Happy ThanksGiving

Happy Thanks Giving to Everyone Out in the Interwebs. 

I'm off for the day to visit relatives & get stuffed!
All my best folks 

The Goblin Market PDF- Free

Got a present for you folks. I know that there's some Jim Henson's Labyrinth fans out there Well awhile back we had a community project over at the Gorgon Milk Blog to develop a goblin style OSR project called the Goblin Market. There's all kinds of items in it. I had a hand in writing 6 or 8 of them! You can get the Free pdf over here. The material might be able to be recycled for other games as well say Changeling The Lost or something. Anyway take a look Here







Some influences as well ! 

Shady Sam'rrizzi's Intergalactic Repo Service & Institute

Are you down a couple of credits & need a fast note or are unemployed? Are you looking for the career of a lifetime? Want a life path of excitement?
Then boy have we got a job for you!
Shady Sam'rrizzi's Intergalactic Repo Service & Institute
We're looking for you! "
Not just a job, it's an adventure."
In Just 12 Weeks We Can : 

1. Teach you the Code Of The Repo Men 
2. Be ceretified in Intergalactic Traffic Laws & The DSV codes & laws throughout known space & local star systems 
3. Learn How To Render Down A Space Craft To The Frame In Under 2 Hours or Less 
4. Be your boss & set your own hours in the wilds of intergalactic space!
   

Repo Space Craft Table Based On Commission 

1. Battle Cruiser   90,000 credits 
2. Galaxy Class star ship   80,000 credits 
3. Battle Star 100,000 credits intact 
4. Civilian Cruiser 1,000 credits 
5. Troop Striker 2200 credits intact 
6. Wartime Defense Fortress 50,000 credits 
7. Far-range Heavy Peacetime Explorer 30,000 credits 
8. Outer-System Dreadnaught 40,000 credits 
9. Intergalactic Medium  Super-Eliminator 63,000 credits 
10. Dimensional Heavy Support Fortress 77,000 credits
    

Random Space Repo Encounter &  Reaction Table  Roll 1d10

1. Spacers out for a joy ride & behind on their payments. Instantly chaotic & ready to fight 
2. Ancient Aliens that have taken over the repo & yet are looking talk perhaps 20% of payment 
3. Explorers behind in their payments. 30% chance of them being space pirates 
4. Space Pirates with a fake repo from a rival clan!  Will fight 
5. Rival Repomen looking to fight. They have a cherry repo in their possession 
6. Radioactive Heavy Strategic Striker with a heavy repo on it! Don't look in the cargo hold. Pilot is crazy but social 
7. Alien Battle fortress heavy repo but infected with various parasites 
8. A cult has taken over a battle station with a good repo on it. They have armed the station but want to talk about their religion. 30% of fight 
9. Escaped criminals in a classic space craft. Armed & Dangerous! 
10. A group of strange adventurers including a space princess, 2 droids, a wookie, & a pilot are burning through space. The ride is sweet but has a really nice repo. 40% of fighting 

Science Fiction Mile Stone - The First Airing of Doctor Who

Today was the first episode of Doctor Who it aired right after the announcement that Kenndy had been shot!
 The Unearthly Child's Plot went something like this:

The first episode starts in a junkyard in contemporary London and introduces the four characters who were to form the core of the first year's production: Schoolteachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright are concerned about one of their pupils, Susan Foreman, who seems to have a very alien outlook on England. She is precocious, but seems to have strange gaps in her understanding of the world. They have come to her listed address to investigate.

The programme's main prop, the TARDIS, is also introduced, when the teachers hear Susan's voice apparently coming from inside a police box. At the time, such boxes were a fairly common sight on the streets of London, but only police officers held a key to open them. The TARDIS proves to be no ordinary police box: when Ian and Barbara enter, they discover it to be much bigger on the inside than the outside, and furnished with futuristic-looking controls. The time machine retains its outward appearance when it travels through time, which Susan explains as a malfunction in the circuitry that is supposed to adapt its appearance to its surroundings.

Susan lives with her grandfather, the mysterious Doctor, who does not otherwise identify himself. He is a cranky, hostile, suspicious old man who appears to be a fugitive. Fearing that Barbara and Ian will give away the secret of the TARDIS and make life impossible for him in London, he takes the machine to the Stone Age.

In the remaining three episodes, the four become involved in a brutal power struggle within a Stone Age tribe. In "The Cave of Skulls", the group encounters a Paleolithic tribe and are subsequently imprisoned by them in a large cave. In "The Forest of Fear", they are shown to escape from the settlement, but are subsequently intercepted before reaching the TARDIS. They barely escape with their lives by exploitation of Ian's knowledge of how to produce fire, which induces fear and respect in the primitive Stone Age society. The final episode, "The Firemaker", has the group mediating separate factions of the tribe before fleeing successfully to the TARDIS. They travel, seemingly at random, to a new destination; even the Doctor does not know where. The TARDIS's view screen shows a mysterious scene, a petrified forest, which acts as a teaser for the next story. As the time travellers leave their machine, a radiation meter is shown on the console of the machine, unheeded by them, registering "Danger".

Other facts -The four episodes of the serial are, respectively, "An Unearthly Child", "The Cave of Skulls", "The Forest of Fear" and "The Firemaker". In common with Coburn's original acronym TARDIS, as component parts of his script texts, these titles now remain the copyright protected property of his estate.
Some Other Odd Facts About the Transmission - The first episode was transmitted the day after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It has been written that the transmission was delayed by ten minutes due to extended news coverage; in fact, it went out just eighty seconds late.^[8] However, because it was felt that the coverage of the events of the assassination as well as a series of power blackouts across the country may have caused too many viewers to miss this introduction to a new series it was broadcast again on 30 November 1963, just before the broadcast of episode two. This repeat was not broadcast in Northern Ireland. The serial was repeated on BBC2 in November 1981, daily from Monday 2 November 1981 to Thursday 5 November 1981 at 5.40pm. The Pilot was transmitted on BBC2, 26 August 1991 at 2.15pm.

So here's to one of my favorite Doctor's William Hartnel ! 

Some great behind the scenes information found right Here

R.I.P. Anne McCaffrey

So so very sad over this... The darkness has claimed another great! 

R.I.P. Anne McCaffrey, Creator of Pern and The Ship Who Sang

Anne McCaffrey wasn't just the inventor of Pern, the world where a whole society is based on dragon-riding. She was also an incredibly influential author who helped transform the way science fiction and fantasy authors wrote about women, and the way all of us thought about bodies and selfhood. She was the first woman to win a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award, as well as a Grand Master of science fiction.

Top image by Michael Whelan

Besides the Pern books, McCaffrey wrote the classic space-faring novel The Ship Who Sang, in which a severely disabled girl becomes the core of a starship, or Brainship, with her mind controlling all its major functions. McCaffrey's novel provided a startling new way to think about personhood and the nature of the mind/body connection, but also helped pave the way for a whole subgenre of posthuman space opera, in which heavily modified humans explore space.

She told Locus in 2004:

I think the best story I ever wrote was 'The Ship Who Sang'. It still causes people to cry, including me. When Todd and I were reading it at Brighton, they had a BBC crew filming it. So there were these BBC cameramen hunkered down filming us, and comes the end of the story (which Todd always reads, because I can't go through it without weeping), I saw that these cameramen had tears rolling down their faces. That's such a thrill — a story I wrote at the beginning of my career, and it's still packin' the house. I wrote that story because I couldn't tell my father, he died in 1953. I remember reading a story — I can't remember the name or that of the author — about a woman searching for her son's brain, it had been used for an autopilot on an ore ship and she wanted to find it and give it surcease. And I thought what if severely disabled people were given a chance to become starships? What if they wanted to do that? I thought, 'Hey, that would be a gorgeous idea.' So that's how 'The Ship Who Sang' was born.

McCaffrey's first novel, Restoree, was written in response to the unrealistic depiction of women in science fiction and fantasy.

But it was the many Pern novels that sealed her renown. One of my fondest convention memories is of going to Dragon*Con one year and attending a panel about "Emergency Medicine on Pern." There, a group of extremely earnest — but good-humored — people were hashing out exactly what you would do if someone happened to be on Pern and fell of his/her dragon. How would you make a stretcher out of items that were readily available on Pern? How would you keep the fallen rider's dragon from freaking out? And so on. The world of Pern was as real to these people as Atlanta — maybe more so.

Anne McCaffrey died today at the age of 85. [Media Bistro]

Terror Tuesday! The Black Scorpion

A secret favorite of mine for Terror Tuesday is the Black Scorpion! This is one of those movies that was made in the wake of such films as Them & the Beast From Twenty Thousand Fathoms! I have to place Black Scorpion in my top thre Big Bug movies, along with Tarantula and Them! 

The plot involves a very active volcano in Mexico and geologists Hank Scott (Denning) along with a colleague are interested in seeing this activity first hand. Corday plays Teresa Alverez, a ranch owner whose cattle is being mysteriously slaughtered and is having difficulties keeping locals around to help her round up the cattle as they believe some devil bull or something is responsible.

Turns out the active volcano has ripped open some giant fissures in the Earth, exposing a vast underground cavern containing mostly giant, prehistoric scorpions. The scorpions, being a might bit peckish after years of living under the ground, start venturing out into the Mexican deserts, stinging and eating whatever gets in their path. They are soon discovered, the military comes in, blows them up real good, and that's the end of that...or is it? Okay, no it's not, as the humongous scorpions find another way out, and begin to do cool stuff like attack trains and find their way into populated areas.

What really worked so well in this movie is the special effects...well, at least the ones done by Willis O'Brien (King Kong) and Ray Harryhausen using stop-motion animation. Harryhausen isn't credited, but he ended up doing about 90 percent of the effects, under the supervision of O'Brien. The scenes with numerous scorpions attacking the passenger train are probably among the best in this feature.
 Yeah I know that Mystery Science Theater lampooned this one but man this is a fun picture. How could this work for a science fiction game or perhaps a Dungeons & Dragons game? That's pretty darn easy. Chance the location to your favorite world. Add giant scorpions & shake well. Personally this is a classic schlock science fiction film! 

5 Super Science Powers That Might Save Your Character's Life

Illusion of The Erotic - This level one super science power pulls a sexual fantasy or incident from the target's mind. The target must make a saving throw or be caught in a dream world illusion of their own creation for 1d20 rounds. They will only exit this world if attacked or harmed in any way! 

Claws Of The Beast's Burden - This level 2 super science ability creates a deep state of  apathy & empathy within the target. The victim will be in such a state of disgard for anything they will see the other person's point of view as well as their feelings. There is a +3 for all charisma rolls on the target. The victim is allowed a saving throw. This power may last 1d3 months on the target with repeated uses & applications 

Sword Of  The Mind - The user of this 4th level super science power creates a blade from within the depths of their very soul. The blade is +1 on all attack rolls & functions for as long as the power is with use. It may damage planar creatures however if the user should lose concentration the blade vanishes & this power may not be used for 1d3 rounds! 

Faery Maze - This 5th level super science power summons a group 1d30 of  planar creatures of  1 hit dice each who will come from the realms of the Outer Darkness to carry their target away. The target is allowed a saving throw but will be carried beyond the lower dimensions themselves. The target is allowed to make a charisma roll at the beginning of the next game to see if they provide the creatures with enough amusement to let them go. Then they have to find transport back to their world! 

Rattle Of The Outer Darkness - 4th level super science power.The user is able to reach across the cold voids of space to the court of the demon sultan himself. A wild cacophony of flutes & chaos of the hells of  the spheres themselves assaults the target. Unless a saving throw is rolled the target is lost within this maze of music, madness, & chaos. The power lasts 1d4 round 

Retrospective For The Second Stringers - The Galaxy Trio

Much of the cartoons back in the 80s were reruns of classic 60s cartoons dressed up & repacked for cable. Among those was this guy. Bird Man & The Galaxy Trio. Lets forget about Birdman for a moment & concentrate on the Trio. The Trio were the perfect example of a small plot that a dungeon master could use for a space going campaign.. Hear me out here. Seriously this is a great concept for three reasons. 

1. They've got a space ship which means cross over without tears. Need some npcs to pull out  the pc's bacon from the fire. Their right there. Space ships allow the dungeon master infinite opportunities. Hell Star Frontiers didn't even have space ship rules until the advanced game.
   The transporter ermm Displacer allows the party to save on costs without tears. The displacer is perfect for allowing the dungeon master to have say over its potential. Don't want it go through solid rock or lead. Then it can't. 
2. Super Heroes INnnnn Sppaacce. Each of the trio were super heroes whose powers worked very well together. Super Heroes in space are always golden look at Space Ghost but that's another blog entry. The powers of the trio were always second stringers, these were the guys who cleaned up the lesser interstellar criminals. 
3. Greater background - These folks were interstellar law enforcement they had the Chief: A man referred to only as "Chief" is a recurring character in Galaxy Trio. He fulfills a similar role to that of Falcon 7 in Birdman. Whose the chief in a game like this? Well you are Mr, Dungeon Master. Need information conveyed quickly, easily, & without tears here's your puppet to do it with. 
   

The plot & background of the Trio : 

Galaxy Trio

The Galaxy Trio is a group of three extraterrestrial superheroes, Vapor Man, Meteor Man, and Gravity Girl, who patrol space in their cruiserCondor One maintaining order and fighting evildoers in the name of the Galactic Patrol law enforcement agency. The ship was equipped with a "displacer" very similar to the transporter device on Star Trek,^{[citation needed]} which was a contemporary show.

• Vapor Man (voiced by Don Messick) - He has the ability to transform part or all of his body into gaseous form (a power shared by at least some residents of his home planet of Vaporus), enabling him to fly, escape from physical bonds, and squeeze through very small spaces, as well as producing various forms of "vapor" (such as "freeze vapor") from his hands.

• Meteor Man (voiced by Ted Cassidy) - A native of the planet Meteorus. Meteor Man is distinguished by his ability to increase or decrease the size of any part of his body. He gains superhuman strength in any limb that he chooses to enlarge.

• Gravity Girl (voiced by Virginia Eiler) - She has the ability to bend the laws of gravity to her will, allowing her to fly and lift very heavy objects with her mind. The daughter of the king of the planet Gravitas, she left her luxurious home and life of privilege at an early age to fight crime with the Galactic Patrol and was subsequently assigned to the Galaxy Trio team, with whom she has served ever since.

[edit]Minor characters

• Chief: A man referred to only as "Chief" is a recurring character in Galaxy Trio. He fulfills a similar role to that of Falcon 7 in Birdman.

Updating The Galaxy Trio For The OSR 

The trio's concept for the OSR is one of the most easily accomplished!
 

Its not enough to say that these types of characters were born on planet XYZ & this is why they have special powers! With a game like Human Space Empires its easy to imagine them being bio clones. Human beings adapted to conditions found on various planets instead.
 Yeah I know that this was used in the Buck Rogers Rpg but hey its older then that! 

Both James Blish & Fredrick Pohl have done series to reflect man adapted for space & planetary conditions. For the cool powers however Human Space Empires, Marvel Super Heroes, or Stars Without Numbers has everything you need to run this type of a campaign.
 If you'd really want an odd campaign then adapt something like Fredick Pohl's Man Plus where mankind is adapting himself to the stars Here
Personally retro is the way to go with only having to increase the power levels for something like Human Space or Stars Without Number