Petty Gods and trivial concerns

With the fair range of readers this blog seems to enjoy, from various areas of gaming and beyond it, not every reader with a potential interest might know about the status of the Petty Gods project.

Short version: Greg Gorgonmilk is taking over and calling for submissions old and new.

Long version: Petty Gods was a project inspired by Blair here at Planet Algol and set moving by James Maliszewski here at Grognardia. The idea was to source descriptions of obscure gods with game stats suitable for old school fantastical roleplaying. In simple terms, a bit like The Unknown Gods meets Terry Pratchett's Small Gods. There's an example here. Entries were sent and art created, but it seems layout was never finished.

Grognardia is one of the oldest blogs associated with the OSR, a movement of gamers interested in early forms of roleplaying, and especially early Dungeons & Dragons. For a few years the blog was one of the major hubs, a source of information, reflections and arguably revisions on the early years of D&D and tactical roleplaying as a whole. A significant part of the structure of current thinking in the OSR, and therefore quite possibly also the next official edition of D&D, may well lead back to, or through, one or more of James' posts.

James has been quiet for some time, apparently for personal reasons, leading to debate on the exact status of his as yet unrealised Kickstarter megadungeon, Dwimmermount.

It also seems to have contributed to a fin-de-siècle sense the OSR is out of steam, but this analysis seems not to recognise the breadth and depth of the movement. To judge by the response to Greg's first post, compared to James' say, the concern looks off the mark. It's a transfer: not an end, more an End. Petty Gods seems to be a rallying point.

Once again then: Greg Gorgonmilk has stepped up and is now accepting submissions.

If you feel this old school aesthetic and have a petty god worthy of praise, or can draw one, you can play a part. Start a religion, get published and change history in one move.

Update: A stop on gods for now, but various items are still needed - see Greg's sidebar.

Update: Greg has just linked to what he's calling Original Petty Gods, the first edition.

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Life, but not as we know it (1)

Following on from the mention of Discworld in the last post but one, and all the talk of the scope of fiction, here's the first of a series on especially unusual fictional lifeforms.

This one's from Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett, possibly one of the first places you'd expect to find something out of the ordinary (except maybe The BFG..?). I'm a latecomer to Pratchett, and for many years was a bit closed-minded about the Discworld series. Now I realise what I've been losing, with the earlier books at least. It's good, unexpectedly old-fashioned fun, unpretentious. Pratchett's one of us. What I like most is the way we're given idea after deep idea seemingly only as a catalyst for the jokes.