Alien Gunfighter's page

Hey, just an inquiry: where abouts are you located? I'm in L.A. and I never seem to get my subscription issue until about the same day the newsstands do...

In a shrill, nasally voice, my pixieish fighter announces, "They call me Slake-moth Sally. Cause I'm your worst (bleeping) nightmare!"

Sounds like you need to find some new people to game with if you ask me.

Luckily, I have online games...

sORRY BUT I've always wondered who the warduke was....anyone?

Heh, just kidding--I'm starting to realize just how old I am when younger gamers have no idea what I'm talking about. Warduke was THE COOLEST D&D action figure from that line during the 80s. He looks like a badass. He IS a badass. He even has his own Dungeon cover (can't remember which, same issue as the Deathnet minigame).

He also made an appearance in the D&D cartoon from the early/mid-80s. All cartoons back then were about groups of meddling kids (target market, you know) which is what one of the posts above was referring to.

Sorry, but in my experience guys who play girls are either--

1) Weirdos who've never had a girlfriend and are playing out some bizarre sexual fantasy about how women act ("I thrust my huge breasts in his face!"), or

2) Power gamers looking for an advantage ("I have a Charisma of 18! There's no way he can resist my charms and not give me his vorpal sword!").

Once I had some 300 lb. zit-faced geek tell me his female character was "whispering seductively in my ear." Talk about an uncomfortable moment. No wonder people prefer Warcraft.

And I don't care much for the non-adventure articles. If I want that stuff, I have Dragon. Give that stuff (and Downer) the boot and print another adventure in that space!

Downer. I'm sick of Downer. I hate Downer. Down with Downer!

Age of Worms is awesome! I`m looking forward to the Grand Finale (insinuated to be an encounter with Kyuss himself!) and the next Adventure Path.

I have them loaded to my portable hard drive and open them in Acrobat. You don`t have to swap CDs (or risk damaging them) that way.

I already have all of this stuff in 3rd or 3.5 edition rules from past issues of Dragon. I thought you were going waaay back (to the cool stuff of 1st and 2nd edition). Sure, there is some of that, but not enough to warrant my interest.

Dunno about Pocket PC, but there is plenty for Palm OS.

You can get Iron Heroes and its supplement Mastering Iron Heroes from drivethrurpg.com in .pdf format. Both are pretty awesome.

Top Picks:1. Iron Heroes, by Monte Cook
2. X Crawl, by Pandahead. Dungeon-Crawling as an extreme sport!
3. Encyclopedia of Demons and Devils 1&2, by Fast Forward Games
4. Book of Fiends, by Green Ronin
5. Devil Player's Guide, by Fast Forward Games

I would nominate...someone I've never heard of. New demons! New demons for all!

No, but there was a half-machine template in one of the past Dungeon magazines (not currently available to me). There's also several different 'mechanized' and 'machine' templates from various other .pdf books (Template Troves comes to mind).

In Dungeon #118's adventure "Throne of Iuz", King Bog One-Eye's stats list him as an 'awakened' toad. Is 'awakened' a template from some source I'm not familiar with, or is it just the author granting intelligence to an otherwise unintelligent animal? I loved King Bog as a villian, either way.

I think that drow are like nija, dinosaurs, and mecha--people will never get tired of them.

Can't find a copy of the CD-Rom?

Forget Dr. Pepper. Go to Wal-Mart and get some 'Dr. Thunder'. Generic Dr. Pepper is an abomination worthy of a Sanity check.

What I really mean is a formula that would balance a minature's power with an appropriate point value cost, so the miniature would never go "out of style."

Even if errata had to be issued on various minis from time to time (changing their point value, their statistics, etc.), I think a formula would be better than retiring/rotating minis. Sure, I'd still use the minis for the RPG, but I'd really rather be stomping plastic monster butt with them.

MM: I was thinking of something like the system from the Miniatures Handbook, pg 79. Afer reviewing the section, I think a 'formula' (if one could really be applied) would have to be more detailed than the one found in those pages.

1. Frank Frazetta/James Silke's "Death Dealer: Prisoner of the Horned Helmet". out of print, but worth looking for for fans of dark, gritty fantasy. There's also three sequels which are also very good.

2. Ignorant Armies, edited by Dave Pringle--an old Warhammer shortstory collection. Be sure to check out "Laughter of the Dark Gods," which shows one man's slippery-slope descent into becoming a Chaos Warrior and ultimately a daemon. I think its been reprinted...

3. Eiji Yoshikawa--Musashi. A semi-fictional account of the life of the legendary Japanese swordsman. If you're feeling really adventurous, try reading Yoshikawa's "Taiko"--but keep a scorecard handy, because the characters in the book change names frequently (as most everyone in Japan did at that point in history).

4. PJ O'Rourke--Parlaiment of Whores. A must read for anyone interested in humor and the US government. Famous for the line, "Giving money and power to the federal government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."

5. Theodore Schick Jr.--Why People Believe Weird Things. How to be logical in an age of ignorance. Read up on the Forer effect (do a Google search for this one; its useful in games and in real life)

6. Koushun Takami--Battle Royale. The infamous book about a class of Japanese high-school students kidnapped, taken to an island, and forced to kill each other. There is a movie based on the book, but you won't find it in the US (it's not banned; the Japanese studio that owns it wants a big-marquee US release, which US distributors have thus far refused. Thus, no movie). It's easier to find in book format online on various book-shopping sites. This book is frickin' awesome; I read the whole thing in one sitting.

Robert Howard "Cthulhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors". Another out-of-printer, but worth finding. Forget Conan (though he does make an appearance in this tome), this collection of short stories is a dark fantasy approach to the Cthulhu Mythos. I loved it.

I don't get to play much anymore, but when I do--

D&D (of course)
Advanced Heroquest (my favorite, now augmented with D&D minis)
Paranoia (The Computer is Your Friend)
Necromunda
Gamma World

I had a recent run-in with my employers over my blog. Long story short, I decided to change names from my regular log-in (on various sites) to this new one. I wanted something cool and unique (I didn't want to be Drizzt43597206) and hit upon this odd combination of words. I like it. Even better, I can keep writing in my blog (which has changed name and location) without fear of repercussions.

Be careful of how much info you tell the online community about yourself. If somebody decides he doesn't like what you have to say, all he has to do is click on your user profile and see if you'll spill your guts about who you are so he can mess with your employment, webhost, etc. I paid to learn this lesson, so learn from me for free.

Dungeon tiles for D&D minis can be found at http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mi/20041007b . One of them is labelled "mushroom tangle," which may be what you're looking for.

Challenge of Champions is a good series. Even if you don't like the adventure format, you can pick it apart and use the various parts of it as traps for your own games.

It's a couple-a-ways tie between--

Ghost-Faced Killer (Dragon)
Angel Hunter (Unholy Warrior's Handbook)
Alienist (various sources)

I hate Downer. Good space wasted that could be used for gaming material.

Even worse was that Dragon felt the need to waste space on a "the story so far" article. I figured those who cared would already know what was going on.

I'm not into the retirement/rotation thing. That's one of the reasons I stopped playing Magic.

Maybe a set formula (like the one from the miniatures handbook) could be the answer?

Oh yeah, Mr. Avritt? Well, why don't you submit an article about vermin, Mr. Entomologist guy?!?!?

Seriously, it would be cool. Write about bugs found in the really real world that have abilities that we laymen are unaware of.

I was watching National Geographic today and learned about a type of ant that takes over other ant colonies through mimicking the pheromones of the target colony's queen. Now if only the giant version had enough gumption to take over an out of the way human settlement...

Or stats for giant versions of new and interesting bugs, like walking sticks ("Did that tree just move? AIIIIEEEEE!!!")? I'd like to see that.

But no matter what you do, realize that nothing you produce will ever be as cool as that lizard that shoots blood out of its eyes. =)

To welcome you, we should all sing, "99 bottles of beer on the wall." I'll start...

99 bottles of beer on the wall,
99 bottles of beer,
take one down,
pass it around,
98 bottles of beer on the wall!

Next verse, same as the first!

(ok, don't really do it--this thread could get monstrously long)

I'm just here to keep Patrick from getting too lonely. =)

How about allowing us to upload our own avatar pics? That would be cool. Does the <---- Warforged guy really look like an "Alien Gunfighter" to you? =)

I've always hated the fiction section. If I want to read a story, I have subscriptions to FSF, Analog, Asimov's, Ellery Queen, and AHMM, not to mention a library of books (that I should really get around to reading). I buy Dragon for D&D/RPG material, not fiction.

I keep the miniatures maps for my Advanced Heroquest set and file-13 the rest.

How about a wallpaper gallery? I love the Warduke painting, but can't find a good clear image of it anywhere. Oh yeah, and maybe some other covers, too. =)

Here it goes (no particular order, just off the top of my head)--

Sleepless, from Dragon Magazine. The first look at what D&D would become today. A wizard selling his soul to several different buyers? All of them coming to collect just as the PCs arrive in his castle? Brilliant! The monsters were way cool, too.A Rose for Talakara, another Dragon magazine classic. A long adventure where the PCs are manipulated by a skeleton warrior into freeing him from his high-level wizard mistress.

Treasure Hunt, and old 1st or 2nd edition module. Start as a 0-level character, and the choices you make during the adventure tell you what character class you will become. A Rorshach for players!

Tomb of Horrors, Castle Ravenloft. Always with the classics.

Tomb of Kings Unknown, another Dragon magazine entry. Mutant orcs!

The Forest Oracle. A 1st edition adventure. Nostalgic choice, it was the first module I ever bought with my own money.

Wonders of Lankhmar, a bunch of short modules based off of the adventures of Fafhrd and Grey Mouser.

Rahasia, a Basic D&D module. I wore this one out.

Diablo 2: to Hell and Back. Let's wreck Diablo!

Epsilon Cyborg, a Gamma World 3rd edition module. Had Oscar North (the mutant badger/cyborg who was on the cover of the 3rd edition box set) and rules for creating robots.

Isle of Dread. Let's wander around and kill dinosaurs!

Ochimo, the Spirit Warrior. a 1st edition Oriental Adventures dungeon crawl.

Black Gulch, an old Paranoia adventure. Every time "The Bot with No Name" showed up, all the players had to whistle that old western tune. Good times!