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http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/03/28/iconic-dd-artist-david-a-trampier-1954-2014/ Bleeding Cool is reporting AD&D and Wormy artist David Trampier has passed away. A lot of the "cool" factor to me on the old AD&D 1st edition was the cool art, and Trampier's art was always distinctive - as was his work for Dungeon magazine.

After a somewhat long layoff from tabletop gaming, I started to get that itch to play again after I stumbled on to a lot of OSR (Old-school Revival) blogs and material sort of by accident. After diving in, man I've really want to put together a game of weird fantasy, free booting and swords and sorcery (basically gaming based on a mishmash of influences including: Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, Fritz Lieber and Micheal Moorc o ck's books). Not to disparage anyone who likes WotC's vision of D&D, but the OSR stuff has been so compelling not just because 3.x D&D (and especially 4e) finally wore me out and sort of sucked the fun out tabletop gaming for me a few years back (especially as the rules became more battle-mat focused and bogged down with "video-gamey" elements) but my best gaming memories are still of that old red box and playing Keep on the Borderlands with all of the weird Erol Otus and Russ Nicholson art that always got my creative juices flowing. So on a whim I busted out my old Basic D&D Cyclopedia and 1st ed. AD&D stuff from boxes and I even strolled over to DriverthruRPG to pick up some retro clone stuff like Dungeon Crawl Classics and I've started to rebuild my old home-brew world from memory and I'm feeling pretty inspired; writing a lot of good material, developing some good hooks, but alas no one that I know seems the least bit interested in playing something that isn't 4e or Pathfinder. So has anybody else been bitten by the OSR bug or played an old or retro-clone game recently and has any experiences or advice they'd like to share? Edit: Apparently the author the Elric, Corum, Oswald Bastable and Von Bek novels doesn't pass the swear filter?

Hey everybody I am SO hyped to discover that Obsidian are working on a new rpg especially one that ISN'T first person which leads me to wonder...just why did isometric 3D rpgs fall out of vogue? Darklands, Wasteland, Ultima, Dungeon Seige, Fallout, Planetscape: Torment all had one thing in common; they were isometric. I suppose you could argue that as technology improved it was a natural progression to move to first person; however, I disagree, why weren't the advances in technology applied to isometric 3D? This article indicates that the genre is back in a big way, so why exactly did it fall out of favour? Best wishes

Do we have any information on the spell system? One of the things most intrinsic to the old Infinitey Engine games is the (2.5 ed ad&d) spell system. The depth and variation was really well implemented, and while not always balanced, I would sincerly hope that Obsidian is considering something of similar depth and breadth for Project Eternity. Sawyer, anyone, can you give us any info? Let me talk for a minute about what i mean when i say depth and breadth. The depth of the spell system in old IE games was a reflection of the 2.5 ed rules. Multiple resist types, save types, durations that forced you make hard choices and spell side effects (caster immobilization, chance for summoned fiend to turn on caster, etc) that forced you to think. I feel like mage battles were the best example of tactical combat in IE games being similar to a puzzle. Many spells had an effective counter-spell. All defensive magic spells had certain counters (which if not useful, are burning an available spell slot...), there was spell turning, and hell: you could even cast a resilient sphere on a fighter who was near death just as validly as on an enemy who was wreaking havoc with your back line. I appologize if this is reading a bit like a love letter, but I strongly feel like this is one of the shining features of the old school games I enjoyed so much. The breadth in the spells is obvious to anyone who played the Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale series. Beyond the cool ideas of some spells, there was a conscious effort to provide low level spells that suited low level players when they needed them, while providing good options for high level players later on. Some of the classic examples are spells that initially do 'a lot' of damage (for a low level party) but don't scale with the player level (ghoul touch, angazzar's scorcher) or others that do something like 1d4 + 1/lvl of caster (shocking grasp, burning hands i think, chromatic orb is similar). There is no doubt that the higher level mage spells were badass, but there was a breadth to the level 1 - 3 spells that let the player grow into them. You would find yourself a point where you needed to reevalute your spell selection because your power plane had shifted, and now the previously weak spells were more effective. What was great about the old system was that this was part and parcel of 2.5 ed ad&d, and if you took the time to learn the spells and read their descriptions, you were rewarded with a depth of gameplay that I haven't experienced yet again in a computer RPG. I sincerly believe there are some people at Obsidian who feel the same way, and I hope they are in charge of developing the spell system. So, with that being said.... TL;DR: how similar in depth and breadth will Project Eternity's spell system be to the old infinety Engine games?