A Return to The Village of Hommlet (4E Style)
How cool is this? Wizards of the Coast has released an updated version of Gary Gygax’s 1979 classic The Village of Hommlet, one of the most celebrated AD&D adventures and the first part of the notoriously difficult Temple of Elemental Evil mega-campaign, revised to run in the 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. The new version was updated by Andy Collins and is suitable for fourth level characters.
Oh, wait. “Released” is too strong a word. The module was actually a free giveaway WotC mailed to RPGA members as a DM Reward, and is not available for sale (unless you count eBay, where copies are currently selling for around $50.) Curses!
If you’re the creative sort, Familiar Ground is offering a free copy for one lucky winner, selected randomly from all those who leave a comment with a “gaming or RPG related joke or funny incident.” Deadline is Aug 31.
The original module is still played today by die-hard fans. It’s been converted to a popular computer game, and the back-story behind it all is annually re-enacted as a tabletop miniatures game at Garycon. Not bad for a module that’s been out of print for over two decades.
I have fond memories of the original. And when I’m 80, I hope to have fond memories of tracking down this one. Let the search begin.
D&D in space. It’s an idea that has been around for a long while in the form of TSR/WotC’s Spelljammer.
Bitch Slap the (unrated) film relates to fantasy fiction how, you may ask?
The Woman Who Loved Reindeer, by Meredith Ann Pierce
I don’t know what makes a novel great. Maybe every great book is great in its own way. I suspect, though, that a novel’s greatness resides most often either in its structure (not just its plot, but its balancing of themes and elements, its division into units like chapters, and its decision of what to describe and when) or its prose (its ability to make every word count, not only in depicting character and setting, not only in moving forward story, but in advancing the theme of the book, what it’s about, the idea that prompted the telling of the tale in the first place).
Anyone who has been reading these entries with any regularity knows that the word “minimalist” will never be used in the same sentence with my name. I seem to be visually starved, needing to be perpetually surrounded by interesting if not strange things to look at. This can easily be proven by the fact I cohabitate with a voodoo doll collection and three German Shepherds.
Night of the Necromancer
The lead story for the
complete artwork comprising all the issues in 2010) is “Mannikin” by Paul Evanby. The story opens in July 1776, the date of American declared independence from British colonial rule (sidenote: the writer is Dutch and the magazine is published in the U.K.). But this isn’t about Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson, and doesn’t even take place in the colonies, but rather signifies the irony of a revolution that resulted in freedom for white Protestant male landowners who relied on the exploitation of African-American slaves to maintain economic autonomy.