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Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Gamma World: Quest for Peace - 6th Grade FanFic

Preface


I'm a bit of a pack rat... So when I moved last year, I tried to reduce (not entirely successfully) some of the detritus I've gathered over the many years. But there was one thing (among many) I could not throw out. I came across a story I had written around 5th or 6th grade (circa 1981 or 1982) based on the many games of Gamma World my pre-teen friends and I played. Gamma World was our go-to game after D&D... and sometimes before it. My memories of the games are a little vague after 35 years but clearly the game made a distinct impression on the nascent writer in me.

This story was originally written for an English Composition class at a Catholic school in Maryland. Written today, it would likely generate a call to a student counselor, a local clergy, and possibly "the authorities." Keep in mind that (to my knowledge), I have not turned out to the a psychopath and my teacher must have seen some promise in my writing as I received a 4.5 out of 5 with a "Nice Job!" note instead of a "Please have your parents call me..." (and I have the pics to prove it -- http://imgur.com/gallery/hmj5P). 

With all that in mind, I present to you, in its reproduced original text, the grammatically uncorrected 6th grade work entitled "Quest for Peace" (you will see the irony in that title shortly). (c) 1982 - 2016.

PS -- I hope Jim Ward gets a kick out of this. He was an inspiration for the 12 year old gamers everywhere.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Royals board game (Origins Preview)

It's good to make friends in high placed.
As I noted in my Origins Post Game Report, my wife and I were able to try out a few pre-release titles, including Royals from Arcane Wonders, an area control game with a card mechanic. Royals supports 2 to 5 players.

Royals is scheduled for official release in August at Gen Con 2016, but they had a few hundred pre-release copies for sale at Origins (and is available for pre-order at Amazon).

Monday, July 11, 2016

Raging Owlbear - 2016 Ennie Nominee

This was a nice feather in my beak to hear about last week...

Raging Owlbear was nominated for an "Ennie" (vote for me) in the Best Blog category by the eminently gracious and delightfully charismatic (I must say) EnWorld judges. This would be all true, I'm certain, if I had ever met them.

This would be even more impressive if there were more than 5 submissions to the category, but alas, they do not report on those submissions (or rather, they do list submissions, but it's hard to easily tell the category from the list)... There appears to be at least 5 blogs, so I beat at least 1 person out... So suck it!  (just kidding).

Vote for me here -- select "1".

I have to say the submission list is quite a treat to browse. I mean, check out AdventureScents.com.

Wow. Talk about a niche product. But, holy f@#%... They have SIXTY different little potpourri packs to simulate your adventure locations. The are the freakin' Glade Plug-Ins of table top gaming.

I honestly don't what to think about that. Is there really a market for sixty different RPG-based scented packets? Your guess is as good as mine, but best of luck to them! I might just have to buy one now out of sheer curiosity.

Anyway, if you've ever read and enjoyed my blog, please vote for me. Even if you didn't enjoy it, vote anyway. It don't cost nuthin'.