Thundarr The Barbarian Anniversary

I love, love this cartoon. I wish there was more. It was my first introduction to "weird science", fantasy and sci-fi. Many of my D&D campaign worlds have been strongly inspired by the opening narration. It has stuck with me. 

"The year, 1994. From out of space, comes a runaway planet, hurtling between the Earth and the moon, unleashing cosmic destruction. Man's civilization is cast in ruin. Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn. A strange new world rises from the old. A world of savagery, super-science, and sorcery. But one man bursts his bonds to fight for justice. With his companions, Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel, he pits his strength, his courage, and his fabulous Sunsword, against the forces of evil. He is ..."

3D Virtual Ramesses VI Tomb / Tomb of Horrors

This Tomb of Ramesses is amazing in it's own right. So much surviving hieroglyphics and decoration. It gave me waves of nostalgia and anxiety from going down the Tomb of Horrors great hallway.

Poor mummy, murder hobos broke into his tomb and hacked up his sarcaphogus, and looted his grave goods. Looks like he made them fight for it; "showed severe damage to his body, the head and torso being broken into several pieces by an axe used by the tomb robbers", cool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesses_VI

https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=NeiMEZa9d93

Adventure Lookup

2456 ADVENTURES indexed and searchable by rules system, environments, notable items, publisher, setting, monsters, level and page length.

AdventureLookup.com

Random Adventure

Helm of Infravision has been invented

In real life.

Central Texas Game Cons 2020

Owlcon

Houston, TX. You missed it. Feb 28 - March 1st

Great small RPG con on Rice University campus.  It was great. Go next year! https://owlcon.com/

LibCon

Abilene, TX. April 23-25th

At the Abilene public library!  Never been, little far for me to drive. But looks awesome Check out this LibCon 2020 video.  https://abilenetx.gov/264/Lib-Con

Chupacabracon

Round Rock, TX. May 1-3rd

Been couple times. A broader game con still with plenty of RPG.  A friend and I are both running "con dungeons" all weekend long. Similar to Mythrus Tower at NTRPG.  A single persistent dungeon across all sessions (and other cons). https://tabletop.events/conventions/chupacabracon-vii

North Texas RPG Con

Dallas TX. June 4-7th

The Old-School RPG convention. Been several times, but not this year.  https://ntrpgcon.com/

Lone Star Game Expo

Grapevine, TX. October 9-11th

Never been. Looks like good RPG convention. Hope to go this year. http://lonestargameexpo.com/

Aggie Con

College Station, TX. late 2020

Oldest, largest student-run fan convention in the world. Missed 50th one, going this year to number 51. http://aggiecon.org/

The Infernax of Spells, Necromancy and Black Magic

Man! Wish I had a copy of this. But like the Centurion says "it's extremely rare".

This is video review done by Centurion's Review Youtube Channel. Who often reviews old wargames esp micro games. But occasionally has an RPG item like this.

Approved by Dave Arneson

Owl Con 2020 Recap

Got back to Owl Con this year.  A great con at Rice Univ in Houston Texas. I ran a B/X session of Caves of Chaos. I had a blast, the full table of eight players had a blast. My friend ran Tegal Manor using OD&D and my other friend (I do have more than two) had an exhibitor booth hawking Scribes of Sparn wares. Mostly Planet Eris Gazetteer, map and modules. Being the shared campaign world several Austin OSR games run in.

He also did a much better job at taking photos and blogging about con than I ever will. So, I'll just direct you to his coverage on The Contemptible Cube of Quazar starting with this post OwlCon Live Blog Day One.  Half dozen or more posts after than one.  Be sure to look for "Professor" Norm and the serendipitous behind the screen photo of the DM's map!

Sadly I got sick and went home late Sat night. Looking fwd to Chupacabracon in May.

Old-School Essentials Online Tools and SRD

My 2nd favorite incarnation, OSE, of my favorite D&D rule set, B/X.  [My 1st favorite is Necrotic Gnome's previous, B/X Essentials, cause it was soft backed, handier and cheaper.]  Have released the Old-School Essentials SRD (System Reference Document)  And a slew of cross-linked  Treasure, Encounter, Spell, Magic Item, Retainer OSE generators.

The /r/osr announcement.

Generators include:

• B/X Treasure by treasure type.
• B/X Treasure by dungeon level.
• Loots at end of treasure map.
• B/X Encounters by dungeon level.
• B/X Encounter by terrain type.
• B/X adventuring parties, including the special types of party led by a high-level cleric, fighter, or magic-user.
• B/X Memorized spells by character class and level.
• B/X Magic items, including sentient swords.
• B/X Retainers by level including level ranges (1d6) !!! Really this is excellent for generating any kind of leveled NPC.

These generators are cross-linked with the Old-School Essentials SRD.  Optimised for desktop, mobile, and tablet. Formated for Cut and Paste.

My initial review, Necrotic Gnome have rolled a nat 20!

VR Digital Table Top

Been lot of OSR / Nostalgia posts here recently. Just to show I'm also hip to new fangled things too.

Virtual Reality isn't as smooth and effortless as other digital tools / aides.  But my neither was my IBM 286 clone nor was my high school's Apple ][ I used to program a robot arm.

[Guest Post by my friend and game buddy, Steven Clark]

I've spent the past two weeks exploring an old PLATO mainframe that is publicly run, called "cyber1". Not sure if any of you are familiar with these, but these system were created in 1960, and widespread through Universities throughout the 70's. They finally went away sometime in the late 80's.

Why you might be interested in getting a log-in and trying out this system is that some of the earliest D&D games were written for them starting in 1974, up until about 1984. The graphical simplicity hides some pretty complex and deep simulations going on as well; and the way these games approach their subjects is novel in many of the same ways as OD&D is novel compared modern RPG's; the most successful elements have been rehashed and reimagined to death in modern games, but there is some true creativity in this old stuff.

I made a video on PLATO Terminal to pique interest.

The mainframe functions much as a BBS would; the "notes" lesson (program) is used as a bulletin board. It can be access through the internet via a PLATO terminal emulator.

http://www.cyber1.org

Steven Clark