Secret Santicore 2013, Vol. 1….?!!!

Secret Santicore 2013 VOLUME ONE(!) was just put out by Joey Lindsey over on Metal v. Skin.
Any average gaming grunt requests the Santicore to fulfill some RPG device such as a monster, item, table, art, brief scenario, etc. In return Santicore binds said grunt to complete another random request. Then the entire crazy mess is released as a free PDF. Bloody awesome!

Joey's work for 2013 is crazy huge, so the final tome is being completed in three parts. Volume 1: Advice, Character Generation, Spells, Rules, Deities is out. Volume 2: Treasure & Magic Items, NPCs, Places, Encounters is due the end of February and Volume 3: Adventures, Monsters & Illustrated Cover the end of March.

Take a peep...

(Here is a brief Secret Santicore history from Metal vs Skin … “+Zak Smith had a great idea to celebrate the lives of Gygax and Arneson back in 2010 with the Secret Arneson Gift Exchange. Then the next year +Jez Gordon renamed it and did it again for the holidays -and released it as an awesome PDF. In 2012, Jez nobly tried to do it again, first putting out a call for helpers, then submissions. Then, sadly, life did what it does and Jez had to bow out. Some rad folks stepped up, and most of the content made it on to one blog or another.”)

Imaginos...

Part of the D&D cliche' is that "...the stereo is pumping Zepplin..."during  games, but if I had to pick a band whose music brought together the zeitgeist of our sessions it would have to be Blue Oyster Cult. I finally picked up a copy of Imaginos (1988) which had eluded me for many, many years. Here is an interesting article that includes Sandy Pearlman's ideas behind Imaginos ("A bedtime story for children of the damned"), certainly something for RPG magic: http://thequietus.com/articles/12881-blue-oyster-cult-imaginos-review-anniversary

Divine Providence?

Ok, now how many times does this scene have to play out before it is definitely a sign that beneficent mystical forces are at play???

DunDraCon XXXVIII

If you are a gamer in northern California over President's weekend I heartily recommend visiting the longest continually running RPG convention on the west coast... DUNDRACON!

One of the single best marathon insane party/D&D games I ever experienced was in a purloined private gaming room at DunDraCon #16 in 1992, the first of the conventions to be held in San Ramon after being situated at the Oakland Hyatt for many years.

Unfortunately I have a major career challenge to face at the end of February which I have been preparing for non-stop since early December. This is only the second DDC I've missed in San Ramon (although for several my memory is... suspect).

Sinsemilla the Wizard

Sinsemilla (later Sinsemilla the Wizard) was a D&D-esque drug infused comic I wrote and drew during the fall-1981 semester of my senior year in high school. All the originals save one were lost to time's ravages. However, I recently came upon a cache of photo-copied versions I distributed. Out of 12 issues I discovered copies of #1, #4, #8, #9, #10, #11 and #12.
While the first issue was this grandiloquent Ode à la casserole, later issues settled into a somewhat rambling story with many little cultural references related to what was going on around me at the time. For whatever it's worth, when I have some free time in March I think I'll archive the remaining issues somewhere online...