Auctions, Auctions, Auctions

Remember Mt. Zogon and Slice of Death? I Miss Dave's stuff, he was
THE BEST!!!!!!

I've had a low post count for a few days....missed both game groups....and since Wednesday last week have been deathly ill with something weird, flu-like and severely fever inducing. I finally turned around a bit on Saturday and here I am at 5 in the morning feeling weirdly okay and engaging in a bit of manic Ebay fun. If you're interested, check out my auctions here. A lot more are timed to start at 8:30 PM (MST) and will be real 7-day auctions. I'll probably post even more after some sleep.

While lying around near death I realized I had a lot of crap. A LOT of it. And a lot of stuff I knew I had bought because the store owner of location X was selling something for a song that I couldn't resist, knowing it was going for big bucks on Ebay. At last, after a lengthy absence, I realized it was time to do a bit more Ebay selling. Yay for iphone cameras.

A few notes about what I am getting rid of:

I have a lot of Traveller editions, but the one I will use to play is not the pristine Deluxe Traveller up for sale. Also, Interstellar Wars, which I have never read or used and never will, although it looks interesting.

I have a lot of Runequest stuff, but the Runequest I have fond nostalgia for is actually RQ3, the version that I really got in to; I only ran about 8 games in RQ2 (that I can recall).

I love Mutant Epoch, but after a couple years of collecting it I still can't muster up the requisite energy to plow through even one of the massive sourcebooks. My future post-apoc plans all revolve around Savage Worlds, Mutant Year Zero or Cypher System right now (emulating a hybridization of Fallout and Appleseed). Mutant Epoch is very cool but surprisingly demanding for an OSR-hybrid title. The books deserve a more dedicated soul's attention.

I'm ditching Shadowrun auction-style. I have finally accepted that liking the CRPGs does not mean I will like the paper and pencil version. Really it's the same issue I have with Mutant Epoch: too much content, not enough time left on the planet to figure it all out (damn you D&D 5E for taking up 90% of my gaming time.

I have some odd strays lying around....Planescape, for example. They've actually been waiting in a "send to Ebay" pile for ages. Also, stuff like Tomb of Abysthor (which is perfect condition, but I have the Frog God revision) and Red Hand of Doom (which is very popular as 3rd edition modules go, and somehow I found a pristine copy languishing on a back shelf in a local store, the owner of whom hasn't actually heard about the internet yet).

And then there's Blood & Smoke, which is a cool book but putting it on Ebay is my way of facing reality: I'm never gonna run it or really even properly finish reading it (I think I got 75% through before I was distracted) because I just don't grokk to the White Wolf/Onyx methodology on gaming, and my wife, who left the WoD and LARPing behind ages ago will never look back, so it might as well go to a home that can appreciate it properly.

More eventually!

UPDATE: I have 40 listings up now. Mutant Epoch went first....go figure! RQ2 went next. I have probably 2-3 more boxes of another 50-100 listings I'll eventually get up, including both old and new games, and a few more surprises.

Death Bat's Top Five Tabletop RPG Books for 2014

To match my video game awards this week I offer up the top five game books for tabletop RPGs that took my fancy in 2014. This list is going to look a little biased...you have been forewarned!

#5. Blood Tide
The hefty Basic Roleplaying tome on the world of magic and mystery in the Caribbean is a fantastic and well-researched effort at making pirates accessible as both a mythic genre and a historical setting. If you liked those movies and also know what I mean when I say that On Stranger Tides was one of the best books ever written (Tim Powers, check it out) then you should investigate this book.

#4. 13th Age Bestiary 
This amazing monster book and one of the only such tomes I've enjoyed reading in quite a long time. Every entry is loaded with ideas and concepts about using the monsters in 13th Age games. Every stat block is concise and to the point, a trademark of 13th Age's style, with system-specific tricks and gimmicks to make the monster interesting. Invaluable resource for 13th Age games.

#3. Savage Worlds Science Fiction Companion
This amazing book, as as slim as it is, shows just how good Savage Worlds is at doing fast and furious multigenre, and was the source of a great SF campaign and a lot of blog inspiration last year.

#2. 13 True Ways (13th Age)
13 True Ways is the quintessential expansion for 13th Age, this book is a magnanimous addition to that system. From the way it managed to introduce devils into the game and show a multitude of ways to "make them your own" to the six new classes and plethora of setting material 13 True Ways is a real hoot. I got a lot of good gaming out of 13th Age in 2014.

#1. Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (Player's Handbook, Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide)
These three books swept in and in one fell swoop brought the game back to where I wanted it, while stealthily introducing new concepts and expectations for how D&D should play that have already become so comfortable at my gaming table that stepping back to older editions without these changes feels like a regression. Who knew I'd grow to love the advantage mechanic, bounded accuracy, and a hefty ephasis on "less is more" when it comes to modifiers and variable? This is the last D&D I want to buy, and it's the first edition I feel could be the one I game into my old age with. Please don't eff this one up, WotC.

Honorable Mention:

Lots of good stuff came out this last year, but especially interesting to me were the following books. If only I'd found time to run them, these games might have made it into the top 5:

Interface Zero 2.0 - a fantastic and deep cyberpunk world for Savage Worlds. Possibly too deep for the kind of game SW is, this book could have done just fine if it was half the size it is right now.

Shadowrun 5th Edition - I am not qualified to compare this version of the game to prior editions, as I didn't even decide I wanted to care about Shadowrun until the new android/PC RPGs came out and motivated me to investigate this book. It sold me on the idea of mixing fantasy and cyberpunk, though, and the 5th edition mechanics seem very sound.

Vampire the Requiem 2nd Edition (alias Blood & Smoke: the Strix Chronicles)
Bet this one took you by surprise. Far and away the most interesting read of 2014, the revision of the Vampire: The Requiem runs deeper than just a sound reworking of the mechanics, adding in a new metastory about the ancient Strix and a strong emphasis on a more...2014ish take on vampires (still with 100% less glitter, thank you). Appears to have recently been re-repackaged as Vampire: the Requiem 2nd edition, perhaps due to the insane level of confusion I am sure the original title caused people, for a product which you can only find if you know that it is available online through rpgnow.com, being published by Onyx Path and not White Wolf. I would have made this a top contender if I had just found the opportunity to run it.