Intermission

Been working hard today, hence the absence of a proper blog article. Instead, I'm going to discuss the articles that will be appearing over the next few days or weeks. I plan on reviewing the Temple of the Ape's module I bought on Lulu,a long with several classic modules in my collection.

I've painted up some more of my Wargames factory Vikings, abandoning the whole mixed Saxon-Viking wargaming unit given that I'm going to need lots of viking types to represent the Vanir and Aesir. Similarly, I'll be converting a large number of the Saxon minaitures to represent tavern patrons, sailors, traders and other civilians. I've also acquired some of the old Grenadier barbarians (about 20, in fact) which I plan on painting up and introducing as a crew of Cimmerian mercenaries or pirates.

This in turn has given me the idea for a series of features on miniatures lines suitable for use as characters and foes in the Hyborian Age.

The main project taking up so much of my time in this last 36 hours or so has been creating the city of Tortage, built upon the sound foundations of Glavius's excellent wiki articles on Port Blacksand in the Fighting Fantasy Wiki.

Blacksand is, for me, the iconic Pirate port. I've collated and expanded the wiki articles and added locations heavily inspired by the eighties City Book series produced by Blade, a division of Flying Buffalo games. Which reminds me, I'll have to do a review on those old books as well.

When I've finished Tortage, which includes adapting the wonderful old Port Blacksand map to include all these new locations I'm adding, I intend to publish the city as a free downloadable PDF on this blog.

That won't be for some considerable time yet, as I still have a great deal of work to do. The wikki information is, of course, public domain, but since Glavius's work will be feature so strongly I'll also have to track him down too so he can be properly credited for his efforts.

That's where things stands for the moment. I still have to find more time to work through my module shortlist to decide what to put in the Hyborian Sandbox (and where) but I expect to see some progress soon. Ideally, I'll have my Temple of the Ape's review up at some point tomorrow. No promises though. So much to do, so little time (which reminds me: I really need to update my DragonAge campaign journal as well).

Finally, I intend to track down the old D&D Necromancer, Demonologist and Huari NPC classes from White Dwarf and adapt them to OSRIC. All three classes are very flavorful and ideally suited to a Hyborian themed campaign.