Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Metapost

Is it dumb to write a blog post about what blog posts I want to write? Oh well; I want a little push to help me fight off writer's block, and this should keep me accountable to any readers I might be lucky enough to have gained in my brief time as a blogger. Here are some things I ought to write about:
  1. I need to start on those actual play reports!
  2. My posts about Kult aren't exactly my most widely-read material, but I think there's some stuff in Kult that might be useful in Lamentations of the Flame Princess, so I want to explore that possible crossover.
  3. I should REALLY finish reading The Hell House Beckons and get around to reviewing it. My first impressions are very positive.
  4. For some reason I got bored back in February and wrote on a sticky note a list of D&D editions/versions in the order of what I found most-to-least interesting. I looked at it again today and realized that order has changed a lot in just two months or so. That may be some food for thought.
  5. Related to Number 2 above, I've been having an internal debate over whether or not Kult counts as cosmic horror. A lot of people seem to see it as the exact opposite of cosmic horror, but I can see arguments both for and against that claim. Does this kind of nitpicky genre debate interest anybody besides me?
  6. I have some more NPC ideas that might benefit from a write-up, like what I did with Joop van Ooms and Ibofuris Onaxix. There's a dwarf inventer named Ori, a wizard/sculptor named Klavis Garavone, and a cabal of warlocks that could use some fleshing out.
  7. Two words: Alderson disk.
  8. Maybe I'm just hitting the Lotus Powder a bit too much, but is it just me, or does Lamentations of the Flame Princess seem to have a fascination with cloning, copying, imitating, and replacing people?
  9. I think I tinker with the classes in LotFP to an obsessive degree. I guess I might as well share some of what I've come up with. Worst case scenario, people can at least enjoy laughing at my amateur attempts at game design.
  10. Last year, I read the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake. I think there's some pretty gameable stuff in there.
  11. I wonder if you could use The Ghost House Guide to Ghosts as a Monster Manual?
  12. Big Trouble in Little China is a great D&D movie.
  13. Arguably, so is Conquest. (Although I suspect a lot of people would say it isn't a good anything. I disagree, but I don't blame anybody if they feel that way.)
  14. For the most part, I actually like the Cleric class in LotFP, which perhaps puts me in a minority. I'd like to talk about the things that I think the Cleric class and spell list do well.
  15. I want to do a read-through of Carcosa like the one I did of the Holmes Basic D&D rulebook.
  16. Ditto B1 In Search of the Unknown.
  17. Ditto B2 The Keep on the Borderland.
  18. Ditto the two B/X D&D rulebooks.
  19. Ever since I read The House on the Borderland, I've had this cool idea in the back of my mind: What if I combined The House on the Borderland with The Keep on the Borderlands? (I haven't thought of a clever title yet.)
  20. I have an idea for a dungeon made of sugar I ought to get to work on. "Death Frosting Doom," if you will. If I ever get off my ass and make it, maybe I could make it a free (or "pay what you want") product on DriveThruRPG or Lulu or something.
  21. To complement my list of "official and semi-official" LotFP classes (in print and PDF), I should make a list of classes from blogs and other online sources. It's definitely not going to be a complete list, but I can at least gather links to a bunch of them.
There. It's not an exhaustive list, but it hits the main things I've wanted to write about lately. In the meantime, here are some recent blog posts by other people that I think are super good.
Snake Men
Arguing for weaker demon lords
Murderdog V: A New Beginning
Doom has good maps
Scared bunnies are scary bunnies
Magic is weird
I love the nano warhead cloud
Cool observations and opinions about Mentzer Basic D&D
Skill checks in B/X

UPDATED ON OCTOBER 1, 2016
Stuff that was on the list but that I covered since writing this post:
  1. I just obtained a copy of the Holmes Basic D&D rules. The book is awesome, and I want to talk about it. DONE!
  2. I have this theory about how the Fighter/Mage/Other Class trio has a sort of universal appeal for people who like fantasy games that use character classes. I don't know if it holds water, but I'd like to develop it a bit. DID IT.
  3. Am I the only one who struggles with figuring out how the appraisal of treasure by PCs should work? Especially with magic items? TALKED ABOUT IT HERE.
  4. This might be strange, but I have an urge to stat up a certain annoying enemy from an old, arguably crappy video game called Dark Castle. I think it might be an amusing take on the goblin/kobold archetype. I just really like repurposing old video game stuff for old-school D&D stuff. THERE IT IS.

2 comments:

  1. Just ran across this today, and thought it ties into your idea #10:
    TSR 09572 Dawn of the Overmind
    The Ilithid (Mind Flayer) homeland is located on a Alderson disk. The disk has a wall along the inner edge near the sun to shield out direct sunlight, resulting in a permanent twilit world.

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    Replies
    1. That is so cool! I can't believe I didn't see your comment until now. I'll have to check out that book.

      That also reminds me: someone (maybe me?) should really turn The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson into a campaign setting or a hexcrawl or something. Of course, I need to read the whole thing, first. It's a bit intimidating to actually get through because of the pseudo-medieval style Hodgson adopts for his narrator, but from what I've heard it's amazingly creative.

      You just reminded me about that because a twilit world rules over by brain-eating Lovecraftian aliens sounds a bit Night Land-esque, among other things.

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