Death from above!

Giant Acid Ant

The Giant Acid Ant is a horrific, swollen monstrosity that hangs from the shadowed ceilings of natural caverns or dungeons, waiting for victims to pass beneath them. Appearing, at first, as a normal giant ant, as they hang from their perch, their abdomen slowly fills with digestive juices, until it is many times the mass of the rest of their body. The ant is dark red or purple in color, and when hanging can surprise its victims 4 out of 6 times. When a victim passes by, it disgorges this terrible reservoir, causing 2d6 points of damage (the victim can save for half). The Giant Acid Ant then detaches from the ceiling, falls to the floor and enjoys the feast. Acid Ants which are spotted and attacked are able to aim their acid burst up to 20'.

Once its acid is disgorged, it takes the Ant 24 hours to refill its abdomen. While the Giant Acid Ant is normally foudn alone or in small groups, one band of wary adventurers returning from the Forsaken Halls has reported a cavern teeming with a vast swarm of these abberations!

Interestingly, the jewel-like eyes of these creatures are coveted by dwarves and gnomes, who will pay 2-5gp each for them.

Giant Acid Ant: HD 3; AC 3[16]; Atk 1 bite (1d6) or acid (2d6); Move 9; Save 14; CL/XP 4/120; Special: Acid, Surprise

A Retro-Clone you might not have.

Though my focus is usually on D&D-based games, there's still one little RC out there with plenty of old-school cred that I think well-deserving of mention. During my misspent youth it wasn't always possible to get together an "appropriately" sized group for a good game of D&D, and fortunately for those times, Microgames came to rescue. Cheap, tiny, ridiculously portable, easy to learn, and *usually* fun (yes, there were a couple of duds), these little games ate up a lot of my freetime.

One of these that I particularly enjoyed was Melee, part of what, with its later companion game Wizard, was known as "The Fantasy Trip" (we're trippin' dude!). Like its more board-or-war-game oriented brethren, my (used) copy of Melee came in a worn little plastic baggie, with some tiny dice, a hex map, a tiny rulebook, and some battered counters of little gladiator-looking dudes. "In the Labyrinth" would develop the Trip even further, into what many regard as a quite passable rules-lite RPG with some cool combat options.

TFT would become quite popular in its own right, even amidst the crowded RPG landscape of the late seventies and early eighties. The owner of the game held a couple of notorious contests in which he provided clues to the location of a real Silver Dragon (and attendant 10k prize) and later a Gold Unicorn, which was never found (I believe I've narrowed the location down to three possibilities;).

At any rate, the game has vanished into the mists of time, some 25 years gone now, after a dispute between the owner and the game's lead designer, one Steve Jackson (yes, that one). Fortunately, the fellows over at Dark City Games have put together a short and sweet simulacrum of the complete TFT game (Melee/Wizard/Labyrinth) called Legends of the Ancient World and are happily chugging along making cool new adventures for the system. Check it out, its good stuff.

They also have a sci-fi variant of the ruleset, called Time and Space, which I find particularly cool, as rules-lite sci-fi games are extremely few and far-between.

Who's attacking the OSR publishers?

Drama! Usually I avoid it like the plague, but the last couple of months have seen reports of retroclone fans and publishers getting critical and threatening emails and messages from someone who thinks they should just go away.

In each case so far, the victims have been too gentlemanly to name their attacker(s) in public, and have opted to stew/suffer/agonize in private. While I can respect taking the higher ground about that, it also appears that the culprit(s) behind these attacks are taking things a bit too far, and should really be dealt with. The OSR is more than a hobby, its a community, so name your attacker and we'll help you out with it. :)

Torgo Tuesday - Torgo Loves Andre Norton!

Torgo was absolutely enthralled this morning as I read aloud to him from J's excellent review of Quag Keep. I enjoy reading to Torgo, as it keeps him from tormenting the cats for a few minutes, giving them a much needed rest.

Adding to the review from my own well of largely useless trivia, I mentioned to Torgo the interesting factoid that Quag Keep, while an uninspiring work in many folks' opinion, is a rare glimpse at the pre-publication version of Gary's Greyhawk campaign setting. Ms. Norton was invited to attend a lengthy session at Mr. Gygax's table, and took extensive notes as she adventured through Greyhawk in its original form, what we call today a "sandbox", centered around Castle Greyhawk and its nearby city of Greyhawk. Of course, as Gygax fleshed things out more and more for what would eventually become the "canon" setting published as "World of Greyhawk" in 1980, this magical place would move further away from Gygax's freewheeling initial, pulpier, inspirations, and further towards a more "realistic" setting, an alternate Earth of sorts, with well defined nations and races. Wouldn't it be something if Ms. Norton's notes on that prototypical Greyhawk could be released? However, when one reads notes on the initial dungeon expeditions beneath Castle Greyhawk and Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" in quick succession, as I have done recently, one gets a pretty good idea of what it must have been like. Try it yourself, you'll see what I mean! :)

Incidentally, Andre Norton was a member of a pretty awesome club herself, one that would've made any DM poop bricks for the opportunity to game with: The Swordsmen & Sorcerers Guild of America, also known as SAGA. In addition to Andre Norton, the association included the likes of Jack Vance(!), Fritz Leiber(!!), and Michael Moorcock(!!!), along with Lin Carter(the founder), L. Sprague DeCamp, Roger Zelazny, and Katherine Kurtz, among others. While ostensibly a literary group, it was also a damned good excuse to get together a drink a lot while talking shop. What would you give to have been a fly on the wall at one of their meetings?

Support Old-School Gaming - vote today!

Ennie voting opens today for the Ennies.

Swords & Wizardry for "Best Free Product", and
Mythmere Games for "Best Publisher", and
Goblinoid Games (Labyrinth Lord) for "Best Publisher"

Even if S&W or LL aren't your systems of choice, having either of these win will no doubt make publishers and distributers take notice(if they havn't already;) of the increasing presence and influence old-school gaming has, which is good all for us!

Vote here.

When you're done, be sure to grab a copy of the badge above!

Who's Niche?

Poking around on EnWorld today, I was amused to find even more old-school gaming than the last time. I don't think it was normal even a year ago to see more than one old-school thread on the main general discussion page, but the amount of discussion has been growing steadily over the last several months. Today's page features threads on:

"What flavor of old-school do you like?"
"Experiences with Basic Fantasy RPG"
"What was your Megadungeon like?"
"The thing I miss most from AD&D is..."
"2E Legends & Lore"
"Gaming generation gap"
"Gary Con (old-school gaming convention) 2 dates set"
"Why doesn't WotC license older editions?"
"AD&D1 Training Rules"
"4E Blackmoor"
"Treasure and leveling comparisons: AD&D1, etc"
"J Tweet's comments on Swords & Wizardry"
"How did you play back in the day?"
"Familiar with the Megadungeon?"

That's 14 out of the 25 top current threads...

At any rate, there are a lot of misconceptions posted here and there, so if you feel like it, drop by over there and help steer them gently in the right direction.

Very sad news - Eleanor Frazetta

Eleanor Frazetta (6/15/35-7/17/09) passed away last Friday. From everything I've read about Frank Frazetta, he was completely devoted to her, so everyone keep him your thoughts through what must be an unbearable time. More here.