Archive | May 2013

1) I was friendly with Connor from the time we were in Nursery School together. This school was housed in a giant Victorian-era home in our town, and it stood complete with a covered driveway port, a carriage house, and other unusual, period amenities. It had, over the years, served as a retirement home and a hospital for invalid WWI soldiers. Failing to meet certain codes, it existed only because it was continually operating before the laws had changed – and the people running it knew that if it were ever to cease operations, it would never be allowed to reopen.

Balrogs A-Poppin!

The first edition of D&D included Tolkien’s Balrogs as monsters for the game – and they also appeared in D&D’s miniature game precursor Chainmail. Tolkien’s lawyers put a stop to this, along with other examples of unauthorized appropriations from his work, and the later editions of the game never included them. I had no idea that the first version had these monsters and we never encountered any Balrogs when I played with the “White Box” back in the day…

Harn?

I’m actually one of the people who bought The World Book of Khaas, Legendary Lands of Arduin – the enormous Arduin supplement, notorious for its total lack of stats and mechanics. I had thought that it was the ultimate in the kind of “D&D supplement as produced by frustrated novelist” product.

Then I encountered the Harn materials.