tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181Sat, 11 Apr 2026 22:17:05 +0000word of the daytimAmazing Adventurescastles & crusadesPulprpgcastles and crusadesttrpgDaily Dose of Literatureaihrdecampaign planningcampaignsdictionarydungeons and dragonsrole-playingroleplaying gamesgygaxmerriam-websterLord of the Ringsfantasygamesgary gygaxtabletop roleplaying gamesGame PlayTTRPancient mapsbattle mapdungeon mapsfunnygamegary conroleplayingstephen chenaultstevetablletop roleplaying gamesDwarvesRole Playingarchaeologycity mapscrusaderfoodgaryconmainenostalgiarecipetlgtraptrapsvictorian3d Printable Terrain3d PrintersAdventureCanting CrewDragonsDruidFat Dragon GamesGencon CosplayGimliHorrorLittle MonstersMagicPink FloydPlayers HandbookResurgenceTLG CandC sales midnight PDFTeachersTroll Lord Sale BlogTroll's TuskWalking Dead castles & crusadesZombiesadamantineadieuapricityashwagandhabattenbostonbrigandbritannicabugbearburgerbutterbyzantinecalumetcassettecastlecevichechainchickadeechicken stockcinnabarcitruscitycookingcornucopiadicediedilbertdungeondungeon trapemailessenceeuphoniumfighter classfishflehmenfly rinkfodderfree pdf giveaway twitter trolllordgamesgencongigglemuggillgoodman gamesgrillingguddleguitarhalberdhelmetshistoryhorn of plentyhucksterhyggeiceinteresting factsinternetjason veyjim wardjocundjumperkayakkennethkenspecklekickstarterkilterkohlrabilaughterlawlouis armstronglutefiskluthiermacmapmapsmarymeandermedievalmenacemilquetoastminatorymoatmonty pythonmoosemoviesmt aihrde gods monsters YouTube sale PDF newsmulctmultiversemusicmythnoodlingocarinaoceanoddsoedoobleckorganolepticotakuoxymoronoysterspalindromepasselphillipinesphysicspicadillopicayunepiedmontpizzapoisonpopinjayportlandputtanescareduxreprobaterogerruralsalessalmonsciencescreensstate of the denstabletoptergiversationtiramisutom tullistombtometrainingtraitortreacletriskaidekaphobiattprgturmerictwitchtwitterumbrageuniversevapidvcrvermontvidkun quislingwarriorswavesweaponwikipediawolfwormholeyeggyoutubezigguratPopular Culture, Movies, History, Games, Castles and Crusades. The musings of the Brothers Chenault. Troll Lord Gameshttp://trolldens.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)Blogger7389125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-5390572696238628628Mon, 15 Dec 2025 21:19:00 +00002025-12-15T15:19:50.156-06:00 My dad was born in 1969. 1969 was Jim Steinman’s senior year at Amhurst College. In order to fulfill the requirements for an independent study course that year, he wrote the lyrics and music for a musical called The Dream Engine, as well as an accompanying book. From what little I understand, The Dream Engine is about a guy who hates his girlfriend’s parents and fights “society”. According http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2025/12/have-you-ever-seen-rain-grace-carras.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-1891561045680500364Wed, 03 Dec 2025 17:26:00 +00002025-12-03T11:26:29.937-06:00We have completed the Codex of Aihrde Expansion Dwarven Trace and it is set to be released any day. This piles on top of the recently released Expansion Tarvine Belt, and, once Trace is out, will make it 9/17 Expansion Books. The 10th Northern Waste is complete and just need my final pass and then on to editing. And the 11th, Reavers Fairway, is roughly 1/3rd written and should be finished by http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-world-of-aihrde-growing.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-1994890902698586690Tue, 18 Nov 2025 16:03:00 +00002025-11-18T10:03:07.825-06:00The ‘80s had a wonderful slew of fantasy movies that were horribly good. There is the famous Beastmaster, Sword and the Sorcerer, Krull, there was another that escapes me, it had two twins in it, who may or may not have been Playboy Playmates. There was a bunch of them. There were some exceptionally good ones as well, Excalibur, Legends, Dragon Slayer, Conan the Barbarian, and so on. It was a http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2025/11/deathstalker-steve-chenault.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-864376730188311700Thu, 13 Nov 2025 19:18:00 +00002025-11-13T13:18:26.773-06:00No small part of the games I’ve run over the years spills itself into the design work I do on Castles & Crusades, Aihrde, and the monsters I put together. Demons and devils have always been my favorite. I have long since broken them free of any real world connotations, landing them squarely in either a generic game context or, more often than not, an Aihrde-centric mythos.Orcus is a great http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2025/11/no-small-part-steve-chenault.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-4301413896825208395Tue, 11 Nov 2025 20:29:00 +00002025-11-11T14:29:31.227-06:00There was a momentary euphoric feeling as I flew. I remember the board beneath me, at a dead stop. I can see the pavement too, cavorting in unnatural angles. The pavement swirled through my vision, then grass. I couldn't find the sky as my face closed with the earth and my feet dashed heavenward. Impact. The pavement bends me as my face grinds to a stop, but my torso still has a few inches left http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2025/11/tiny-pebbles-steve-chenault.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-1979516029786776337Mon, 22 Sep 2025 19:57:00 +00002025-09-22T14:57:37.760-05:00Greetings from the Troll Dens,We wanted to share an exciting development regarding our Aihrde: After Winter Dark campaign setting. We have been steadily working on our Codex of Aihrde Expansions: a series of setting expansion books that dive deeper into each of Aihrde's locales. These books offer adventure hooks, the detailed history of each region formatted usefully as it pertains to http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2025/09/free-map-codex-of-aihrde-expansions.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-7018699934063485017Thu, 11 Sep 2025 20:38:00 +00002025-09-11T15:38:19.998-05:00Greetings from the Dens!You may have noticed our silence on this campaign; we’ve had a lot going on behind the scenes, much of it out of our control. But long story short, we were set to begin building. We hooked the camera up and watched as the first equipment was unloaded. About then things came to a halt as the permitting process ran into some snags. Several weeks of back and forth saw an http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-factory-postponed-but-still-coming.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-4743014416909425951Thu, 14 Aug 2025 13:18:00 +00002025-08-14T08:25:23.973-05:00Greetings from the Troll Dens,We have some interesting news. A little bit of a setback, but nothing the trolls aren’t used to.As many of you know, particularly those backing this campaign, Troll Lord Games purchased a 5-acre plot last spring and have been working toward building our print facility and warehouse there. Once purchased, we set about designing two buildings and then began the http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2025/08/an-important-update-re-tlg-factory.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-6650787867882464391Mon, 21 Apr 2025 14:43:00 +00002025-04-21T09:43:19.098-05:00State of the Trolls, April '25Made in U.S.A., International Trade, TariffsWith all the recent news about tariffs and trade wars, and the potential damage spreading through our community, coupled with the host of curious and angry comments online I thought it is a good time to put out some kind of public statement concerning Troll Lord Games and the manifold projects we have in the hopper. I’ll http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2025/04/state-of-trolls-april-25.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-20244218757220139Fri, 06 Dec 2024 18:22:00 +00002024-12-06T12:22:35.540-06:00State of the TrollsIt has been a momentous few years since my last State of the Troll. A great deal has happened since, from the OGL conundrum, to the addition of employees, revamping old infrastructure, rekindling old relationships,  and other sundries. Below we'll tackle all of this as well as dive into some places we’d like to go.I do not want to spend a great deal of time on who we are http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2024/12/state-of-trolls-2024.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-4042075679217131831Fri, 02 Aug 2024 04:23:00 +00002024-08-01T23:29:10.786-05:00 Out trip to Gencon took us up through the Arkansas Delta country, and into the boot of Missouri, across the Big Muddy and on into the sprawling flats of southern Illinois and Indiana. It is a marvel to travel in this part of the country. When people think of the bread baskets of the U.S. their minds always go to the Great Plains, but they forget the never-ending fields of corn that mark http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2024/08/plywood-memories-from-gencon-to-vegas.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-5162676421288843199Thu, 01 Aug 2024 03:21:00 +00002024-08-01T22:08:13.980-05:00We left Little Rock in the late morning in a truck loaded with books, racks, luggage, a cooler of Dr. Pepper, and all the other sundries one takes on the road. We crossed the Upper Delta of Arkansas, those flat lands of rice fields and soy beans, first on 40 and then hanging a left onto 55 and on up to the show me state. Crossing into Missouri somewhere after noon we headed on to Sikeston. The http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2024/07/on-road-to-gencon-interstate-57-dave.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-2792077581358001103Mon, 22 Jul 2024 21:56:00 +00002024-07-24T16:38:57.579-05:00 As I wander ever deeper into the world of UFO sightings I keep finding ever more interesting parcels of information. For instance, a Japanese astronomer noted, in 1949, a giant explosion on Mars (December 9 I think). He theorized that it had to be an atomic explosion because of the size of the dust cloud. Were the saucers coming from Mars?There are hosts of these small things that roll http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-saucers-unique-spin.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-4572937700439901889Tue, 16 Jul 2024 17:59:00 +00002024-07-16T14:23:56.361-05:00I'm still looking for a good history of the UFO phenomena in the United States and beyond. Preferably one that begins in the post war period, the "Atomic Age" (what a great name for an age too, we are stuck in the Information Age, or have we left that and entered some other dystopian Age as yet uncatagorized) and carries it through to at least the 1980s. These years seem to be the golden years ofhttp://trolldens.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-sense-of-urgency-in-time.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-3516821964830340999Fri, 28 Jun 2024 14:15:00 +00002024-06-29T21:11:14.512-05:00Recently I took a trip to New York (the city) and needed something to read that I could easily carry on the plane. I don't really buy paperbacks anymore but still have my rather large collection from the '80s. I poked around and found a book I hardly remembered reading, but whose content echoed some vague satisfaction from when I first read back in '83 or '84.  I plunged into on the http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2024/06/songs-from-drowned-lands-kernaghan.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-126199531186147040Mon, 03 Jun 2024 18:03:00 +00002024-06-03T14:08:36.221-05:00It is presumed in Hell that the plane is one of structured law. That Hell is a realm governed by the dictates of its occupants and creators. That it is one of continuity and design, of purpose and patterns. That Hell’s decalogue governs all things there and all those who inhabit it. This is not wholly the truth, for Hell is also governed by evil, and evil is petty, vainglorious, vindictive, http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-presumption-of-hell.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-5599682951147913345Wed, 29 May 2024 22:40:00 +00002024-05-29T17:40:54.978-05:00 I've been working for Troll Lord Games for 25 years now. That's a fair bit of time and it has been an extremely busy and vibrant quarter century. Notice I don't use the word successful, because it has not always been that way. There were some hard fights along the way, most of the way. And I suspect more to come. So many things have happened or we have been a part of that it is http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2024/05/i-think-ive-forgotten-more-than-i.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-4871315543535565717Tue, 28 May 2024 21:01:00 +00002024-05-28T16:06:15.855-05:00I kicked back and took a little time to watch The Last Stop in Yuma County last night and I have to say, I was NOT disappointed. It was riveting from start to finish. It is a beautifully shot movie, capturing the Arizona dry heat in this not too glaring yellow wash. I felt I was there. The story is, very unusual, with some interesting bordering on wild turns. Everyone in the movie carried ithttp://trolldens.blogspot.com/2024/05/movie-recommendation-last-stop-in-yuma.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-8178417599956385041Fri, 24 May 2024 15:41:00 +00002024-05-24T10:44:10.919-05:00 I feel as if this is the typical office of an RPG publisher. Maybe. Maybe not.  This was taken in and around 2007 I suspect (see previous post). On the left you have a flail or a morning star as I like to call it. The fan of course. A printer with instructions written on the front of it. A pile of indiscriminate paper, which if I remember correctly led to the big metal 1950s http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2024/05/memories-from-office-of-game-publisher_24.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-3787305964790500352Thu, 23 May 2024 19:07:00 +00002024-05-23T14:10:24.881-05:00Everywhere I look across social media I seem to be encountering two things. Economic news about the pending commercial real estate collapse, and the movie Office Space. The former is vaguely interesting to me, as I applaud the work-from-home movement (better in the long run for everyone, from employees to employers and on to the tread on your tires), and the latter is one of my favorite movies. http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2024/05/memories-from-office-of-game-publisher.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-4503889758559598597Wed, 22 May 2024 19:28:00 +00002024-05-22T14:32:26.197-05:00Some time ago, I think around ’04 or ’05, Todd Gray and I were coming back from Origins up in Columbus, Ohio. We were in Old Blue and had no camper shell. I can’t imagine why we went to a convention without a camper shell, but the cause and effect of such things are best not riddled over much. We tarped the cargo of course, but not much more than that. At any rate, we were moving along as http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2024/05/memories-of-traveling-publisher-for.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-6006108836909773910Tue, 21 May 2024 19:03:00 +00002024-05-21T14:03:38.743-05:00I sometimes wish that I could go back in time, stop the fellow I was then and tell him… What? I don’t know exactly. Maybe I just want to be in his shoes with the knowledge I have now.But where would the fun in that be, knowing the end in the middle? One of my fondest memories from the early days of Troll Lord Games is a night, I was laying in the bed of the truck, beneath the camper shell on thehttp://trolldens.blogspot.com/2024/05/memories-of-traveling-publisher.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-8212236665600499433Mon, 20 May 2024 21:33:00 +00002024-05-20T16:34:06.599-05:00I'm not sure what was going on in the Medieval period, but I'm pretty sure it was very different than what we think. I think those people were having ever bit a good (and hard) time as we do today. Maybe time is a flat circle....http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2024/05/this-puts-m-in-medieval-period.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-1317803759294207114Tue, 20 Feb 2024 22:18:00 +00002024-02-20T16:18:22.648-06:00For several weeks now, we’ve been hyping up the Gygaxian Fantasy World series on various platforms, Facebook, X, Instagram, and Twitch. It is something near and dear to most of us here in the Dens, even though all seven books were pulled from us in 2008. The echo of them remains, both at our tables, on our shelves, and at the outrageously high prices they cost on sites like eBay. But the more I http://trolldens.blogspot.com/2024/02/gygaxian-fantasy-worlds-introduction.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361181.post-9157619758273267991Tue, 20 Feb 2024 17:52:00 +00002024-02-20T12:23:07.481-06:00 Two Up Front, One in the Bed On our first trip to Vegas, we crossed the Arkansas River and hit I40 West sometime in the mid-morning. We crossed the forested hills of western Arkansas, passed across the border into the dry gulch country of Oklahoma, skirted the Staked Plains in Texas and New Mexico, climbed up the Colorado Plateau, and at last banked right and crossed the Hoover Dam slippedhttp://trolldens.blogspot.com/2024/02/tales-from-dens.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Troll Lord)0