I could watch this on a continuous loop...

Full Length Conan the Barbarian Trailer Released

This one looks much better than the teaser trailer (I still can't believe they basically did the whole "In a world..." thing in that one).   I have my doubts about their being much of Robert E. Howard's Conan here, but it at least looks like a solid fantasy flick.

New Conan the Barbarian Teaser Trailer.

I'm still not sure about this, but the quote at the end gives me hope.

Garhelm - My Homebrew Campaign Setting

My next few posts will detail a campaign setting I created a few years back for D&D 3.5.  I named the world “Garhelm.”  Why?  Because it sounded cool.  (To this day, I’m waiting for someone to tell me that it means “small scrotum” or something in a foreign dialect.)  I designed the kind of game world in which I would want to play.  It unabashedly borrows from several cliché sources, such as Howard’s Conan stories, the Conan the Barbarian movie, Norse mythology, Lovecraft, classic D&D demons, and more. I also designed the world so I could fit just about every Necromancer Games module I owned into it.

   I ran two short-lived campaigns in Garhlem, both of which ended for various reasons.  One was a face-to-face game that involved players from different states.  We didn’t meet often, so we had only about three sessions.  The other campaign was played online via ScreenMonkey.  This was before the days of Skype, so everything was chat-based.  Suffice it to say, it was very slow.  So, both of those campaigns had logistic obstacles, but, in both cases, lethality was the final campaign ender.   It’s frustrating enough when your PC dies, but even more so when you seldom get to play and/or the play format (i.e., online) is sort of inherently frustrating to begin with.

I learned a couple things from these campaigns:

• Be upfront about the death rate in the campaign. If there is going to be a high body count, let your players know from the start.  Then they can pass on the campaign from the get-go and irritation can be spared by one and all.  I made sure to do this with my Rappan Athuk campaign.
• Seemingly small mechanic adjustments added for campaign flavor can come back to haunt you.

I no longer use this setting, opting instead for the game world sparsely alluded to in Bard’s  Gate and the Rappan Athuk module.  I would like to revive Garhelm one of these days (with a few tweaks), but who knows if that will happen.

Frazetta Passes On to Valhalla

It's old news by now, but Frank Frazetta passed away on May 10. Still, I would feel a bit remiss if I didn't mention it here as he is my favorite fantasy artist of all time and certainly one of my top 10 artists period.

What sets Frazetta's works apart is how dynamic they are.  He had a knack for emulating movement that few (if any) can match.  Boris Vallejo, for instance, has fantastic skill, but his pictures seem more like window displays than snapshots of action.  In my favorite Frazetta piece, "Snow Giants," you can practically hear the giant gurgling his blood, his throat having been slit by the Cimmerian's sword.  I had a poster of this picture on my wall during my teenage years.  Honestly, I wish I still had it.

Frazetta certainly captured the raw, blood pumping adventure of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories.  I have to admit, it's always irked me a bit that Conan is almost always near-naked in these paintings, despite the fact that he is usually well-armored in the corresponding tales.  Still, hell, if it weren't for Frazetta, Conan might still be depicted like this:

I'll take "half-naked" over "huge, nerdy-looking guy" any day.

Here is another of my favorites.  I love how Frazetta captured Conan's "volcanic" eyes.

I also have to say, nobody drew voluptuous women like Frazetta.  These aren't waif-like damsels, these are women that would make any man's blood race and heart pound.

 Hell, he could even make Tolkien sexy.

RIP Frazetta. You'll be missed.