I was pretty tired when the alarm rang at five thirty this morning but not as bad as you might guess. This is my first day of my five days of early morning shifts this week.
I found out today that two images that I have on Flickr have been selected and will be used definitely in the upcoming “Schmap Montreal: Fourth Edition”. The link to the two images are here and here.
Here is a great tip for Dungeons and Dragons players looking for many of the older products out there from the AD&D and AD&D Second Edition time periods. I have been looking for a lot of this stuff on eBay and you can get a lot there but the shipping costs tend to make the items a little more expensive than they would have been new even if they sell for a good price (depends on the items, keep an eye out for deals.) Wizards of the Coast offer a good selection of older products available as free downloads from their website. That is a great place to check first. If they don’t have what you are looking for, check Paizo who has hundreds of D&D legacy products available as low cost PDF downloads. Tons of older adventures and expansion books that would easily cost you six to fifteen dollars to get from eBay can be downloaded for just four dollars! Now that is a bargain. And you get them immediately.
In reality, getting the products via PDF might be better than getting them in print anyway. Sure it isn’t as flashy but these days who has space to store all of that paper? And if you have tons of resources in paper form you can’t easily take them with you when you are playing someplace other than your own home. By having them as a PDF you can print out the sheets that you are going to use and you can happily write on them and know that your originals are still pristinely stored on your computer. It also makes it easier for printing out “handouts” based on maps or images in the game materials. Now I am sorry that I just recently bought two old adventures off of eBay. I would rather have had them as PDF files and it would have saved me several dollars.
I bought “Sword of the Dales” and the classic “Ruins of Adventure” to check out the PDFs. “Ruins of Adventure” became one of the most famous AD&D adventures ever when it was used as the basis for SSI’s classic 1980s video game Pool of Radiance. I played and beat Pool of Radiance on the Commodore Amiga around 1989. The game was new in 1988. I also had the sequel, Curse of the Azure Bonds which I did not beat.
Things were pretty busy today. I grabbed a knish out front of the office for lunch and ate at my desk. That is how it normally is. Not enough time in the day for everything.
I worked an eleven hour day and headed for home around six. No snow today like everyone has been saying that there was going to be. Just a little cold drizzle. Nothing really notable. I am amazed by how mild the weather is here on the coast compared to back home.
I picked up dinner at Metro Cafe in the Gateway Center on my way home. That was a lot quicker and easier than trying to figure something out after I got home. I had a cheese sub and Dominica had an eggplant parm sub. We got some cake for dessert too.
Dinner was really good. It was late in the evening already, though, and we weren’t up to doing much. Dominica spent the evening ready from R. A. Salvatore and I did a little web design work and then worked on the adventurer’s journal from the game this weekend. It is amazing how much work is involved in just writing down what happened. We did play two sessions this weekend though so that definitely contributed. There is a lot of material to cover in the journal.
In the short time that I was home I had to walk Oreo twice, feed him dinner and a snack. When he wasn’t demanding food and walking services from me he spent the evening sleeping on the Ottoman between Dominica’s feet.
We went to bed around eleven. I have to be up at five to head into the office.