Top 15 Favorite Books

After reading Kage Baker's The Bird of the River, I decided it was time to revisit a project I'd last posted here back in 2007. This time around, I expanded the list to 15 and allowed myself up to two titles by the same author. This is still leaving off all graphic novels. I also realized, to my shock, that I had left off Jules Verne completely from my past list. What was I thinking?

1. The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)
2. With a Single Spell (Lawrence Watt-Evans)
3. Gods of Mars (Edgar Rice Burroughs)
4. Voyage of the Dawn Treader (C.S. Lewis)
5. The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Graeme)
6. The Fellowship of the Ring (J.R.R. Tolkien)
7. Around the World in 80 Days (Jules Verne)
8. True Names (Vernor Vinge)
9. Princess of Mars (Edgar Rice Burroughs)
10. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
11. Magician's Nephew (C.S. Lewis)
12. The Sign of Four (Arthur Conan Doyle)
13. Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency (Douglas Adams)
14. Journey to the Center of the Earth (Jules Verne)
15. The Bird of the River (Kage Baker)

The Undead Pages - pt. 2

[Although it was technically called "The Undead Pages", the strip has always been known by my friends as "Marcy the Lich" after the main character. The origin of Marcy the Lich came from a before-school discussion one day amongst my acquaintances when we debated who was most like which Peanuts characters. Of course, all of us thought we were most like Charlie Brown, but we couldn't all be Charlie Brown so some people just had characters assigned to them. Somebody, possibly me, suggested Chris should be Marcy. The more Chris protested this assignment, the funnier it seemed to me.

[Soon thereafter I drew a picture of Marcy as a skeleton, a midget skeleton with big glasses, wearing a t-shirt and shorts, and with just a few hairs left on her head. As I drew more of Marcy, Marcy shifted from being a female to a male, like Chris. And so Marcy the Lich was born...]

The Undead Pages - pt. 1

[My friend Ron requested I find this old high school comic strip and show it to him again. Sadly, only six pages of it were ever inked, the rest done in pencil too lightly (or is now too light) to scan well. Oddly, the six pages are only from Year 2 of the strip, right in the middle of its three year run.]

[This strip never appeared in the school newspaper; indeed, it would probably have been rejected on the spot for being too weird. Its origin lies in the fact that several of us, in my circle of high school acquaintances, who could draw tried their hand at comic strips just to show around to the group. The only other one I remember was Erik's Tick-homage, "The Marlin", but I'm pretty sure Joe tried making one too. We all worked in pencil on lined paper, since that's what we had in school. The main difference with mine was its longevity.]

Things I Want to See in Hobbit II

I had read much earlier that The Hobbit was going to be filmed in two movies, but it was only recently I read a rumor that was printed back in 2008 that the first movie would follow the book while the second would be an invented sequel bridging the Hobbit to the Lord of the Rings. This was pretty exciting for me, whether it's true or not, because I've long thought that if I ever get around to running a Middle Earth campaign (I know, what's wrong with me that I haven't done it yet?) that's exactly what I would want my campaign to be like.

So, with that in mind, I started looking at The Hobbit again and took some notes.

1. Rule #1: no established characters from The Hobbit. Use cousins of Bilbo and the dwarves, or even a not-totally-evil-yet Saruman, but everyone from The Hobbit remains off-stage.
2. Do any Tooks still consort with fairies, like a Took ancestor was rumored to have done?
3. What was the Old Took's business that kept him away from home so long?
4. Where does their tobacco come from? Is it a deadly carcinogen, or the more harmless "pipe-weed" I see in many D&D campaigns?
5. What happened to Old Took's magic diamond studs that never come undone until commanded?
6. Were the dwarves coming from west to east when they reached the Shire, or did they go really far out of their way to find Bilbo? And what were they doing out west?
7. Do dwarves drink tea? None of the dwarves touch Bilbo's tea.
8. Is there significance to the color of the dwarves' cloaks?
9. Is there significance to Dwalin's golden belt?
10. How long have they had tobacco, tea, and cofee in the Shire?
11. Pop-guns exist, so guns exist, though perhaps only as dwarf-made toys?
12. A typical dinner? -- tea, coffee, beer/ale, wine, raspberry jam, seed-cakes, apple tarts, mince pies, cheese, pork-pie, salad, eggs, cold chicken, pickles.
13. With magic pipes you can direct the smoke rings?
14. Common instruments: bag(pipes?), fiddles, flutes, drums, clarinets, viols, and harps.
15. Magic item: light hidden in gems of hilt of sword; illuminates a room until the sword is drawn and held?
16. What else might Hobbits hide behind the beer barrels in their cellars (besides themselves)?
17. If Kili and Fili are so much younger, why were they included in the company? Just because of their kinship, or perhaps the closeness of their kinship to Thorin? And are any other dwarves upset about their exclusion?
18. Where was the Battle of the Green Fields fought and where is Mount Gram? When was Bullroarer Took around to fight it? 60 years ago? 75? 125?
19. Does anyone still play golf?
20. Burglars and expert treasure hunters advertise with secret marks on their doors; this is common practice.
21. What do dwarves dig coal for? Do only dwarf-run furnaces run on coal? And if the dwarves have to dig their own coal now, who were they making to do it before? Maybe the goblins of Moria have a reason to hate dwarves...
22. Who do they know of the Last Desert to the East-of-East in the Shire?
23. Do dragons still live in the Withered Heath?
24. Where are the goblins of Moria regrouping?
25. What is the Necromancer doing now?
26. Dwarves are a common, or at least not rare, sight on the roads of the Shire. What marketable goods do they still trade? The dwarves once controlled a great toy market in Dale. Do dwarves still make toys?
27. Clockworks exist and mantel clocks are not uncommon.

Dreaming D&D

I had an unusual dream last night, sort of a “Willie Wonka and Dungeons and Dragons”. I received an invitation (my “golden ticket”) to a special pre-GenCon D&D game hosted at the home of Roy Thomas. I got my wires crossed on this part as, obviously, Roy Thomas is a figure in the comic book field, not the RPG field. And yet, I suppose I invented him because the D&D field never had a Roy Thomas – a no. 2 man under Gary Gygax who took over running his company for him, but kept it going in the same direction (like the character Jo Jo in Knights of the Dinner Table).

“Roy Thomas” had a huge estate not far from where GenCon was being run. The front yard was full of cars of gamers who showed up early for the con, though where all those gamers went after that, I have no idea. Only four people had been chosen to play in his game. “Roy” was an eccentric; he had a 300 ft. long swimming pool in his huge backyard, but he had pet messes all over his kitchen floor covered in dried stains of some cleaner that had never been wiped up.

Two of the other players, both white, dark-haired 20-somethings, had a previous financial arrangement with “Roy” -- for a fee, they would be allowed to consult his gaming collection after the game. The youngest player was a teenage boy with a bright shock of blond hair. I played a dwarf and did my best Gimli imitation.

It is, perhaps, not surprising that “Roy”'s DMing skills were not as good as mine in my dream. Every player started with one rumor whispered to them at the start of the game. I don't remember what mine was, but it seemed unimportant. The rumors were unimportant at best and detrimental to the game at worst – the youngest player's rumor was that my dwarf was a criminal of some kind. We were given nothing to do at the start of the game except hang around and roleplay with each other, which could have gone better had the youngest player not have blurted out his rumor in front of my dwarf. To add to the roleplaying experience and help everyone else get into the game, I grabbed the boy and pretended to rough him up as our characters, but “Roy” and his co-DM (a friend, I suppose, who just happened to be hanging around for the game) were terribly upset about this, breaking up the “fight” and chastising me for acting instead of just stating my intentions.

The game did not progress beyond this set-up period and I wonder if it ever would. “Roy” seemed to have no sense of establishing a pace for his game. He was more interested in throwing out trivia about the early days of D&D, like how the stirge monster was named after a player whose last name was Stirge (or perhaps Sturges?). I wandered away from the table to look for his gaming collection and found, what books were sitting out at least, it was no larger than my own.

I woke up not long after that, initially disappointed that the revelation about the word 'stirge' was only part of a dream. The dream did seem to have an intriguing lesson to it, though. I came to that game, in the dream, excited that I was going to get to game with a famous gamer and found he was not as good, or at least no better, a gamer than I was. My dream was inspired by reading a lot of Knights of the Dinner Table from 2008 (and a Hard 8 storyline) lately and learning that the druid class was originally written, not by Gary Gygax or Brian Blume, but by Dave Sustarre. It was about wanting to know the secrets of the game and wanting to feel like I was in the same league as the big creators of the game.

Garham to Greyhawk Campaign: Session Eight, the Final Session

Session Eight – August 14, 2010
Cast
Flex, human shield bearer
Clair, hobbit shield bearer
Sein, human shield bearer/rogue
Sanji, human medium

The hunt for the Wight of the Hiddendale had not gone well; Clair had been energy drained. Gregor, their ranger guide, had used a magic flask of smoke to confuse the wight and allow everyone to escape. The Crazy Adventurers retreated to the Village of Hawfair to rest. Specifically, they stayed there for three days, waiting to see if the energy drain was temporary and if Clair would get better; she did not. It was during this time that Sein and Sanji came back to the company.

A messenger working for the Serpenthelm family found them in Hawfair. It turned out that Kevlamin Serpenthelm had family in Greyhawk. Down on their luck, they were looking for help from Kevlamin's company to finance a proper funeral for him. Flex, though he had started out hating Kevlamin, championed the cause of going on a quest to raise Kevlamin and convinced the rest of the company to agree unanimously. They weighed their options and decided to approach the Temple of Zilchus back in the City of Greyhawk. The High Acquisitioners of Zilchus said they could resurrect Kevlamin, but would demand 5,000 gp to do it.

Their best bet of raising the funds was the same quest they had planned to pursue while hunting the Wight of the Hiddendale – to find the Ruined Tower of Elzid. Actually, it turned out to be absurdly easy to find Elzid's tower, as a territorial war was going on between goblin and orc parties and adventuring companies from Greyhawk over the tower at the heart of the Hiddendale. The four remaining members of The Crazy Adventurers actually spent a week exploring the Hiddendale and the Great Hillwood trying to find another a safer route around the fighting parties to the tower, until they encountered by chance a gold dragon that chased everyone else off.

((Spoilers for “A Wizard's Fate” From Dungeon magazine #37))

By now there was almost nothing left of the tower, but a short investigation revealed that a stairwell to a basement level was safe inside the rubble. As they started down the hallway at the bottom of the staircase, they activated a trap that caused a block of stone to slide across the hallway and block off their retreat. Undeterred, they continued down the hallway to a room with a demonic-looking statue in it. As Flex started searching the room, the statue seemed to come to life and attack them. Everyone ganged up on the statue and did enough harm to it to dispel the illusion ; the statue had actually never moved at all.

Trying one of the doors from that room, the company found a corridor with more doors. The door at the end of the corridor was locked, so they concentrated on that. Sein tried to pick the lock and failed. Flex and Sein hacked at the door for awhile with their axes, but were interrupted when a voice whispered to Flex to hand over his magical cloak of protection. Magically compelled, Flex complied and the cloak began floating down the hallway away from them. They were able to catch up to the cloak and snatch it back, though.

Clair had grown impatient waiting for the door to be chopped down and coated it in lamp oil instead. After lighting the door aflame and backing off for a bit, Sein felt something brush by his leg. People started trying to hit his invisible attacker, but found nothing. Since it was not seen heading into the smoke, they could only assume it had run away from them back towards the blocked dungeon entrance.

When the smoke cleared, the company found the interior of the room had been burned away. They thought they were responsible at first, but investigation showed that the fire was weeks old and had destroyed a library. Nothing was found that survived the fire, except for some graphitti scratched into the back wall. This made Flex sure that there was a secret door in the back wall. His 30 minute search of the back wall was weakening the morale of the company until he really did find a secret door and opened it.

The secret door led to a room filled with spider webs and rubble. The four set about searching the room and were shortly attacked by four large spiders, one for each of them. No one had trouble dispatching their spiders except for Sanji, who succumbed to the poison of its bite and was immediately weak from fever. Undeterred, the other three went about searching the rubble, hoping the spiders had guarded something useful. Sanji, in his delirium, said he saw a door in the corner of the room and, sure enough, there was another secret door there.

Behind this secret door was a closet with only a wooden chest in it. Sanji was too weak to leave the middle of the room, so only the other three went into the closet to open the chest – just as Sein set off the fire trap spell on the chest. Flex and Sein were killed outright, while Clair was knocked unconscious. As the flames died down, the invisible imp that had been following them all along came in, watched Sanji die, and then killed Clair in her sleep.

And so, with the passing of Clair, the last original member of the campaign, the Garham to Greyhawk Campaign came to an end with a TPK. As a last footnote, the player of new character Jack Stafford showed up late right after the TPK, but could not have arrived to save anyone because the company had done nothing about the trap blocking the dungeon entrance.

Graduated Flavor Text II: Burial Options in a D&D Campaign

1. Ditch the body – 0 cost, 0 attendance, no prep, no ceremony.
2. Improvised pyre – 0 cost, 0 attendance, 30-min.-prep time, 2-min. ceremony.
3. Shallow, unmarked grave – 0 cost, 0 attendance, 1 hour-prep time, 10-min. ceremony.
4. Church-recognized pyre funeral – 5 gp, 1d3 attending + acolyte, 2 hour wake, 15-min. ceremony.
5. Grave and marker in a village graveyard – 12 gp, 1d4 attending + acolyte, 4 hour wake, 15-min. ceremony, corpse protected from being animated as a skeleton.
6. Grave and tombstone in a small town graveyard – 25 gp, 1d8 attending + adept, 8 hour wake, 20-min. ceremony, corpse protected from being animated as a skeleton or zombie
7. Grave and tombstone with statuette in a big town graveyard – 90 gp, 4d4 attending + priest, 1 day wake, public procession, 25-min. ceremony, corpse protected from being animated as a skeleton, zombie, ghoul or shadow, includes reception with snack food.
8. Tomb burial in a small city graveyard – 130 gp, 6d4 attending + curate, 2 day wake, public procession, 30 min. ceremony, corpse protected from being animated as a skeleton, to wight, includes reception with food, drink, and light entertainment.
9. Exclusive tomb burial in a major city – 260 gp, 5d6 attending + prefect, 3 day wake, public parade, 35 min. ceremony, corpse protected from being animated as a skeleton, to wraith, includes 1-hour reception with food, drink, and entertainment.
10. Private mausoleum in a major city – 400 gp, 7d6 attending + bishop, 4 day wake, public parade, 40 min. ceremony, corpse protected from being animated as a skeleton, to mummy, includes 2-hour reception party.