Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane Poems

If you're a Solomon Kane fan, give these audio files a listen: link.  I liked them so much, I burned them to a CD to listen to in the car.

You'll find the following at that site:

• The One Black Stain
• The Return of Sir Richard Grenville
• Solomon Kane's Homecoming

Chaos Turns 6

May has been a very busy month and I have tons to post about.  Unfortunately, I haven’t had much time to do so.

My eldest daughter, Chaos, turning 6 was the biggest event.  Six is the big leagues.  Six means she is knee-deep in kid-dom. 

She received tons of loot, but here are the gifts ol’ Dad added to the present pile:

- Black Knight Foam Sword and Shield kit.  I couldn’t pass this up when I saw it at Toys R Us.  It came with two swords and two shields.  Chaos wasn’t sure what to make of it at first, but by the end of cake time, she was slaying balloon “dragons.”  I knew I had done well when a few days later she and Mayhem were playing with the swords and Chaos turned to me and said, “You know, I really like this, Daddy.”  It was funny. It was almost as if she was surprised she was admitting it.  Mayhem likes her weaponry as well and the two spend more time slaying imaginary creatures than bashing each other.  I think I’ll pick up one or two of those bopper punching bags for them to slay when I get a chance. 

Also, I think I will get this axe so I can walk around the house saying, "By This Axe I Rule!"

- Mouse Guard Volume 1.  A friend of mine recommended this.  We’ve read a few chapters at bed time and she seems to like it, but has more trouble following the plot than I thought. The lack of words hinders her understanding at points, but she seems interested in it and I think she’ll grow into it a bit more in the upcoming year.



-  The A-Maze-ing Labyrinth board game.  I saw this board game at Toys R Us and picked it up even though I hadn’t heard of it.  I’m always on the lookout for games that are different from the various Candyland-clones out there (i.e., the mindless games).  We’ve played once and Chaos seems to like it.  Players shift the maze layout on their turns in order to move their pawn to specific treasures.  Despite the cartoony look, it isn’t just a kids’ game.  I could easily see playing it with adults.



- Pokemon booster packs.  I’m not a big Pokemon fan but Chaos and the boy down the street are.  She loves animals, so a game with cute little critters is right up her alley.  She and the boy have their own house rules, which seem like some sort of version of War.  The gamer in me has the urge to teach her the “right way” to play, but that same gamer is rather proud she has her own rules and is completely happy playing that way.

Fantasy Forest Books and Their Great D&D Art

I took snapshots of some of the interior art from the Fantasy Forest books.  The picture quality isn't the best, but I tried.

Mario Macari, Jr.'s art from The Ring, the Sword, and the Unicorn

Michael Fishlel's art from Ruins of Rangar

Pamela Summertree's art from Dungeon of Darkness

Mario Macari, Jr.'s art from Star Rangers and the Spy 

(Star Frontiers!)

Fantasy Forest Books – Welcoming Kids to the Dungeon One Choice at a Time

In my box of adventure, I found four Fantasy Forest books:

#1 The Ring, the Sword, and the Unicorn by Jim “Gamma World” Ward

#2 Ruins of Rangar by Michael Carr

#5 Dungeon of Darkness by John Kendall

#6 Star Rangers and the Spy and the Spy by Jean Blashfield and Beverly Charette

So far, my wife and I have read #1 and #2 to Chaos, with #1 being her clear favorite. It’s pretty hard to beat a unicorn for little girl appeal. Although Ruins of Rangar has a pegasus on the cover, it more or less has a cameo appearance and Chaos wasn't too impressed.  I’m guessing the cover of Dungeons of Darkness is a bit too creepy for her and Star Rangers might be too sci-fi (she has never shown much interest in spaceships and such).


There has been much hullabaloo about WotC's new D&D for kids venture, Monster Slayers.  They have a free adventure, Heroes of Hesoid,  here: link and a Monster Slayers story book here: link.   Troll Lord Games is onto this as well with their Harvesters RPG (as well as the eternally delayed Castles & Crusades Basic).

I think this is great. Like the cigarette industry, we need to hook 'em while they're young!  Seriously, though, it is great to see people realizing there is a market for kid-friendly RPGs.  When I started this blog, I thought I was in a minority, but I've realized there are tons of gaming parents out there.  A lot of them, myself included, want a way to share our hobby with our kids.

I think WotC, and any other gaming company, would do well to revisit Choose Your Own Adventure-style books.  They really are a great gateway to the fun of role playing.  My daughter can't get enough of them.  What is really cool is that these books use the monsters and the artistic styles from the game.  The dragon art in The Ring, the Sword... is done in the same style as the 1st edition Monster Manual and stirges attack the the heroes in the Ruins of Rangar.  (I'll put up some pictures of the art in a bit.)

I keep thinking of this quote:
Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed. - G. K. Chesterton

My daughter is kind of a scaredy cat, much like I was at that age (hell, I would literally run out of the room when David Banner hulked out on the old "Incredible Hulk" TV show).  But these books have the kid as the hero (or at least as a brave side-kick).  In The Ring..., the kid is riding a unicorn and battling orcs and dragons.  In Ruins..., the kid is wielding a dagger and kicking skeletons to bits (notice how the hero is smart enough to not even attempt a piercing weapon. ha!).  This sort of crystallizes an un-hearlded benefit of gaming for kids.  Sure, there are monsters in it.  But the players' goal is to slay those monsters, overcome traps, and save the day.  More importantly, they have the means and powers to do so.

To this day, my wife is amazed that I, as a kid, didn't have nightmares about all those pictures in the Monster Manual.  Like I said, I was a chicken-shit.  So why didn't I?  Because the monsters were there to be slain.  That goblin only had 1 hit die and I knew my 3rd level fighter could bash its brains in with his morningstar.

These Fantasy Forest books are great way to show kids the fun of gaming.  The kid gets to be the hero and, really, who doesn't want that?

A Box Full of Adventure

I stopped by my parents’ house last Saturday to say hi and borrow a power-washer.  My dad put me to work and had me climb up into the garage attic to bring down a bike carrier.  While I was up there I found a box full of my old Choose Your Own Adventure books, both official ones, as well as a bunch of clones, including a goodly amount of TSR’s Endless Quest books.  The fact that this box survived my father’s great purging of “junk” a few years back is a miracle (I had to dig my Battle Masters game out of the trash during said purge).  I can only guess that he didn’t make it up into the attic, so this box were spared.

These books brought back a ton of memories.  I knew I had been a huge fan of these books, but I didn’t realize to what I extent. I think Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) books are still being published, but are they popular?  Anyone with kids know? I seem to recall them being very big when I was a kid.

The box had a total of 22 books. Here is the break down:

- 6 Choose Your Own Adventure books
- 5 Endless Quest books
- 1 Heartquest book (a version of the Endless Quest books, but for girls: “In a HEARTQUEST book, you, the reader, are challenged to PICK A PATH TO ROMANCE AND ADVENTURE.”  What can I say? If it had a D&D-like cover, I would buy it and read it).
- 4 Fantasy Forest books (more on these below)
- 2 Explorer books
- 1 Zork book
- 1 The Choice is Yours book
- 1 The Secret Files of Dakota King book
- 1 Dragontales book (this, not the kiddie cartoon).

I knew I read a lot of these growing up, but I thought I had checked most out from the school library.  Speaking of that, I remember having some sort of library project in 6th grade and having to use certain books from a librarian-provided list.  A CYOA book was on that list (I think it was this one: link), so naturally I choose it.  Oh no, the librarian made it clear that book wasn’t appropriate and shouldn’t have been on the list because it wasn’t a proper book.  She actually had a derogatory term for it, but damned if I can remember it.  Yeah, gasp, heaven forbid someone produce books that encourage kids to read.

Sort of ironically, it was through the Endless Quest books, not D&D manuals, that I first learned of the Satanic criticism of D&D.  I showed Dragon of Doom to one of my neighbors, a young boy from the South (I was living in Wisconsin at the time) and he said, “Oooh… that is a devil book.”  I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.  Clearly, that was a black dragon on the cover, not a devil. 

On a side note, that kid had quite a handle.  His first name was “Ikey” and his last name, which I won’t post to protect is anonymity, was the most Greek last name I have ever heard.  I also recall telling him we would have flying cars in the future and his response, was no, Jesus is coming back in the future.  I have nothing against that belief (heck, I’m Catholic), but that just struck me as, well, a rather heavy thing to come out of a 6-year-old’s mouth (I was 8).

Anyhow, more than any of the other books, I’m thrilled to have found the Fantasy Forest books, which are Endless Quest books for younger readers.  My wife and I have read two to Chaos so far and she loves them.  I’ll detail them more later this week, but for now I'll just say I think Wizards of the Coast would do well to revisit this style of books.

Books I Read to My Kids: Greek Myths for Young Children

Since I'm on a Greek Mythology roll, I wanted to share a great book for kids: Greek Myths for Young Children

I gave this book to Chaos for her fourth birthday. At the time, she wasn't taken too much with it, but really enjoys it now. Although it's very colorful and has plenty of illustrations, it doesn't have pictures on every page.  That sort of put a damper on her interest at first, but now, at five, she doesn't seem to mind. I also think some of the creatures used to frighten her (she wasn't too big on the picture of the Cyclops).

Actually, we've returned to this book because I ran out of myths to tell her.  When I put Chaos to bed at night, I often tell her a Hercules or Odysseus story.  "Hercules and the Hydra" is one of her favorites ("Cut! Burn! Cut! Burn!"). When my mental stash was depleted, I busted out this book again.

It's a great book and, although the tales are bit abridged, be warned, they aren't censored and no happy, Disney-like endings have been added.  When Bellerophon, after riding Pegasus to slay the Chimera, gets cocky and decides to ride the flying horse to Olympus, he still ends up plummeting to his death.  That certainly isn't the kind of ending my daughter expected.

I'm not sure what she makes of those kinds of things yet, but she always asks for "one more page," so I take that as a good sign.