Swords and Wizardry White Box SOLD OUT! Cover Revealed Early

Did you get yours? I hope so brother because it's sold out until April with another chance again in November (just in time for next Christmas!). If you were able to get your order in early, here's a special treat--the cover revealed earlier than expected.

And it's a beauty!

Another Motley Selection of Legendary Encounters Minis

These are a few I've had for a while, but they're pretty nifty nonetheless. I have to apologize for the lighting in my photos. It's been driving me bonkers to get decently lit shots with the macro focus on our craptastic camera. It serves it's purpose when we need it. Except for when I REALLY am counting on it (like for clear, close up shots like these). So today we have...

An ogre, one of my favorites actually in the line...

A nasty green cave troll!

A ghost, who's about as in focus as a ghost can get...

Some very Harryhausen-esqe undead warriors--notice that Reaper updated the shields between purchases. I think they've even updated them again since these came out...

 

And a few heroes, including an elf archer...

What is it about elves that makes them so hard to determine the gender? I thin this one is technically male, but who knows.

Next we have an "evil" warrior, I'd prefer to think of him as "slightly perturbed"...

And finally, a good one! This is Ranald, you've likely seen him in these posts to help provide scale, bad jokes, etc. I think of him as being more than slightly skittish. It must be the awkward way he holds his sword!

This last one should give you some idea of the size differences between the figures. The macro setting is a bit deceptive here as the skeleton is actually slightly shorter than Ranald.

As always you can click the images to see larger versions (hoping my bandwidth holds out!).

I've got just a few more of these guys to share so stay tuned!

HOT Sale at Flames Rising RPGs!!

Normally I don't pimp businesses (unless it's my FLGS) on this blog, but there's a great, big heckova PDF sale on Flames Rising's RPG Now storefront. They're having a "Twenty for 10" sale (that's 20 products for 2010). Word to the wise: the sale ends January 7.

There's some seriously good swag to be found there--many at more than half-off the cover price. Lest you all think me a sellout (I wish!) here's a few choice items that piqued my curiosity:

• Dragon Warriors RPG (I’ve heard great things about Dragon Warriors lately)
• Dungeon Crawl Classics #51: Castle Whiterock (This is a compendium of adventures from Goodman that’s usually $60)
• Hero 6th "2010 Special" [BUNDLE] (Isn’t this the Champions game engine?)
• MT MegaTraveller Core System [BUNDLE] (Original price is over $70!)
• Mouse Guard Roleplaying Game (Was JUST talking about this on Narmer’s blog)
• Cooper’s Compendium of Corrected Creatures: [BUNDLE] (lots of OGL 3.5 monsters)
• Starblazer Adventures (I think I’ll have to get this one, in print it’s usually $50 in hardcover and 600+ pages of ideas, great illustrations, and even has a comic included!)

This is just a sample, there's lot's more Traveller and Twillight stuff plus Deadlands made the list and how can you not love an old west RPG?  

With all the new OSR products coming out in the last month, and a few more on the horizon I feel like I'm going broke. But then this damn sale cropped up and there's only 3 days left--what's a guy to do?!

Huge props to DeForest over on Narmer's blog Dynasty Zero for the tip!

UPDATE: I purchased the two in green yesterday, lot's of great material, I'm quite pleased!

Hey, you've got your SCIENCE in my FANTASY!

No, you've got your fantasy in my sci-fi!

There's a lot of talk lately about the resurgence of the old-school or the old school renaissance in RPGs and a call to return back to the roots of science fantasy. In fact some are calling for an escalation of these efforts (which I whole-heartedly embrace BTW). Apparently some people are squeamish about mixing the two, barring a few one-off exceptions. Which, to be honest, is understandable. Especially if you're trying to create a world where technology can't come in and trump your magic system or where an omnipotent race of aliens can easily annihilate your meticulously crafted medieval analogue world. For some, it was less of an issue, but most seem to be more comfortable keeping sci-fi and fantasy separate.

It occurred to me however that if you started with a sci-fi universe and sprinkled in some magic or low-tech, then people don't seem to mind. Mysticism and lasers seemed like two things too good to pass up.

Case in point:
...or so we thought, before 1999. But isn't it funny how (essentially working backwards in a sense) it's easier to think of a sci-fi world in the broad strokes of fantasy, than to try and upgrade an ancient world into a larger universe.

Food for thought I guess. Thoughts?

The New Frontier!

So this JUST arrived from the mailman not even 5 minutes ago. I saw the post over at Grognardia and had Star Frontiers on the brain for sometime. Yeah, I've already downloaded all the PDFs of the remastered SF books and modules over at StarFrontiersman.net and StarFrontiers.com. And all of his supplement issues. But what I really wanted was the box set...so I could stare at it. That's not weird is it?