ORACLE

8/20/2010

Happy Birthday HPL

(Howard Phillips Lovecraft, as seen through the lens of Dave Carson.
Its like he is actually posing for a birthday portrait in his best suit.)

Happy birthday to the Old Gent of Providence!

8/16/2010

[Poll] Help Me Decide on Book Format

I have posted the first two polls that will ultimately help me decide on how to publish Swords Against the Outer Dark Labyrinth Lord Supplement. I am curious to see what book size and type of binding you guys would prefer. Dan Proctor published Labyrinth Lord through Lulu and has had nothing but great things to say about their quality and service, so I have decided to follow his wisdom on this. I plan to offer several choices since Lulu offers a wide variety, but I am curious to see what the general public would prefer buying. Of course there will be a PDF available as well. I look forward to seeing the results.

8/15/2010

Swords Against the Outer Dark Labyrinth Lord Supplement

Something I mentioned in my last post was that I have started work on an official Swords Against the Outer Dark Labyrinth Lord Supplement, so it looks like I am taking a huge step forward and throwing my hat into the publishing ring. Basically, I see this project as a way to share how I play "The Game". I see many people throw around the term "my D&D", well this will be my D&D to say the least.

I am an old-school gamer who has been playing the games I love for thirty years now. I have enjoyed playing many, many games these past three decades, and I have seen a lot of trends in gaming come and go. One thing I have not seen is a lack of interest in fantasy gaming, especially in the popularity of D&D. Even though it is a clone, Labyrinth Lord is in my opinion the most well put together version of old-school "D&D" out there. I know many people will argue this point, and some will not understand the statement at all. What I am try to say, in a long way of saying it, is that Labyrinth Lord is in my mind the perfect set of old-school rules coupled with a very flexible Open Game License, which makes it the ultimate vehicle for old-school games publishing. I have seen a lot of modules, and a few booklets with optional rules released to help enhance Labyrinth Lord. What I have yet to see is Labyrinth Lord be used much in the same way the d20 SRD was used, in that publishers take Labyrinth Lord as a base and build upon that strong foundation to create their own version of The Game. This is ultimately my goal with this project. I want to create a Sword & Sanity roleplaying game, or better yet Swords Against the Outer Dark "The Game", and Labyrinth Lord is going to help me achieve this goal.

In the days to come I will discuss some of the things that I will be putting into this book. When it is all said and done I am sure this supplement will change many aspects of Labyrinth Lord, but I have decided to try to keep the core game in tact. It is a very solid foundation, and it would be a mistake to try to reconstruct that foundation. I will also be adding several polls on this blog in the coming weeks to help me decide on how to proceed with certain areas of the design and content of the book.

The biggest obstacle I am facing long term, besides getting the project finished, is obtaining artwork for the project. I hope to get Dave Carson to help with this, but honestly I have not approached him as of yet, so I am not sure if this will become a reality or not. I am crossing my fingers... With a very limited art budget (I am not sure I even have an art budget) I am not sure the direction I will end up taking with the graphics for the book. Time will tell...

So there it is. I received a few emails asking for additional information on this project. Sorry I haven't gone into further detail, but I promise I will have more to share in the coming weeks.