Legends of the Wulin - It exists!

 

A very elusive game for those of us who are crazy about wuxia is Legends of the Wulin. Eos Press made a game a few years back called Weapons of the Gods, based on a comic I have never been able to track down. The next step in the evolution of that game system have been mentioned in hushed whispers, but sightings are few and far between. The publisher does not even sell the game from their own website!! I went so far as to pledge for a Kickstarter where one of the bonuses on a higher pledge level was not only the board game the crowd funding campaign was all about, but also a copy of the hard to catch RPG. Now it's mine! Noble Knight Games suddenly had a copy, and I grabbed it as fast as I could! Yah! 

Nothing is so sweet to a collector as finding that thing you have been looking for. The system looks interesting, but a bit fiddly. It's very clearly made by someone who knows a thing or two about Chinese culture, and the visuals are quite impressive with glossy paper and a lot of art. This baby increased the shipping weight and costs quite a bit!

Now it's mine. It will be interesting to see how it stacks up compared to Tianxia.

New Loot - pictorial evidence!

Here it is! My holy grail for a time have been to get hold of a copy of the 1974 edition of D&D for a decent price. In addition to that, a 1st or 2nd ed. of T&T and The First Fantasy Campaign have been at the top of the list.

You see that stuff up there? Not only is that a copy of FFC, in pristine condition, from the personal collection of Ken St. Andre. Ken even had a few extra maps, from a few other Judges Guild products it seems like.

But wait, there's more!

You see that little black book? It's the British 1st edition of Tunnels & Troll, which looks identical to the 2nd American edition I have browsed. That means puny damage from most weapons, ablative armour and some other goodies from the earlier editions. You get Adventure Points for gold! The cover looks very funky, but the innards is pure gold. Eh... adventure, I mean.

This was all from an auction Ken ran, with a percentage of the proceeds going to a fund to help artist Jeff Freels with some quite serious medical expenses. Take a look at the stuff Jeff is selling. He's an amazing artist.

I'm dancing the happy dance today, both for me and for Jeff.

Synnibarf!

Me, with a part of my collection. In my hands the most gonzo of games. I will definitely roll up a character and see what it can do. I have actually played this game before, and it was the most fun I've had next to WHFRP and Stormbringer back the the crazy days of youth.

Many thanks to a certain knight!

Admit you are tired of your old RPG...

Maybe it's time to switch to Synnibarr?

Cataloguing my collection. Now, should I video blog?

Tonight I once again had my wonderful wife help me cataloguing my collection, by being my typist while I took down and read out titles. I'm now at 351 volumes, and counting.

While I'm doing this I can't help but blather on about trivia and memories of this or that game. Naturally, my wife is not that interested. Some she find kind of fun, but most of it she has told me she will never remember, or even bother trying. I don't blame her. But, she said that maybe somebody else might actually care. That someobody else could be you, reading this blog.

Would anyone reading this blog be interested in a video series, where I take down stuff off my shelves and sprout trivia and totally make a fool of myself for not pronouncing things right?

I'm not saying I will do it, but I'm wondering if anyone would be interested. I would be surprised, but I have been surprised by gamers before.

Collecting games, or playing them?

A few days ago I got a package in the mail. It was my second copy of DragonQuest. Yes, I have bought a second copy of a game I have not yet played!

This even got me thinking. You could imagine that if you were playing some games fairly frequently, you would like to have another copy for the collection. Sadly, that's not the case. These are the games I have multiple copies of.

• AD&D1 PHB
• Menzter Basic D&D
• B/X D&D
• Rolemaster 2nd ed. Character Law/Campaign Law
• Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition
• DragonQuest 2nd ed.

So how many of these games have I played?

Well, one session of AD&D, two or three of B/X D&D. Yes. That's it.

There are some games which I have played and for which I have multiple copies. Oddly enough they are all just different editions. Looking at that list you find games like Stormbringer, Fading Suns, Call of Cthulhu, Mage: The Ascension, Tunnels & Trolls and Traveller.

From that list I have played FS once, CoC multiple times, Mage a few sessions and T&T I've played a lot and still do. Stormbringer even used to be my main frpg. But, the games I have multiple copies of the same book are games I would like to play, but haven't. This realization made me sad.

How many game books do you buy?

I remember that the excellent site Pen & Paper once had a poll about how many game books you owned. It was interesting, since I remember it having had more than 2000 gamers answering that poll! It's not enough to be a good coverage of all of gamerhood, but it did show some trends about the gamers that hang out on the web.

There were multiple categories, and most of them in the lower range, naturally. Those of us who own stupid amounts were lumped together as "more than 1000", "500-1000", "200-500" if I remember correctly. The lower ranges were far more fine grained. What surprised me was how many that fell in the category of roughly 25 game books. For me that sounds a lot like having one favourite game line, or maybe two. A lot of people also had less than 10. I think those people who claim you only need one rule book and some imagination might be onto something. The next big bump were the collectors, and I was in the higher end of that range, 200-500.

Apart from all the pictures that gives us about the size of most game libraries, it gives me an interesting comparison. I just counted the amount of game books I have in my library now, since having moved and left most of what I counted in the former poll in storage. That way I could easy see how much I have accrued over the last 24 months, and maybe also compare that to the time the rest of the collection have grown. After some math I found that I buy roughly 6 books a month, or closer to 7 if I include magazines. Should I be lucky that I will have ten years or so to find storage space until I reach the "more than 1000" range, or should I be scared that it took only 24 months to surpass the size of most of the collections in that poll, again?