DM Muse: March 2011 Update

A Quick Update for DM Muse and their Living Tables Project

As of March 31, 2011

Number of Tables: 35 with a total of 1,899 entries.

• Number of rolls in the last 7 days: 96
• Most popular Table: Throne Effects with 28 rolls

Top Contributors in last 7 days are:

• DelveLord with 1,325 entries
• netherwerks with 572 entries
• terje with 1 entries

Monster Database

• Number of Monsters: 169
• New Monsters in last 7 days: 39
• Latest Monster is: Harlot submitted by DelveLord

Top Contributors in last 7 days are:

• DelveLord with 168 monsters
• netherwerks with 1 monsters

Name Generator Seed Names

• Number of Seed Names: 5,511
• New Seed Names in last 7 days: 5,511

Well, it looks like DM Muse is off to a nice start. There is a Development Log there, if you want to see what all has been going on at DM Muse. A lot of work has gone into this site. It will be fun to see this project grow and evolve in the months ahead.

The New Grave Robbers: Trading In Dead People's Images

I cannot make this sort of thing up: The New Grave Robbers.

The New Grave Robbers
By RAY D. MADOFF
Published: March 27, 2011
Congress should enact a law that allows people to opt out of marketing their identities after death.

Ideas Like Bullets

http://allpulp.blogspot.com/2011/03/ideas-like-bullets-fires-one-off-at-you.html

The nice people over at the ALL PULP site have announced a fun contest. Below you'll find the opening scene to a story-in-the-making. This is your jumping-off place, your spark to work from. The contest is to add onto what is there and take the story forward. You can go for as long as you like, but it needs to be at least a full page. If you don't finish the story, that's okay--just provide a synopsis of where you think the tale will go from where you stop.

The top five submissions will be posted at the ALL PULP site. The method of determining the final winner is yet to be determined, but there will be a winner and the winning story will be printed in one of Pro Se Press's upcoming anthologies and will receive a percentage comparable to other writers in Pro Se's anthologies. Yep. This is a contest for a paying writing gig. It won't pay much, but it will pay something.

All you have to do is make the folks at All Pulp love the story you tell starting off with this spark-

She walked into my office, moving like a song of forbidden jazz full of sultry horns, hellishly hot ivory licks, and a rolling drum beat with the cadence of exploding artillery every time she stepped. A melody that haunts your soul,weakens your spirit, and teases your body in ways that are illegal in most states.


"I know it's late." The melody out of her full, painted lips was as seductive as the accompaniment. Dusky, but softly tender. Like silk sheets on a cheap motel bed. "But your door was open."

"Never closed." I didn't give her one inch, not moving from my reclined position at my desk, feet up on the corner by the half empty whiskey bottle, my battered fedora pulled down over my face, the shadow of the brim meeting the five o'clock one on my chin. Didn't move a bit. Except for my eyes.

She was fully outfitted, not an ounce of meat and muscle where it shouldn't be and enough there to be noticed. Over and Over. As she flowed across my floor, she seemed to shimmer and glow, caught in the ever changing kaleidoscope of the neon sign just outside my office window. First red, giving each swish of her hip a devilish hint as if she were tugging a pointed tail behind her. Then green, a soft green teasing that maybe, just maybe there was enough gentleness in that double barrel body to be nice to someone. And finally a swirl of blue, turquoise melting into hints of ebony. And that told the whole story. Or I thought it did.

"I need someone," she cooed, leaning across my desk, one hand teasing its scarred top, "to go somewhere for me."

Still didn't move. "Surprised you don't have a conga line of admirers, suitors, and gadflies behind you everywhere you go."

"Oh, I do," she laughed, rippling water running over dried bones, "but none of them will go as far as I want them to. I need someone to go to-" her words caught, not for effect, but for a moment, the act slipped. "To go to The Epiphany."

That name brought the shoes off the desk and forced me to push my hat back on my head. This noirish fantasy just took a turn for the tricky and possibly terminal. "That's living that only the dead enjoy."

"Yes," her effervescent red lips parted, her tongue carressing the bottom one like a snake on a limb. "And its where you really learn what androids dream of."

Send your entries to: allpulp@yahoo.com!
Good luck to everyone who takes a shot at this contest.

Stories in the Ether

http://nevermetpress.com/stories-in-the-ether-volume-1-open-call-for-submissions

The nice people at Nevermet Press are accepting submissions of short stories (i.e. stories that can be read in one sitting, about 25,000 words or less) and flash fiction (i.e. stories that can be read over a cup of coffee, about 3,000 words or less) for inclusion into their new Stories in the Ether blog series and anthology. The published anthology, titled “Stories In The Ether: Volume 1“, will be published in early 2012. Authors will be paid royalties and retain rights to their works as detailed in their Submission Guidelines.

Results of an Experiment in Structured Creative Writing

So here I was looking blankly at my monitor wondering why I didn't have any coffee close at hand and what do I espy? One of those structured creative writing exercise thingys. This one was over at Burning Zeppelin Experience. (A nice blog by the way)

A Creative Prompt. Yeah. I can deal with that. So I did.

This was the result:

It was in the midst of a daemonical plague. A wretched, feverish pollution that brought about hundreds of freakish mis-births that wriggled and squirmed out from the victim's flesh irregardless of their gender or anatomy or even whether they still lived. Writhing, tumorous things formed horribly deformed pustule-sacs that reared outwards from any and every bit of flesh exposed to the fetid miasma that wafted sullenly from the sewers. They tried to close-off the sewers. Then they tried to close off the lower districts.



It didn't do any good.


Nothing could stop the hellishly infectious plague. It was a devilish pox of fertility.


Fetility run amok.


That is why the people flocked to the once proscribed and interdicted shrine of The Barren One, to seek some consolation and comfort from the Mother of Desolation, She of the Sterile Womb, the patient Empress of Wastelands.


And she smiled.


Crookedly. Cruelly. For She had finally won after many, many long hard years...

This little off-hand exercise just delivered the raw text for our opening bit of fluff-fiction for our second Adventure...and we've gained yet another deity to detail for the A-to-Z Challenge.

Have you given this sort of thing a shot? What were your results?

We might have to try a few more of these. Does anyone have some to recommend?

Thanks to Porky for starting this most recent Microfiction/Flashfiction experiment, at least for us.
And Thanks to Jennie over at Nine Worlds Ten Thousand Things for the continuation of the Expanders! microfiction challenge that started over at Porky's Expanse. You can find several other creative writing thingys over at Jennie's blog, so if this sort of thing appeals to you, go and check it out by all means. The Jarpha have been having a wonderful time over there...
 
You might also consider naming and statting-up the lonely little monster over at our Name The Monster post at Netherwerks, or maybe you'd prefer to stat-up sea creatures over at the Rended Press blog.

Burning Zeppelin Experience: Creative Prompt, Take II

How about a Creative Prompt to get the writing going?
Here's one that is all but certain to appeal to gamers:
"Tell me the story of a world in which a god associated with a generally malevolent phenomenon is viewed as a benevolent force..."
From: Burning Zeppelin Experience: Creative Prompt, Take II

Inside the Tome

So What is inside this book? Any suggestions?

The Following is declared Open Game Content.

D30 What Is Inside The Mysterious Tome Table

1. Magical notations describing, and capturing, the psychic despair of all insects throughout history ever entombed in amber. The energies will aide those seeking to escape imprisonment. [From the Sorcerer's Skull]
2. The reader's future diary, chronicling from the moment they found the book up to the seeming moment of their death--but the last page is missing, and the narrative ends in an abrupt fashion. [From the Sorcerer's Skull]
3. An alchemist's diary, recording in exacting detail his daily diet and excretory records, weighted and measured. This is all written in a backwards ancient language that can only be read by a 6th level magic-user. [Rended Press]
4. The dashing tales of derring-do of Waldo the Ubiquitous, that esteemed ancient adventurer known to have visited all the realms at least once, and half of them twice. Rumored to have been lost on his third voyage to Eastern Umfulkampf, it is said to contain the true secrets of how to travel light but still be ready to dungeon delve on a moment's notice. [Rended Press]
5. No mutton? No lizards? No way! Everything in moderation, says Drugahl, Chief Cook to the Orc King. After all, some days only blood or flumpf will hit the spot. In Chef Drugahl's 30-Slaves to Get Ready Meals, the bestselling cookbook author serves up another helping of creative, hassle-free recipes that are ready to rock your tastebuds with the help of less than thirty slaves. Here, at last, are recipes for those who just cannot and will not live totally slave-free: Meat dinners made mostly with slightly rotted meats and no vegetables, fresh elven and dwarven sausage wraps, camp-style meat-pies, and tons of scavenging ideas—with and without fins and feathers!. With more than 150 new dishes, plenty of time-saving tips, and a generous serving of Drugahl's “I will kill you” attitude, 30-Slaves to Get Ready Meals proves you don’t have to go to extremes to eat Orc-style! [Rended Press]
6. It's clearly a hoax. [Countdown to Gametime]
7. A transcription of a dialog between Orcus and Graz'zt debating the relative merits of entering into demonic pacts with humans. Halfway through, the text changes to a partial translation of the ninth chapter of The Necronomicon for about 50 pages, and then there's this weird purple stain covering the rest of the pages in the book. Anyone touching the stain must make a Save vs. Insanity, or immediately strip off all their clothes and attack the nearest dwarf. [Rended Press]
8. The design plans for a cave complex for a keep somewhere near the borderlands. [Rended Press]
9.  A series of variously-sized and sequentially-numbered tables. The entries are hazy and unclear, but the numbers stand out clearly and seem to float above the page.
   Should a means of determining a random number, such as a die, be available to the characters - and courage be mustered to use this - a table of any kind and from any gaming resource may be chosen by the GM and the appropriate die rolled by a player. The text of the table entry rolled will clarify on the page of the tome, and may be read from the GM table by the players. Reality will flex almost imperceptibly and this table result will manifest in the experience of the characters in the game. It should be incorporated by the GM at the earliest opportunity, ideally at once.
   For each additional entry determined in this way by any character, the flexing of reality also sees that character suffer one repercussion from the d100 table at Quckly, Quietly, Carefully. [Porky's Expanse]
10. Blueprints, schematics and operating tips for the dream-harvesting engine, perpetual motion dungeon turbines (handy for re-setting traps, powering spinning rooms, etc.), geodesic microverses, low-cost flat-pack insta-dungeons, and the like.
    Also includes cuttings of articles on the use of purple worms in macroculture soil aeration, Myconid hunting tips, the political economy of pillaging, etc. All the above are written and illustrated in the breezy style of the Whole Earth Catalogue, although occasional hints of loss and horror intrude. [Vaults of Nagoh]
11. A treatise exploring the failure of treaties between the elves and the dwarves, between elves and drow, between drow and dwarves, and the roll of gnomes in instigating the 1100 Year War. [Rended Press]
12. It's just a lich's coloring book. [Rended Press]
13.  A rambling, unedited, stream-of-consciousness discussion of various spellbooks and scrolls that Verdananmium the Mad found to be inspirational in his own magical research and spell creation. Several of his references are to tomes that clearly do not exist or attributed to the wrong arch mage or necromancer. The names of spells are often confused with other, similar sounding names, and many of the spells, if cast in the form that Verdananmium has recorded them, will result in severe miscasting catastrophes. A message from The Wizards Guild stamped on the inside front cover strongly encourages its members not to trust the accuracy of the tome's contents. Those attempting to read the tome must make a Save vs. Insantiy or be severely grumpy for 1d4 days. [Rended Press]
14.  It's a Cult of Baphomet tattoo codex. [Rended Press]
15. Why, it's a long lost copy of Paladin Kanamit Damon's "To Serve Man". [Rended Press]
16.  A full rendering of the life to date of a randomly-determined member of the party, including innermost thoughts and feelings, and abstract expressions of the most fleeting experiences and half-perceptions. Leafing through, the text is seen to be writing itself, running on line after line, and the act of this reading appears. The number of pages remaining may be of significance, and the corporeal relationship of book and subject is unknown... [Porky's Expanse]
17. The book is a trap*. If read, it will gradually steal all memories of the reader and add them to itself after the last recorded page, in the form of a story. *It was originally read by those that were dying to preserve their life. [Lunching on Lamias]
18. A census of the realm, including the amount collected or owed in taxes, rent, crops, etc. There is also an evaluation of each subject's fealty to the current ruling power. Each PC's name appears in the tome. There is a 35% chance that the information recorded for each PC is incorrect. [Rended Press]
19. It's a copy of Uncle Screwtape's Infernal-to-Common Travel Dictionary.[Rended Press]
20. Initially nothing, but a sharp reader may notice a slightly raised surface on the spine that when depressed causes the pages to light up and images appear, which may then be unlit in the same way. While the tome is hardly portable, extensive study may reveal wonders, represented by further rolls on this table. Unfortunately the tome will one day fail to respond. Further use will require discovery and application of the flow of a property of subatomic particles producing and interacting with a fundamental force. [Porky's Expanse]
21. That ain't a book--it's a dwarf Mimic! [Rended Press]
22.  Its not really a book. Its an elaborately disguised top to a chest. Its meant for arcane types and scholars who likely leave many open tomes in their workspace. Insert key into the thin black space on the conveniently place writing implement, and the whole top of the table, book included, will lift to reveal the storage area. (Roll again on this table to determine the fake contents of this fake book.) [Brian Liberge]
23.  It's a Tome of Many Tongues. [Rended Press]
24. Upon these pages are writ the dreams of the Jeliai the Prophet. Known in his times as the dream scribe of King Aronus, Jeliai possessed an unusual adeptness at interpreting the dreams of others to predict right courses of actions. His own dreams, however, were plagued with nightmares of choices wrongly made and future catastrophes beyond his own time. Scholars and mages have been arguing for ages over the correct interpretations of these recorded dreams and Jeliai's attempts at interpretation, which are often written in vague snippets of doggerel poetry. [Rended Press]  (If the adventurers choose to read a page, roll 1d4 on the following sub-table.)

ONE

If there is a bustle in the hedgerow
Don't be alarmed now;
It's just a spring clean
For the May Queen. 

TWOWe're a ship without a storm.
The cold without the warm
Light inside the darkness that it needs;
We're a laugh without a tear
The hope without the fear,
We are coming home.
We're off to the witch. 

THREEGenerals gather at their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerers of death's construction
In the fields the bodies burning
As the war machines keep turning.

FOURGod of thunder of rock and roll
The spell you're under
Will slowly rob you of your virgin soul;
I'm the lord of the wastelands.
A modern man of steel
I gather darkness to please me
I command you to kneel.

25. A full page ad for the toxin InstaGlue:

It stucks on me,It stucks on you,It must be -InstaGlue!
The book is then glued to the person reading it. [Jensan]

26. A full page ad for a new series of collectible, quick-summoning monsters, InstaGrue:

It eats on me,It eats on you,It must be -InstaGrue!
It will then instantaneously summon forth a horrible grue of various size. [Jensan]

27. A detailed and fully illustrated instruction manual for Githzerai martial arts. [Migellito]


28. A pornographic romance novel written in Dwarvish. If the PCs decide to read a page, they will find one of the passages found at This Site. [Rended Press]


29. That's pretty stupid. As you open the tome, a fist appear between the pages and punch you in your face! Just like a "Jack in the Box". Using the right formula ("Klaatu, Burada, Nicto!"), allows you to actually disarm the punching fist and read the book. Roll again on the table to find out about content. [Il Male™ ]


30. The book is a colony of tiny wormlike creatures which form themselves into characters and images in line with pheromonal signals sent by the queen living in the binding. The queen herself is channelling a far vaster consciousness. Part of the colony may migrate with the reader. [Porky]

-------------------------
Okay then, we now have Thirty entries, so we'll convert this into a free PDF with each contribution linked/credited to the contributors and made available off of one of our file-sharing accounts. Look for details shortly.

BBG: What To Blog About Today

Beyond the Black Gate has a table for rolling up what you should blog about today. You can find the post and table here. I rolled a 'one.' That results in the following option:

"1. Why I hate (insert edition/clone/opinion of choice here) so much, and why you should care."

Sigh. Okay. Fine. I don't see any reson or purpose in granting things that you hate any of your bandwidth, energy or attention. Why Should You Care (about any of this)? You probably shouldn't.

Hate less, Do More.

'nuff said.

Cthulhu Chick Rocks

Cthulhu Chick has created created a free eBook of the Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft. It's available in both Nook and Kindle formats and it is FREE, so head on over to her blog: Cthulhu Chick and download your copy today. You might also find Cthulhu Chick's Word Count for HPL's Stories a bit shocking, in an appropriately unspeakable way. Squamous, for example, isn't nearly as over-used by HPL as it is by his 'disciples,' and wait til you see how many times hillbilly shows up, or who's the most favoritist Outer God of them all--and no it doesn't have a shiny red nose...

World Building Resources

Last Updated March 2011
Please let us know if we've missed an especially good Worldbuilding Resource!


Atomic Rocket
Just what the name says: ATOMIC ROCKETS. How cool is that?

Basilicus
Basilicus is a world-building project focused in the Basilicus Prime Galaxy, a fictional galaxy home to both advanced and feudal societies. Although several civilizations have ventured off into neighboring star systems; several others have not reached the technological knowledge to traverse the four corners of their own planet.
Step By Step and Building Worlds are suggested as beginning articles to get you started if this project appeals to you.

Celestial Architect Spreadsheet
A really handy spreadsheet for building planets, comes in Open Office format.

Color of Plants on Alien Worlds: NASA
It's NASA, so they ought to know what they're talking about...

The Division of Territory in Society
Very interesting work rooted in sociology that helps plot out who got what land and how/why.

Earth Impact Effects Program
The Earth Impact Effects Program is an easy-to-use, interactive web site for estimating the regional environmental consequences of an impact on Earth. This program will estimate the ejecta distribution, ground shaking, atmospheric blast wave, and thermal effects of an impact as well as the size of the crater produced. This program needs to be seen to be believed.

Fantasy Worldbuilder's Forum
A forum devoted to people who build imaginary worlds and can't keep their mouths shut about it, like most of us...

Jacmus-Prime Worldbuilding
They have a nice article on What is Worldbuilding?

The Language Construction Kit
DIY pseudo-gibberish. It doesn't get more nerdy than this, does it? But at the same time, it is handy to cuss people out without anyone knowing exactly what you're saying, some times...

Magical World Builder
A fairly basic intro to building a fantasy world.

The Metaverse
A tremendous resource for Constructed Languages, Synthetic Cultures, Worldbuilding and all manner of other creative crimes against normalcy.

The Planet Construction Kit
371 pages for about $15 -- a bargain, really. Check out Yonagu Books.

Planet Designer
A really handy online resource to help with the math involved in designing worlds.

Qaiyore
A Fantasy-oriented Worldbuilding site. Qaiyore is a game in which the players take the roles of societies, rather than playing individual characters. The players invent a society with its culture, and guide its development and interaction with the world. Emphasis is placed on developing a detailed history and cultures for Qaiyore, along with myths and legends. Too bad it hasn't been updated since 2004...

Rabiki
One Guy's efforts at SciFi worldbuilding. He's also writing a novel and doing other stuff.

Ray Winniger's Dungeoncrafting Articles
This is a 29-part series of articles that originally appeared in Dragon magazine from 1997 to 1999. It was (and still is) a comprehensive look at the process of traditional dungeon-based game-mastering, which is a form of Worldbuilding in and of itself.

Rish Staat's RPG/Worldbuilding Articles
Some interesting stuff to look over here. The piece on Structure in Gaming is well worth a look.

Roleplaying Tips: Worldbuilding Articles
Quite a selection of articles on worldbuilding--and a lot more--at this site.

Stars and Habitable Planets
An excellent site for getting deeper into the nitty-gritty of planet formation, types of stars, and all that fun science stuff. The Earth-like Planet section is handy, as are the sections on Water Worlds and Super Earths.

Star Types at Enchanted Learning
A nice primer on the various types of stars that are out there.

This Orb
A Worldbuilder's blog. Home of the Celestial Architect spreadsheet.

Virtual Verduria

Wikipedia: Solar System

Wikipedia: Stellar Classification

Wikipedia: Worldbuilding

World Builder Projects
A bunch of links to all sorts of worldbuilding across the WWWeb.

Worldbuilding
Some nice resources at the Fantasist.net site.

Worldbuilding Links

RPG Brainstorming

More weird critters and other stuff from the depths of the internet to your feverish brain all courtesy of Netherwerks.  Just add dice, makes its own sauce...

(No picture available at this time--I'll draw one for later...)
The Minhocao.  A twenty-foot long millipede...which reminds me of the The Vaults of Yoh Vombis by Clark Ashton Smith where they see a similar creature, only much longer...You can read more about the supposed Mega-Millipede at Fortean Times.

Picture from Dalhousie University

Rusticles. Bacteria named Halomonas titanicae are eating the Titanic over 2-miles down below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. More details at Discovery's site, from which we quote: "While potentially dangerous to underwater metal structures like shipwrecks, as well as offshore oil and gas pipelines, the newly discovered species could also offer positive applications for industry." Bacteria that break down iron. Yeah that might be a bit of a problem for shipping, oil rigs and pipelines.  Sufficiently advanced and widely proliferated in a world's waterways, it'd bring back wooden ships in a hurry. This also gives you a nice one-two punch, microbially, when you factor in the recently uncovered bacteria that uses arsenic instead of phosphorus in its DNA.  Bacteria are cool.  They outnumber us billions to one.  So watch what you say--they might be listening.

conjoined Acromyrmex ants, collected in Botucatu, Brazil (credit: Rodrigo Feitosa)

Dorsally-fused 'dual-chassis' leaf-cutter ants. There's another photo of the two-headed Brazilian leaf-cutter ant at the Myrmecos page. Literaly Two-Headed Ants.  Just blow them up to Giant Economy-size (ala Them!) and you have yourself one heck of a nasty critter. This is a freak of nature that is just begging to be adapted into an RPG.  What a cool monster!  It would be just the sort of thing that could guard a pair of corridors at once. Bonus: consider what a  myrmecologist combined with some basic genetic engineering might be like. Or consider a myrmemancer: Ant-based magics...very scary stuff.  Alex Wild's site Myrmecos is rapidly becoming one of my personal favorite finds thanks to the TYWKIWDBI blog. Insects make some of the best monsters; insects, crustaceans, deep sea creatures, worms and those weird little squishy-things that make players cringe.  Fun stuff.

Soylent Green

So how does Google get to post entire movies like this? Is Soylent Green in the public domain somehow? That'd be weird...

Weird Publishers (Mostly Small Press)

Last Updated: March 2011

Here's a quick and far from complete listing of small press publishers who produce Weird Fiction & Weird Nonfiction. We'll add more publishers to this list from time to time as we run across them or our readers let us know about them.


Hippocampus Press
Link: http://www.hippocampuspress.com/
Example: Pleasures of a Futuroscope by Lord Dunsany

Necronomicon Press
Link: http://shop.necropress.com/
Example: Studies in Weird Fiction

Nightshade Books
Link: http://www.nightshadebooks.com/
Example: Revolution World by Katy Stauber
Two words: Fire-breathing Cows.


Ohio University Press
Link: http://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Lord+of+a+Visible+World
Example: Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters, By H. P. Lovecraft, Edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz


Penguin Books
Weird Stuff available through Penguin: http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Search/QuickSearchProc/1,,weird,00.html?id=weird

Prometheus Books
Link: http://www.prometheusbooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=51&products_id=1225
Example: Tales of the Occult, with an introduction and afterword by Isaac Asimov

Tartarus Press
Link: http://homepages.pavilion.co.uk/users/tartarus/welcome.htm
Example: Guide to Supernatural Fiction: http://www.supernaturalfiction.co.uk/

University of Tennessee Press
Link: http://utpress.org/bookdetail-2/?jobno=T01377
Example: Ambrose Bierce and the Dance of Death, by Sharon Talley

Wildside Press
Link: http://www.wildsidepress.com/
Wildside Magazines: http://www.wildsidemagazines.com/

Weird Tales: http://weirdtalesmagazine.com/
Submitting Stuff to Weird Tales: http://weirdtalesmagazine.com/submissions/

A to Z Challenge: Fellow RPG Bloggers We'll Be Reading

We're getting ready for the 2011 A to Z Challenge for this April.

Our A to Z Subjects have pretty-much been settled upon and we're in the process of writing the first few to see how it goes. If the schedule allows, we might just roll Zalchis and Netherwerks into the A to Z Challenge as well, featuring a New Monster A to Z at Zalchis and something along the lines of an Island-a-Day if we can get the maps knocked together in time, otherwise we'll launch the Island-a-Day thing in May instead. The Table-a-Day thing is slated for after that...if all goes well.

We'll post the 2011 A to Z Subject List shortly. That list will serve as an Index Page giving you a one-stop set of links to all of our A to Z Challenge entries for April.

Here's a partial list of some of our fellow RPG-oriented Bloggers who have joined the 2011 A-Z Challenge:
(If we missed anyone, please do let us know and we'll add you right away!)

A Hamsterish Horde of Dungeons & Dragons
Aldeboran
Alien Shores
...And the Sky Full of Dust
Appendix N
Armchair General
Asshat Paladins
Axe-and-Hammer
Badger King's Den
B/X Blackrazor
Chicago Wiz's RPG Blog
City of Iron
Clash of Spear on Shield
Dangerous Brian
The Dump Stat
Dungeons Down Under
Gaming All Over The Place
Grognardia
GRUBB Street
In Like Flynn
Jovial Priest
Lands of Ara
Lapsus Calumni
Lasgun Packer
Laughing Ferret
Lunching on Lamias
Nine and Thirty Kingdoms (Excellent Geomorphs!)
No Signal!
Occam's Katana
Ostensible Cat
The Otherside
Polar Bear Dreams and Stranger Things
Paul's Bods (Miniatures!)
Places To Go, People To Be
Porky's Expanse
Quickly, Quietly, Carefully
Redwald
Risus Monkey
Roll2Hit
The Rusty Dagger
Sea of Stars
Sword +1
The Only Successful One
Tower of the Archmage
Tower of Zenopus
Underworld Kingdom
Vaults of Nagoh
Weekend Wizardry
Zero XP Adventures

DM Muse

DM Muse is a great new shared resource that we just discovered and would like to recommend to all our readers who like Random Tables and generators and things like that. You can find out a little bit more about DM Muse either at Netherwerks or just go to their site directly ( http://www.dmmuse.com/ ). This looks like a very handy tool for DMs/GMs/Refs and it'll only get better as people contribute to the collective effort.

"I Got Better."

"I think I'll go for a little walk..."

Recovery is going well. Sorry to have missed the Hot Elf Chick thing, but we will have a slew of islands for the Sea of O'sr (An entire archipelago, actually...), some D30 Tables, the missing sub-levels to The Cliff Tomb of Vhonj (see Jewel Throne) and a bunch of other stuff that has been waiting patiently on the desk and in the 'puter for a few weeks now. Planes, steamtrains and autonomatons...we'll have dozens of new spells, monsters and several Adventures ready to roll in the next couple of weeks as I get back up to speed. It's awfully nice to have this kind of a backlog to work through. There is a LOT more to come, so please just bear with me as I ease back into things a bit at a time. And Thank You to all our readers, followers, acquaintances and fellow gaming-folk for all your support over the last rough patch. The worst is done and over with. Now it's onwards to greater and better things.