April - 2019

Workout Recap - Week of April 21, 2019

I have no idea where this week went. It felt like it just passed in a flash, and my mind has just been all over the place. It probably didn't help matters that I had the cross-referencing in my native file for my TTRPG blow up last night, so I spent most of this morning combing through it to fix the links one by one. On a better note, though, I've really been enjoying the Conan stories. It feels like it's been a long time since I read something for pleasure that I actually

Elric: The Stealer of Souls

Rating: C Length: 458 pages, standard paperback font size, larger than standard paperback page size I don't have a grudge against British fantasy authors. I'm sure that people who know me well would back me up in how much the opposite of racist I am. And yet, there just seems to be something about the famous fantasy fiction that comes from the UK that just doesn't click with me. It's not that I don't appreciate how transformative Tolkien was in the genre by divorcing it f

Workout Recap - Week of April 14, 2019

On the plus side, I kept my commitment to make up for getting out of cycle on my weekend challenges. On the minus side, my quads wish to die at the moment, and they aren't going to be granted their wish. I find myself reminded of the fact that I don't think I've ever had a massage that didn't come courtesy of either my own hands or rolling on top of an inanimate object. I make do with what I've got, of course, but I could sure go for some third-party squeezing at the momen

Adventures & Antagonists: Swords and Sorcery in a Dark Age of Fantasy

Well, I went and made a retroclone. Here's a link for the PDF: link Basically, I found myself annoyed with certain aspects of 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons, and I wanted a simpler system to run with a friend who's a gaming novice, and those two situations happened to coincide with my stumbling across the whole idea of OSR/retroclones. I checked out the rules for a few systems (Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, OSRIC, For Gold & Glory, B

Workout Recap - Week of April 7, 2019

I started the week intent on a deluxe double-challenge, only to have my plans dashed by a surprisingly social end to the week. Fortunately, with the Good Friday holiday being this week, I'll have a lighter load in the immediate future, which I can use to make up for that. Sunday Type: As Fast As Possible 7 sets of: 7 Pull Ups 7 Burpees Time = 8:00 Bonus: 1 pull up, 1 burpee This was pretty much a steady time with what I achieved the last time that I did this challenge. As s

Workout Recap - Week of March 31, 2019

Things have a way of just blowing sometimes, don't they? Long story short, I got too caught up in other things to get my challenge workout in this week. Alas, but it's not the worst thing in the world to resign myself to a four-workout week, and I can do a Sunday/Saturday deluxe double-challenge next week to make up for it. Sunday Type: Pass/Fail One-armed Push Ups, feet together - 2 sets of 9, each side (pass) T&A Pull Ups - 2 sets of 6, each side (pass) Pistol Squats, bot

Alone Against the Flames

Rating: B Length: Approx. 1 hour per playthrough I like Seth Skorkowski's YouTube reviews of adventure modules for AD&D, and I dip into some of his other videos on occasion. He posted one recently about learning new TTRPG systems, in which he mentioned that this adventure as something that could be played by a single person (as opposed to the "DM+1" format that's usually meant by a solo adventure) to help learn Call of Cthulhu. I'd never played Call of Cthulhu before, and a