My Friendly Local Gaming Store

I've been playing with the video features of my new iPod touch, and decided i'd do several video blogs about my friendly local gaming store, The Sentry Box.

I apologize in advance for how boring these first two videos are, but it was a bit of a test of my video and editing abilities (this is the first time I have shot and edited video).

Hopefully the next few videos, that follow, will have a little more substance. These first two are of me driving to The Sentry Box and walking around the immediate vicinity of the building.



If there are any topics you would like me to cover in video blogging about my FLGS, please let me know.

Ballad For An Oppressed America

This next song is for the working man...




It seems to me that the powers that be
Keep themselves in splendour and security
Armoured cars for the megastars
No streets, no bars, your wealth is ours!
They make the masses kiss their asses
Lower class jackass (pay your tax take out the trash)
Working for the world go round,
Your job is gold so do as you're told
They'll pay you less
Then run for congress!

Wizards' Wizards And More Wizards

Earlier, I mentioned that the quality of The Fantasy Trip (TFT) micro-art reaches its zenith with Death Test.

Two TFT products precede Death Test: Melee and Wizard. I like the micro-art from both sets of counters. The art is minimalist but for the most part highly effective at communicating the essential character of the depicted Wizard.

Melee has its' bell-bottom wearing warriors and giants. Wizards, by way of contrast, introduces vaguely oriental-style 4- and 7-hex dragons, and trippy-tropey Wizards. Here are several of those Wizards, gracing, well, the Wizards' counters.

The first Wizard, above (or is that Sorceress?), you've seen in one of my earlier posts. It is Mistress J, with her blond hair a-fluttering, her cape a-flowing, and her armored bikini glinting in the torchlight. I posted this counter earlier, as it is one of my favorites from the Wizards set of counters. Simple, evocative micro-art. I wonder if she gets an armor bonus.

The next counter (below) is somewhat of a mystery. The figure suggests a female form, with the face in profile -- a Sorceress sporting a gossamer gown or dress. The upper, casting hand is oddly distorted, and the midriff, thighs and posterior have a strange, bloated quality (consider in particular the placement of the belly-button). I never used this counter during a game. I find it vaguely disturbing rather than entrancing. It's too bad, because there is something compelling about this piece of micro-art, particularly the hair, lower legs and feet, and the hand by the figures' side. The hair almost says Medusa. I'm not sure if the artist (Pat Hidy?) was going for a gossamer effect with a dress, or if that is a spell-effect enveloping the Sorceress.

Is this next counter Fu Man Chu or Dracula? Only the TFT player using this counter knows for sure. Consider the odd placement of the fingers. You don't notice these things when you are looking at the original 3/4" counter, but at this resolution, you can see the compromises the artist has to make to give these drawings some character, without mucking it up by adding too much detail. I love the fog or mist he is conjuring, you want to pick a spell like that for him, don't you, just to go with the over-all theme?

Who hasn't always wanted to play a speedo-sporting, wand-waving, pointy-shoe shod Elf, with droopy digits and weak wrists, like the one below? You even get to start his name with an "E". Ebberbobble? Elfy the Elf? Well, you get the idea, something silly or insipid. The ear and shoes give away his elfin heritage.

If you don't name the next Wizard Gandalf, when you use this counter to represent your character, there's something seriously wrong with you.

The next counter, the mysterious Wizard Q, inspired the "tween" me to write my own supplement for TFT, focused on clerics. Thankfully, that document is buried deep in the Spy Hill landfill. He's bald. He's knelling. And he's got a crystal ball. Which is odd, since scrying is not high on my list of activities when facing a death-duel against another Wizard. He should get a movement penalty for being on his knees. Having said that, there's no doubt about what fantasy trope he represents.

Here's the counter I often used to represent my character. Goatee-Wizard R. The illustration on this counter was sufficiently active that you felt like he was all wound-up, ready to spring into action at any moment.

This last counter is another female, who looks rather uncomfortable leaning as she does at a precarious angle. Her spell-casting efforts has caused her face to burst into flame. Perhaps she is part of the coven that is conjuring the dragon appearing on the front cover of the Wizards microgame.

Well, there's a meandering tour of some of the micro-art on the Wizards microgame counters. What I like about these counters, and TFT micro-art more generally, is that the art is sufficiently universal that you can put that counter down on the table, and anyone picking it can create their own backstory to fill in the character details.

Swashbuckling Octopii (And Other Horrors)

Following the success of Death Test, Metagaming published Death Test 2. Included in Death Test 2 are swashbuckling octopii, like the ones pictured here.

In addition to their handweapons -- either 3 swords or a sword and battleaxe -- the Octopii encountered in Death Test 2 also sport crossbows, which they can manipulate and fire with their tentacles.

I'm pretty sure that skeletons make their first appearance in The Fantasy Trip line of game products in Death Test 2. Prior to Death Test 2, the monsters and beasts encountered in The Fantasy Trip were giants, dragons, wolves, bears, goblins and such.

The illustrator for Death Test 2 is Roger Beasley, although the cover art for Death Test 2 is by Pat Hidy. The interior art for Death Test 2 is by Beasley, but it's hard to know whether he also produced the micro-art appearing on the game counters.

Google Blog Reader Problems

I lean on Google's "Blog Reader" function quite heavily to manage the blogs I follow. According to Blog Reader, I am following 354 blogs. I use the Blog Reader to catch up on what people are talking about in the OSR blogosphere. Since I can sometimes go for several days without checking up on my own blog, blog reader is invaluable for allowing me to see what was posted on other blogs, while I was away.

Lately, i've been having some problems with Blog Reader. It only allows me to see the last 2-12 hours worth of blog posts. Thus, it has been a real challenge keeping up with what's going on out there. As a result, I am missing some excellent posts. Am I the only one who is experiencing this? Last time I checked, there was a 47-entry thread on the Google-problems site where others are complaining of this same problem. If you don't use Blog Reader, what do you use to keep up with your OSR fellow-travellers?

The Fantasy Trip: Death Test Art

I've already posted a number of pieces of artwork from The Fantasy Trip. Here are some illustrations by Pat Hidy, whose artwork appears in several Metagaming microgame titles.

I always preferred the black and white Pat Hidy pieces. The color cover (above) of the Death Test microquest is by Pat Hidy, as is the black and white illustration (below) that appears on the inside front cover. I much prefer the illustration below. Thought I have little use for much of what comes out of The Forge, I do like this article entitled "Naked Went The Gamer" by Ron Edwards, about the sanitizing of Dungeons and Dragons art.


Edwards makes a good observation about this, and much of the other "controversial" D&D artwork from the late 70's. That artwork was naturalistic, while the recent artwork appearing in fringe fantasy games seem purposely risque or shocking. The above illustration is my favorite one from the TFT line.

I promised one of my commentors that I would post the "Oops, I crapped my pants" giant from Death Test. Here he is. This giant appears pretty formidable, but I have a difficult time taking his oversized diaper seriously.

The Fantasy Trip: Melee Art

The Fantasy Trip: Death Test Micro-Art

Following the huge success of Melee and Wizard, Metagaming released a long line of Microquest adventures, starting with Death Test. The Microquests were pre-programmed adventures, somewhat akin to the choose-your-own-adventure line of products. Thus, they were perfect for those who wanted to play a solo game of Melee or Wizard.

The original Death Test adventure hook was rather lame. The local overlord stocks a obstacle-course dungeon and sends potential hired goons through the labyrinth to test their mettle. You are one of those potential bands of hired goons.

The obstacle-course was a mixture of straight-up combat encounters, and gotcha traps. If you survived the Death Test (and the back cover warning was not hyperbole: this adventure was a KILLER) you arrived at the end of the obstacle-course and were either offered a job as a hired goon or were executed for running away from combats too many times. Harsh.



While the adventure hook was pretty lame, the gameplay was fun, and Metagaming's micro-art reached its zenith with Death Test. Pat Hidy was the illustrator for Death Test, and the most memorable adversary micro-art comes from the counter set that was included with this Microquest adventure.

Pictured, at the top, is a malevolent-looking dude that we used as an evil wizard, if that's what was called for in a particular combat. Looking at the figure now, i'm not sure why we thought he was a wizard, as he clearly possesses a battleaxe and shield, and has a sword strapped to his back.

Also included among the 35 Death Test counters, were seven goblins, six of which I have reproduced here. The most memorable goblins, for many of you, will be the first two: they appeared either in the Metagaming ads in Dragon Magazine, or on the back covers of the later Melee "boxed-set" back covers.

For those of you keeping score, you will note that five of the seven figures above are topless. I think its safe to conclude that Cidri, the assumed setting for The Fantasy Trip, is a jungle-world, where the climate is too hot for the employment of upper garments.

Melee Microgame Counters: Bell-Bottoms Spectacular

Melee has a copyright date of 1977. Coincidentally, that is also the year that the movie, Saturday Night Fever, is released. Quite a few of the characters depicted on the Melee microgame counters seem to be sporting bell-bottoms, but I will let you be the ultimate judge.

Here's a counter for the two-headed giant. Giants in Melee take up three hexes, which allows you to surround him with a greater number of figures. That's a good thing, because a single hit from a Melee giant is enough to kill most single-hex characters. He may be a brute, but this giant has excellent 70's fashion sense. Not only is he wearing some snazzy bell-bottoms, but his belt-buckle is the envy of the disco-hall. My only fear is that he will trip on those bell-bottoms and crush one of my characters.

And here we have four figures, representing an archer, a crossbowman, a pikeman with shield, and a greatswordswoman. For most guys in the Melee universe, going topless seems to be very chic. The ladies are generally wearing pants, but weren't pant-suits cutting edge in the 1970's? I'll have to do a little Mary Tyler Moore research to confirm that for myself.

Wizard Microgame: Micro-art

One of the really interesting things about the microgame phenomenon, which, while true for the wargames that proceeded it, was significantly amplified by the explosion of games in the compact game segment, was the development of what I sometimes refer to as micro-art.

By micro-art, I mean artwork that is placed on 3/8" to 7/8" cardboard playing pieces, accompanying the wargames and microgames themselves. I want to share a few examples of micro-art with you, as they appear on the Wizards and Melee playing pieces.

Before the introduction of micro-art into the wargame and microgame segments, most cardboard playing pieces employed military designations and numerical factors to differentiate the game units. Tank units might have been a rectangle with an oval inside. Infantry was a rectangle with an X through it. Combat Engineers were represented by a Capital E facing downwards. And so on.

The numbers on the wargame counters often represented the strength, defense, speed and other abilities of the military unit, and some counters also included the size or name of the unit, if the game was a historical recreation.

That system of unit representation worked fine for wargames. However, with the broadening of the boxed game segment, to include non-wargames, and introduction of the compact game, game designers needed playing pieces that were equally representative of the types of units that their games utilized. Military symbols were not going to be nearly as appropriate for Chitin:I, a game based on rival bug hives harvesting each other for food.

The other consideration for those game designers was that the new cardboard counter symbols had to be both representative of the kinds of units used in the game, and needed to fit on a cardboard counter roughly the size of your thumbnail. Therefore the image had to be iconic and immediately recognizable as representing the unit being activated.

The accompanying images are some of the unit counters for Wizard and Melee. The actual size of those counters is roughly 3/4", but I have scanned them at a higher resolution so you can see the fine detail. While some microgame counters -- like those for Ogre, for example -- included printed attack, defense and move numbers, the Wizard and Melee counters used a single letter to allow differentiation between various units.

The first counter is from Wizard, and represents a female mage. Note that the artwork itself is quite minimalist, with no shading or detail. The face and hair are represented by a few short strokes, the inside of the cape is block-filled, the legs and arms have minimal definition. At the original size, you know immediately what or who this counter represents.

The next counter from Melee, sporting the capital L, is a two-blade-wielding swashbuckler, lightly armored and with a flowing mane of hair. Some of the Melee counters were screened to give them a shaded effect. At the normal resolution of these counters, you don't notice the screen, but at this higher resolution it becomes more obvious.

The next two counters are two male fighters. The first appears to be heavily armored and wearing a helmet, with a greatsword held aloft. The second is a sword-and-board fighter, sporting some funky pointy-shouldered tunic or vest. The micro-art for the Wizard and Melee counters have a certain disco vibe, particularly obvious with the sword-and-board fighter and even more so with the bell-bottom-wearing Giant that is included in the Melee counter set.

Another unusual feature of Melee and Wizard was the inclusion of weapon and shield counters. A weapon or shield might be dropped by an opponent, or the encounter might include several spare weapons already on the battlefield, and those counters were intended to be used to represent them. Those weapon and shield counters were nearly impossible to pick up, being as small as 1/4" by 1/2", and were easily lost. Here are three example of those counters: a greatsword, a mace and a handaxe.

Melee included about 40 character and opponent counters and 25 weapon and shield counters. Wizard included about 60 characters and opponents, but those were provided via two identical sheets, one printed in blue ink and the other printed in red.

I don't recall seeing the illustrators of those microgame counters being credited for their efforts, though it may be that I simply did not appreciate their work when I was younger. Looking at the breadth of micro-art now, I can only imagine the unique kind of illustrator who can reduce a image to its essence and place that on a 3/4" square counter.