What is this Archive?

This archive preserves many of the posts made to the Holmes Basic D&D Community on the late G+. I created this Community in late 2012, not long after Communities were added, and it existed through April 2nd 2019, when G+ was shutdown for non-commercial users. By the end there were over 600 members. While most were not active, there was always a core group of commenters to keep things interesting.

There are over 2100 posts included, made by myself and various members of the community, each accompanied by its original comments. While a number of posts (~500?) are shares and thus duplicative of posts on the Zenopus Archives blog, these have been saved because they include different comments. The other ~1600 posts fall into two broad categories. I often used G+ for quick shares of images and links of interest to the community, material often not posted to the ZA blog. And then there are the many posts by other members of the community. A big thank you to everyone who participated!

Due to limitations of the application (Google+ Exporter) used to extract the posts from G+, every post here is labeled as "Posted by Zenopus Archives", whether or not I was the original poster. However, the identity of the original poster is preserved as one of the labels, and as time allows I have been slowly adding this information to each applicable post. All of an individual's posts can be found by clicking on the relevant name in the Label list in the right sidebar (only visible in desktop format). 

Most of the originally posted images are preserved. I went through the entire blog and manually downloaded and re-uploaded the images so they wouldn't be lost. The harvester preserved a link to each image in the relevant users Google+ "Album Archive", but Google may delete these at any time going forward. A few images seem to be missing; I don't know if the harvesting program failed to grab them or the original source had been removed. I've also noticed that a number of links are missing as well, and I will eventually re-add these.

All of the posts originally made to the Holmes Basic G+ Community are tagged with the label "Holmes Basic: Discussion".

I added a few other posts of interest that I made to other communities or to one of my G+ collections. I will try to note these here:

~50 posts from the OD&D Community. These are each labeled with "Original Dungeons Dragon (OD&D): Discussion" or "Original Dungeons Dragon (OD&D): Links & Resources" or "Original Dungeons Dragon (OD&D): Classified".

~70 posts from the OSR Community. These are each labeled with "OSR: Discussion" or "OSR: Free Stuff" or "OSR: News".

~150 Public Posts. These are labeled only with "Zenopus Archives" without a "Holmes Basic: Discussion" label.

For each of the above, click on the relevant post to bring up all posts with that label.

Places to find me after G+ vaporizes

This combines two somewhat duplicative posts I made on G+:

3/31/19 public post, which had no comments

Some places to find me after G+ vaporizes:

The Blog will continue of course: http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/

Facebook Profile (as Arch Zenopus): https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009452211671 Facebook Holmes Basic Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/holmesbasic/

Click the three dots to the right to expand this and see more:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZenopusArchives
Tumblr: http://zenopusarchives.tumblr.com/

MeWe Profile: https://mewe.com/profile/5bbbd5042ee15f0a6cffff75
MeWe Holmes Basic Group: https://mewe.com/group/5bbbd60c2ee15f0a6c696d7b

OD&D Discussion Forum: http://odd74.proboards.com/ (must join to see all subforums including Holmes Basic, but I am a mod & can approve you. Email me at zenopusarchives at gmail.com)

Knights & Knaves Alehouse forum
Dragonsfoot forum
Acaeum forum


3/21/19 post to the Holmes Basic G+ group, the comments below were made to this post:

G+ vaporizes on Apr 2. Thank you all for joining and participating in this community. When I started it in 2012, not long after they created Communities, I had no idea if there would be enough interest to keep it alive. Happily it turned out there was. I'm going to miss it. I will be archiving many of the posts as a second blogger blog, and I will of course keep blogging, but I tend to save posts there for more extensive writings, versus here where feel more comfortable posting quick links to news or pics or ideas or discussion topics.

Options to continue our conversations include:

The Holmes Basic MeWe group:
https://mewe.com/group/5bbbd60c2ee15f0a6c696d7b
I don't entirely like MeWe, but it's most like G+ in format. I will probably start using it more once this group is completely gone.

The Holmes Basic Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/holmesbasic/?ref=bookmarks
When I post there, I get some likes but not too much conversation. It was started by someone other than myself, and while I was added me as a moderator, I don't feel as comfortable as I do here posting stuff that is of more general nature (like my Conan comics earlier today).

Zenopus Archives twitter account:
https://twitter.com/ZenopusArchives
I've been using this a bit more lately, but obviously it's not a centralized location where anyone can leave comments.

I've signed up for Reddit and Discord but I find the formats too alien.

Gronan's Guide to Gaming

Gronan's Guide to Gaming, advice he sent out to the players of his OD&D game at Gary Con beforehand.

https://wmusswtwbf.wordpress.com/2019/02/23/gronans-guide-to-gaming/

GRONAN'S GUIDE TO GAMING

Hell, I've been running D&D since before it was published. I'm not "old school," I'm PRESCHOOL! Anyway. Yes, Virginia, there are really very substantial differences between Original Dungeons & Dragons (OD&D) and later editions. There are also differences in the way I run D&D, no matter what the edition.

Marvel Conan $1 reprints

How come no one told me that Marvel reprinted ten (!) Conan comics this past January as part of its $1 True Believers series?!? Just found them all at a musty used bookstore that also sells comics.

Humble Pi in a dungeon

Herman Klang wrote:

This is the room I put Zenopus Archives Humble Pie in.

https://dungeonsofklang.blogspot.com/2019/03/map-key-of-plague-year-4-humble-pie.html

Map Key of the Plague Year 4: Humble Pie

A Throne raised up on a small dais, stone, covered in dust. Also a banquet table in the middle of the room, also stone and covered in dust. On the table are three pristine well decorated cakes. They look delicious, but don't say that. Let the players ask.

Scale model of the 1st level of Quasqueton

8 x 10' scale model of the 1st level of Quasqueton! By Douglas Waltman, posted on FB in the Gary Con group. May be coming to Gary Con next year.

https://m.facebook.com/groups/58339157369?view=permalink&id=10157195812027370

Larry DiTillio has passed away.

Originally shared by Zenopus Archives

Larry DiTillio has passed away. He is best known in RPG circles for writing The Masks of Nyarlathotep, a multi-chapter world-spanning adventure for the Call of Cthulhu RPG. But he also co-created She-Ra while writing for He-Man. #callofcthulhu #shera
https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/larry-ditillio-she-ra-he-man-obituary-j-michael-straczynski

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/larry-ditillio-she-ra-he-man-obituary-j-michael-straczynski