Dragonlaird Gaming Studios

Beautiful Atlanta and Darkest Vietnam

Despite traveling to Atlanta most every week on business, I was able to prepare and then run my much anticipated Tour of Darkness game last Saturday at the annual Ohio Game (a mini-convention for my gamer friends here in Columbus). I’ll try to post some pictures to Facebook soon but it went better than I’d expected. My next task is to write it up as a “one page adventure” for Pinnacle to post on the Savage Worlds website.

Kudos for Dragonlaird Gaming at Origins 2012

Some of my players enjoyed my Savage Serenity game at Origins 2012 and were kind enough to give me a shout-out.

Rule Zero Podcast

Around 46 minute mark.

Refreshed by the Side of the Lake

Hey gang, just got back from a week at Lakeside, OH (a Chautauqua community). Very relaxing, but now it is back to work… on the stuff that pays the bills and the stuff that’s fun. In the latter category, I’ll be putting the finishing touches on a Savage Worlds Tour of Darkness adventure for a mini-con we hold here in Columbus in August. Then I’ll be putting in serious hours getting the first Dragonlaird Gaming product content done and off to my editor. And I’ll be doing in-depth reviews for a friend’s cool new game he’s written (more on that as soon as he’s ready to let the cat out of the bag). So it’ll be a busy, busy July and hopefully I’ll have some more to share on www.dragonlairdgaming.com very soon.

New Submission to Knights of the Dinner Table Magazine

Just submitted a new Gamemastering article to Knights of the Dinner Table magazine. I dig into the ways that religion/faith affects a character’s daily lives so maybe your campaign world can have a more robust religious flavor in its mix. Should appear in the next few issues.

Free Savage Serenity Adventure Posted

Last summer I wrote a Serenity adventure using the Savage Worlds Deluxe rule set called The Price of Success. I ran it twice for friends and now four times at the recently concluded Origins convention here in Columbus, Ohio. After making several tweaks and improvements, I’ve posted it as a free Savage Worlds Fan adventure for anyone to run.

Click to Download the Price of Success

The zip file includes a map of the city of Lost Ways on Paquin, business-card sized Object Cards, and Savage Serenity GM Screen Inserts. There are also other items useful for running this particular adventure. It is all free and distributed under the Savage Worlds Fan rules, courtesy of Pinnacle Entertainment Group. You can pick up copies of the Savage Worlds Deluxe rules and much more at their site.

Enjoy the adventure and let me know what you think.

Cheers,
Jim

When Facebook Eats the Moon, We’ll Know It Went Too Far

Hey gang, just wanted to let everyone know that Facebook no longer echoes blog posts into their own stream of postings. So my posts here on my site don’t get the same exposure as those on the Facebook page. While this will remain the best place to see what I’ve been up to with Dragonlaird Gaming, fresher updates will be occurring on facebook. Just search for Dragonlaird Gaming and become a Friend.

Thanks!

Dragonlaird Jim

Dragonlaird Gaming gearing up for Origins 2012!

Apologies for the several month quiet period here at the sprawling campus of Dragonlaird Gaming but things have not been at a stand-still. I’ve got two major pushes coming to fruition and a third just (re-)beginning.

1) I’ve been working with Josh Minto of Minto Illustrations and Savage Worlds veteran Simon Lucas (Board Game Geek Page) who has worked on almost every Savage Worlds product out there, on a new Savage Worlds product. We’re in the stage of getting licensing approval, but I hope to have a sample version of the product with me when I go to…

2) Origins 2012! Once again, one of the top gaming conventions in the U.S. is being held in my current home town, Columbus, Ohio. I’ve gone steadily since 2005 when I was on the Serenity RPG development team and always have a great time. This year I’ll be running a Savage Worlds Serenity adventure called “The Price of Success” in four time slots including Savage Saturday Night. I’ve run the scenario twice with local gamers and I think players will have a lot of fun with it. Stop by one of my games or catch me at Savage Saturday Night.

3) Gaming the Movies. This well-received series of columns in Knights of the Dinner Table Magazine has reached 34 entries. After a semi-hiatus over the last year, I’ll be renewing my activities with KODT either with a continuation of the GtM series or with direct Gamemastering articles of general interest. Drop a comment if you’d like to see one more than the other, or if there is a favorite movie/TV show you have in mind that I haven’t covered in the column to date.

Cheers!

Jim

Savaged Serenity Characters! Kaylee Frye

Character #6 of my Savage World takes on the Serenity crew. The girl with the smile but a mean way with machines.

(These are free of charge (M*tant En*my please don’t sue) and using the Fan version of the Savage Worlds license. You will need the Savage Worlds rule book to use the characters (and hey, they have an awesome new deluxe edition out new this summer!))

Here’s Kaylee: Kaylee Frye

Review: Let’s Paint volume 01 – Lucius Panderwagon

After purchasing Christopher Davidson’s “Let’s Paint! Vol. 01 – Lucius Panderwagon” a couple years ago at Origins, I finally sat down to give the two DVD set a good viewing. I thought it was good enough to review and share with my Dragonlaird Gaming friends.

Overall, I liked the DVDs a lot. Christopher has an easy tone and his off-hand references to Bob Ross seem perfectly in character. He covers a lot of important techniques in the course of painting Reaper Miniatures awkwardly-named Lucius Panderwagon figurine: dry-brushing, painting eyes, blending highlights, painting metallic objects without metallic paints, rich basing, painting wood, painting clothes with many, many layered highlights. It answered a lot of questions I had on how certain techniques were achieved. I would certainly say that the photo of the finished miniature used for the DVD cover does the actual results no justice, but photographing miniatures is notoriously difficult.

The entire lesson is 4.5 hours long as he does layered highlights on the robes, the flesh, the sash, the sword. The beard and staff were dry-brushed. His presentation is pretty good although there were some technical oops when the DVD seemed to skip a couple times. Ideally, it would have been nice see how he was handling the brush and paint more explicitly, although there are limits with a single auto-focus camera capturing the action. The techniques certainly come across with repetition. You definitely have to keep your paints watered or his ten+ highlight layers will blob up the details of the miniature.

While I have no plans of becoming a master painter such as Christopher, I do see some techniques I can adopt to “up my game” somewhat without taking 4 hours for a miniature. If you’re serious about improving your miniatures painting techniques, I would highly recommend this as a good place to start.

AG Productions – to get the DVDs.

The Lucius Panderwagon Miniature at Reaper

Final Review Rating: 4.5 Stars (out of 5)

Adventure Havens: Temples now available on DrivethruRPG

Well, gang, I finally have a product of my sole authorship in the marketplace. (Another personal RPG industry milestone reached!)

I wrote Adventure Havens: Temples in the spring of 2010 for Bards and Sages publishers. It underwent the typical editing and extensive play-testing in the latter part of 2010 and has just been published on DriveThruRPG.

For the low, low price of just $4.99, you can get a 53-page collection of twelve fantasy campaign ‘adventure seeds’ complete with descriptions, story hooks, fully d20-statted NPCs. The temples are divided into Wilderness and City temples and attempt to stretch the typical notions of temples in fantasy campaigns. Your heroes might find the Contemplative Temple of Silence a refuge, at least at first. The Traveling Temple of Twisted Fate could wander into the village they are resupplying in, offering a few days of entertainment and distraction. Darker encounters are there as well. Encounters are defined for each temple offering a range of CR values to give any adventuring party a challenge.