OSR Observations of Dave Hargrave - Just Some Thoughts & Commentaries On The Man

 It two thirty in the morning and I'm finally home from what seems like a very long day. My Arduin books are cracked around me. There's still thoughts in my head about rereading 'The In The Cities' wordpress that hasn't been updated since 2014.. But the author hits the high points about Dave Hargrave & Arduin quite nicely; "Hargrave was definitely not a “frustrated novelist.” Like the best of the OSR people he manages to convey a lot with very little. His brief descriptions of the “Shadowlands” (in the eponymous supplement VII) could serve as a model of how to write great game material. It’s less than two tiny pages long – just a few paragraphs really – but I read it and thought: “This could take years and years to flesh out and play.” How many writers can provide so much inspiration in such a short space?" 

There's something about Hargrave's  writing & design work that seems raw in places, polished in others, & comes across as genuine. Believe me Dave Hargrave for me isn't up on a pedastal far from it. He was a figure that controversy followed & this is even reflected on his wiki entry; "While Hargrave was considered one of the best Gamemasters, he was also known for having a somewhat volatile personality. The original role-playing community at large was split between love and mere tolerance of Hargrave's passions (his falling-out with Greg Stafford, which resulted in Hargrave naming a spell after him as revenge, is one such example" 
Dave Hargrave was a product of  the Vietnam War for six years & many of the guys that over the years I've gamed with were as well. This war shaped his health throughout the rest of his life after serving as a combat photographer. And this was right in the front line of fire during the Vietnam War. I think that the mind set of Mr.Hargrave was one of many vets who came back state side.This includes my uncle & my own father. The war let these veterans down in many ways & its reflective in the hand that many of these gentlemen were dealt. Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, & David Hargrave along with  many others were brilliant writers & designers. Men whose names appeared on the inside covers of the books that we played with. But as I've gotten older these were brilliant but flawed men. Flawed men & women like so many of us. The sort of dedication that it takes to pump book after book out is no small feat. Dave Hargrave continued to write right until the end of his life. There's no Dave Hargrave week for me. Because there's really never really a week that goes by that at some point the Arduin Grimoire isn't in my hands. That's no small feat for a designer whose passed in Eighty Eight. But whose works continue to inspire generations of dungeon masters, players, & rpg table top designers. Was Dave Hargrave perfect? No but he was brilliant with a vivid imagination way ahead of the curve with regards to what we call the OSR these days. Had he been alive now I have no doubt in my mind that Dave Hargrave would be a corner stone of the OSR as publisher & designer today. 

Interview & Sit Down With James M. Ward About The Troll Lords Games Star Ship Warden Rpg Game & Kickstarter Part II

"Near the beginning of the 24th century, humans began the largest construction ever undertaken by their species. Larger than most cities, the project was forty-nine miles long, twenty-four miles wide, and more than six miles in height. The manufacture of this colossus required decades of labor by thousands of skilled craftsmen. It was a feat unequaled in human history at that time. Too large to be manipulated in planetary atmosphere and gravity, this behemoth was built in earth's orbit. It was developed to provide safety for more than a million souls and was to be filled with myriad forms of life.

Packed with the latest technology available at the time, the starship was capable of 90% of the speed of light. A trip to Alpha Centauri was but a mere 6 years. A host of other systems were well within reach, and this vessel was to take humanity to the stars. The planning for this mission was meticulous, the courage of her crew unquestionable, and the hopes of mankind ever present. She was named the Warden after her designer, and she set off for the stars in the late 24th century.

Less than two decades into her mission, she simply disappeared. There has now been no word from the Warden for more than 300 years...."

So I had the opportunity to shoot a rather long email to James M. Ward with whom I've been friends with on Facebook & met at a Gencon long ago but never got to play with the man.

However I did send a rather lengthy part II interview email about the Star Ship Warden Kickstarter for Troll Lords Seige Engine.

'My captain,my captain', really digging this piece of MA style artwork from
The Starship Warden Kickstarter. 

With the continuing popularity of the Star Ship Warden Kickstarter & the Kickstarter campaign hitting well over the fifty thousand dollar mark. What do you think of the incredible interest in the Warden & her backstory that grabs at gamers today? 

JMW: I'm lucky that lots of people have played MA over the 40+ years of its existence. I think they might want to get back some of the fun they remembered years ago. Plus the product is way cool.

You've got such a detailed timeline & solid backstory with the world & setting of the Warden. Growing up did you have a keen interest in science fiction & fantasy?

JMW: I started with the Tom Swift books when I was in 5^th grade. The school libraries were well used after that.

 

Can you see other adventures & stories being told in the universe of 'The Star Ship Warden' in the near future?

JMW: Amazon is right now selling three MA anthologies and an MA novel. Red is the Android

Will fans of James M. Ward be seeing more 'Star Ship Warden' supplements & adventures from Troll Lord games?

JMW: There are lots of stretch goals of product. Also Goodman Games is producing a convention tournament MA adventure.

The events from 'The Star Ship Warden' Kickstarter  seem ripe for a writer/designer of your caliber to exploit into more opportunities for modules & so forth.  Does this opportunity excite you as a writer or a designer? Can you elaborate on this a bit? 

JMW: As a freelancer I write what I'm paid for. If people want more MA things I will be happy to write them.

What is your routine for writing these days? 

JMW: I get up around 9 in the morning. I go on AOL and Facebook looking to see if someone wants to hire me for work.

I start writing on the product with the soonest deadline. At noon I break for
food and read a bit of science fiction. In the afternoon I take up a different product.
 I usually stop at 3 or 4.
From then on I surf the web and do some more fiction reading.

Could you ever see yourself doing an adventure like S3 Expedition to Barrier Peaks with 'The Starship Warden' for Castles & Crusades? Asking for a friend of mine whose backed the Kickstarter. Just color me curious? 

JMW: I am writing a C&C adventure for the Warden called THE SAVING OF WREN about a poor half elf that got cruel transported to the deck of the Warden and has been there for over 40 years and really needs saving.

The Warden is a massive ship & filled with all kinds of adventure opportunities. Where did the idea of the Warden come from?

JMW: I always claim it was an idea I got from Brian Aldess and his STARSHIP novel. I've read lots of novels about colonization starships.

Over the years you've turned this simple star ship into your legacy & so many people respond to the idea of the Warden & her ill fated crew. But what really draws you  back into her again & again? 

JMW: I want the starship saved and put back on course. I want to write the MA Planet Campaign.

The Star Ship Warden seems to have so many layers & turns for adventure about her? Can you talk about some of your influences for writing & designing the Warden? 

SIR: I always call the Warden the Adventure in a Tin Can. Over the years I've read thousands of SciFi books. It has all rubbed off.

  You've had some really impressive products with Troll Lords but two of my favorites are the 

Storyteller's Dictionary &  Storyteller's Thesaurus. But where did the idea for those come from? It seems to me that 'The Star Ship Warden' is the perfect venue for those books to get a work out. I think out of the Troll Lords lines these two books are some of my favorite. JMW: The Storytellers books are Steve Chenault's idea. He was kind enough to give me and Anne Brown the task of writing them. Do you have a favorite book or adventure that you've done for Troll Lords Jim?  JMW: This is an awful question.  It's like saying which of your many daughters is the prettiest. I like all the things I have done for them. I like CASUALTIES OF THE CURWSED WOOD because it is an  adventure that uses a ton of gunpowder. I like TOWERS OF ADVENTURE  because you really can make a huge tower adventure in just five minutes. I like THE HAUNTED LANDS boxed set because it's a horror themed product and it was very difficult to write. OF GODS AND MONSTERS was great to write because  I found a way to make the deities of the campaign world  lots more reactive to the players. I'm just saying. . . If you could snap your fingers Jim & have a fantasy product assignment  for the table top hobby what would it be?  JMW: I'll take a pass on that one as I don't want  to give other designers great ideas. With the ever changing faces, systems, etc. of the table top hobby what do you think is the appeal of the Seige engine  & Castles & Crusades  in your opinion James?  JMW: It's very easy to learn. There is lots of gaming material to be had. The Star Ship Warden book seems to cement the USS Warden into  the universe of Castles & Crusades. There's always been a large theme of  science fiction which turned into science fantasy in your writing as the years have rolled on. How do you feel about the fact that writing & designing has inspired countless writers & designers over the years?  JMW: I don't know that I have done that. I do enjoy people saying they like my work. What do you think that 'The Star Ship Wardens' Kickstarter will do for the table top rpg hobby scene?  JMW: I'm hoping everyone things it's as good as I think it is and  useful in any SciFi game system. Do you think that this 'Kickstarter' is the indication of a new trend in the table top hobby for other science fiction or science fantasy games?  JMW: Nope Troll Lords has always supported your work &  had a solid working relationship with you. Could you tell me a bit about that relationship & what its meant to you over the years?  JMW: I greatly respect the talent of the Troll Lord people. They tell me  I'm one of the few designers that turn over product on  time and in good condition. Thank you for taking the time to answer some questions with us. And this has been an extremely exciting opportunity to talk with you James M. Ward. Thanks very much. From all of us over at Swords & Stitchery we really appreciate  all that you do for the table top role playing hobby & for Troll Lords over the years.

If your a fan of the Metamorphis Alpha rpg then your going to want to 

take a look at
 The Star Ship Warden Kickstarter from Troll Lord Games 

Beer, Fritz Leiber, Arduin, & An OSR Campaign Set Up

Its Memorial Day here in the States again & I got together with friends at a local watering hole to discuss OSR stuff. Swap some beer & shoot the breeze about International Dave Hargrave day, classic original Dungeons & Dragons, OSR games, & everyone's current campaigns.
So we began to talk about WWI & some of the history leading up to it including the international  brush fire conflicts that lead up to the war to end all wars. The idea came up of battle fields whose violence was so bloody & bad that they transcend the local time space continuum & pull soldiers in from other time periods & eras.


This smattering of ordinary soldiers becomes the adventuring party whose bonds of friendship & brotherhood form the basis for the center hub of such a  campaign. This isn't a new idea & The Big Time by Fritz Leiber  takes some of the ideas about a central temporal war & uses the concept of the 'Change War'. Within the "The Change War" temporal fronts change & move as time lines change & die. "Their method of battle involves changing the outcomes of events throughout history (temporal war)." Yet we hear about it but never see it. Lieber is of course Appendix N front & center alumni because his various creations including his two Sword & Sorcery creations with their adventures in the city of Lankhmar. But for me  Lieber is so much more then a simple Sword & Sorcery writer with his Science Fiction with its various alternative worlds being great fodder for a dungeon master's old school campaigns. You can read 'Big Time' on line -

"The Big Time as serialized in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1958, parts one and two, at the Internet Archive"

I don't really want to get hung up too much on Fritz Leiber too much because I've got a lot of ground to cover here. Liber's Change Wars are only another front in the bigger war between Law & Chaos, yup that's right I said it. This was something we'd see much more of in Three Hearts and Three Lions in 1961's  fantasy novel by American writer Poul Anderson.

Michael Moorcock would 'borrow' certain concepts for this along with American writer Roger Zelazny. Gary Gygax just danced in with Gord & his crew of dungeon miscreants.
Dave Hargrave plugged into this with his dungeon locations that weren't bound by time or space. These dungeons were created to cancers on timelines & their appearances were the death wail for a world. The appearance of a dungeon on a world isn't cause for celebration but call to arms for adventurers, outlaws, & soldiers in a war they barely understand.  This is something I've done time & again faster then you can say Hargravian Hell spiral.

The idea of taking a bunch of adventurers from across a platform of various old school & OSR retroclone system  platforms & throw them together isn't something new. We've done it time & again much to the cynicism & criticism of the local OSR scene. The idea of breaking down the traditional Dungeons & Dragons tropes seems outside of some folks comfort zone.

A soldier from Rhûn in Middle-earth artwork by
Jan Pospíšil

Dungeon are adventure locations whose appearance might mean a call to arms across time & space. We've seen both Marvel & DC use this tactic in their comic books & now block buster movies time & again. This is simply another tactic to get get very different groups of players to the table. Some may play pulp heroes, some adventurers, a few soldiers, but by night's end they'll be veterans of the temporal wars.

Gary Gygax & Dave Arneson were the fathers & innovators of this hobby but where we are today is from the blood, sweat, & tears of those who came afterward as well. Some of them have been forgotten but some of them are still in the trenches today & the OSR continues to roll along. Some will leave & some will stay as for me I'm in for the long haul. The fact is that Hargrave took a quiet & yet dangerous approach. Dangerous because he was willing to take the risk of possible regret & rejection in our hobby. Still his light was kept on by Paul Mosher for years
Meanwhile I quietly drink my beer & crack open my copies of Arduin again & salute Dave Hargrave.



To pull this off I reccommend the first three Arduin books & B/X Dungeons & Dragons along with your favorite retroclone systems. Possibly Amazing Adventurers! rpg & its Companion from Troll Lord Games.

OSR Hargravian Commentary - Happy International Dave Hargrave Day!

So its international Dave Hargrave appreciation day which has very different connotations for me as both a dungeon master & as the son of a Vietnam veteran. Arduin is of course the sometimes controversial cross genre fantasy world of Bloody, Bloody, Arduin.
Bloody, Bloody, Arduin hit me square in the face at about seven years old & was long before Palladium's  Rifts that I discovered that Arduin included everything from  interstellar wars to horror & historical drama as its setting campaign world. Although it was ground in the medieval fantasy tradition of TSR's original  Dungeons & Dragons rpg box. My adopted English uncle in New York from the U.K. a retired RAF pilot along with his kids came back from California with a bunch of original Dungeons & Dragons books & the  three Arduin Grimoire books back in the early Eighties. He also had a smattering of Dragon Tree Press books

You can still get the pdf of the Arduin Trilogy here but I'd wait till it goes on sale.

Things have been a bit well iffy from both Dragon Tree Press  & Emperor's Choice for ordering items. Consider yourselves warned folks.

I received those three books as gifts back in the early Nineties & they were burned up in an apartment fire ages ago. I grabbed the new Emperor's Choice Arduin reprint book the first time I got into the OSR scene.
For the record I took a lot of heat for that purchase over the years from both the old school community & the local branches of the OSR. Screw 'em its been one of the best purchases of my hobby. If you want to know the contents of the Arduin Trilogy Mr.Lizard does a solid break down of the books.
My uncle used the free wheeling style of the world of Arduin to weave together his own worlds & creations where we went toe to toe with all manner of horrors including renegade clans of  Deodanths! Deodanth are a cross breed of  Elves & Vampires here's the concept art from the Arduin Grimore,1977 that hunt their fantasy stock brothers the Elves! If there's one constant about the world of Arduin its that power attracts power!



Deodanth artwork found on twitter!

David Hartlage's blog DM David had a great piece on the Arduin books. And many games were spent battling across the face of Arduin's campaign world setting. Kill Kittens took out two of our number and then a star spider did a total party kill as we quested for the Holy Grail. Out came the Delian Book of the Dead as we'd quest for the souls of our fallen comrades but such was the heady mix of Dave Hargrave's gaming books kids! This was the U.K./California style that I was used to now a days called Gonzo or some such. To us it was pure gaming fun and that's only a part of the Hargravian legacy. Its only now that Dave Hargrave is getting his due.


Today Arduin is one of those old school gaming wells that I frequently find myself returning to whist other dungeon masters & OSR bloggers seem to burn out. The sheer volume of old school weirdness & wonderfulness keeps the experience of gaming fresh for me. If you don't like something then drop it or move on! Dave Hargrave wasn't an easy character to define but he did gaming on his own terms!

To quote Ryk Spoor's blog article; "The Arduin books told GMs and players that they should not believe in limits. That of course magic and technology could play in the same game – Welcome to Skull Tower gave rules for firearms, while The Runes of Doom had rules for advanced energy weapons! – that no species or type of character should be forbidden to enter the realms of adventure. Dave Hargrave painted Arduin as one of the most complex, amazing worlds ever created, with innumerable species coexisting in a world that had a massive history and mysteries hiding around every corner."
For me this is the essence of Dave Hargrave's work & contribution to the old school gaming community. He was taken far too young! Had Dave Hargrave lived he would have been a major force in the OSR as his ideas & philosophy have not only come to pass but become part of the OSR mainstream.

An insectoid Phraint in the big city / an Elf on the windy wharf. Dave Hargrave's imagination knew little bounds & DM's should not find themselves hemmed in by the constraints of imagination or rules.

For me the world of Arduin is alive and well, sitting on my shelf waiting to be used on new & unsuspecting players & their PC's! I hope the Dream weaver & Paul Mosher who recently passed are sitting having a game right now. So shake some dice, come down to the street of Darkness, & watch out for those most dangerous Arduin horrors! Happy international Dave Hargrave day!


Everyone on the street sees the pickpocket attempt

(Roland Brown, The Arduin Grimoire IV: The Lost Grimoire by Dave Hargrave, Dragon Tree Press, 1984)

Not The Ususual Appendix N & OSR Literary Recommendation Commentary

Straight out of Cross Plains  Texas came one of America's pulp era lights & after whose birth the world of fantasy & Swords & Sorcery literature was never to be the same. Robert Howard changed the world with his literary creations & today is his birthday!

Right so its Robert Howard's birthday today. I've already seen the usual recommendations of his Conan novels & stories. The big one that many DM's sight is of course Robert Howard's Red Nails. This is one of the original hex & dungeon crawling stories in real time that has provided countless DM's with hours of inspiration. But there's more to Robert Howard's writing then Conan.

But for me as a DM there are other novels & stories of his that I've found useful are his single foray into his singular style of brutal science fantasy Almuric. This is sort of the anti Edgar Rice Burroughs novel that Robert Howard did. A brutal & violent answer to the usual 'Sword & Planet' blundering stories that I'd seen up till that time. I do love Edgar Rice Burrough's writing  but for totally different reasons then REH's.
For me earlier in the latter 00's Robert Howard's Cthulhu Mythos stories have been instrumental in my OSR campaign settings, inspiration, & adventure creation. He wrote in the same era & time frame as Lovecraft because they were pen pals. As a pulp guy I love REH's El Borak stories. They've provided lots of inspiration especially for classic Dungeons & Dragon's Lost City adventure module.


The James Allison Stories are actually my preferred source material for creating Sword & Sorcery adventures on Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea second edition's hidden valleys & forbidden lands. They capture the raw brutal violence & other worldliness of Howard's vision but are not as well known among the usual Howard fans of gamers. These stories also have many of the elements of the Moorcock Elric novels without the angst bits & other half baked weirdness.


King Kull of Atlantis I've always preferred to Conan for a number of reasons including that in my mind he's a far better recommendations for a Dungeons & Dragons style Sword & Sorcery monarch. He's far more stable then Conan & deals with the Lovecraftian  horrors of his era on equal terms with a far more stable eye towards level progression. He goes from slave, to pirate, to outlaw, gladiator, finally to soldier & to king by his own hand.
I have often lamented Robert Howard's suicide and while I totally understand the circumstances I often wonder what other stories & novels might have come from that brilliant but troubled writer from Cross Plains Texas. Anyhow keep em rolling & happy birthday to one of my all time favorite writers & poets Robert Howard.

I am older than the world:
Older than life.
The race of man is a babe in the cradle of Time.
I am Alpha and Omega.

The first and the last;
The circle without end.
I am a serpent with its tail in its mouth;
I am a triangle whose tips overlap a circle.

I am the older sister of Destiny.
Before man was, I was:
And after man has vanished from the Universe, I will be.
Time is a phantom, built by the mind of man;
There is no Time.
The thing that men call Time flies before my wind;
Time has beginning, duration, ending.
I am that which was, is and shall be;
Unceasing, Neverending, Eternal.
Number all the sands of all the shores of all the worlds
Of all the Universes.
And let each sand represent a million centuries;
And they all shall not be a single instant
Of Eternity.

For I am numberless and unnumbered,
Eternity had no beginning nor shall there be ending.
I am Alpha and Omega.
That which was, is and shall be;
Numberless and unnumbered.

Eternity
by Robert Ervin Howard

More OSR Commentary - Happy International Gary Gygax Day!

So today is the birthday of one of the creators of not just Dungeons & Dragons but the modern table top role playing game hobby Gary Gygax. For the OSR & indeed millions of gamers across planet Earth its Gary Gygax day today. This was a man who wrote, designed, gamed, &  lived life on his own terms. This is how I still think of Gary Gygax, I found a picture of him at a September 1999 Modcon  event in Italy the photo of the man by Moroboshi. This is how I still think of  Mr.Gygax out in the world promoting the hobby, playing the game that made him famous, giving advice, playing the war & board games he loved, & spending time with the family he loved.

In the minds of friends & family its his birthday, a today is a bitter sweet reminder that friend, father, & man who touched so many lives is gone. Yet for  many of his friends & family he seems alive to this day, his memory alive kept by the Gygax family & friends through Garycon.  Do I have a Gary Gygax story? Yes I have several. But the one that sticks in my mind goes something like this.

I met Gary Gygax very briefly at a Gencon  & that encounter sticks in my mind. I spoke with Gary Gygax about his involvement with shoe patch & leather working  sewing machines. The guy with the easy going manner,who took the time to speak for a few minutes with me(a fan), signed something Dungeons & Dragons related & then got whisked way by another Dungeons & Dragons fan. Well that brief encounter was enough for me. I got a pretty good measure of who the man was a down to Earth guy but  a sharp and very intelligent gamer & author. This was a guy who would happily mop the floor with you across a war gaming board or kill off a PC if your actions dictated it. Years later, I was reading through a Game Spy Gary Gygax interview on the history of Dungeons & Dragons by Allen Rausch which bore this exact sentiment out.
Because of my father's condition(he's fine but I've had to pick up a lot of the slack in the sewing machine repair business) I don't know when I'll make GaryCon but eventually I will. In the meantime to celebrate the day I intend to do a bit of campaign brainstorming and gaming with friends tonight. So get together with friends, chuck some dice, and celebrate the birthday of one of the creators of  this crazy hobby of ours! Game on!

H P Lovecraft Videos Created by The Lone Animator & A New Free Lovecraft Download Resource As Inspiration For Your Old School Campaigns

I'm huge HP Lovecraft fan as anyone who knows me in real life can attest to, last night I got together with some friends for a beer or two. I got a chance to see some incredible work by the Lone Animator last night. Needless to say, I'm also a fan of this gentleman. He & his team's take on HP Lovecraft's The Outer Gods is very well done in my humble opinion. I love Lovecraft's Dreamlands Cycle of stories, poems, & novel.
Anyhow on with the Outer Gods!

So after downing still more brews we were ready to take on Lin Carter's poem "The King In Tatters"; set in the mythic world of Carcosa, where Hastur is the King In Yellow. Its a well done short piece of film that hits all of the major bases of Carter's work with the animator's own twist on the Lovecraftian creations.
But then again that's one of the beautiful parts of Lovecraft's work,everyone has their own interprations of the horrors & weirdness of the mythos.

The Lone Animator has a paetron page & he pretty much has a few opinions that I share especially with regards to Ray Harryhausen. He's done a page video & he's some great stuff which can have applications for rpg miniature or model making as well as film.

You Can Find Out More About
The Lone Animator's Work Here 
And His Blog Here 

Alright obviously this gentleman's work can serve as an inspiration for those engaged in old school Lovecraftian role playing. I'm not associated or affiliated with the Lone Animator but I try to help out where I can. So I'm not trying to steal or violate his trade marks & copyrights on his Lovecraft work.
I would love to segway this into the fact that there is a brand new revamp & expansion of Lovecraft's work's on the Internet Archive;"The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft contains the original stories which Lovecraft wrote as an adult. It begins in 1917 with “The Tomb” and ends in 1935 with his last original work “The Haunter of the Dark.” The book is ordered chronologically by the date the story was written. Because Lovecraft was a terrible businessman and left no heirs to his intellectual property, all of his works are already in the public domain. It does not include collaborations or revisions because some of those works may still be under the co-author’s copyright. There also left out two completely non-Weird very early stories. "
Since I'm looking to do an Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea campaign eventually I wanted to see what resources were out on the Net. The work came up last night over beer & with my friends.

You can down load The Complete Works Of H. P. Lovecraft

by H. P. Lovecraft Here

Celebrate Robert Howard's Birthday With Free Sword & Sorcery Pulp Downloads

Happy birthday to Robert E. Howard, born on this day in 1906! If there was any writer whose had more influence on me or my life its probably HP Lovecraft or Edgar Allen Poe. But Robert Howard was the creator of Conan, Brian Mac Morn, and as host of other incredible characters! He is the father of the modern  sword & sorcery story. 

In his short  life time he changed the face of the pulp story with his writing but it wasn't until after his death at again thirty by his own hand that he was truly appreciated.
“I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”
― Robert E. Howard, Queen of the Black Coast

I first encountered Robert Howard at the tender age of 11 down at the five & dime store when one of the Seventies reissues of his writing hit the stands. The damn thing dropped into my hands & changed my life. His writing was/is evocative, fast paced, & pulpy to the core but speaks volumes to me even to this day.


So with it being Robert Howard's birthday I figured it was a fine day to grab a few titles from the Internet Archive! They've got a mess of Robert Howard's writing for free!

Raising The Volume On The Stefan Poag Original Art Raffle for Jim Ward! And The Metamorphosis Alpha: Epsilon City Kickstarter

So there's this great piece of art being auctioned off from the Metamorphosis Alpha and DCC RPG artist +Stefan Poag. from the Dungeon Lord site for James Ward's medical bills. And if you don't think that these contributions are making a difference  according to Mr.Ward's Facebook page -

'The first GOFUNDME check arrived and Janean and I turned it right around and paid some really nasty bills. Bless you all for your donations on my behalf.

The Epsilon City Kickstarter ends in 3 days. We have a number of great authors helping me with the project. I got Joseph to put dice on the list so that I can have a new bag of dice and you all can get a great deal on purchasing a block of specific MA dice. I only have one project left to write and I'm sure I can get that done by the December 1 deadline. Thank you all for getting into that kickstarter.

I truly appreciate all the support I get from you all.'



Which brings me to the Epislon City Kickstarter , the fact is that the Kickstarter looks pretty damn cool and its got some damn nice stuff in it. I'm also enjoying the fact that its for Dungeon Crawl Classics and Mutant Crawl Classics as well. Personally I would get on board now before the time runs out. By the way I'm not getting anything out of this except for the fact that I enjoy James work and I wish to see him in the best possible health to continue the great stuff for Metamorphis Alpha's DCC version.