Savage Swords of Athanor

On Friday I received my latest Lulu purchase in the mail-box (always a great way to end the week), Doug Easterly's Savage Swords of Athanor available through Lulu.

Now the thing I really love about this Old School Revival are all the booklets, downloads and publications that other gamers are putting out for both free and pay. Some of my favorites would be peoples house-rules and campaign worlds.

As you may know, I tend to cherry pick the best of peoples house rules out there and fit them to my own campaign. So I love gathering these books up and getting fresh ideas.

Savage Swords is a great little booklet. Easterly put together a very creative, pulpy, planetary romance world in the vein of Burroughs' Mars stories using the Swords & Wizardry White Box as it's foundation. In just 63 pages Easterly gives a perfect broad-stroke of this hex based planetary setting and the city state of Zamora. He doesn't weigh the book down with needless detail but gives you just the right amount of information for the GM to jump in and color this savage world.

Savage Swords of Athanor is broken up into 3 familiar sections, Men and Magic, Monsters and Treasures, and Underworld & Wilderness Adventures which bring to mind the original Little Brown Books. These sections cover everything from new alien races, mutations, Treasures of the Ancients, The City State of Zamora, Planetary Encounters, a mild skill system, details of the planet Athanor, adventure hooks and much, much more all packed into 63 pages. The book also suggests what to remove from the standard Swords & Wizardry rules (races, classes and monsters) to bring it in line with the world of Athanor.

As with any campaign world that takes the fantasy concept outside of the 'comfortable' classic setting of elves, dwarves, and wizards, there is always that curve of getting GM and player up to speed with the extra fantastic world setting, culture and races. Easterly realizes that and provides the familiar character type of Earthman to help players jump into the Savage World of Athanor.

If you love deep pulpy campaign worlds settings I would highly recommend Doug Easterly's Savage Swords of Arthanor. At a concise 63 pages it's a perfect length to get into a fantastic fantasy world. I plan on transporting my current players there sometime in the near future. What better way to keep them on their toes!

Paperback Roundup

I'm sure like many of you I can't turn down a used book store especially with the prospect of picking up a couple of vintage paperbacks. I love those classic covers and will buy the book just for a Jeff Jones or Frazetta cover or some weird 60's bizarro cover. In fact, I'll pick up a used paperback over a new edition most anytime.

When I lived in Chicago, there was never a shortage of amazing used book shops that had so many vintage paperbacks on their shelves it was virtually impossible walking out without a hand full of delicious treats.

Here in Tucson I've still been able to find some pulp treasures. Latest acquisitions....

Iron Rations

So we had our 10th campaign session the other day - recap coming shortly. It was a full house to be sure. Zach (who plays Skwanky Furrytoe) returned to the table as well as Max (Slick Vinny) who also had been out for a number of sessions. We welcomed a new player, Tim, to the fold as well. That's seven player characters all told. It makes for a pretty loud raucous session as you can imagine:

*The Elmer's Glue is there purely by accident.

Quote of the game from Slick Vinny: "Alright, I'm going to shotgun Teabag."

More Of "My Players Are Awesome"

This week proved to be a double header in the My Players Are Awesome department. Zach, one of my players whom I've mentioned before and will be returning to the table, dropped this off for me.



It may be hard to believe, with me being such a huge fan of the OSR, but I never owned a copy of Labyrinth Lord. I've loved the book, the layout, the rules but I found it to be so close to the basic red and expert blue that I never found it a priority to pick this one up. Well, I'm glad I have it now as it's a great little compiled set of rules (which I have always thought, btw). In fact, my house rules have been sprinkled with some of the LL Advanced Edition.

Next up, Brian surprised me with this Usagi action figure (yeah, I took it out of the package...for shame!).



For those of you who don't know of Usagi, this is Stan Sakai's Ronin Samurai rabbit. Don't be turned off by the anthropomorphic characters, Usagi Yojimbo has all the drama of a Kurosawa film. It's one of my favorite comics. It's a must read for those into feudal Japanese action.

More Real Life Character Sheets

Looking to rewrite that resume? Try this....

Planet Stories

Over at the blog Golden Age Comic Book Stories there's a great post of a collection of Planet Stories Pulp covers. Check it out, it's good stuff!

Fantasy Friday

Ah, it's first Friday again and our pin up this month is Startling Stories featuring a dragon fighting a robot with the ever present endangered yet scantily clad heroine.