Author: Mister Frau Blucher

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Combating Lead Rot, Part Deux

I soaked the batch of figures in vinegar overnight, and then flushed them with distilled water, scrubbed with a toothbrush, and then flushed them again.

Initially, it looked like it was fairly successful, as the lead looked cleaner. But as the figures dried, it was clear that while some of the rot had been killed, most was still there.

A few pix:

The Grenadier Standing Cleric cleaned up better, with the white dust gone from the sides of his hair, but some rot in the helmet and above his lip is now apparent. As it dried, those became more pronounced.

Continue reading “Combating Lead Rot, Part Deux”
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Combating Lead Rot, Part Uno

To those of us who collect old miniatures, the greatest scourge is lead rot. There are plenty of articles online about it, so if you are unfamiliar with it, Google is your friend. But while the process is pretty well understood, the means to fight it once it has set into figures seems to be less understood, as there are a lot of differing ways documented online.

I am adding to this chorus of fighting lead rot, as unfortunately, I have quite a few figures afflicted with it. This is the first post in a series of several – not sure how many.

In this post, I am showing some photos of several of the minis I will be treating, and then I’ll do the most common step – soaking them overnight in vinegar. In this case, we’re using Food Lion’s distilled white vinegar.

After a night’s soaking (maybe two nights), I’ll scrub with an old toothbrush. From my reading, I expect to do this several times before getting all the rot off, if it works at all. I may have to graduate to a metal wire brush, and then to an Xacto knife, to remove all the rot mechanically. We shall see!

A few pictures of what my lead rot looks like. This is not all the figures I’m treating at this time, just a few choice to show the rot.

A Grenadier Cleric. The white, powdery stuff is the obvious evidence of lead rot.

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Spam is Now a Way of Life

For the first two years, I didn’t get a single spam comment. Now I get them every day, and the total spam outnumbers the total real comments by 3 to 1. I guess everybody blogging has to deal with that.

All of the recent spam comments use a technique of appending full, three-word names at the end; some of them are hilarious, when I bother to read them. I usually just trash it, but every now and then I read the spam comments.

This one is a gem, and I had to save it:

The the next occasion I just read a weblog, Hopefully that this doesnt disappoint me up to this blog. I mean, It was my replacement for read, but I personally thought youd have something fascinating to talk about. All I hear is often a couple of whining about something that you could fix when you werent too busy in search of attention. Sonya Alphonse Lemmie

This was deposited on one of my old Megadungeon Faction posts. I love when these bots are programmed to be critical, as if that is evidence of their authenticity.

It is very enlightening to discover that I am whiner in search of attention. Thanks, Internet!

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Dice or Die, 2nd Edition

Personally, I thought the first edition was great. Evidently there was some feedback that the work was a bit too theoretical in places. Maybe; but the book encourages you to create your own world, even as it gives concrete examples of the author’s own world-building. I think it was already pretty close to perfect.

So kudos to Mr. Knoepfle for taking criticism seriously and trying to improve on an already great work. I don’t think it needed it; the book already gets your neurons firing. Original D&D is already a bare bones system, so if you work with that, I don’t get criticism that this book is too theoretical in places. But again, the author responded, and produced a second edition. Not sure how it’s changed, but if you did not get it earlier, I certainly recommend you do so now.

It is just a great read, even if you have no intention of creating your own world, for it gives an understanding of how a game world simply fits together. It can be just as inspiring for a player as it is for a dungeon master.

The book is on sale for a few days. If you put it in your cart from the link below, and buy within 24 hours of doing so, I get like 3%, at no additional cost to you or the author. Help keep my robot drones in the air and spying on the world!

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Robert E. Howard’s Birthday…

…was yesterday. I tried to post about it, but Bluehost was acting up on me and I could’t. No real problem, I am pretty sure the world survived.

I wasn’t going to say anything profound or long, just a few words about his impact, primarily with Conan. But there were probably plenty of blogs that did that, so Conan would undoubtedly see the irony in me parroting everybody else’s blog posts while talking about independence.

So instead, I’ll just say thanks.

There is also irony in my talking about increasing my blog posts…and then not doing it. I am behind in most phases of my life, now; time to change that. I will have two things done in the next week: Issue 19 of the Greywater Chronicles and a review of Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Volume 2.

See you then!

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Swords Under Distant Suns 2020 in Review

First off, I got 12 issues of The Greywater Chronicles completed, numbers 7 through 18. Pretty happy about that, and I feel the quality in craftsmanship got better as the story went on. This was right on the heels of the Shades’ Hollow game and comics, which finished up early last year. Some of the survivors from there showed up in the Greywater Chronicles. We’ll see where we go from here, but Aramaim did say she was coming for K’Tuuluu…

I got a lot of reviews done this year, of stuff old and new. The reviews have been among the most popular posts, as those of current books have been linked to a few times. I had hoped to have a review of The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly number 2 up by now, but running a bit behind. Probably still a week or so out. I also received Tales From the Magician’s Skull number five, so something about that will show up later this month.

I got a pretty strong adventure for Dark City Games finished, Uprising! Playtesting revealed one thing that needs to be improved; I am working on that today, so the adventure should be out early next week.

Speaking of DCG, we had a conversation about having an iconic world. I created the city of Redpoint in one corner of the old Tyrin map, but I am thinking something a little different. I’ve created adventures all over the city and the Stormspeake Peninsula that it is set in. I had hoped others would contribute to a shared game world, but it never really panned out. I am creating a document today for George to look at; I’ll keep you posted on that.

My fiction writing was thin last year; as in, no stories completed. Gah. Lots of ideas, though, that I hope will be the basis for a strong fiction year. My goals: one novel, four stories. Again, we’ll see…

I got a lot of terrain painted this year. I have more than I will ever need now, and I am unlikely to get much more. A couple of specialty terrain things, and I may make a few pieces myself. I have an idea for Beholder corridors.

For a stretch, I was posting almost every day here. I enjoyed that. I’m not going to let myself get too sidetracked from the blog in the future. I’d like to maintain at least four posts a week here. Starting now!

OK, there might be a few other things I missed, but I think that is it from my fiction and gaming cult perspective.

I hope you all have a wonderful year!

Bret

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Currently Under Distant Suns…

Everything and nothing going on, as usual!

Some plotting/writing progress. This should be moving faster, but other factors have been intervening. Still, pretty happy with the ideas the little grey cells are generating at this point. I want to have two solid S&S stories done by the middle of next month; I feel that is a strong likelihood.

On the topic of this here blog, two noteworthy things have been occurring. First, traffic has been way up. This has been driven by my review of Necromancy in Nilztiria, which was linked to from the DMR website and Facebook, and The Best of HFQ #1 review. I wish I was getting attention for my writing and/or comics, but if my reviews lead to bigger and better opportunities, that works, too!

The other big thing on the blog: spam comments have now exceeded real comments. Hmmmm.

Gaming and hobby-related stuff has been at a stand-still. I hope to change that very soon. I will have a post or two up on lead rot, which I have found in a few figures. There is a bit of info out there on how to contain it, and I will document my own battle with it.

I am re-reading Best of HFQ #2 right now, and will have a review up in the next week.

I guess that’s everything that’s happening around here. Hope you are all well!

Bret

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Review: The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Volume 1

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is a webzine that comes out – you guessed it – every three months. It usually features three stories and one or more poems, a cover picture, an editorial, and sometimes another feature or two. It has been going since 2009. I am not a big fan of reading on the compu-screen, but I check it out pretty regularly as the quality is some of the best on the web.

Recently one of the editors, Adrian Simmons, contacted me after reading one of my reviews of Tales From the Magician’s Skull (#4 to be precise) and asked if I would be interested in reviewing their Best Of anthologies. This, despite the enormous number of typos in that review (note to self: fire my editor). I joyously agreed, and a week later the three published volumes showed up at my door in glorious paperback.

So three full disclosure/disclaimer thingies:

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