Zombie and Black Dragons

Ok, enough of my blabbering. Here are some pictures of the new GW Zombie and Black Dragons. Both very are nice.

You may have noticed I changed the positions of the wings. Though I liked the look of the wings on the giant bat thing, I thought the wing configuration on the dragon was not very menacing. To me, it look like it was holding up some pants. So, I just switched the wings around and angled them up.

I left the rider off the Black Dragon as I want him to be multipurpose. 

DCC RPG part 2

I'm not one that believes in fate or destiny. But I find it unusual that I started reading Jack Vance for the 1^st time about a year ago, I started re-reading the Chronicles of Amber this past month, and I was planning on going to Half-Price to look for Lankhmar - all before I was turned on to the DCC RPG. Of course that doesn’t mean I’ll ever play, but it does mean that the RPG should be a good fit for me if I ever did.

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG

http://www.goodman-games.com/5070preview.html

Ok, this looks promising. An RPG based on the pivotal influences of D&D that makes use of modern RPG design. It is about time. One of the things that bugged*1 me about the latest incarnations of fantasy RPGs is the fact they feel to me like they are based only on the prior editions and literature written from those prior RPG editions. Specifically, it feels like the authors of Pathfinder only ever read 3^rd edition D&D, Ebberon and the Dragonlance novels. (To be fair, 4^th edition D&D feels like the authors only read the The Wheel of Time Novels and Paranormal Romance and they played World of Warcraft.)*2 Think of it another way, say you were writing historical fiction based on Xenophon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophon). Would it be better to base it on his writings, writings of authors’ contemporary to him and modern archeological finds related to his time period, or would it be better to simply base it on Robin Waterfield’s Xenophon's Retreat: Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden Age? Well, modern RPGs feel like the second, perhaps the DCC RPG will feel like the 1^st.

*1 This has been something the bugged me since 2^nd edition D&D. I should say something in the back of my mind bugged me about the fantasy RPGs that were rooted in D&D since 2^nd edition. I never really had a good handle on it until reading the premise behind the DCC RPG.

*2 To be fair, I have no idea as to how well read the authors’ of Pathfinder or D&D 4^th edition are. My guess is, a lot more so then me. They can write better was well. But they fall short, in my eyes, of Gygax and Arneson. They may be better by the letter of the rule, but not by the spirit.