Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Underworld Day - Rankine tailrace

Tailrace tunnel of Rankine Hydro Power Station near Niagara Falls. Anyone been there?










More photos here.

Monday, July 30, 2012

At last!

This is the place where I'm going today!

Time for some vacation. Despite shitty weather I'm heading to the "wilderness" to rest from the big cities, walk, splash in the lake (I live for 28 years by the sea and still can't swim!) and enjoy the brew. I should be back in a week or so. I have one or two posts scheduled for this time (Underworld Day and maybe something more) and meanwhile I present you small random table.

Things in the lake (roll 1d10):
  1. Giant blind fish, escaped from some underground river or lake. Big enough to sink a yacht or swallow a man whole. It can be encountered only during nights.
  2. 2d6 animated corpses of drowned men and women. They lurk in the shallow water just beneath the surface.
  3. Giant electric eel (18 feet long). It's intelligent and can speak (but it's rather hard to understand him if not submerged in the water).
  4. Sunken barrel, full of pickled cucumbers or sauerkraut (50% chance for each).
  5. Very old fishing nets, slightly magical. Water wraith is trapped in them.
  6. 3 feet long Opal Crayfish. Has poisonous bite (save or be unable to breathe air for 1d6+2 hours) but its carapace is worth 348 gp.
  7. Pack of 2d12 brown-skinned toadmen fighting 3d8 green-skinned frogmen. Both sides are armed with primitive weapons. Toadmen are led by l4 fighting man (fighting toad?) and leader of frogmen is l3 magic user.
  8. Giant leech, capable to suck all blood from human in mere seconds.
  9. Sunken barrel, full of rotten, toxic fungi. There is a huge emerald hidden inside the barrel (it's worth2366 gp).
  10. Giant swamp octopus hidden under a really big, green rock. In fact, rock is a huge gold nugget covered with fossilized goo. It's worth over 20000 gp but it's really very heavy (over one ton) and octopus is very powerful and deadly opponent (and it will defend its home).

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Second review of Towers of Krshal


Tzimiscedracul (or maybe should I say Tzimisce Dracul) made short but awesome review of Towers of Krshal. Thank you for your kind words.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

I dare you, buyers of Towers of Krshal!


Dear buyers of my mini-supplement: I encourage you to write a review of Towers of Krshal! I'd love to read what do you think about it.

Slide the Sliders!

Doug has created "blank" slider sheet to describe our settings. You can find them HERE and I encourage you to use them to depict us some basic feats of your world(s).

At the moment I have two sheets completed - one to depict Underworld Kingdom campaign setting and one to depict something... new :D Click to enlarge:

Double slider on tech level is not mistake - world of Ortix is EXTREMELY diverse.


Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Artists of my youth - Michael Böhme

When you are six years old, everything is magical for you. Some things remain magical even after several decades. Link to artist's website (it's in German but don't worry - art needs no translation).







Note about all artwork from Artists of my youth series - there are lots stuff made by the artists that I'm showing you (so check their galleries!) but I post here only pics that I knew when I was a kid.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Only Ten? Ten?


Brendan asked interesting question: If you could only keep ten of your printed RPG books, which would you pick? I thought about it and answer surprised me.

If I could only keep ten of my printed RPG books I will keep not even one. I played without any rules, dice or even char sheets for more than five fucking years. I can game without that crap, only with my imagination.
Even when I ran Underworld Kingdom test runs, I had about 10 printed (or not) gamebooks. And I looked almost only into first LBB (Men & Magic) and sporadically into Terminal Space (but stopped when Technician PC departed).

But it would be awesome to have my custom-made private AVES spellbook :D

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Taking a break


As I mentioned yesterday on G+ - I need a break from writing and posting. Next two weeks will be rather silent (except maybe Underworld Days) - I must go on some kind of holiday, play boardgames, drink beer and generally don't give a fuck about the world. Probably I'll write something new for Bandits & Battlecruisers (or maybe something for my other projects - who knows?) but don't expect new creative posts here.

See you in the second week of  August.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Art of James Warhola (artists of my youth)

Another awesome artist, discovered by me when I was 6-7 years old (!). Great inspiration, especially for a kid. I strongly recommend you to visit author's website.







Saturday, July 14, 2012

Art of Chris Achilleos

Another big inspiration of mine. Not as big as Rodney Matthews, but still quite big.
More artists to go.
Do not forget to visit Chris's website.


Thursday, July 12, 2012

Blog of the Month - Swords & Stitchery


I decided to start promoting underrated OSR-related blogs. First is Swords & Stitchery - your ultimate source of weird Science Fantasy stuff. Man, Needles posts more than five fucking hundred posts per year and has mere 110+ followers! Even my mediocre blog has 125 watchers, so follow his blog or I will hunt you down.

PS. you may find lots of awesome Terminal Space-related stuff by Needles in the Index of Terminal Space resources.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Look at top ten items on Lulu!

!

Bandits & Battlecruisers: Ultimate Edition


Along with regular, free edition of Bandits & Battlecruisers I plan to release Ultimate Edition of the game, with numerous additional features and entirely new graphics.

I'm still not sure what will it contain, as I'm adding new stuff almost constantly, so I can list only features that are already completed. Bandits & Battlecruisers: Ultimate Edition contains so far:
  • Ideas for additional abilities;
  • Motivation of alien PCs;
  • Strange and unusual alien features;
  • Keywords that may be helpful in designing monsters, robots, planets and civilizations (400 keywords total plus lots of ideas of using them);
  • Random ray guns;
  • Space phenomena;
  • Security status of star systems;
  • 100 random space stations;
  • Artifact name generator.
Much more to come: additional monsters, artifacts, spaceships, spaceship components. I don't know if I will be able to create new spells (I'm not very good at it) but I'll try to do my best.

What do you think about these ideas?

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Underworld Day - Moscow Sewers

Set of great photos of sewer system in Moscow. Be sure to visit author's website, but better use Google Translate.