By This Axe I Rule!

Rosey (of Drama, Dice and Damsons) and I are in discussion about play-testing ChrisK (Hill Cantons) wargames rules By This Axe I Rule. And what better way to playtest it than with an elf wielding an axe and a severed orc head?

The last time this chap and his posse of archers saw battle was at Salute '07 in London in a game of Fantasy Warriors. They were slaughtered by barbarians in a corner of the battlefield and saw very little action. It was, however tremendous fun. Winning didn't matter (I was on the 'goodies' team), and the unfolding story was heroic and hilarious.

We who are about to die...

Artist Focus - Terry Dykstra

Watch it, Frodo...

Get out of my shared imaginative space, get into my chariot







A proud banner-waver of the facial hair tradition of D&D.

Now, Dykstra seems to get a fair bit of stick from some people online. I must confess that I don't like some of his work, but I can say that about luminaries like Brom and DiTerlizzi as well.

Terry Dykstra's art provided my first exposure to the D&D game. The elf opposite manages to be beautiful and bad-ass (even if she is the super-short D&D elf). The halfling conveys that although he's not a fat hobbit, he's still not the greatest warrior.



Dykstra (or the art director for the Rules Cyclopedia) is to be applauded for the racial variety therein. That and super-hot thief chicks.

It ain't D&D without face fungus

Yes, your player is 14 years old

Now, the more po-faced grognards despise this picture, and yet I see laments day after day for more humour in the D&D game "like the old days". Seems you can't win. Well, anyway, it made me chuckle.

Unearthed Hexmap

I recently (well, 6 months ago) brought up about half of my RPG stash from my parents to our house. Amongst the haul was the World Builder's Guidebook by Richard Baker (TSR 1996), which as the name suggests takes one through the process of creating a campaign mileu (as Gygax might say). The book comes with a thick pad of blank hex maps and grids: in this I discovered a map I drew up for part of a forest world setting (I seem to recall the basic set up was elves vs forest linnorms or something). I noted that each hex was 1 mile, and I have no idea if any of this is geographically feasible. I enjoyed drawing it all the same. Does this seem as though it could work?

November 4, 2011

(Click to embiggen, hmm ok, not by much)