It's weird getting back to apartment life. And this is not your quirky urban apartment building; this is a full-on apartment complex, with not much of anything you'd call personality. To add to my mild sense of dislocation, Cockeysville is a suburb cut in the classic style. We're right off Cranbrook Road, which wends its way through at least a couple of miles of apartment complexes, mostly identical and many owned by the same management company. Our cross-street is lined with brick ranch houses and a middle school, which is populated in the morning by flocks of SUVs dropping off flocks of kids. I am an urban dweller by choice and inclination, and I have said goodbye to my preferred environment for a while.

On the other hand, it's a nicely spacious apartment, and it's got a dishwasher and a washer/dryer pair in the apartment. Totally hot. I can catch a bus to work right across the lawn, and the bus drops me right in front of my building, so there's that. Also, good food: the Indian place nearby is good, the Chinese place nearby is OK, there's a top-notch comic book store with a good mainstream RPG selection within walking distance...

The weird thing for me is that if I do walk to the comic book store, it's not unusual for me to be the only person in sight who's walking. Suburbs! It's not like there are way fewer of the things I love to do around here. Hm. I miss having indie/art house movies within spitting distance, and I miss having game stores with play space easily accessible. But other than that, I'm totally good for the things I like to have in my life. It's just that most stuff is driving distance rather than walking distance.

It is awfully warm down here. I was mildly horrified to realize that for the first time in my life, I'm living south of the Mason-Dixon line. As a Yankee, I should probably burst into flame or something. I know, hyperbole -- it's not actually all that different. The immediate neighborhood is a tad bland but that's more the suburban than it is the state. Baltimore seems like a pretty cool city.

We have given into temptation and Ikea-fied the apartment. It has a certain style going for it. I should wander around and take videos and post them or something. I am remarkably happy with our dining table; we got a nice one that is just right for a couple but it expands out to be a perfect gaming table for six people. We also have big clunky square bookshelves next to the table, which hold gaming books and michele_blue's collection of glasses. It is a highly pleasing blend of geeky and classy.

There's a walk-in closet. I thought I wouldn't care but it turns out to be the coolest thing in the world, because there is room to hang everything. And T-shirts go up on the shelf. And undergarments go in the dresser next to the bed. Why did nobody tell me about this? Alternately, why did I completely ignore the accoutrements of modern living for so long?

The job looks superb. I actually knew I was in the right sort of place when I walked in the door and there was a seven foot tall character statue in the lobby. Aw yeah, gaming. Working in middleware just wasn't the same.

I think we're sort of open for visitors. We need to get bookshelves. We also need to get a day bed for the guest room. But visits work out, and there's always the couch!

I am trying to get some Living Forgotten Realms kicked off. Little interest so far but we've got a week or so to build. Hrm. I wonder if there's a Baltimore gaming LJ community? I found the Facebook one, I hit the LFR mailing lists... I'll have to look. Possibly I should also hit the usual forums.

Dad's Taxi Service delivered J to Camp for the Final Banquet. Yes, like an episode of Survivor, my daughter the camper who lost out halfway through the season, returned for a surprise visit to her cabin buddies!

Audrey was picking up Liam. Cell phone reception was spotty. (I tried her anyway.) I was close, very close if I just took a slightly different way home to Target.

Why is this important?

Have you ever had a shrinking waistline? Enjoy it. You have to buy new clothes. That's a great feeling. Now what if you've been over the same stretch of road five times and and you keep missing the hours for the thrift store on said road? Huh? Huh?

It's time to head to Target and look at the discount rack.

So that's what I did. In addition to an absolutely awesome shirt (I would kill to be able to buy a second one at $4.24; okay, not kill, but perhaps maim), they had shorts. Stop snarfing your beverage of choice on your keyboard. That'll kill your computer fast. Yes, new shorts. Not underwear shorts. That's between me and the missus. Heh. Plaid shorts and striped twill shorts. I bought two pairs. Full price.

My inner Yankee cried.

My outer snob smirked as I grabbed the bag, the receipt and stepped over to the Starbucks in-store for a doppio. Which is a double-espresso smarty-pants.

I wound up writing what amounted to an essay over on ENWorld, explaining to someone why a glut of setting-specific books was far more damaging to a company that a glut of any other sort of book. I figured, I'd repost it here, for ( anyone who's interested. )

One of the true geniuses of our time. He'd have been 153 today.



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Originally published at The Codex Continual. You can comment here or there.

“A.J. Soltare is one of our authors of whom we’re very proud. He has worked with Bulwark under my father and my uncles Rupert and Sebastian. He claims I’m the easiest `boss’ with whom he’s ever had to work, but I suspect I let him get away with more as he’s been around the offices for decades longer than I’ve been alive.”

—Oscar Kharm, Bulwark publisher, in an interview on March 12, 1981

</p>

“What can I tell you about A.J.? Precious little, I’m afraid. Gentlemen’s agreement, you see. I keep his secrets and he keeps mine. All I’ll say is what he’d say about me—look to our fictions and therein you’ll find more than a little of us looking back at you. That’s as close a secret as I’ll share with you and your readers.”

—Blake Hart Montgomery, in an interview on March 4, 1981

</p>

“A.J. Soltare is an enigma, to be sure. His ACE BARRIGAN stories are far more polished than most writers’ early works and have an energy that made his stories stand out from his fellow pulpsters. He continues with other Bulwark properties like THE REDRESSOR, BRASS BRADLEY, and THE GASLIGHT and finds new niches within their tales to not just duplicate his success with Fairgeth’s mystic P.I. but transcend it while crafting new shadowy worlds around every character.

“His writing shares some similarities to earlier writers like Jack London and John Solo, though his longevity and his variety make him the stronger author. His work now spans seven decades and while his craft improved as he aged, Soltare’s entire output is eminently readable, no matter when he penned it. Whether he writes hardboiled pulp noir, supernatural horror, weird fantasy, romance, or sword and sorcery, this author knows how to appeal to his readers and expand the boundaries of any genre he chooses.”

—Critic Virginia Harold, New York Times Book Review, October 15, 1994, reviewing Nemeses Nocturnal: The Collected A.J. Soltare (Volume 2) Bulwark/Prospect 1994

</p>

“I’m embarrassed to say that I read A.J.’s stuff almost backwards. He hooked me as a reader with his Silver Age comic book work, really. I loved what he did in KHARNDAM Tales, and those led me back to the earlier stories in SAGAS SUPERNATURAL and other places. Only after I’d read through all the KHARNDAM material I could find did I look back and find his reprinted comic book work on DOC ENIGMA, and that was mind-blowing stuff for 1972, let alone for 1942 when it was originally done. A.J.’s a marvel to read in any medium and he’s only gotten better over the years. Doesn’t matter what you first read—you’ll end up reading it all because his knack for characters and plot grabs you too and won’t let go.”

—Curtis Winter, writer of the Ignisceror and Arcaniac Quartets

</p>

Alexander James Soltare was born on August 26, 1910 in Portsmouth, Maine. He led an uneventful childhood and only came to notice after his move to Chicago in 1932 where he got work at the Chicago Tribune. His first foray into fiction was “Six-Spell-Shooter,” the first ACE BARRIGAN story in OCCULT THRILLS #264 (November 1935), and he continued to regularly publish in Bulwark’s pulps and magazines and books for decades. Whether as an author or editor of fiction, nonfiction, or comic books, A.J. worked for Bulwark Publications until the age of 75.

A.J.’s penchant for gripping stories and tight plots, combined with his gift for speedy writing, garnered him a lot of work. According to some pulp historians, he approached H. Bedford Jones’ and Lester Dent’s phenomenal outputs in total words per year. Unlike some pulp authors, he worked exclusively for Bulwark, though this did not limit him from working in many different magazines or genres: BOOKS BIZARRE, BOXING THRILLS, GAMING THRILLS, GREEN GAZETTE, HERO THRILLS (pulp & comic), MISTER CONUNDRUM, OCCULT THRILLS, ORKNEY STREET, RACING THRILLS, ROMANCE THRILLS, SAGAS SUPERNATURAL, SCIENCE THRILLS, SPACE THRILLS, TALES TERRIFIC, TRUE-LIFE MAGAZINE, and WESTERN THRILLS.

While many of Soltare’s works appeared under his own name, editors disguised some of his work under house pseudonyms to hide just how much A.J. Soltare material they published. Thus, assembling his entire bibliography publicly only recently occurred. All told, whether under house names or his own, A.J. Soltare published nearly 200 novels, over 700 short stories, and nearly 500 articles or essays between 1935 and 2000.

Mr. Soltare’s most recently published work was the “Introduction” for KHARNDAM Collected #1 (TWELVELANDS Volume One; Bulwark/Prospect 2000). For those worried about the man’s longevity into his 90’s, A.J. promised in recent interviews that he’d already written new material (introductions, afterwords, or anecdotal sidebars) for every volume of the promised 14 book collection of his long-lived fantasy collaboration.

</p>

“I write to relax, to be honest. For me, it’s never the first thing I do in the morning but the last thing I do at night after conquering my day and its errands. More often than not, my process of unwinding and spooling my experiences and feelings and thoughts out in fictions leads me to watch the dawn before I get some sleep. Even now, in my so-called ‘golden years,’ I’m finding the only way I can get to sleep is to rattle off a little story or article on my trusty Underwood.”

—A.J. Soltare, “Introduction” excerpt, Bold as Brass: The Collected A.J. Soltare (Volume 3) Bulwark/Prospect 1995

</p> </p>

© 2009 by Steven E. Schend. All rights reserved.

</p>

Too much going on. I've directly contacted the two people who were interested, but I wanted to post that I will not be running the game this weekend. Please don't go to Great Hall Games looking for me.

Check out the image. Awesome homage to Nikola Tesla.

It is Friday, right? I mean, I thought it was Thursday, maybe even Wednesday, but the computer tells me it’s Friday and generally it’s smarter than I am. Obviously I am very confused today, so we have Tapes and Tapes doing Cowbell. Because for months I heard it on Triple J and couldn’t work out how they were getting the bass sound they were getting in the song, and it was driving me nuts. And then I saw the clip and, aw, obviously, indie-rock with tuba. Awesome.

Originally published at petermball.com. You can comment here or there.

*random back-of-the-palate spicing on stir fry chicken with Rachel Ray Jr was excellent
*Liam ate an entire pizza!
*two days until I see a friend who comes to the US once a year (but not the great guy from Denmark)
*work continues to have its ups and downs
*contemplated life changes
*petted the dog
*felt overweight tonight - doctor's appointment in T-20 and counting to talk about the tendonitis issues and the knees
*gotta love glucosamine chondoitin megadoses though - that stuff stopped a lot of arthritis pain*
*really looking forward to Gen Con, which is G-35 days *ooh!*

*43 is the new 23. Except to your (slightly) aging body.

Current meme I've noticed on Twitter is 1st Draft Movie Lines

Wil Wheaton contributes "Have a seat near Zod."

According to this article, Michael Jackson's kids are surprising normal for being the kids of the King of Pop:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07092009/news/nationalnews/lifting_the_veil_on_jackos_kids_178330.htm?page=0

Really neat.

.

One of my patrons gave me donuts today, as he said he would. Since the summer term started, he has accounted for a significant chunk of my requests- 25 for May-June, with more to come (by way of comparison, the total number of requests I make in a month typically fall in between 80 and 100- not that I've seen typical in a while, what with the end of spring months being way under, and June hitting 124 filled).

He didn't have to bring donuts. I'm just doing my job, and he's not the most prolific requester I've had. But, he appreciated what I was doing and wanted to show it. Yummy donuts.

Even though he makes a lot of work for me, I appreciate him a lot more than another patron, who sent me a request (via email, even though I'd given him step by step instructions for our online form) for an item we have in the library. When I told him we own it, he wanted me to send him an electronic copy, because he was too busy to walk over and photocopy it himself.

Yeah.

Besides the copyright violation, that's really not my job. No matter how busy he is.

Five days have been awesomely fun with the kittens. I've been so happy playing with them!

Kekovar is the orange male and he's a real sweet heart. He now purrs when I pick him up to clip his nails. He's still learning to scratch the cardboard scratch pad, but seems to like carpet more. He absolutely loves his mouse lure and fear that i will have to buy a new one in less than a week! I tried the harness on Kekovar today, he squirmed and squiggled, but soon forgot it when I feed him wet kitty food.

Kia is the white-tabby girl, she doesn't like the nail clipping as much but she loves to be picked up and snuggled. She's also a very good girl and loves to scratch on the cardboard pad. It took her three days to completely destroy her butterfly toy. I have to make a new one soon because I can see her looking for it. I have yet to try the harness on Kia, i think she'll probably hate it more than Kekovar.

They both have taken to their kitty litter which makes us very happy. They also like to compete for space on my laptop keyboard -- which makes me die of kyoot! I hope soon to be able to take them on a tour of the house and their first in-person meeting with Boris and Nandoor. Maybe in a few weeks they'll be ready for some outside trips. I have yet to see how they react to water. Car rides come much later. Overall I think they're enjoying the attention and new experiences.

This story has popped up on one of my mailing lists lately. As per normal, a lot of people see the price and miss the point (of course, point missing seems to be a particular strength of a few guys on this list, and I'm looking at you, guy who thinks Dr. Who is really gonna be flying around in a TARDIS that looks like a toilet).

I'm not a big collector. I will, on occasion, admire something someone else has, but I'm not likely to lay out fat loot because I want something oh so bad. I don't buy collectibles that are $300 reproductions of tv props (not that there's anything wrong with buying lots of those!); mine are more pack a week type habits where I'll get some randomized toys. And it's highly unlikely I'll buy a very expensive one of those. I want a Kingdom Come Superman and Superman Prime Heroclix (he's one of the Guardians of Fear, you know), but they're just a bit out of my range of what I'll pay for things that are nice to have but that I'll never use.

Obviously, JJ Hendricks feels differently. I can't get to his post where he describes his purchase. But the concept of the collector's feelings are not that hard to understand. Sure, I don't know how much of a chunk of his worth/income 17 grand is. I hope, especially since I read about how he accepted the delivery with his six month old daughter in his arms, that it's his funny money.

But what a lot of people seem to be missing is the significance of this. I'm pretty sure supply and demand gets magnified significantly when you're talking about things where the suppy is this rare. I shudder to imagine how many collectors there must be of vintage '80s Nintendo paraphenelia. The parallel I tried to draw was that fewer copies of this video game exist than there are copies of Action Comics #1.

That was the first appearance of Superman. Even if you aren't a comics fan, that's got to grab your attention. An offer was made offering a million dollars for a mint copy of that book.

This game is rarer. I figure even the well worn hyperbolic "holy grail" phrase should be some sort of indication of the fact this is not your normal nintendo cartridge.

Admittedly, if there are ten copies of something in the world, and two people want them, they each get five and probably don't need to pay a whole heck of a lot (unless they are psychotically competitive, in which case someone needs to write a short story about them). But I'm willing to be the number of guys who are hardcore nintendo game collectors in the world significantly exceeds 26.

I'm gonna have to admit that this isn't an endorsement of this particular action. I personally can't see wanting something this much, and the collector's value just escapes me, but I can see how an item of this rarity and significance to a hobby would be valuable to someone. But the sheer amount of dumbpinion that got unleashed made me wonder how people who claim to be of the geek culture can be ignorant of how possesiveness works, or even fairly simple economics.

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

There are days when you are feeling down and something happens that restores not only how you feel but also your general outlook on life. Yesterday was one of those days.

Tuesday was not a good day for me. I felt down, sad and quite lonely, especially at night. Early yesterday morning, nursing a mild hangover, I get an email from (met-in-person-once-but-mostly-online) friend and fellow podcaster Adam Pinilla (The Podgecast) offering some words of support and asking if he had my permission to do something for me, open a ChipIn account to help out. I had no idea what ChipIn was, but it’s not hard to figure it out; I said “sure” and gave him my PayPal email acct. Then I went out to visit Mom at the hospital and do a few other things.

When I got back in the late afternoon and opened Twitter, I saw a barrage of @replies show up on my personal @Highmoon account, and many more on my @GamerTraveler account as well. I followed the link provided by Adam (@bafadam) and saw the page he created at Chipin. I then saw the little widget that tracks the donations and was, honestly, moved to tears.

I could write a long message to every single person who retweeted Adam’s message and to those who donated, but wordy as I am, I can’t quite articulate how I feel. Instead, from myself, my wife and my mother, I simply say to you:

In looking at elementals in the 3.5 Monster Manual and from what I've seen of elementals in a few of the modules and campaign settings, the creatures are written off as dullards and lackeys to be summoned.  These are creatures that are used by wizards and sorcerers incessantly to power some fantastic device, the airships of Eberron being a good example of this.  Not to mention that elementals can be harmed by normal weapons!!  Let's examine the air elemental in this instance.  How is it possible that a creature that is the essence of air itself can be harmed by a steel sword or a morningstar or a mace??

These are the problems that I have with the OGL write ups on elementals.  These monsters have no goals, no insight into their thinking or their motivation.  These are creatures that were basically designed to be an almost mindless brute whose energies were to be harnessed in the creation of powerful magic devices or to do a spellcaster's dirty work (ie- "Elemental! I command ye to slay that squad of hobgoblins!").

So in my ongoing development of a homebrew campaign realm, I have decided to make a few changes to the elementals as a whole. Here is my first alteration of the elemental; a rebellion.  After hundreds of years of being summoned and imprisoned by creatures in the Prime Material plane for selfish reasons, the elemental lords banned together and fought a tremendous war for their independence.  The elementals were victorious, which changed the very nature of the options available to subsequent elemental summonings by creatures within the Prime Material plane.  So what does this mean for a PC who summons an elemental?  There will have to be a degree of role playing on the part of the player who has summoned the elemental to convince it to achieve the desired task.  One idea in my head is that spellcasters can enter into some sort of covenant relationship with the elemental which makes it a bit easier to have amiable relations with the summoned elemental.  

As an aside and as a nod of respect, I think the warlock class of the Palladium Fantasy RPG addressed part of the above issue.  However, given the nature of how spellcasters viewed an elemental as a slave in the OGL, I figured eventually, some of the more prominent elementals, those who had more foresight and social capabilities realized the plight of the 'species' as a whole and decided to do something about it. Hence, the rebellion.

Is this muddying the waters of the game a little bit?  Yes!  But it doesn't make any sense that elementals would continue to allow themselves to be imprisoned in forges, airships or other devices for hundreds of years without them eventually realizing, hey this is intolerable, we should do something about this!  Of course, then this opens a can of worms for other sentient creatures summoned.  Why haven't other outsiders came to the same conclusion and committed rebellions of their own against unwanted summonings?  My only argument with this is that often these creatures have a secondary agenda when they're summoned.  For example, a demon or devil would have a goal of tricking or corrupting the summoner to further the goals of Hell or the Abyss on the particular world where they were summoned.  Similarly, angels summoned would have an agenda to further the cause of good whilst being summoned.   Or perhaps the social strata of certain summoned creatures doesn't allow for them to actually organize into a formidable rebellion against being summoned as in the case of the elementals.

All in all, this does make things more challenging to DM whenever a PC decides to summon a sentient being for assistance, particularly an elemental.

Another necessary change to the nature of elementals is that I've decided to give them damage reduction, which  drastically alters their CR.  The easiest of the elementals to account for is the fire and water elementals.  The PCs must simply have either a magical frost weapon or a magical fiery weapon to overcome the elemental's DR.  The air elemental is the trickiest of the four.  How can you damage air??  My only solution to this problem is that the PCs must wield special magical items that create a vaccuum when they strike the elemental.  In practice, the weapon removes air.  As for earth elementals, I am somewhat at a loss. In theory, the aspect of 'earth' covers alot of substances, even say, adamantium or mithral.  However, fire, water and air can wear down the earth can they not?  So perhaps fiery magical weapons can do the trick.  However, perhaps specially forged weapons that are water or air aspected may also be employed against earth elementals.   But these weapons would have to be at an extreme temperature in the case of a fiery weapon, which would entail having a unique sheath or scabbard for the weapon so that it wouldn't damage the wielder.  The same case could be argued for the water and air aspected weapons as the water weapon would be containing vast tidal energy and the air weapon would be have within it powerful winds capable of grinding down the earth.  The more I think of this, the air aspected weapon doesn't seem to foot the bill as it were for a reasonable defence against an earth elemental.  Then there are the deadliest of weapons, weapons employing anti-matter... However, I don't know if I would implement any anti-matter weapons in the campaign world.  On further reflection,  a sphere of annihilation would be effective against most elementals ( including spells and magic weapons employing similar principles).

Sigh... These are just some of the thoughts on what I will be doing in the homebrew.  It makes things a bit more complicated in D&D but it seems to me it adds a bit more 'fantastical realism'  to the elemental as a monster.  

Like any RPG group I'm developing house rules for our D&D game...

Leveling.
Character may level at any time, during an extended rest (that's basically overnight to non fourthers) and must be done between sessions. So as long as you have enough XP to level and the games session ends with the characters getting some rest they will have gone up a level at the start of the next session. One last caveat, they must have new character sheet with them too at at the next session. If they forget or haven't done a new one and only have the previous levels, they have to use that until they remember it and have an extended rest.
The rational behind this, rather than the more traditional view that you have to train to level, is that I'm currently swept up in the 'fun is the whole of the law' movement. We're not teenagers anymore with vast quantities of disposable time, so the rewards have to come in thick when they do.

Traps.
Generally I'll try and describe how detected traps work, particularly if they have mechanical elements. If the characters disarming the trap describe how they are disarming the and are roughly correct in the method, they gain a +2 bonus to their thievery roll. If they are super confident then they need not roll at all and I decide if it works. This is therefore a good choice for very easy traps, which can still be fumbled or very hard traps that need a very high roll to disarm. This is really to give the party thinkers some extra shine time. I'm not worried about staying in character here, if the half-orc Barbarian has the winning solution to magical tree-trap, they should speak up.

XP, items & treasure.
If a player forgets to write done their new XP amount after a session, it stays at the previous amount. If the completely lose track of their XP they are reset back to the beginning of the level. Items and treasure picked up must be noted on character sheets, even if I've not revealed what the treasure actually is. A note saying bag of shinies from that dirty Kenku Assassin will do. Harsh, but you're meant to love these characters with every inch of your fiber. Ok, I admit this is because I'm likely to forgot the parties totals and treasures lists, so I'm delegating.

Ralph and Alice Kramden.

So I suppose you could also say Fred & Wilma Flintstone, but without the creationism.

I'm still in Kosovo and was hoping to get some art done while here. Ah well, best of intentions. I actually got pretty dehydrated last night due to being outdoors all day and not drinking enough water. So I spent much of last night with what amounted to a large hangover without having the enjoyment of a beer or two. Ah well, I'll be home late tomorrow night. It'll be very good to be back with the family.

Fuck Yahtzee. Ghostbusters: The Game rocked my world, and he can eat a bag of dicks.

Oh yeah, I'm home.