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Friday 5 April 2024

Blood Sword to Dragon Warriors - part 4

We've got another set of stat blocks from the Blood Sword gamebooks, as converted to Dragon Warriors rules by Oliver Whawell. This time it's the turn of Doomwalk (the one where they go to the land of the dead) and you can get the PDF here.

The original 1980s covers were always an oddity, as they were completely different in tone from the books themselves. Blood Sword was verging on grimdark (well, the nearest you could get in a book sold to 10-12 year-olds) before the term was even invented. The covers on the other hand were cute and funny. I'm not sure what the art director at a publishing house actually did in those days. Took long lunches, I suppose.

Thanks to Wombo I've been having a ball rejigging the cover art to suit the interiors. Use of AI art infuriates some people to the point of hysteria, but you can see that (a) it's not going to replace human artists just yet and (b) these aren't for commercial use, so it's not taking away a job that I'd have otherwise hired anyone to do. However, let me just assure General Ludd's followers that I'm doing my bit as the forlorn hope against the forces of AI art by engaging real-life illustrator Inigo Hartas for the Jewelspider project.


In the video below, Grim expresses pretty much how I feel regarding the use of AI art. But I'm open to debate on this, so let me know what you think.

4 comments:

  1. How many squares can a player or monster move per round on the tactical maps? Thank you.

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    1. In the basic rules characters have unlimited movement. In the optional rules (which I prefer) a PC or monster can move a number of squares equal to half their Awareness, rounded up.

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  2. Would have been nice if we could summon the old knight Varadaxor at the Shrine of Summoning.
    If we could summon Varadaxor (from Book2), would he come back as a geriatric old knight or at his peak? Also, what rank would he be?
    Much thanks Dave!
    The option to call Tiresias with a literal walk-through was just pure magic!

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    1. That's a good question, T. I think the shrine summons people as they saw themselves in life, so Varadaxor would be in his prime. Unfortunately I didn't include a codeword in book 2 to record if you helped Varadaxor in his quest or whether the quest succeeded. Perhaps we should just say that, one way or another, he hasn't died by the time of Book 4 -- though he might be suffering a fate worse than death in service to the Lady in Grey.

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