Some Records Store Day Releases

Here are a couple of the releases that you can look forward to on Record Store Day.

First we have a collaboration between The Flaming Lips and New Fumes, with a very NSFW music video after the jump.

Record Store Day

It's time again for Record Store Day (sadly not free like Free Comic Day or Free RPG Day, but you take what you can get). The fun starts on Saturday April 21, 2012.

Here in the Saint Petersburg, Florida area Bananas Music and Daddy Kool Records are taking part in the event. I believe that Daddy Kool is going to have live music as part of Record Store Day.

Here's the list of the special stuff that is being released just for Record Store day.

I'm looking forward to a few of the things, the Beach House and Regina Spektor singles look cool, and there is a single for Starman from David Bowie. There is all sorts of good stuff for all sorts of musical tastes.

Here's a couple of great quotes from artists who are involved, or have been in the past:

"My early record shopping experiences were my musical backdrop. It's not just the ability to touch, see and smell an album and the artwork...it's the fact that you are in a Real Place with Real People...and not just any people: other music-obsessed freaks like you. I discovered so many bands by just hanging out, talking to shopkeepers, getting recommendations from some random dude who was flipping through the Nick Cave bootleg box as fervently as I was. Every time I am in a different city on tour, I make a point to hit the indie retail record stores to see what they're spinning and selling, because i just LOVE being there...my own personal and sometimes anonymous church. You can't get that feeling sitting behind your computer, ever."

- Amanda Palmer (The Dresden Dolls)

“Independent retail has always been the backbone of Porcupine Tree’s exposure in the US, and from the very beginning, the band was proactive in trying to associate with as many indie retail stores/chains as possible. We’ve always respected the aesthetics of the “pure” record store, and the importance of knowledgeable staff who can recommend great stuff to you because they truly love music and know what they’re talking about, and are not selling vacuum cleaners or washer/dryers in the next section over. Porcupine Tree would never have reached its level of retail exposure without the indie stores, we’ll always stand with them.”

- Steve Wilson (Porcupine Trees)

"The indie record shop is the nucleus of the nerd...the internet has it's temptations but physically digging for booty? there's no substitute."

- Ursula 1000 (DJ on ESL – Thievery Corporation label)

"Before all of them were shut down by itunes and downloading, my local indy record stores were perhaps the only reason life was worth living. It’s strange to think that there was a time that an album you've never heard of could be sold to you because of cool artwork and a successful listening station session. Every Tuesday, you'd walk in, say what's up to the same 3 people who are always there working, and feast your eyes upon the 'new releases' shelf. Seldom did I walk out with any money left. And I was fine with that. Now my city doesn't have any independent record stores."

- Mac Lethal

“We are drowning in a sea of Myspace, blather, and too much information. Music is everywhere and nowhere. The independent record store is the solution, a place staffed by friendly (or not) people who are actually paid to weed through this crap and help you find the good stuff.”

- Dean Wareham (Luna)

Valiant Comics Solicitations for July 2012

The July solicitations for Valiant Comics are out! This looks like another strong month for the company. I can't wait to get these books into my grubby hands.

BLOODSHOT #1
Written by Duane Swierczynski
Art by Manuel Garcia & Arturo Lozzi
Cover by Arturo Lozzi
Pullbox Exclusive Variant by Mico Suayan
Variant Covers by David Aja & Esad Ribic

The Summer of Valiant continues!

It's the start of a new mission for one of comics' all-time best-selling superheroes in Bloodshot #1 — the first issue of a new ongoing series from acclaimed writer Duane Swierczynski (Immortal Iron Fist, Birds of Prey) and the lethal artistic tag team of Manuel Garcia (Checkmate) and Arturo Lozzi (Immortal Weapons)!

Your name is Angelo Mortalli. Your brother is trapped behind enemy lines and on the verge of — no. That's not right.  Your name is Raymond Garrison. You've retired from the dangers of the field, but a desperate plea from your oldest friend plunges you into a vicious firefight that — no. That's not right, either. You are Bloodshot.  You are the shade of gray that freedom requires. The perfect confluence of military necessity and cutting-edge technology. A walking WikiLeaks that is a reservoir of dirty secrets that could set the world on fire.  And you've just been captured.  

On sale July 11 • $3.99

HARBINGER #2
Written by Joshua Dysart
Art by Khari Evans & Lewis LaRosa
Cover by Arturo Lozzi
Variant Cover by Doug Braithwaite

Outside the law. Inside your head. Welcome to the Harbinger Foundation.

The hunt for Peter Stanchek intensifies after an epic battle with Pittsburgh S.W.A.T forces him to use his powers out in the open. Now he faces the most difficult decision of his life. Continue to put his friends in harm’s way…or abandon them for the safety of Toyo Harada’s Harbinger Foundation?

On sale July 11• $3.99

X-O MANOWAR #3
Written by Robert Venditti
Art by Cary Nord
Cover by Jelena Kevic-Djurdjevic
Variant Cover by Mico Suayan

The smash hit series of the summer continues!

With the X-O Manowar armor now in his possession, all that stands between Aric and freedom is a legion of alien soldiers.  When he at last comes face to face with Commander Trill — the man responsible for his capture — the enormous power of the Manowar armor reveals its potential in a new and electrifying way. Can Aric lead his band of fellow prisoners off the Vine colony ship and back to Earth, or will their revolt be put down?  Who will live and who will die?

On sale July 18 • $3.99

About Valiant Entertainment
Valiant Entertainment is a character-based publishing and licensing company that owns and controls some of the most cherished comic characters ever createdacross all media worldwide. Since their creation in 1989, Valiant characters have sold 80 million comic books and have been the basis of a number of successful video game franchises. Valiant's extensive library includes over 1,500 characters, such as X-O Manowar, Bloodshot, Harbinger,Shadowman, Ninjak and Archer & Armstrong. Visit:

ValiantUniverse.com
www.facebook.com/ValiantComics
www.twitter.com/ValiantComics

The Dogma of Appendix N in Fantasy Gaming

One thing that I never thought that AD&D/D&D was very good at was simulating the fiction of the fabled Appendix N. I don't think that it really needed to because, even as a kid, I always felt that the books in Appendix N were meant more as a guideline to inspirations than what the game was actually supposed to be about. This is supposition, but in hindsight I get the impression that after D&D came out Gygax & Co. were surprised to find out that their tastes in reading weren't as universal as they thought that they would be and that is what led to the inclusion of the Appendix N in AD&D 1e. It seems almost to be an early example of the geek social fallacies in action.

Here's the problem. What might have been intended as a "here's where our head is at with fantasy fiction, some stuff that we like that might make your D&D games cool" has been turned into a near dogmatic "THIS IS WHAT D&D IS SUPPOSED TO BE!!" by more than a few fans and publishers (who are obviously fans as well). The cries of "Appendix N Gaming!" seem to be calling for a game that never was, or at least a game that I can say that I never saw. I do think that if we are going to call for more Appendix N games, we definitely need to have more games inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Recent sad performances in the Box Office aside, Planetary Romance and Lost Worlds styles of games are sorely underrepresented in published RPGs. I understand the reticence of publishers, considering the overzealous nature of the Burroughs Estate when defending what it believes to be its rights.

Anyway.

I guess what I am saying is that we need to look at things like Appendix N for what it was intended to be: an inspiration upon the games of those who might not have read the same books as the Founding Fathers of gaming. The books listed therein are not the destination of a fantasy game, but they are the journey towards it.

Tweet and Heinsoo Craft 13th Age As A 'Love Letter' to Their Favorite Dungeon-Crawling Fantasy Game

13th Age, an upcoming RPG (currently in playtest) to be published by Pelgrane Press and designed by Jonathan Tweet (designer of Ars Magica, Over The Edge, Talislanta 3e and Lead Designer for D&D 3e) and Rob Heinsoo (who has designed and/or edited for Nexus: The Infinite City, Over The Edge and D&D 4e) is already gathering buzz and interest around the internet. A press release here has some of the details of the upcoming game.

A couple of interesting quotes from the press release:

"Our goal with 13th Age is to recapture the free-wheeling style of old-school gaming by creating a game with more soul and fewer technical details," said Tweet, who spoke alongside other game industry veterans on panels at Norwescon 35, a fantasy, science fiction and gaming convention in Seattle.

Tweet continued, "13th Age makes the play group’s campaign the center of attention, with a toolkit of rules that you can pick and choose from based on the kind of game you want to play. The mechanics of 13th Age draw from classic games as well as newer, story-based games."

 and

Although they can't yet share details about 13th Age with others, playtesters have been enthusiastic about it on online message forums. Playtester Adam Dray said, "Tonight, the one player who comes to the game for mostly social reasons said after a test combat, 'That was fun!' and engaged with her character in a deeper way than she ever has."

 Another playester, Eric Provost, said simply, "I want to play this until I can't play anymore."

I am sort of surprised that there isn't more buzz going on about this game. This sounds like the sort of thing that Wizards of the Coast is attempting to do with their upcoming edition of D&D. I'm about to do something uncommon for Bloggers in RPG circles and say that I can't really comment or compare and contrast these two games because I haven't seen the playtest documents for either. To see which of these games actually reaches these goals, I am going to have to wait for each of them to come out...just like the rest of you. I am curious to see what comes about with The 13th Age, if only because Tweet has created two of my favorite games in Ars Magica and Over The Edge.

A poster at the Something Awful boards did have this to say:

So yeah, there is a playtest going on. For awhile the NDA was simply don't distribute the files and a bunch of information was posted (see every post after this one). Now, it's don't talk about the game beyond the broadest of terms. Here's some of those broadest of terms. Keep in mind this is playtest and everything could change next round.

• I am enjoying this playtest.
  
  
• The playtest document is 200 pages of text, and extremely put together for such an early draft. The underlying framework is very exposed. There's a monster on a business card section as well as instructions on how to tweak monsters in general.
  
  
• There's lots of advice on how to play the game; everything from which classes have the least fiddly bits to track, to "this mechanic ties into our design goals this way; this mechanic ties into D20 traditions this way."
  
  
• The whole thing is riddled with optional rules. There are tons of "this is the rule, don't use it if you don't want to. Rob certainly doesn't," and, "if you ignore this rule, do X to fix the math."
  
  
• Combat is simplified. Maps are still used, but distances are relative and broad. Minions are faster to run, status effects and modifiers are simplified, combat moves faster after each round.
  
  
• This isn't a complete revision of D&D traditions (at least not yet). Alignments, ability scores and binary skill checks are all in, but have been reduced in importance, modified, or their most obnoxious elements have been otherwise diminished.

So, some interesting stuff. Let's see what happens with it, as it develops. I did manage to grab an exclusive look at a piece of pencil art from the upcoming game. This is an Orc Lord, which I am assuming is going to be a bad guy.

Hopefully we will hear more about this game in the months to come.

Law Versus Chaos in RPGs: The Universal Church of Truth in My Games

This is a sort of "posting of notes" or "working out the words to a tune in my head" type of post. If these ideas seem rambling, or not finished, that is probably true. I just want to get some of them out and onto "paper," probably mostly because of the online game that I am going to be running soon. Warning: Metaphor heavy posting follows the jump.

Cary Nord Signs As VALIANT's First Exclusive Creator

Valiant is proud to announce that Eisner Award-winning artist Cary Nord has signed on to become the publisher's first exclusive creator. Nord will be making his Valiant Comics debut alongside New York Times best-selling author Robert Venditti in X-O Manowar #1 -- a landmark 40-page issue that launches Valiant's return to comic shops on May 2nd.

"It's been immensely exciting working on X-O Manowar," said Nord. "I'm having a great time working with this character and this team. The chance to help define the Valiant Universe was one that was just too good to pass up."

With over two decades of industry experience, Nord has contributed to some of the most popular series in comics, including Daredevil and Action Comics, and has collaborated with some of the industry's preeminent talents. With writer Kurt Busiek, Nord forged an Eisner Award-winning run on Dark Horse's Conan.

This May, Nord tackles the return of another comic book icon with X-O Manowar #1 -- the first issue of a new ongoing series that will cement the foundations of the Valiant Universe -- and spotlight the visceral action and dynamic storytelling that have made him a fan favorite artist around the world.

"Cary is a tremendous talent and his work on X-O Manowar has elicited an off-the-charts response from fans and retailers. We're extraordinarily happy to have him on board for the long haul," said Executive Editor Warren Simons. "We're dedicated to bringing excellence with our comics month in and month out, and Cary has already proven himself to be a true visionary in designing the new direction of the Valiant Universe with X-O Manowar."

Get your first look at Nord's spectacular work on X-O Manowar #1 when the Summer of Valiant begins on May 2nd! And don't forget to ask your local retailer about the X-O Manowar #1 exclusive Pullbox and QR Voice variant covers. Visit www.ValiantUniverse.com for more information and news on all of Valiant's summer titles -- Harbinger #1 in June, Bloodshot #1 in July, and Archer & Armstrong #1 in August.

X-O MANOWAR #1 - ON SALE MAY 2nd!
Written by ROBERT VENDITTI
Art by CARY NORD
Cover by ESAD RIBIC (MAR121221)
Pullbox Exclusive Variant by CARY NORD (MAR121222)
Variant Cover by DAVID AJA (MAR121223)
QR Voice Variant by JELENA KEVIC-DJURDJEVIC (MAR121224)
$3.99/Rated T+/40 pgs.

X-O MANOWAR #2 - ON SALE JUNE 6th!
Written by ROBERT VENDITTI
Art by CARY NORD
Cover by JELENA KEVIC-DJURDJEVIC
Variant Cover by ARTURO LOZZI
$3.99/Rated T+/32 pgs.

Castles and Crusades Classic Monsters: The Manual

Classic Monsters is a compilation of some of the classic monsters of old school gaming, taken from the open content of the first Tome of Horrors and converted to the C&C system. This book greatly expands the amount of monster available from the Monsters & Treasure book, and would be a boon to anyone running a game of Castles & Crusades. The art is up to the usual high standards of a Castles & Crusades book, and the layout follows the crisp and clean standards of the other C&C books.

Unfortunately, among the weird and wacky monsters from the early days of the first edition of the Advanced Game, the one glaring absence would be the demons and devils. Yes, it would be easy enough to convert these...but they just seems to be much too noticeable in their absence, particularly in comparison to other much more thorough old school monster manuals that are on the market. Does this render Classic Monsters useless, or make it a less attractive purchase? Well, no to either of those questions. Classic Monsters is definitely much more affordable (and likely easier to find) than those other monster manuals, and there are still plenty of other monsters that are available in this book. With a couple of hundred new monsters, there is still a lot of meat for a Castle Keeper in this volume.

Comparing this book to the recent edition of the Tome of Horrors Complete (ToHC) for Swords & Wizardry, would not be a fair comparison for Classic Monsters only because ToHC has five times the page count of Classic Monsters. It does, however, not shy away from the conversion of Devils and Demons. You can almost call these infernal creatures the Great Schism of AD&D, as it was their removal from AD&D 2e that upset a good number of gamers who felt that the new edition was overly sanitized after the "Satanic" scares over D&D of the 80s. I am certainly not accusing Castles & Crusades or Classic Monsters of being sanitized, but for me this is a glaring omission. I like the existence of the infernal to test the goodness of characters, and as a fan of writers like Michael Moorcock I like to emulate his fiction with demonic characters. Not that I would not be able to adapt or convert this material myself, if I wanted. I don't want people thinking that Classic Monsters is a bad book, because it certainly isn't. I just feel that it could have been a better book with the addition of more material. Who knows, maybe someone at Troll Lord Games will want to do something along the lines of the great old Demons series for AD&D that Mayfair Games put out all those years ago.

One of the strong points of the write-ups for these monsters is the combat section. For those less experienced Castle Keepers, or those who were not around in the hobby when many of these creatures were first published, having that brief outline of how each monster acts in combat can be very useful. There is also enough ecology information to be able to place these monsters into an adventure in a way that makes some logical sense.

Yes, this is a volume that adapts material that is already available, but sometimes not having to do the conversion work is worth the price of admission, and not everyone still has copies of the original MM2 or the Fiend Folio around to use for their Castles & Crusades games. Because of that, this book is useful and a good addition to anyone's Castles & Crusades library.

You can purchase the PDF of this book here, and if you keep the affiliate code, a portion of the sale will benefit this blog and allow for more things to be reviewed.

G+ RPG Recruitment

Are you on Google+? Do you like old school fantasy gaming? I am recruiting for a Swords & Wizardry Whitebox game that will be played on Google+ hangouts, Tuesdays at about 10pm EST. Most of the goal is to introduce an online friend to tabletop role-playing (or the approximation of it online). You can find the PDF at the above link, so there is no cost to you to play. My G+ profile can be found in the column at the right, and you can express your interest in the comments below. This will be a G+ hangouts game, so you have to be set up over there to play.

There's a little interest already, so we are probably looking for two more players.

Updated: Valiant's XO Manowar #1 - 6 Unlettered Pages

Update: Valiant has released the first six pages of XO Manowar, now with letters. The pages have been added to the bottom of the post.

Valiant has released a few more of the unlettered pages from the upcoming relaunch of XO Manowar #1. Now, with more pages after the jump.