Data Visualization of J.R.R. Tolkien's Works

Character Co-occurrence

An incredibly detailed analysis of how frequently words and characters appear in J.R.R. Tolkien's books. This was created over at Emil Johansson's Lord of the Rings Project, and has an extensive series of charts, maps, and genealogies analysing J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth. It's obvious this is someone passionate about both Tolkien and data visualization who then went on to create an interactive analysis of Tolkien's books. Johansson's data-centered look at Tolkien's books is fascinating, for me anyway, and sometimes it reveals some real surprises about the books that we may not have seen so clearly otherwise.

The interactive page over at the lotrproject is a lot better because ... well it's interactive. So go check it out if you're a Tolkien fan like me.

Castle Siege Resources

Catacomb Librarian asked a good question the other day about a few good resources on how to run a castle siege in a fantasy RPG. Since things tend to disappear into the intrawebs after awhile I decided to add the answers here so that when I went looking for them a few months or years from now I'd be able to track it down.

Usually in the past I would have just used the Battlesystem rules from D&D.

The D&D Castle guide is a interesting background info. resource -
http://www.ekkaia.org/rpg/dnd/castleguide.pdf

Junior General has a simple set of Medieval Castle siege rules. The site also has links to appropriate paper figures, castle models and siege equipment.
http://www.juniorgeneral.org/siege/siege2.html

Pathfinder has some siege engine rules here -
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateCombat/combat/siegeEngines.html

Palladium System resource:
http://webspace.webring.com/people/dn/nykodymus/Palladium_Siege_Weapons.pdf

Pendragon Siege Rules:
http://shirosrpg.blogspot.com/2010/04/pendragon-siege-rules.html

Found this on FRP Games:
http://www.frpgames.com/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=61804

Two posts on Large-scale Combat:
http://home.earthlink.net/~duanevp/dnd/masscmbt.htm
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2jplt?Siege-Warare-in-DD

Here's an interesting set of free miniatures rules. Each week of the siege, you roll for various events such as raids, skirmishes. Each week the attacker gets to build trenches, dig mines, etc.

http://magweb.n1uro.com/sample/stor/ssieg.htm

also these Siege Rules (combined for Cry Havoc and Siege with basic rules for Samouraï-
http://cryhavocgames.net/GingellFiles/CHLIST1105.rtf

Weapons vs. Armor - Alternate tables

For the folks out there like me who use the weapons vs. armour tables in AD&D here is the OSRIC alternative located at Dragonsfoot.

Weapons vs. Armor (rationalised)

Author	David Williams
Description	A set of alternative, rationalised, weapons vs. armour tables.
Last Downloaded	Saturday, 16 February 2013
Type of file	PDF File
Size of file	148 KB
Adobe PDF file - You may require Adobe Acrobat Reader to read this file. Get PDF reader from here.

In the words of David Williams;

Really, there is no fundamental difference between the OSRIC version and the AD&D version. I just reduced the weapons on the table to display only those with stats in OSRIC, which has fewer weapons than AD&D, primarily a reduction in polearms. When calculating the table, I made the following assumptions:
(1) The AC TYPE column on the original AD&D table referred to armor ONLY, not lesser armor + shield.
(2) The difference between AC 10 and AC 9 is the effect of a shield, and that effect should be transferable to heavier armor types.
(3) Since AC Type 2 could ONLY be plate + shield already, I kept that value rather than interpreting it with assumption 2 above.

White Dwarf

For the folks who aren't following Timothy Brannan's White Dwarf retrospective you might want to check it out. I unfortunately only have about twenty issues or so left in my possession. But Tim's coverage brings back some good memories: The Lichway, Temple of the Golden Spire, The Halls of Tizun Thane, Irilian. Lots of playing time spent exploring some of those great places.

A sampling of some of my favorite White Dwarf cover art:

 

Way too many cool covers

White Dwarf issue # 48

White Dwarf #44 was another one of my favorites

New Monty Python Movie

This is re-posted from over at Forbes...

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...With Robin Williams

The comedy team of Monty Python–which gave the world five years of BBC television as well as five movies–is reuniting for a new film. Their newest creation will be a science fiction film. The Pythons will be playing aliens who grant wishes to humans, just to see what happens.
Well, not all Pythons. Eric Idle has yet to climb aboard this crazy train, and Graham Chapman died in 1989. But John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, and Michael Palin are all in, as is Terry Jones, who will be directing.
Robin Williams will be joining them in a role as a talking dog. That’s right: Robin Williams and Monty Python. And if the Pythons let Williams off his leash, he could very well add a few four-letter words to the Python vocabulary. This also means that fans can look forward to the usual hijinks, as well as something completely different.
Monty Python lives in the hearts of geeks everywhere thanks to their anarchic skits, including, the Dead Parrot, Spam, and Nudge Nudge, to name a few. And then there was Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which later became the basis for the successful Broadway play, Spamalot.
According to MSNBC, filming starts in April, just in time to look on the bright side of life.
For a look at some Pythonesque humor, characterized as both scholarly and surreal, check this out.

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 To be honest I'm not sure whether this is going to be great or a big disaster, but in either case it's going to be big.

ToEE in 3D

As some of you might remember I had started off some mapping of the Temple of Elemental Evil for my Greyhawk campaign. The player modified handouts and maps are here for level 1 and level 2. Just the other day I ran across Random Wizard's 3D maps for the ToEE. Since I've always been a sucker for maps I've re-posted them here as well. [I tend to lose bookmarks quite frequently,  hopefully that trend won't continue with blog posts].

Level 1 ToEE

 

 

 

level 2 ToEE

level 3 ToEE

level 4 ToEE

As stated previously these are Random Wizard's maps. I just think they are way cool.

Retro Gaming Conversions

Although this isn't exactly my style since I tend to stick to the old school stuff pretty strictly. Mostly AD&D 1ed with just a smidge of 2ed material. For those folks interested there's a thread on theRPGSite where people are converting classes, races, and monsters from (mainly) WOTC D&D to old school (TSR) editions of D&D; Oldschool Conversions of Post-Oldschool Material. There is some interesting(if untested) stuff in this thread.

Exerpts from the first couple of pages of messages:
Fighter Subclass - The Warlord, Harrier
Races - Warforged, Tiefling, Dragonborn
Monsters - Ape, Giant, Carnivorous; Serpent Anathema; Bladewing;  Bladerager Troll; Sithilar.

There are a few additional pages of posted material -- and growing. Some interesting ideas here for those so inclined.