My Tea Plant Flowers

So, yesterday I noticed that my tea plant (a kind of camelia) has put out its yearly flower. I'd just planted some pansies, which along with some violets (which if they flowered this year I missed it) make up my modest little flowers-in-pots minigarden for this year.

Possiblee adjustments include replacing the capnip, which died out at some point over the last few months. I'm also pleased to note the flourishing of the Italian shell beans' leafy greens so beloved of Hastur. Neither of our current cats show much interest, but Tyburn has taken some of some grass growing out of the side of one of the pots, so we'll let that stand for cat greens for now.

--John R

 

--JDR

P. S.: Thanks to JC for the photol

I Am Podded

 So, thanks to Ben Riggs, author of SLAYING THE DRAGON 

(a highly entertaining account of the fall of TSR)

and Gareth Hanrahan, whose work I'm not familiar with

 (his work on The One Ring rpg sounds particularly interesting), I got to enjoy an hour's online discussion of LotR. Ben has since posted the discussion in both audio/video form, complete with close captions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sOa8nrmVxQ

I can see that I need to learn more about the One Ring rpg and see what the current license holders have done with the newest in a long line of Tolkien rpg. Sounds like the Shire starter set is a good place to start, if I can find it.  More on this somewhere back the road.

--John R.*

*bonus points: Ben knows how to pronounce my name

New Fish Long Ago

So, it's October 7th, which I always celebrate as the day I was hired at TSR as an editor in their rpg department. Over the next five years I got to work on a lot of adventures and sourcebooks and boxed sets, most of them for core AD&D / D&D but also at one time or another on just about every game world they were publishing at the time. 

 I got to work on a lot of great game modules (didn't keep count, but at a guess, about three dozen releases) and with a lot of amazing people. That same week I was one of four new hires (whom Jim Ward, our boss who's hired us all, called 'new fish') that same month on sequential Mondays. 

I arrived first on October 7th, followed by Rich Baker (designer) and Thomas Reid (editor), both on the 14th, with Wolfgang Baur (as part of the DRAGON / DUNGEON magazine team) on the 21st.

It was a great place to work, from the point of view of GETTING TO BE THE ONES WHO WORKED  ON D&D (how cool is that?) and a terrible place to work from the point of working conditions and the cluelessness of management carried to a high degree. 

Later there was coming and going, and coming, and going, for a total of ten years at three iterations of TSR / WotC / Hasbro and a lot more releases I worked on --events some of which I commemorate in turn. But that's the subject for another time.

--John R.

Jimmy Carter Day

So, Jimmy Carter has just turned a hundred years old -- something no other President has achieved. 

No one has ever done a better job of being Ex-President. An interesting legacy, and one that I doubt will be matched.

I met him at a book signing once (he was famous for his epic book-signing sessions), and I wonder if he might hold some king of record there as well. 

He's also the first person I voted for in a presidential election.

He didn't cure river blindness but he helped a lot of people over the years --from the roll-up-yr-sleeves and pitch in of Habitats for Humanity to election monitoring and off-the radar unofficial diplomacy. 

I hear they're planting a hundred trees in his honor. I wonder what kind, and where?

Well done, Mr. Carter.

--John R.

 

 

D&D Gets Some Respect

So, thanks to Andrew H for this  link to a piece by a writer with the great name of Jedediah Berry. And the article is pretty good too: from the inside, linking together the roles of DM and author in a respectful way. And it's not another one of those journalist-descends-to-write-about-strange-people-and-their-strange (possibly dangerous) hobby. 

https://lithub.com/what-fiction-writers-can-learn-from-dungeons-dragons/ 

--And this  is a week when 'Settlers of Catan' was the correct answer to one of the challenges on NPR's 'Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me'  (an answer they didn't quite get right).

Have I mentioned the fundraising event coming up for the state of Washington's Attorney General where he's focusing the  event on his being a dedicated fan of the game? More on this one later.

--John R.

Marquette Tolkien in Sixty Seconds

So, thanks to Janice and to Jim Lowder for the link to this nice little piece: a brief account and overview of Marquette's Tolkien Collection. 

https://today.marquette.edu/2024/09/60-second-marquette-on-bill-fliss-the-tolkien-collection/

As someone who's spent a lot of time with this collection, let me say if you ever get the chance to see this in person, it's well worth the visit.

P.S.: can you spot the point where they briefly show my book?

--John R.

I.C.E. / E.Q. books

So, back in the day when there was no online gaming and DMs were hard to find, some of us filled the gap with pick-a-path books.*

 

Of the many variants thereof, the ones by Iron Crown (a.k.a. i.C.E.) show how relaxed a lot of game companies' understanding of copyright --esp. other people's copyright-- cd be.  And the trouble this cd cause when the Other People (e.g. lawyers) were paying attention.

 

So far as I can tell, I.C.E. released ten books in four series: Tolkien Quest (two books), Middle-earth Quest (four books), Narnia Solo Games (one book), and Sherlock Holmes Solo Mysteries (three books). It started as Tolkien Quest, then quickly changed to Middle-earth Quest --indeed one of the books advertised as part of the T.Q. series had been re-labeled to be MeQ books instead by the time it came out. 

Here's a listing which may not be complete, given that more books were announced than ever appeared on shelves.

 

I. Tolkien Quest

   —The Legend of Weathertop.  by Heike Kubasch (1985)

   —Night of the Nazgul.  by John David Ruemmler (1985)

 

II. Middle Earth Quest

—Rescue in Mirkwood.   by Gerald Lientz (1988).**  

—Treason at Helm's Deep.   by Kevin Barrett & Saul Peters (1988)

—Mines of Moria.  by Susan Mathews & J. D. Ruemmler (1988)

—A Spy in Isengard.  by Terry K. Amthor (1988)

            [Search for the Palantir]. announced but never released]

            [Race from RIvendell ].  never released

 

Next Up: Narnia Quest

--John R

*P.S.: In my case it was Dungeon Geomorphs and Cal-tech encounter tables, quickly followed by the Player's Handbook, which I actually read all the way through, from start to finish.

**best cover