More Bloody Books!

Today, my friend Mike and I braved the freeways and took a relatively smooth drive south to Long Beach, California to visit Planet Books for our very first time.

Planet Books was one of the many vendors we saw at the recent Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Collectors Show, but neither of us really carved out any time to pore over their wares there so we thought it might be fun to pay them a visit.

The shop is located inside an old warehouse and is quite large, offering thousands of books (including first editions, signed books, and Easton Press leather-bound editions) as well as vintage toys, comics, vinyl records, and other collectibles. Organization is tenuous at best with books stacked floor to ceiling in some places along with dusty cartons on the floors and mountains of file boxes containing choice bagged items set aside for book fairs and the like.

We spent the bulk of our 90 minute visit perusing the shelves of science fiction, mystery, and western paperbacks and both of us came away with armloads of terrific finds, most of which were but a dollar each. All told, I walked out with 13 (lucky) books and spent less than $20.

Note that while the aforementioned boxed and bagged books are priced (and the prices all seemed quite fair for the items I saw), the majority of paperbacks we grabbed were unmarked (assumed to be a buck each) with the owner of the shop making a few on-the-fly price declarations during checkout.

Here's what I walked away with today:

1. Beachheads in Space edited by August Derleth (includes a short story by John Wyndham, one of my favorite authors)
2. Donald A. Wollheim Presents the 1981 Annual World's Best SF (great collection and a DAW book)
3. Donald A. Wollheim Presents the Best From the Rest of the World (DAW)
4. Not Long for the This World by August Derleth (a collection of short stories)
5. Six-Gun Planet by John Jakes ("This is the story of the planet Missouri..." 'Nuff said!)
6. Spell of the Witch World by Andre Norton (the very first book in the yellow-spined DAW Books range)
7. Swords Against Death by Fritz Leiber (I already have an earlier, signed printing of this, so this is a reading copy)
8. The Haunted Strangler by John C. Cooper (cool movie tie-in with a photo of Karloff on the back)
9. The Ship of Ishtar by A. Merritt (a really nice and clean (apart from a little corner damage on the cover) Avon printing)
10. The Silkie by A.E. Van Vogt (another yellow-spined DAW book)
11. The Wizard of Lemuria by Lin Carter (Carter's very first novel)
12. Time to Come edited by August Derleth (short stories)
13. Yesterday's Children by David Gerrold (I have another edition of this, but Gerrold is one of my favorite authors, thus I must collect)

If you ever find yourself in the Long Beach area, do make a side trip to Planet Books located at 1855 Freeman Ave, Signal Hill, CA 90755.

Read on, all!

My Other, Other, OTHER Hobby

I have always been an enthusiastic reader and a lover of books. I still have vivid memories of my elementary school library (Town Line School in Spencerport, New York, by the way) right down to the physical location of many of the books I consumed during those formative years. Thanks to my father's passion for good science fiction, there was also a decent-size home library I was able to mine as well and thus, by the time I was moving on to Junior High, I had already read dozens of books and short stories by the likes of Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Richard Matheson, Jack Vance, and so many more.

Over the decades, I have continued to love reading and my list of favorite authors includes Alfred Bester, John Christopher, David Gerrold, Frank Herbert, John Wyndham, and many others, and I have endeavored to collect their published works in a variety of editions. This has led to me being a casual collector of books and one way I celebrate this is by attending the annual Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Collectors Show held here in March. While this year was promoted as the 45th such event, I have only been attending since 2002, back when it was still held at the labyrinthine Mission Hills Inn and special guests included people like Ray Bradbury, George Clayton Johnson, and Frederick Pohl.

Photo Courtesy the Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Show

This year, the show returned to the Glendale Civic Auditorium where it has been since 2014 and I wound up with 21 "new" additions to my collection, many of which were either impulse buys or purchases based on recent recommendations. I also grabbed a couple volumes to fill gaps in my collection or to replace badly worn copies of books I already own.

All told, I spent about $65 and I'm really happy with the stuff I brought home.

A few highlights include: 

• Six books in the Dray Prescot sword and planet series written by Alan Burt Akers. Artist Tim Kirk was in attendance, so I was able to get him to sign one of them.
• Flash Gordon: the Witch Queen of Mongo by Carson Bingham (the only book in this short, six-book series from the '70s that I didn't own).
• Shot in the Dark, a collection of 23(!) short science fiction stories by a number of terrific authors including Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Jack London, Isaac Asimov, and others. It has a great cover by Herman Bischoff!
• The Science Fiction Galaxy, a collection of 12 stories by various authors, but in a unique, sturdy, hardback format with a bright yellow cover.
• Alien Skies by Peter Dagmar (a lesser-known SF author) - his first novel, published by Digit in the UK.
• Atoms and Evil by Robert Bloch (author of Psycho), a collection of his stories published by Fawcett/Gold Medal.

It's a pity this show only comes once a year, but then again, it gives us plenty of time to READ a lot of these books in anticipation of the next event.

I hope to see a few of you back for the 46th annual show in 2026!

A "Secret" Adventure for the Sixth Gun

The Sixth Gun Roleplaying Game, the very first RPG I wrote for Pinnacle Entertainment Group, was originally released in late 2015 after a successful Kickstarter campaign a few months earlier.

In 2018, after crowdfunding the Savage World of FlashGordon, my second RPG for PEG, I was contacted by Oni Press, publishers of the Sixth Gun comic, about contributing some new game material to an upcoming deluxe reprint collection of said comics.

As I had loads of notes and undeveloped ideas for the setting still lurking on my hard drive, it was easy to dip into them and find something suitable for this volume and I hoped that by saying yes to the idea, it might help bump sales of the RPG from comic fans who weren't already aware of the game.

The resulting adventure was Mimihqueh: Temple of the Dead, a sequel of sorts to the featured location's first appearance in issue #42 of the comic where the heroes (Drake, Becky, and Nidawi) hid from the Knights of Solomon and the King of Secrets in an ancient temple occupied by unliving Aztec priests.

I pored over each panel of that particular issue to pull exact details from the illustrations, reproducing an accurate map of the mysterious pyramid down to the names of each represented god in the forms of towering statues.

I came up with a unique treasure (the Heart of Tlahuillo), statted up a few choice enemies, and penned a short adventure suitable for a single session of play (perfect for a convention game or a one-shot with friends).

Accompanying the adventure was a selection of relevant rules pulled from the core book, a posse of six pre-generated characters originally created for the Sixth Gun Companion, and a short comic from Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt that introduced all those characters to the world of the Sixth Gun.

The resulting section devoted to the RPG runs 26 pages in that oversize collectible volume and if you're a fan of the setting and you can get your hands on a copy (it is still listed on Amazon and I occasionally see them on eBay for reasonable prices), it is very much worth it!

I intend to reach out to a few people to see if I can at least share the adventure with you all at some point down the line. 

Watch this space, amigos!

We're Only Making Plans for Kubla

As I've mentioned in previous posts, KublaCon (now known as KublaCon PRIME) held each year over Memorial Day weekend, is my absolute favorite west coast game convention and this year I am once again returning as a "Special Guest." 

At this point, I have not been contacted about appearing on any panels, but as a special guest, I always feel compelled to at least run a few games and make myself available for conversations, signings, or whatever the convention asks of me. 

This time around, I am running an adventure for the Sixth Gun Roleplaying Game for Savage Worlds as well as a Pathfinder® for Savage Worlds adventure as part of Savage Saturday Night. 

The Sixth Gun RPG based on the critically acclaimed comic series by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt, was the first setting I wrote for Pinnacle Entertainment Group and this particular adventure titled Happiness & Contentment is one I originally wrote and ran at GenghisCon 42 back in 2019! As it has been a few years since I did anything with the setting, I thought I'd blow the dust off this scenario, update a few things, create some sexy bling for the table, and present it to players once more. I'll be running this one on Friday at 2:00pm and it's Event #43 if you're interested in giving it a whirl:

"After a long, hot trek through the desert, a small town in the middle of nowhere is a welcome sight indeed. But something is definitely amiss in Contentment, Arizona! This is an adventure for the official 'Sixth Gun Roleplaying Game' written by your GM, Scott Woodard, and based on the long-running, award-nominated Supernatural Western comic series created by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt."

 

For Savage Saturday Night, I'm running Crypt of the Everflame for Pathfinder® for Savage Worlds. This adventure was originally published for first edition Pathfinder® and then lovingly converted to Savage Worlds by my friend Chris Valentine. I played it at Gamehole Con 11 last year and had a great time so I thought I would slip behind the GM screen and offer it at KublaCon! This is a pretty straightforward dungeon crawl, but it offers a number of challenges that should make for a fun four hour session. Find it on Saturday night at 7:00pm (Event #98):

"The young heroes of the town of Kassen are ready for their coming-of-age ceremony, an old tradition in which they retrieve a piece of the eternal flame burning in the tomb of the town's founder. Yet when they arrive there, they find only the corpses of their fellow townsfolk, dead bandits, and mysterious animated skeletons. The Novice heroes must brave the traps and perils of the Crypt of the Everflame, discover the source of the corruption that has awakened an ancient evil, and defeat a menace that seeks vengeance against Kassen and its people. This is a Savage Worlds conversion of the original first edition Pathfinder® adventure."

 

Other things you'll find me doing at KublaCon are assisting with the almost legendary Friday Frenzy Flea Market and the Sunday KublaConAuction. I've been helping out with the auction at this con for the past few years and I can't imagine NOT participating. At some point in the future, I'll be sure to talk more about my relationship with game auctions. 

For more information about KublaCon, check out their site, their Facebook page, and their Discord server and I hope to see some of you at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport at the end of May!

Eighties! I'm GAMING in the Eighties!

Last week, I wrote about my teenage discovery of the horror roleplaying game, Chill back in the mid-1980s. This got me thinking about all the other RPGs that I experimented with around that time and the more I thought about it, the longer that list grew!

This was the during the so-called “Dark Times” before the internet (yes, Billy, some of us grew up before the advent of the "World Wide Web") where one learned of new games via various publications, word of mouth, rare local conventions (we were fortunate to have an annual one in our area), or just by reading blurbs on the backs of shrinkwrapped boxes or flipping through books on the shelves of your friendly local game shop. If a game looked or sounded interesting, you simply took a chance and bought it or, if you were lucky, you signed up for a session at a con to experience it for yourself, hopefully at the hands of an experienced game master.

I was fortunate that my circle of friends were all interested in roleplaying games alongside all our other shared hobbies including filmmaking, improvisational comedy, cycling, and exploring the dense, mysterious woods that surrounded our small village of Spencerport in Upstate New York.

Together we played first and later second edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (our Basic D&D days were already behind us when we became friends), but we soon began to dabble in a number of other RPGs, sometimes learning and playing a particular game just once or twice before deciding that it didn’t suit us and agreeing to move onto something else.

Throughout the ‘80s, I played, ran, or at least owned and read through all of the following. This list is by no means complete. (I still own (and in some cases still play) those titles marked with an asterisk):

• Tunnels & Trolls (1975)*
• Bunnies & Burrows (1976)*
• Gamma World (1978)*
• Villains & Vigilantes (1979)*
• Top Secret (1980) (later Top Secret/S.I. (1987))*
• Call of Cthulhu (1981)*
• Stormbringer (1981)*
• Star Frontiers (1982)*
• James Bond 007 (1983)*
• Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game (1983)
• The Adventures of Indiana Jones (1984)
• Arcanum (1984)*
• Chill (1984)*
• Marvel Super Heroes (1984)
• Middle-Earth Role Playing (1984)
• Paranoia (1984)*
• Star Ace (1984)*
• Time Master (1984)*
• Toon (1984)*
• DC Heroes (1985)
• Doctor Who Role Playing Game (1985)*
• Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game (1985)
• Sandman – Map of Halaal (1985)*
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness (1985)
• World Action and Adventure (1985)*
• Ghostbusters (1986)
• Ars Magica (1987)
• Star Wars: the Roleplaying Game (1987)
• Talislanta (1987)*
• It Came from the Late, Late, Late Show (1989)
• Shadowrun (1989)

Looking over that list of 31(!) titles, I can’t help but find myself a bit puzzled by some modern-day gamers who started their journey with the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons and have yet to try anything else beyond that despite now living in a world where there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of tabletop roleplaying games out there, most of which are available via download from sites like DriveThruRPG! I’ve heard every excuse in the book, but that’s a topic for another time.

If you have any questions about any of the aforementioned games, feel free to reach out! I have vivid memories of almost everything on that list and would love to share stories including the time I was running Chill for my friends in my parent’s basement and our table was suddenly invaded by a cascade of newly-hatched baby spiders! 🕷