TenKeep

Today I wrote flash fiction about the second level magic user spell, locate object.   *** Shakey Cat was an old conjurer, a magic user of sorts, who hung-out with rangers around the lake. He spent most of his time in camp, reading books and trying to figure out the maps. Late one afternoon, he was strolling behind a second lake and noticed he'd lost his knife, a good one with an elkhorn haft and silvered blade. Good thing , he thought, I have my locate object spell . Shakey circled his left hand and threw the spell for searching. Ninety feet of lakeside crammed inside his head. His eyes almost popped out. By the time he could walk again, the spell kicked-in. What stood out most was a heavy fish that sliced the water’s surface. He went ahead, jumped in, and swam to a pile of rocks, sort of like an island. He searched but didn't see the silvered knife. Earlier that week he’d read a ranger’s note about bull turtles that loved this lake, so he worried about his toes and fingers. M...

My friend Dan wrote some information for anyone who wants to get a notice when a new TenKeep blog is posted. He wrote: The TenKeep Blog is available via RSS. If you already know and use RSS, then you can add the TenKeep Blog to your RSS feed using this URL: http://tenkeepblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss If you don't already know about RSS, here are some details: RSS is "Real Simple Syndication." Geeks and even some real people use RSS to keep up to date on news, events, and the really cool ones use it to keep up to date on D&D. Feedly.com is a very popular free RSS reader, and you can use it in a browser or on your phone/tablet. Other popular RSS readers are in the app stores for your devices. Just pick one and pop in the URL for TenKeep: http://tenkeepblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss The RSS might be something to check out. Thanks.

Around a campfire in the craterlands, a halfling named Tombo recounted fierce fighting in the desert. Halfling farmers from Tetrada ambushed brigands near Silo Verde. Tombo's tale and the photos below are a battle report from playing out the conflict in the old school game Book of War . *** In hills at Silo Verde, we concealed ourselves in saguaro cactus. Unaware , Amorcito's brigands rode in from the west. Our slingers lured them onward, into swagger and conceit. Like dust devils, we flew down on them, two ranks of horsemen and walking troops behind. We took a hill, and pounded those left with stones, but t he coward Amorcito made a run. When all was done, we drifted back toward La Gama. Our wounded hung back in the shade of a mesa and I set-out for help. It was lucky, finding you here.  Thanks for reading.  

A good remedy for a couple weeks' illness is light, fantasy fiction, for instance: Seth Skorkowsky's story, The Vault of Sowdek John Milius' and Oliver Stone's film, Conan the Barbarian Elaine Cunningham's novel, Winter Witch All create irreversible moments - not too dramatically rendered - when something big's about to happen. *** For sure, trouble's ahead when Skorkowsky's Ahren the Black Raven slips inside an enemy fortress, locates an ancient safe, and picks the lock. The loud click echoed through the room. Releasing his breath, Ahren tugged the door smoothly opened. Thin shelves lined the bottom half, each stacked with parchments...Ahren smiled, and reached inside. Then, the door mechanism clicked again, and bells began clanging somewhere above. 'Damn it! ' *** Conan the Barbarian is darker than I remember, literally, with lots of low light scenes. Conan is indeed a mighty warrior, who's lost too much. Still, adventure called and the...

This blog is a sort of miscellanea about a thief skill: pick pockets. In the OSE rules , a 1st level thief successfully picks a pocket 20% of the time; a fifth level thief, 40% of the time. I'd never actually read the more specific rules: If the victim is 5th level, the thief's chances decrease 5% for every level above 5th. A roll twice the thief's chances for success (40% for a 1st level thief) means the potential victim noticed. The rules say a referee could use the reaction table to determine the victim's reaction ( OSE , page 34). T he reaction roll captures the idea of cunning - it gives a thief one more chance at getting away. *** A few weeks ago, in a wonderful show of 17th Century Dutch paintings, we saw Nicolaes Maes' "Sleeping Man Having his Pockets Picked" (1653).    A thrill of this painting is the shadowy area to the left, where the bandit crept to the drinker. Two others are the bandit's smiling glance and just how deeply her left hand ...