6x9 B/X

First, I'm psyched that I got to meet Zak S, Mandy Morbid and Joey Lindsey this past weekend, while viewing some of the original artwork that Zak made for A Red & Pleasant Land. Zak complimented my girlfriend on her shoes, Mandy complimented me on my LotFP shirt, nobody lobbed any Unforgivable Curses at us, and a good time was had by all. If you're near the San Francisco Bay Area, you should check out the exhibition at Steven Wolf Fine Arts. It runs through March 7, 2015. They've got a whole room full of Zak's work, and I gained a new appreciation for his style when I saw how many fine details he works in using literal drops, blobs and splotches of paint. My artist girlfriend and artist friend both assured me that they would have made a blotchy mess if they'd attempted the same techniques.

Note: This is hot shit!

I spent most of that afternoon fiddling with my own variation of the Black Book edition of B/X D&D, as mentioned in this informative post by Dyson. I decided that, in addition to nixing the watermarks, I'd like to shrink the books down to the portable, utilitarian 6x9 size that works so well for Lamentations publications. I can't hook you guys up with the finished pdf, obviously, but I thought I should at least share my re-sized versions of  Jeremy Deram's covers. I had to add some space between elements to avoid stretching out the words and images, but I think it came together nicely.

Here you go, internet:

These images should be 1913 x 2925 pixels, perfect for the "old" cover-creating wizard at LuLu.

Wrist-Mounted DM Screen

After all the shit-talking that jocks have done about roleplayers over the years, it turns out that those bastards were walking around with goddamned DM Screens on their sweaty-ass wrists the whole time!

But seriously though, I can totally use one of these:

Football 5 Pocket Arm-Play Holder

Of course, it's not remotely as hardcore as actually tattooing Armor Classes onto your forearm for reference...

... but it's still a cute gimmick for literally keeping a little something up your sleeve. If you're rules-light enough, you could fit everything you need to run a game in one of these, and use it as your travel/on-the-fly/convention game-screen.


Plus, these wrist-screens are ambidextrous. That's right; you can totally do this:

Obviously, no one should do that. 

I will probably do that.

If anyone gives me any shit about it, at least I can tell them that it's football gear.