The Barbarian: Personal commission sculpt

Well-thumbed posts

Candid Photos From "Conan the Barbarian" (1982)

This post is barely gaming adjacent, but the Conan stories have informed much of my fantasy gaming since my first forays into the hobby. I've seen the John Milius adaptation more times than any other movie (probably over 50 times, though most of those viewings were on VHS or HBO as a teenager). The 1982 Conan film was the first R rated movie I saw in a movie theater (age 12). The first convention game I ever played in was one in which I played the barbarian himself. The first convention game I ever ran as game master was an adaptation of Howard's "Beyond the Black River." For good or ill, I've spent a lot of time in that fantasy world. When I stumbled on an online trove of about 400 candid photos from various sets of Conan the Barbarian shot by somebody on the crew, it was oddly visceral for me. It generated a warm feeling getting to see these actors and sets from new angles, both in character and out, in situ and behind the scenes. Seeing Sandahl Bergman, Ge...

Scrum Con IV: Face to Face!

The Second Saturday Scrum Club rejoined the fray on April 8, organizing and hosting Scrum Con IV in Silver Spring, Maryland. Although Scrum Con III was a surprisingly successful virtual convention in 2021 that took advantage of its online format to invite all sorts of participants we couldn't have otherwise (Dirk the Dice of Grognard Files in the UK ran a game, and I interviewed wargame/RPG historian Jon Peterson via livestream ), Scrum Con V marked our return to an in-person format. Because Scrum Con 2020 ducked right under the pandemic lockdown on the last weekend of February that year, we were anxious to see if anybody would remember us. Turns out any fears were misplaced...because Scrum Con sold out again this year! In fact, every in-person convention we've organized has sold out, but this year's Scrum Con IV was almost 70% sold out of its 225 badges in the very first week, a pace that frankly caught us off-guard. About a week before the show, we had sold enough b...

Yo Ho! More 'Blood & Plunder'!

About a week ago we asked Peter Megginson to reprise a Blood & Plunder game for some of those in the Scrum Club who were unable to play in our recent foray with these rules . Steve Braun and Josh O'Connor both have the summer months off from work and live close enough that they joined in for a rare weeknight wargame. Peter had taken note of my earlier write-up in which I expressed a desire to try out the Blood & Plunder ship rules to see if I could appropriate and adapt them to the sword & planet skirmish game I'm working on that will feature lots of airship battles and boarding actions in the skies of Mars, so for this game he concocted a scenario that would allow us to do just that. Steve, Josh, and I each helmed a pirate ship sailing toward a Chinese fort full of spices we hoped to plunder before the other had the chance. Peter gamely played the Chinese spice hoarders. One of the highlights this particular evening occurred by happenstance: Peter brought a shor...

Take the High Road: Making Cheap and Easy Dirt Roads

I have wanted some good roads to add to my games for a while now. My first attempt was a couple of years ago when my standards were a bit lower and I wasn't sure how much I was interested in investing in this new hobby. I bought some PDFs of cobblestone roads that I sized, printed, and glued to felt. The result was okay, but the way my laser printer produced the roads ended up being quite reflective to the point of almost being glossy looking. The combination of glue, paper, and felt also meant the roads had a wavy consistency and almost always curled at the edges. I used them once or twice but was never happy with them. My sub-par first attempt at making roads for my games using felt strips, glue, and printed designs. You can see how shiny and how wavy and curled at the edges they turned out. I never felt good about putting them on the table for our games and eventually stopped altogether. I've been meaning to take another crack at making some roads now that I have...

Playing with Yourself: 'Rangers of Shadow Deep' vs. 'Sellswords & Spellslingers'

As the year crawls to an end, I'm looking through this blog and noticing a couple of posts I started and never finished. This is one of them. Back in July 2019, I placed the photos on the page, jotted down a few bullet-point placeholder notes, and then never actually went back and wrote anything to post. The post was meant to be my informal review of Rangers of Shadow Deep after my first game of it with Josh O'Conner, who set it up for us to try in his basement. I think I never finished this post because I was not very impressed with the game but I knew Josh was, and we hadn't been gaming together long enough for me to be sure my candor about the game wouldn't hurt his feelings and sour a budding gaming friendship. I consider Josh more than a gaming friend these days, and so I'll go ahead and post this with some very short notes fleshing out the bullet points I had left as a reminder for myself back in 2019 (at least the one's I can still decipher the ...

All Together Now: 'Sellswords & Spellslingers' and the Pleasures of Cooperative Gaming

I've always enjoyed a good competitive match as much as the next guy, whether it was sports in high school or video games (HALO, etc.) in my thirties. But regardless of the game, I've always been partial to team play, and the best cooperative games put all of the focus on succeeding as a team. That's one of the reasons I was enthusiastic about getting Andrea Sfiligoi's latest release, Sellswords & Spellslingers (Ganesha Games), on the table for this month's Second Saturday Scrum Club gathering. Last year I had organized a Halloween game ( recap ) to beta-test Sfiligoi's Run From the Dead , which is built atop the same cooperative mechanics as Sellswords . I was surprised when I discovered these rules were re-skinned for the fantasy genre and released last December ahead of Run From the Dead . Hopefully, the zombie apocalypse version of the rules is not too far behind because I definitely think Run From the Dead is the best tabletop miniatures rule s...

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