Eleven Again and Blowin' Up Stuff

 I got a wild hair last night.... But I'm getting ahead of myself....

We've been doing a lot of day-trip stuff this year, add we really can't afford an extended vacation. We just got back from a two-day trip to Dinosaur National Monument, which was an annual trip when I was a kid. Faced with some hours in the hotel, I got thinking about what to do instead of TV.

When I was 11, my buddy and I pooled  our money and bought some Car Wars stuff. He bought the books, I bought some maps and counters. I photocopied the book. When we went on vacations, I'd usually spend downtime in the hotel designing cats and running scenarios by myself.

I still have all my maps and counters. The photocopies are long gone. My buddy's books? Burned up in a fire.

This weekend, memories ensued. I picked up a dozen Hot Wheels with the idea of fiddling something together with the  PDFrules I have on my laptop.

That didn't happen.

But my wife and I decided to try a "gamecation" late this year. We have some timeshare access...in a place with terrible TV reception, no phones, no distractions...other than what we take there ourselves. So we're taking games.

Scrabble. Boggle. Sojourner Tales. D&D. May even try some X-Wing Miniatures. A couple others.

So, the wild hair. Tonight I grabbed my wife and headed 45 minutes south to a FLGS in a city down south from here. I knew they had a copy, at least they had one back in February. (Of course I'm this obsessive to remember that.) Sure enough, they had a copy.

Car Wars Classic.

And I bought it. Opened it up as soon as I got home. And I was transported back thirty-some-odd years. I was like a little kid, looking at the counters, the blank vehicle sheets. I started giggling at some point, reading the rules. Yeah, they're not elegant, they're complex, and they're not QUITE the rules u remember...but, yeah.

I think my giggling scared my wife a little.

I know what else we're going to play on our our gamecation. And once my kids know the ropes, I know where I can download a turning key for Hot Wheels.

And my youngest son is nearly the age I was when I first played....My kids are gonna blow stuff up. And I'm going to get to do it with them.

  Warm up the side-mounted flamethrowers and the front-mounted linked twin Vulcans. We're goin' auto-duelin'.

[Found Item Friday] El Diablo Cometh!

I dropped by my FLGS this morning, thinking as I got out of my car that I should leave my wallet under the seat. After all, I really couldn't afford much of anything. I mean, NOTHING at all.

I should have listened to my doubts.

Well, maybe; maybe not. I went in looking for a copy of the 2nd Edition AD&D title, The Complete Book of Dwarves. I was going through my shelves earlier this week and realized that my copy was missing. At least, I'm fairly sure I had a copy. The FLGS usually has an eclectic mix of out-of-print titles from earlier editions. They didn't have that title (although they did have The Complete Book of Psionics (which I'm not interested in) and The Complete Book of Fighters (which I already have)) but they did have a couple titles that piqued my interest. Titles that I got for around 60% of cover price (even the marked-down price was discounted for me).

First up was the Diablo II: Diablerie. One shelf down was the Diablo II: To Hell and Back. Both are 3.x supplements released by WotC, meant to build off of the popularity of the Diablo II video game. The first, the Diablerie is more of a brief "setting" book. Within its 96 pages you can find character classes for Diablo-specific classes, such as the Amazon, necromancer, and sorceress. There's some equipment lists and a bestiary. A blank character sheet template in the 3.x style. Even a sample adventure--five pages--that sets out a "How To" for the uninitiated (with differing levels of encounters: Basic Level, Nightmare Level, and Hell Level), explaining how to prepare an encounter for the Diablo-verse. Most of the book is geared this way: playing in the Diablo-verse.

The To Hell and Back volume is a detailed 192-page "module" set in the Diablo-verse. It contains a bigger bestiary, equipment lists, and magic items. I'm not sure that I'd ever use it as a stand-alone adventure path. I'll more likely cut it into pieces and use those pieces as drop-in encounters in our regular adventure. However, I can also imagine sitting the guys down one night and describing how they wake up next to a shimmering portal, a portal which disappears even as they awaken. They find themselves in a small hamlet, one terrorized by demonic creatures that have taken over a nearby church and accompanying catacombs. Heh. Just thinking about it makes it more intriguing.... Hmm....

They were previously-owned by the same person, as I found scribbled notes on steno-pad paper in several spots in both books. Also slipped inside To Hell and Back is a print-out of the web enhancement "The Secret Cow Level" that anyone familiar with Diablo will recognize. There's also a couple of old PC character sheets: Krump, the human barbarian (played by "Jake") and Isabell, the human Amazon (played by "Sally").

I'd be interested to know if anyone's played around with these books. If you have, drop me a line in the comments. Let me know your experiences, would you?

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Twelve

Day Twelve: First store where you bought your gaming supplies. Does it still exist?

Hammond's Toys & Hobbies.

It's still around, in various forms. By that I mean it's no longer in the same location and their selection and quality has decreased somewhat in the face of box stores. But they're still around and still family-owned. I even worked for them for a while several years back. The place was quiet enough at night that I could actually get some painting done at the front counter.

This was the place that I picked up some of the first metal minis and polyhedral dice I ever owned. My friend (the DM for our skirmish games) and I would pool our cash to pick up minis, Testor paints, and dice. The Armory dice from a few posts ago? Those came from Hammond's. They were a great source of back issues of Dragon and White Dwarf magazines back in the early 2000s. I was able to pick up a boxed set of Rod of Seven Parts at a terrific discount long after it was out of print.

Looking back, though, it's a little frustrating to realize that one of their business models with the lead miniatures was to open and break up boxed sets and sell the individual miniatures at a higher price than they were valued as part of the whole box. Granted, I owned a few miniatures that I likely never would have owned otherwise, but it's still upsetting to think that they were doing this at all.

The greatest memory I have of the store is of the owner. At that time, I thought he had to be over 100 years old. He was ancient. He was also always grouchy. I remember that he seemed to hate kids; ironic, of course, considering he made his living by catering to us snot-nosed brats. But the strongest memory I have is of this man shadowing the kids around the store, making sure no one shoplifted anything. It was comical to watch and admittedly creepy if you were one of the watched-over kids. I suppose it probably helped quell their losses; I know that the store I worked in had a very low merchandise loss ratio. (In one of their now-defunct stores, they replaced Gramps with fake video cameras. Black plastic cameras with a 9-volt battery to run the red "recording" light and a short cable that was stuck up into the drop ceiling.) He wasn't the manager; the manager was invariably one of his family members and was always behind the counter.