Dealing with Forgotten Daemons

I don't know if this is heavily protected stuff, but after somebody's posting the other day of the magnificent White Dwarf stuff for AD&D, I went on a tear and checked it out.  It's enchanting and awesome, particularly the Fiend Folio II, the gigantic listing of clever WD monsters that didn't make the cut for the original Fiend Folio.  The FF is my favorite D&D book of all time, probably more due to nostalgia than anything else, since it was the first RPG book of any kind that I ever owned.  A lot of the magic probably had to do with Russ N.'s amazing drawings (seriously, the Sons of Kyuss have damaged me in ways I cannot begin to explain not the band the monster)

This maggoty creep can find anything on the internet, or in a dungeon, or in the Palaces of Alabaster Flesh.

There is one section in there from maybe WD#45 and it's all about a bunch of whacky but sinister demons - entirely unlike the MM and the other TSR demons, generally.  Likely because they are conversions from a previously published article about RuneQuest demonology.  The more I learn of Runequest, and Questworld, the more my eye turns back to my BRP Elric and I'm interested in the other ways that RPGs might have gone if they'd been untethered from statistical analysis and wargames earlier...  Whole 'nother post, I guess.

I musta had some weird whispering coming through the warpgates, or whatever, but I tracked those RQ down, snipped 'em out, and was going to convert them to a shiny new document but it seems maybe like too much work and the illustrations are fanciful and exciting.  The first couple of pages has renderable text, so I guess you could (if you were inclined) suck the words out and make a beautiful new thing with it, but...

Edit: I withdraw this. I don't feel so great about putting the thing up even 35 years later without permission.

I particularly like the bargaining bits, and the flowchart comic for dealing with summoned demons.  The stuff is not entirely new or original, now - but it was probably pretty neat back then, and I like the variety and new/old flavours since all I usually consider are Vrocks and Malfeshnee and Rifts-type stuff and various entirely random things made with the Esoteric Creature thingamabob.  The particular fun is when you get into bonding with the Big Bads and the special powers etc.

Current Solo Module Plot Paths

This will likely mean nothing to you, unless you're interested in the way the design process is turning out for my DCC solo module.

Art is chugging along - you've seen the cover illo and a couple of my own inside monster portraits.

You saw the nodes for the random encounters of a previous iteration of the monster set (updated, I think, a couple of times since then)

I could show you the map - loosely based on a somewhat famous castle from a pretty famous movie - but I won't.  That'd spoil some stuff.  I think I will make a regular low-level DCC module out of the materials I have and release the monsters for freebies to the community (after I finish THIS project).  Maybe some of the gods and patrons, also.  I have 3 0-level spells that are good intros into working magic for untrained schmucks, at least where the ley lines intersect and the barriers between dimensions are thinning.

However, I can show you the current-a-couple-of-hours-ago node-map of the entries in which the PC runs around the keep all desperate n' stuff.  It's about maybe half finished and written, and when the last entry is done I can practically plug the text into InDesign, plug the graphical elements to fill in the gaps, twerk the layout, and submit to the authorities in this matter.  I think it will come to about 180 entries in which the player is trusted to play by the rules as well as possible.  At times, it is cruel and unforgiving and seems impossibly hard.  I don't know if that is a plus or a minus.  It seems to fit with my memories of the CYOA books and especially the Fighting Fantasy series.  I think it will make, at two or three columns with facing pages, a pretty nice and hefty module when printed in the old TSR style.  I'm trying to figure out a way to export the whole thing to kindle format but that might need to wait a while.

Here, try this:

It's not evident, but the little watermark at the bottom is for the program's author and website.  I'm not afraid to say anymore, since I am within striking distance of submitting the thing within the next month, that I'm using The Gamebook Authoring Tool by Crumbly Head Games.  For what I set out to do, it's perfect and frankly indispensable.  I may have mentioned I tried to start this project off with Twine, but it proved unsuitable for what I wanted.  There was TXT2CYOA but that wasn't right, either.

This thing is exactly what I needed and wanted and perfect in every way.  I feel like I have jilted the author so far, since I wrote about 40 or 50 entries for the Wandering Monster section.  I tried to base it loosely on the flow of the basic and expert solo modules by Merle Rasmussen, you see.  Wander around, mark the entry on the character sheet, and resolve your combat, go back, wash - rinse - repeat until dead or victorious.  I don't know how he could have done something like this project without the aid of this software or something like it - but I imagine about a million million index cards and a giant corkboard.

I'm coming up pretty quickly on the 100 entry maximum for the main keep entries so a full sale is coming for Crumbly Head Games, soon.  And they deserve it!  As I said, it's right as rain and does what it advertises smoothly and elegantly.

I'm looking at about 6 weeks out and I am happy with the way it's going at the moment.  I'll lose about a week between now and then for vacation, but we'll see.

I think I might like to get in touch with Merle and nostalgia-fanboy vomit all over him and Ian Livingstone and rejoice in the memories of hours of my whiled-away youth

Hmm.

The Iron Ration, Magic Cheese, and Hardtack Adventure Cooking

(I'm too self-important to take part in the various blog roll things, so here's something I finagled whilst my daughter rejected my mango-based overtures and then fell asleep on my chest)

Disclosure: In my previous multiclass advancements, my career was "cook", and although I don't cook professionally anymore I still dig food scholarship.  I'm the exact opposite of a "foodie", though.  I like to know a lot about cooking but my favorite foods are ones that other people cook.  I just had to destroy my entire kitchen pantry owing to infestation by either Oat Beetles or Flour Mites, or maybe gremlins, so I am thinking of food value and preservation against spoilage, lately.  Coincidentally, exploration in the Iron Canyons of +Dave Younce and play in +Evan Lindsey 's entry to the ASE got me thinking about what to eat and when, when you are hacking and slashing in your favorite fantasy world.  Frodo and Sam had Lembas, and Gollum had fish raw-and-wriggling but,

These are actual pictures of the bugs in my kitchen pantry

What does a party of murderhobos (STOUTFELLAS?) eat if they are going to spend the night in the deep, dark damp of a megadungeon?  Why, the classic Iron Ration, of course!  But what the heck is an Iron Ration?  I vaguely remember that this question used to course like Greek Fire through the letter pages of Dragon when I was a kid and I am sure it put an end to many friendships.  Not mine, my ended friendships were usually over politics or girls or magic shields.

finished polishing their pickelhaubs, the kaiser's men repose

I may be giving out misinfo, here, but it looks like the Iron Ration was an actual steel or tin can, sometimes full of cakes of beef-paste-enhanced wheat paste, and maybe a couple of cigarettes and a chocolate bar.  A brick of dehydrated super-dense bread was common, too.  As a bonus, in earlier days you could have opted to boil your hardtack in your coffee, and either kept the maggots that floated out and eaten them or discarded them - as you prefer.  As a bonus bonus, if you have intestinal parasites, eating a couple of cigarettes might stun them long enough for you to expel them the old fashioned way without recourse to a cleric.  Ahh, the things you learn on historical tours and via your collection of Army Survival Training guides.

Many of the historical cooking links for the ancient world and middle and ye darke ages have vanished like tears in the rain, but there are good ones every so often.  Thanks to the black hole of Wikipedia for the following:

This here for the distinctly American horror story of famine and failed logistics during a very trying period.  Bonus words:

1. Skillygallee - fry your wet brick of wheat paste in some bacon fat, soldier!
2. Coosh - the same, except it's like cornmeal mush and beef jerky hash
3. the X-ration? - mentioned in the military annals but my attention span falters and I can only assume it was reserved for supersoldiers

Roman Soldiers carried their own mess kits AND rations

I was gonna put up a Hardtack recipe, or maybe a Lembas recipe, but you don't want to eat any of that stuff, real or imagined.

Whoops!  I didn't realize this was gauche

I hate elves.  Did I mention this?

Instead, you are geased to try these links for much cheese-based magical eatery and Wampus Country cheese magic and of course a bevy of magical ingredients for your consumption

(BTW I purchased the PDF of the Anomalous Subsurface Environment at lulu.com - good stuff, and for bonus points get you the Obelisk of Forgotten Memory which is also great... going to need to wait for ASE2, though)

POSTSCRIPT:  The Talislanta Gastronaut's Guide