Minecraft - A Trip to a Dark Place

I had limited time for Minecraft this week, but I did get a few things done. In the last post, I mentioned doing some basic automation to keep myself supplied, organizing storage, and building a quarry. One out of three ain't bad, right?

Skeletal Rangers

Necromancers that have explored the darkest depths of their forbidden art can create Skeletal Rangers. These undead creatures are more durable than skeletons raised by Animate Dead, and they have special abilities that make them dangerous foes.

Minecraft - Relocation

I've been playing my modded Minecraft world a bit since my last post, making slow progress on my base, doing a bunch of mining, and creating a bunch of handy tools using my newly built Smeltery. As I mentioned last time, I wasn't quite sure if I was going to stay put or move my base. I've decided to move, but my new base is not too far away. Here's an update on everything that's happened since my last post.

RPG Animal Companions - Dogs and Horses

As promised in this post, here are the experience and quirk tables for dog and horse animal companions, suitable for use in any OSR-ish RPG. If you're looking for mules, check out the previous post.

RPG Animal Companions

Animal companions are pretty common in OSR play. Mules carry heavy loads on long trips, dogs add a little offense and serve as an early-warning system, and horses let lowly adventurers feel like they're someone important. Why not give these lowly companions a little love and advancement.

What follows is a simple leveling system for commonly used animal companions. Adding this system to your game won't turn mules, horses and dogs into powerful allies, but it will add a little color and fun to your game. Who doesn't want a 7th level guard dog as a companion?

Delving into Minecraft -- Again

In my recent recap of 2015, I mentioned my last Minecraft series, the City Builder Challenge, died a death of ennui. Rather than trying to do something in vanilla, which always seems to end with me getting bored, I'm going to play a modded game. How modded? Very.

A Few Bits of Magic

More magic items are always a good thing, right? Here are a few things the party in my Wilds game found during their adventures. I thought I'd already posted these, but I don't see them anywhere. I did write up some of the older items, the Sword of Bees, the Steadyhand Ring, and the Dwarf Kettle a while back. Without further ado, here are three new items that can be used in most any OSR-style game.

A (Late) 2015 Recap

Looking back over the blog's post history, I see there's been well over a month of silence here. Even though the end of 2015 was quiet, I think a (belated) year-end wrap won't be a bad thing. Three major blog topics all came to an end within a few weeks of each other in November:

• My Labyrinth Lord play-by-email game, the Wilds came to a bloody end when the party found themselves caught in a complex ambush in Blackpool Maze.
• I finished the 100th Dungeons in Blue geomorph in my Tile of the Week series and decided that was a good ending point, at least for the moment.
• My Minecraft city building project died a slow death, the victim of the ennui that I often feel after playing vanilla Minecraft for a couple of months.

Of course, there were a few side posts here and there in 2015 too. I did a first look at the PC video games Skyforge and GRAV and did a write up of the deadly Cold Shades that killed off several of party followers in the Wilds. I also wrote a short piece on using the Mythic GM Emulator for NPC decisions, and posted regular updates on new PBE Games products -- more on that in a minute.

One of the good things about having a couple big, focused series to write about is you always know what you're going to have on the slate. The bad thing is, when they end, it leaves a hole. In this case, it left three big holes. I don't think I'm done with the blog, but I find myself struggling to write. At the very least I should cull through some of the magic items that are now in the hands of the Necromancer in Blackpool and post them up here. Beyond that, we'll see. RPGs are in a holding pattern at the moment, and my list of current video games, Diablo III, Mechwarrior Online and Minecraft with the FTB/Direwolf20 mod pack are all fairly well-trod ground. I guess we'll see what the next month brings.

As for PBE Games, well, the end of the year was quite busy. I've published 17 new titles since the last update. I'm not going to do an item-by-item list, it'd be embarrassingly long, but here are the highlights:

• Five new Dungeons in Blue Mega Tiles, available as a discount five pack
• Three new Dungeons in Blue Expansion Sets and the associated triple pack
• Three new Small Dungeons maps, also available as a discount bundle
• Two new One Page tables, Dungeon Architecture and Fantasy Fungi, along with a discount five pack that contains these and three older products

As you can see, I wasn't a total slacker in December. I'm sure something new will come along, or I'll start a new game that will spark the desire to write about RPGs. Until then, not dead, just resting.