Terry Pratchet Knighted, Forges Own +1 Sword from Meteorite

Image: Associated Press

Seriously, you cannot get more baddass fantasy than making your own magic sword! Pratchett was recently knighted by the Queen (Helloooooo! Wait, that's Julia Child, nevermind) and to commemorate the event he MADE HIS OWN SWORD From news.com.au (really, that's your website's name? Okay, fine.)...

Pratchett, believing the sword would not truly be his own unless it was made from metal he had produced, found a field with deposits of iron ore near his home in Wiltshire, west of London. He gathered the deposits and smelted the iron ore himself.

But wait, it gets better:

Pratchett, who has Alzheimer's disease, also said he had thrown in "several pieces of meteorites — thunderbolt iron, you see — highly magical, you’ve got to chuck that stuff in whether you believe in it or not".

Read the whole, completely true and awesome story.

Image: Associated Press

Congrats Sir Pratchett! 

/Hat tip to Boing Boing.

Recent OSR sightings at my FLGS and other musings

Here in the Twin Cities, the OSR is alive and well--if not a little slow to get to my FLGS, Source Comics and Games. Here's a few finds over the last few weeks. Saw this one today:

Core rules baby!

This is the first time Swords and Wizardry has made it to the Source (I'm pretty sure anyway, I've been keeping my eyes peeled for a while). There have been a few Labyrinth Lord products for sale (like the time I saw a few copies of the Advanced Edition Companion), and they are always snapped up in a week--and for some reason never reordered again. While some of the crew at the Source are hip to the OSR, most staff seem to be down on the "clones". This isn't surprising considering the store is a 4E selling machine:

You should see the dice!

That's just a sign--not a box! And yes, it's an extremely cool sign, but still. 4E of course has tons of events to support it like the weekly D&D Encounters, the Annual D&D Day, and it looks as though they're starting up a D&D Essentials event (not sure if that's regular or not--but they were asking for DMs to sign up).

A few weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised to see this pop up for sale:

Has anyone played Sorcery and Super Science yet? I'd be interested to know. That's gone too now. Expeditious Retreat seems to show up on shelves more often, but again, the same products never appear twice. I'm beginning to think the store isn't keen on smaller, indy publishers.

In the last five years, the Source has held a handful of indy comic creator events--but never one for game publishers. There's several local game houses in the area--some smaller like Atlas Games, some larger like Fantasy Flight. But there's not been an event to celebrate or promote the start-up or even local game scene. Part of the reason for this might be that FF has opened it's own store a mere 3 miles/8-minute drive away, and the Source still sells a lot of FF inventory. To be honest, I don't know the reason.

Well it is good to see that the OSR is represented, and heartening to know that when products are sold, they disappear quickly. But it would be nice to see a them be treated with a little more staying power to help enhance their impact.