nyone with this link should be able to view the map from my last post:
Mucklepuckle

 So this is ready now:

 I've uploaded it to DTRPG and it should be available in a day or two. In the meantime here's the illustration I made for the back cover:

And there are lots more inside. As a bonus here's the map I made for this book:

A full sized higher quality version can be downloaded from here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9PweY4wbxVrT19CUkY5M0ExVG8

and, totally unrelated, I got a Nikon camera and I love to take a photograph. You can see them at :
https://www.flickr.com/photos/134289767@N08/

Going to be working on some paintings for the rest of the month as well as drawings for my next gaming project Runtmounts

Cheers and Happy Holidays whichever ones you are celebrating!

 258 downloads from

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/160884/A-Hundred-Hellish-Hordlings

My hope was that five people besides my friends would download it so feeling pretty good about that! I've even made $13.58!

My next work, (which is much smaller) is about 75% finished. Here's a sneak peak at the working cover:

 

184 downloads so far at http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/160884/A-Hundred-Hellish-Hordlings , a sweet review at 

http://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.ca/2015/10/review-commentary-on-hundred-hellish.html

and 2 five star ratings! I am stoked!

Just for fun here is the cover illlustration:

 

Is now available at 

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/160884/A-Hundred-Hellish-Hordlings?site=dtrpg

Oh yeah, we had our 24th anniversary this week (Sept. 7th)

Donna and I are on the left

At my parent's cabin for our honeymoon.

 "Hola, amigos. What gives? I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but there's been all sorts of craziness going on."

 - Jim Anchower, The Onion

Jim Anchower, my favourite Onion Columnist

Like the immortal Jim says, it's been a long time. My Hordlings book is finished and in the hands of my Editors/Proofreaders. When they're done, and I've corrected any problems they've found then I'll be publishing it for PWYW. I'm looking at a couple of spots for that, I like Gumroad  https://gumroad.com/ but DTRPG or RPG Now have more exposure to gamers. What do yáll think?

Here's the cover:

In the meantime I'm working on my next project: Didus Ineptus Avis Nobilis, or The Noble Dodo Bird.

It will be a short booklet about the halfling's utilisation of the Dodo as Mount, Warbeast, Fighting Cocks, Fancy Breeds and food source. Here are some initial drawings:

Your standard or garden-variety Dodo

 

And a few stabs at War-Beast and War-Mount, still very much a work in progress of course.

I found this map:

here:http://www.familyheritage.ca/atlas2.html

 It is from an Atlas of Saint John City and County, New Brunswick, 1875 by F. B. Roe and N. Geo. Colby

It is of the village I grew up in, since 1901 called Lorneville. Most of us preferred the old name and still refer to it as Pisarinco, and call ourselves Pisarinconians. Stories have it that Pisarinco is a Malecite name that means "Safe harbour abounding in fish", there's no real evidence that that is what it means, so it's probably horseshit.

On the map below I have put a red dot by all the names of people I am descended from. On this map our family name is spelled "McCarver", not surprising, back in Ireland it was spelled McAver. It is a variant of MacIvor. One branch of the family settled in Boston and there they are known as McCarvers. Tim McCarver the baseball player s one of that bunch.

The area below the yellow line is what I consider to be Lorneville/Pisarinco, although the western part of the Peninsula has been named both Irishtown and Seaview at various times. The purple dot is roughly where my parent's house is.

Most of the families listed on this map came from a small village called Derryogue, Kilkeel Township, County Down, Ireland. Apparently it is the only instance, out of the massive Irish migrations in the 1800's, where a group of people came from the same place in Ireland and then stayed together in Canada, Australia, New Zealand or the U.S.A.

The property lines on this map were grants that were awarded by lottery to English Colonels between the French Indian wars and the American Rebellion. Even in 1875 they were no longer accurate and most of the properties that my ancestors bought were 100 acres or less. Pretty much everyone earned their living from fishing and farming (though the soil was and is terrible) and usually they would have some skilled sideline like cobbling or coopering as well. On the map there is listed an H. McCarver, S. McCarver, and J. McCarver, they are, respectively, My Great-great-great-great-grandfather, Hugh, my Great-great-great-grandfather, Stephen, and my Great-great-grandfather, James.

In order from my son back, the direct male line of descent is:

Stephen Lorn (my son)

Stephen Andrew (me)

Stephen Lewis (my father)

Harry Edward (my grandfather)

Stephen

James

Stephen

Hugh

Hugh McCavour had 7 children (that lived), my direct ancestor, Stephen, being the youngest. I am descended from 5 of them through various inbred pathways. I worked it out once that not only are my brothers and sister my siblings, they are also my 4th and 5th cousins. Thank God my dad married outside the village! My Mom's family (Ogdens) are descended from Loyalists from new York and Connecticut.

Anyway, Pisarinco was a great place to be a kid. We had feilds, woods, beaches, mud-flats, boats, bikes, good ponds for skating in the winter and good hills for sliding. I wish I'd been able to give my kids the same.

 

Archery

I have never been happy with the archery rules presented in RPG games ever since I practiced archery for a short while when I was a member of the SCA. In that brief period, during the Speed round I was able to get 12 arrows off, and on target in 30 seconds. If a round equals 10 seconds then that should be 4 arrows per round, so I have always let 1st level archers get off 2 shots per round, but even that doesn't really capture the abilities of a good archer, so I have come up with the following rules for Archers in my campaign.

Shots per round by Level:

1 - 2

2 - 2

3- 3

4 - 3

5 - 4

6 - 4

7 - 5

8 - 5

9 - 6

10 - 6

and so on, one more shot every second level. Any one proficient with a short bow or long bow gets these shots per level, but only Fighters and Rangers get the bonus shots for dexterity as follows:

Another shot is added for each point of dexterity over 12, so:

Dex  Additional Shots

13      1

14      2

15      3

16      4

17      5

18      6

So at 10th level an Archer with a Dexterity of 18 would get 12 shots in 10 seconds. Not unreasonable for an expert Archer. However, like a Magic User, if the Archer's concentration is broken (after his first shots on his initiative) by his being attacked, or if he has to move etc, then he loses the bonus shots granted by Dexterity.

E.G. 7 Party members and a party of 7 orcs roll initiative and the initiative order breaks down like this:

Jane The Rogue

Sam the Ranger ( Archer, 1st level with 18 dex so 8 shots/rd )

Bob the Rogue

Orc#2

Sally the Fighter

Orc #1

Orc #7

Tom the Wizard

Orc #3

Sue the Cleric

Orc #4

Bill the Fighter

Orc #6

Orc #5

So, Jane the Rogue does her thing, then its Sam's turn. He takes his initial 2 shots granted by his level, then the rest of his shots are staggered between everyone else's initiatives until all his shots are used up or his concentration gets broken. So:

Sam shoots initial 2 shots

Bob does his thing

Sam shoots another arrow

Orc #2 does his thing

Sam shoots arrow #4

Sally Does her thing

Sam Shoots Arrow #5

Orc #1 does his thing

Sam shoots arrow #6

Orc #7 does his thing

Sam shoots arrow #7

Tom the Wizard does his thing

Sam shoots Arrow #8 (his last shot this round)

Orc #3 does his thing

Sue does her thing

Orc #4 does his thing

Bill does his thing

Orc #6 does his thing

Orc #5 does his thing

If Orc #2 had thrown a rock at Sam, or hit him with a melee weapon, or grappled with him, then Sam's concentration would fail and he would have only got his base 2 shots, plus his 1 shot after Bob, in. If the Orc had missed he would still be good to go.

I think this is a reasonable mechanic. A lot of the shots will miss anyway, and arrows don't do a whole lot of damage each. Suggestions for refinements are always welcome.

If you want to see what a skilled archer can do, watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk

Not that far off the mark.

So I'm plugging away on my hordlings book. I have about 50% of the layout done. In the meantime I stumbled across this:

and enjoyed it immensely so of course  had to make maps! First I made one loosely based on the local geography but at a very different scale:

Then I decided on making one based on a post apocalyptic earth, only the apocalypse happened during world war II when the Vulkin and Klengon empires coincidentally wound up battling over earth at the same time as several other science fiction and fantasy franchises did! The result was the melting of the polar ice caps (and Greenland) and several radioactive areas leading to global warming and flooded earth! My sand box area is here:

The map is a screen capture from a nifty site that shows the effect of flooding on the earth up to 60 meters, here: http://flood.firetree.net/

I haven't done the whole world yet but I'm thinking that Elves & Nazis with Airships is a good combo to have.

and just because I'm so fond of them here are the characters I'm currently playing in various games online:

Percy in Bryan Mullins' Blackmash campaign

Shimrod in a different part of Bryan's Blackmash Campaign

Flashy in Gus L's Apollyon Campaign

and Chongo in Ramanan S' Masters of Carcosa campaign.

My health problems seem to be behind me for now so hopefully I'll be able to attend more sessions!

TTFN

Well it's been a while. I've been working away on my Hordlings book, in between trips to the hospital (one for pancreatitis and one for kidney stones, hot tip kids, getting old sucks if you haven't taken care of yourself). Anyhoo, I now have all of the write-ups done and am working on the layout. Then it'll be writing the introductions, some stuff for the back and getting all the OGL bumf taken care of.

In the meantime, I got together with my "physical" group of gamers ( as opposed to my online friends) and ran a session in my city of Firstport. They took care of some business arising from last fall's sessions, re equipped themselves and then were approached by an alderman of the Shipyards ward, and a cousin of the elf character Draedan to investigate a "Haunted House" I used an excellent little adventure called Death Mask, written by Jesse Walker, that I found here:
 http://members.iinet.net.au/~jwalker1/encounter/encounter01.pdf

It was easy to adapt to my setting, and it suited the party level very well. I added a complication to getting into the house itself, a magic Repulsor Stone. It is a large polished crystal, the size and shape of a curling stone (minus the handle) with a glyph of Repulsion carved into it. It is placed in the center of a property and activated by tracing the glyph with the index finger of the right hand. Once activated, any uninvited being attempting to enter or intrude on the property must save vs magic. If they fail, what happens to them depends on how they tried to enter the property. If they attempted to use a legitimate entrance such as a gate or walkway, they are teleported away to a location specified by the owner ( in this case to Whoretown) where they will be confused for 1d6 turns, but otherwise unharmed.  If they attempt to sneak into the grounds then they are catapulted 20 feet into the air and dropped unceremoniously just outside the property boundaries for 2d8 falling damage. The stone is deactivated by tracing the glyph again or by removing it from the property it was guarding, and it does not necessarily have to be the owner that turns the stone off. If someone manages to turn the stone off it can be reactivated in  another spot by tracing the glyph. It will then guard that spot for the person it perceives to be the owner. I.E. if placed in a rented room and activated, it will perceive the renter as the owner of that space and work against any of the new owner's uninvited trespassers. The stone repulses intelligent beings and animals, so it makes a good vermin eliminator. It does not work against undead, but does work against everything else,e.g. it will keep out demons and angels if they fail their saving throw.

One of the party was able to make his saving throw and broke the protection by chucking the stone outside the property boundaries. Most of the rest got teleported to Whoretown, and one got catapulted into the air.

The dungeon itself is a nice mix of opponents, traps, maguffins and geegaws. The party consisted of 5 1st level characters, most just bordering on 2nd level (5th Edition) and the challenge level for them was nicely matched. Everything went fairly smooothly until they encountered the main baddy. He cast Darkness in the room he was in , but they went in any way. He was able to take them down (paralysis) one by one until his darkness spell wore off, then the remaining fighter cut him down pretty quick. However, the last fighter made a deadly mistake and put on the evil mask. The mask took him over and then cut the throats of the rest of the incapacitated party for a TPK BABY! Mwah-ha-ha-ha! Now the mask has a stronger host and a new batch of undead warriors for the next unlucky party that attempts to enter the Manor. Oh and Cuthach retrieved and reset the Repulsor Stone too!

It was a fun game, even the players enjoyed it, once they got over the shock! This group is mostly comprised of people new to playing D&D. Usually my son plays with this group too but he was away. My friend Paul was also going to play in this session but wasn't able to at the last minute. I suspect that if either or both of them had been there the outcome would have been very different. Both of them know not to go into a room that has Darkness cast in it, and both are too experienced to put on an Evil Mask!

The main baddy was very well-balanced for the recommended level of the party. He was tricky enough that he could have overcome the party, but not so powerful that they couldn't overcome him. The Manor has a largish amount of treasure, but it is sufficiently guarded with tricks, traps and monsters to justify it. Like I said earlier, I found the module easy to adapt to my setting, but it also has a decent stand-alone set up as well. I've read some more of Jesse Walker's work and like it as well.

And here are some pictures for shits and giggles:

Been busy busy and yet not managing to get anything done. Plus I think my kidney stones are acting up. Hidey-ho, Have managed to finish drawing, keying and color-coding my map of Firstport (gotta come up with a better name!)

the map

With City wards outlined:

and some other points of interest:

This is a small Earldom/Town that I designed as the starting area for low level characters. Much like the Village of Hommlet.

Another map, a seaside fort and village.

And just for shits and giggles, me when I was 13 and won a camera.

Hordlings Project Update.

I am a little more than halfway through revising the stats/writeup for each Hordling. After they are done, I will write up a preface and introduction ( already mostly done), whatever administrative bumf that needs to be in the front. Possibly get an ISBN number. After the hordlings entry I'm going to include tables that list hordlings by size, a blank Hordling creation form, tables to generate your own Hordlings, and then whatever OGL bumf I need to include, need to create front and back covers and then lay it all out.

Some lessons learned:

Make the drawings less static. I.E. show the creature actually doing something like chewing on an orphan etc.

Make the projects shorter (say no more than 20 pages/creatures)

Make the projects have a cohesive theme, e.g. 20 Hordlings (or whatever ) that will only serve evil summoners.

Come up with a wider range of individual characteristics and abilities and focus on writeups that elucidate the uniqueness of each creature.

I'm sure I'll have a few more items to add to this list before I'm done.  At this point my optimistic guess for completion is end of June, but we'll see!