A foul looking creature bursts forth from the storeroom of the Battered Dwarf Tavern. It holds a gnawed human arm in it's mouth as it surveys the dinner crowd. The arm drops from it's mouth as it softly states "buffet." The bartender, an old and bearded dwarf, shouts to the assembled patrons. "The fucker! My wife's nephew was gettin' the next cask of ale to be brought up. I'll pay the tab of any that dispatch this beast and then go down the basement and bring up the ale! Oy, and him too I reckon, or whatever is left. Heck, I'll go so far as offer room and board for a month - but ya gotta triple up in the room, minda ya. Man's gotta make a profit still"
And so it will go from there.
No need to awkwardly set up the party - they are at the only place in town that serves hot food and beverages.
If the ghoul is too much for the party, the bartender or other patrons can assist. The small basement will lead to further adventure as they seek to discover who opened a new corridor into the basement and where did the ghoul come from.
Pocono Productivity Spell in effect ;)
As an aside, I picture the voice of the bartender to resemble that of Mr. Crabs from Spongebob Squarepants. Heh
And no, the f-bomb won't be in the final version ;)
Sometimes you overthink things, especially when you want it to be "right" and cover all bases. Such was the 3d6 hack I was working on for combat and saves for Swords & Wizardry: Light. I wanted to make sure even if the gamers lacked a D20, the material would work for them.
It was going to take up space to explain it and it wasn't going to be a perfect fit, but I was aiming for "close enough"
So, leave it to my sister to come up with the obvious solution.
"There's an app for that, right? I mean, nearly everyone has a smart phone or a tablet and you're expecting folks to have computer access to print copies and distribute. So why not just use an app?"
See, there's a reason she's a published author.
Another example of not seeing the forest for the trees and needing an outsider to point things out.
I really wish I had taken a picture of the MASSIVE map Frog God Games had hanging up at their booth of Bard's Gate at NTRPG Con. Alas, I just didn't think of it at the time. Instead, I spent a good deal of time chatting up +Skeeter Green about the various easter eggs, not just in the Bard's Gate book but the map itself.
Yes, there will be a Tenkar's Tavern in Bard's Gate (it will be recognizable and is full endorsed by your's truly). I was approached about the possibility early on in the process and would have had a hand in the relevant text myself if the wind down at work had gone smoother.
The map at NTRPG had the streets labeled and my God, there are a huge number of easter eggs to be found. Some will make you smile, some may make you snicker. Some are obvious, many are less so but from what I can gather, all will have meaning. I'm really looking forward to this release.
How important Bard's Gate to the Lost Lands setting? I'll give you +Bill Webb in his own words:
Ok, so Bard’s Gate and the pitch. Those of you who know the Lost Lands know the name Bard’s Gate. It’s basically the hub centerpiece city of both the wilds of Akados and the Sinnar Coast. This place is integrally linked to Rappan Athuk, The Sword of Air, Stoneheart Valley, The Borderlands, Barakus, The Sundered Kingdoms and about a dozen of the Quests of Doom adventures. Heck, it’s the starting point for Sword of Air. Anyone playing in the Lost Lands will benefit greatly from this book.
If you don’t play in the Lost Lands, but just need a city, it works for that as well. Ok, time to do a Grognard check—how many over 40’s used the City State booklet for every city in every area of their game world? The best part about a book like Bard’s Gate is that you can grab bits and pieces of it for use as a city adventure or you can use the whole as canon material—your choice. After all, who doesn’t want to visit Tenkar’s Tavern or Thilo’s Scriptorium? There are Easter Eggs galore throughout the city, and dozens of side quests and adventures that can be tailored for low, medium and high level player characters at the GM’s discretion.
Skeeter and Casey have done a wonderful job of expanding and re-imagining the work that Clark Peterson and I produced back in 2003-2004—this city is much bigger and better than it was before—this is not just a window dressing of the existing material. We have modified most of it and added over 120,000 words of new material.
We designed this book to be used, not to sit on the shelf (ok, the metal one is designed to sit on the shelf, it weighs too much to use at a table I fear). Care was taken to make it so you as the GM can easily read, find and follow plot lines and connections within the book and thereby maximize its utility. After all, since the player characters need to return to a city after killing the dragon and rescuing the princess, you might as well have something waiting for them that wants to kill them!
So that’s about it, except for one final note about the giant maps—these are an experiment, and literally can be used as a table cloth or shower curtain. I know they are pricy, but as we are unlikely to make many of them, our costs are fairly high. They are made of cloth and are quite durable. We had one prototype in Dallas last month, and about 20 folks wanted to buy it from us. I can say that one will be going on my wall (and used as a table mat when the party enters the City). Again, we focused this on utility. It makes it very easy to tell where folks are if the party decides to split, where one goes to the armor shop and another goes to the sewers to visit a certain guild. While not quite to miniature scale (it would have been 14 feet long), this still may be the coolest map I have ever seen (ok, geek mode off).
Thank you all again for your patronage of FGG, and I hope we continue to delight you with our books and other products.
BW 30 JUN 16
Crap. I really want one of those giant maps. No idea as to where I'd put it. Hmmm, maybe I can get my son to move out sooner than later and turn his room into my man cave. Damn, and Rach's yoga room. Still, she loved the map hanging at NTRPG Con too...
Just a quick note. +Lloyd Metcalf has a new Kickstarter out there, and not only did it fund in just a few hours, it's nearly doubled it's $1,200 goal in the first 24 hours.
This is NOT a simple re-do. The original Bogey of Swindle was a short digest one-sitting adventure. As a first attempt at adventure writing, and a first attempt at condensed adventures you can imagine that it likely had some short-comings. The original was also written for 1E/OSRIC and never contained very many details about the Goblin town of Swindle (Now Brindle) as everything was focused on a Lesser Gnome setting.
"They say the first time ain't the greatest, but if I had a chance to do all again"... well we DO have a chance to do it all again, and this time there have been many lessons learned since that first effort!
The ENTIRE town of Brindle has been added with HAND DRAWN over-land, dungeon and town maps and illustrations, with NPCs who have story hooks that could lead to many sessions of gaming within Brindle.
Personally, I'm in at $50 for the original pen and ink drawing.
Can't have enough original art.
BTW, no stretch goes. Go figure. It can be done successfully...
So, the feedback was overwhelming that a Thief class is needed for the initial 4 pages of Swords & Wizardry: Light. Of course, part of the issue is simplification and part of it is space concerns. That damn skill chart takes up some major page space.
With the input of some of the regulars during last night's Tavern Chat, I think we have a playable and elegant solution.
Climb Walls will convert to a 5 in 6 chance. All other skills will roll into on singular "Thieve's Skills Package". Chance of success is 1 in 6 at 1st level, 2 in 6 at 3rd level, 3 in 6 at 5th level, 4 in 6 at 7th level at 5 in 6 at 9th level. At 12th level, the chance for all thief abilities would be 6 in 6 - if you roll a 6, roll again and if another 6 comes up, you failed.
You could house rule the following:
All thieve's skills take 1 minute to perform. If you devote 10 minutes to the activity, you increase your chance of success by 1 in 6. If you rush and devote only 10 seconds to the task, your chance of success is lowered by 1 in 6.
There's been one oft requested addition to the Swords & Wizardry: Light Rules (which are themselves a distillation of the Swords & Wizardry: White Box Rules - folks simply want a thief class, and not the one presented in Swords & Wizardry: Core.
Now, as I've mentioned before, in an effort to keep things simple and to make the natural progression of the experience to be going from the Light rules to the White Box rules and due to the constraints of only having 4 pages to work with, a thief class will not be in the 4 page S&W: Light rules. However, I plan on releasing a 4 page Deadly Machinations (GM's options and advice) to go right along with it and a thief class could certainly appear there. Obviously, it would only cover the first three levels, but I could expand the class fully here at The Tavern.
All that being said - tell me why you'd like a thief class for Swords & Wizardry: Light. I've got some ideas on how to make it different then the Core version but I'm open to other ideas.
Last night I mentioned to Rach: "You know, you really should make a post or two at The Tavern. Not only can you write from the perspective of a female in gaming, but with your career in social work, you'd bring a different perspective to gaming than many would expect."
Rach thought about it and remarked:"Like when Merle's wife laughed out loud when I inquired if the terrorist was armed, and when he said he was, I said 'I blow him away!' I don't think she expected me to be so blood thirsty ;)"
Of course, neither did I. And this is my wife we are talking about. The director of a substance abuse treatment clinic.
And that's the key. Rach see's gaming from a different perspective than I do, and I've said it before and I'll repeat it forever: The Tavern belongs to the community and it needs more than just my voice.
Earlier this afternoon, I mentioned the plan to have Rach post once a week or so come the end of the summer to a mutual friend of ours, and he said: "Why not have a Ladies Night or some such once a week. Open The Tavern up for women in the Old School Gaming Community as a platform for them to post their thoughts, ideas, observations."
And so here we are.
There are no requirements. No "do's & don'ts" aside from "please avoid personal attacks". Write reviews, observations, house rules - whatever. Rach is brainstorming something on substance abuse as an underlining theme in an adventure, so it's really an open platform.
Ladies, if you have thoughts for a post or a series of posts, email me at trublunite AT that gmail thing with your ideas. The goal is to get this up and running by the end of the summer. It won't happen without you.
I have a bad habit of adding projects in the midst of projects. Swords & Wizardry: Light drew me away from adding everything to the spreadsheet and getting the cards out, and the surprise overwhelming reaction to the Tavern Cards interrupted me in the midst of matching up the last half of gifters and gift receivers for Chucks fundraising.
Anyhow, today a batch of cards went out. It is a bit time consuming, as I'm adding to the spreadsheet and addressing the envelopes by hand. Ah well, keeps me outa trouble, right? I'm going to try and set a minimum of 20 cards a day, hopefully more, in addition to the rest of the stuff on the plate (the upcoming 3 day weekend is NOT included in those numbers). I decided NOT to put names or nicknames on the card - you will need to do that on your end. Signing the cards, dating them and numbering them I can do without making a mistake, but the names are not mine and while practicing on scratch paper, that is where I saw mistakes (and potentially wasted cards).
I'm in NYC, so I'm hopeful the international cards will ship faster than they might otherwise have done so. We literally have worldwide requests, from every continent aside from Antartica. When the database is complete, I'll do a breakdown by general location and post it up.
I'm hoping to start playtesting the Swords & Wizardry: Light rules in about 2 weeks time, but that is not set in stone. Playtesters will be initially drawn from my current gaming group, but will expand as the summer grows and the project gets closer to completion. I suspect the initial call will go out over the Tavern's Google Group Community before opening up as a post here at The Tavern.
Screenshot of a sample page of the first adventure in the Adventure Path I fully expect a threat if I don't take this down immediately
Anyhow, they really love their YouTube videos.
This is the one from May where they show off their handmade gaming boards:
And then here is the one from today, which tells you they will be at GaryCon next year and you can reserve a gaming board for your game:
BTW, it's the exact same video, same music, different subtitles.
I also failed to find the link mentioned to download the digital maps. Of course, that could be my fault.
I find it strange that a 25 part adventure path for Pathfinder (oh, and OSRIC, but they don't seem to be available in OSRIC stats yet) is aiming it's marketing at Gary Con. Adventure paths are generally not what one thinks of when one thinks of old school gaming these days (nor is Pathfinder for that matter) And yes, I do remember Dragonlance. I suspect the folks behind Dragonwars of Trayth remember it too.
After reviewing the Kickstarter in question, they offered the same 6 adventures in the Kickstarter. I guess they were building 3d game boards over the last 20 months.
Anyhow, here's the pitch (note, nothing in this post should be construed as a threat to Epic Quest Publishing's IP, Trademarks, Copyright or any such nonsense. Really. It's a gaming related newsworthy post. So let's just skip the legal threats all together this time around)
I thought Dragonlance... never mind.
Props to the Taverner that brought this to my attention.
We need to start with a Tavern, right? Hell, it might even be run by a surly dwarf. Cenkar Talishun or some such nonsense. And we know there are going to be rats in the basement. Maybe even coppers ;)
Then, after the party gets their feet wet in the basement of the tavern, they can move on to bigger and more rewarding dangers:
At the moment I'm hoping to have the S&W: Light rules, the GM's pamphlet (Deadly Machinations) and the first 4 page adventure all ready around the same time. All free to DL with permission to print and distribute.
Far West. It's getting to the point that I no longer care about seeing the project reach completion. Now, it's all about "how many more excuses and missed delivery dates does Gareth have left in him before he finally admits he has nothing?"
He's about to "wiggle" himself out of the month of June.
This is what I'm supposed to get for my $150:
Now, I MAY at some point see a PDF out of this. Maybe.
Limited Edition hardcover? Please! With what money? Same goes for T-shirt and Art Prints. The money has been spent long ago on none Kickstarter related expenses.
My suspicion? Gareth does not want to release the PDF because then more than 420 folks will be looking for their hardcovers not to mention the more than 460 that will be demanding their t-shirts. Oh, and the art prints.
After nearly 5 years of this shit, I'm beginning to consider my $150 investment a lifetime investment in the drama machine known as Far West, The Gareth Sharka Kickstarter Lifetime Movie Event of the Half Decade.
Gaslight news
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Greetings again, I have a bit more Victorious news this week, as the
crowd-sourced game Gaslight Victorian Fantasy by Battlefield Press
successfully made i...
Friday Fantasy: The 13th Skull
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*Dungeon Crawl Classics #71: The 13th Skull* begins in grim, if slightly
bonkers fashion. The Player Characters are present at a public execution.
The th...
The Refrigerator for DC Heroes
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The DC Heroes Role-Playing Game 40th Anniversary Kickstarter is still going
strong, and new stretch goals are added all the time. I am quite excited
for ...
Stonehell: From the Sewer to the Sepulture
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Session 272 was played on 11/10/24
Morgana, wizard 10 (Rob)
Borumar, Triton Thief 11 (Josh)
Blotto, Goblin Fighter 8 (Lanse)
Nick, Fighter 9 (Me)
Koltic, ...
RuneQuest Deluxe Edition (1984)
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From the back cover:
"A Classic Roleplaying System
RuneQuest Deluxe Third Edition is a sophisticated, flexible fantasy
roleplaying system of unparalleled...
Brain Worms
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Your blade pierces his heart and the man reels against the dungeon wall
before collapsing against the floor. A few seconds of labored gasping and
then per...
The Shadow People (book review)
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*Thoughts draw them. They are sensitive, they pick up something from us,
they can track us by our thoughts as dogs can track by scent. Angry or
disturbed o...
Pirates and Necromancers, a Play Report
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Over the Thanksgiving weekend we did a lot of gaming ranging from
“off-table” domain level stuff to some solo adventures to spell and magic
item rese...
My Mince Pie Odyssey
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Undoubtedly, many of you reading this have also seen the comprehensive
mincemeat pie reviews written by Kelvin Green over at his Brainsplurge blog.
If not...
Phony Stark
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Elon Musk is a tool for so many reasons (not just because of this). He's
the modern day Thomas Edison and I mean that in all the worst ways. I saw
this sta...
Cult of the Sky Titans
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By Into the Weird Blue YonderSelf PublishedKnaveLevel 1 A blight creeps
across the land. Trees blacken and die. People disappear in the night, only
to retu...
The Rules Made Me Do It
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There are essays about this, so I'm not about to add my own to the mix.
Instead, just a couple of thoughts that always come to mind when I think of
this ...
Twelve Module Ideas
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Apropos of nothing, here are 12 ideas for modules with one-sentence
descriptors. If you like this post, write your own variant.
1. The Tophet of the Gia...
Games, Grinches, and Good Ideas...
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As we enter the holiday season, yours truly can't help but remember what
was doubtless the most important (and consequential) Christmas gift to ever
grac...
TCT - Maybe going back?
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Sometimes I just hate our hobby. Many of us are creative types and we
generate so much amazing things that my attention I end up getting lost and
halting a...
Soft-Heads - VotE Development
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The friendly Neurovore familiar to so many is only one expression of a much
more complex life-form which, over the course of its existence, takes on
many...
More VTT questions for Felltower
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I've had a little more time, so I've been spending it on learning my VTT of
choice more in order to enhance Felltower. I found a good source of tokens,
so ...
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City of Scorn is one of the centerpieces in my current Shadowdark Campaign.
I've never spent the time to draw each sector. Each of those black squares
i...
Warsmith's Words: Magic Trev the Sorcerer
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Greetings fellow Warsmiths! A very quick update to share a picture of the
latest addition to the Iron Warriors. This is Magic Trev the Chaos Sorcerer.
I...
Fokker D-II and D-III
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The Fokker D-II was a fairly mediocre and uninspired successor to the E-III
monoplane responsible for the “Fokker Scourge” of 1915-’16. The D-III
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Open Ended Games 2024 Q&A
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I’m currently running two campaigns using the *Against the Darkmaster*
("VsD") fantasy role-playing game, one set in my homebrew setting of Ukrasia,
the ...
OSR: Magical Industrial Gunboats
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Here's some useful information for river-based adventures using *Magical
Industrial Revolution*. Skip to Part 3 or click this PDF link if you just
want t...
Quick Convention Report: LongCon 2024
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[image: Quick Convention Report: LongCon 2024]
Last weekend I was able to attend LongCon in Longview, TX. I had a work
trip to the Nashville area that en...
Welcome new Greyhawk Fans!
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With the publication of the new Dungeon Master’s Guide, there are doubtless
going to be a lot of new D&D players interested in my favorite setting, the
Wor...
[BLOG] Year Eight: New Foundations
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The Hall of Mirrors stretches beyond the Two Infinities...This blog started
on 5 August 2016, making this part of the year a good time to take stock
and...
Knave Jammin’
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Ben Milton, Mr. Questing Beast, is holding an adventure jam for the release
of the much-celebrated second edition of his game, Knave. Short form,
October...
D&D Player’s Handbook 2024
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Being an incomplete, visual review of the 2024 Player’s Handbook. I got a
copy of this almost entirely on the strength of the new cover art: (This is
the “...
Concerning the Future of Traveller
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I have been a fan of Traveller for a long time and have bought various
books over the years from just about every Traveller licensee, as well as
from Ma...
Grimdark vs. Eucatastrophe
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Noisms has some interesting ideas in this post about his desire for some
depth to his grimdark, and turns to Gene Wolfe and Tolkien for relief.
Now, it ...
Musings on Sleep in OD&D – Is it Over-Powered?
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Link to discussion
Let’s look at the sleep spell in Men & Magic:
>Sleep: A Sleep spell affects from 2–16 1st-level types (hit dice of up to
1 + 1), from...
It's been a bit
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Hey everyone, I hope you are doing well! I've had a lot going on and
haven't had much time to blog lately. Heres a recap of gaming events and
other st...
Session #12 & Adventure Sites Compilation
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Firstly, I wanted to let everybody know that Adventure Sites I by Coldlight
Press is now available as a free download on DriveThruRPG. It includes my
own...
Improvised Awful Lights Missions
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Asking about The Awful Lights, a commenter asks:
*I'd love to hear about how this is run - with the Handler determining
mission location and objectives ...
Jim Ward's Adventure in Gygax's Wonderland
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Last weekend at GaryCon, many of us raised a glass to the memory of Jim
Ward, who passed away just days before the convention. Ward was very
helpful to m...
The Economy Engine, v0.2
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I made a thing. For D&D 3rd edition, so it might not be that interesting to
a lot of people. But I made it and I think it’s cool. The 3rd edition
Dungeon M...
*'s in SpaaaaaAaaaace
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A lot of SF (including a certain 2D6 RPG grandaddy) deal with ancient
aliens taking humans from Earth and dropping them, fleas and all, on one or
more w...
Last move - to self-hosting!
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As my vote regarding Substack in the “marketplace of ideas”, I’m moving to
self-hosting.
I’m now at (and hopefully staying for a long time at)
Blog: ht...
Time Rolls On
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Today is December 31, 2023, in the mid-afternoon. In less than ten hours it
will be 2024. 2023 2023 was a good year. But all years are good years. Both
goo...
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Heya folks, the 21st Salt Mine book, Import Export, has hit the digital
shelves! In the 21st book we follow Aaron Haddock-codename Stigma-as he
tries to ...
Moving On...
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So, my D&D 5e experiment has blown up the lab in a puff of green smoke
leaving my face blackened like Wile E. Coyote after a failed roadrunner
Acme trap...
How to Keep Megadungeons Fresh
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People often consider megadungeons boring. Not because the play style is
boring, but because they are in the same locale for a majority of the
campaign. If...
This is an Important Game Mechanic
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*"That's the GM's Regional Map from my AOWG. And it's a damned good
regional map. It's not a good map for a Simple Homebrew Campaign. It does
some s$&...
Clean Your Room
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Looking back at my little blog here. That last post… wow, I was having fun
playing WOW Classic! That was August of 1999 and I was having a blast… it
was ...
My RPG Zine Trilogy is on Kickstarter!
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I can't believe I didn't post about it here!
The Dead are Coming, Screams Amongst the Stars and Running Out of Time are
on *Kickstarter right now!* Thes...
Maximum HP 004, one week to go
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Just one week to go for Maximum HP issue #004, the undead. We are pushing
through stretch goals and wracking up contributions for the best issue yet.
We...
Steve Jackson Interview
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James Maliszewski recently did an interview with Steve Jackson over on his
Grognardia blog. Steve chats about the beginnings of The Fantasy Trip and
upcomi...
Undermountain Map Origins
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As documented on the Ruins of Undermountain sales page, "TSR didn't
actually use Ed Greenwood's original maps," at least not in their entirety.
This post d...
WB:FMAG Total Print Sales
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Hello Folks,
The last time I did a quick sales report was in September 2018.
I pulled reports from Amazon, Lulu and DrivethruRPG from October to current
fo...
The Minotaur for Old-School Essentials
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*Minotaur*
*Requirements:* Minimum STR 9, Minimum CON 9
*Prime Requisite:* STR and CON
*Hit Dice:* 1d10
*Maximum Level:* 8
*Armor:* Leather, including shield...
WIZARDS OF POHJOLA
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Init +0
Melee Atk
• sword or dagger +1 (1d5 or 1d3)
Ranged Atk
• hot iron sparks +3 (1d4+2 to two targets within 20' but not closer than
5')
AC 14
HD 12d...
Dungeons & Dragonmead Fall Schedule
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*As you know, I run public classic Dungeons & Dragons games at **The Loaded
Die**/Metro Detroit Game Night's Board Game Nigh at **Dragonmead**, in
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D&D Sling Damage vs. Large Targets
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In many early editions of D&D, weapons were assigned two damage values: one
for small/medium targets (i.e. man-sized) and one for large targets (giants
and...
James A. Smith, Jr. Memorial Video
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A beloved father, devoted friend, and D&D Dungeon Master extraordinaire. We
miss you! To view video, click here Memorial Video
Note - The original video...
Let's Talk About Pacing!
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The idea, I think, is that the RPG is ultimately about the long game. Even
rolling back to the early days of Basic & Expert, the goal of the player
was...
Profane and Profound Prep Part 2
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This is part 2 of my work to edit my magic items for a DMsGuild release,
along with adding cursed items along the way. Here is part 1. Bone of a
Saint 8000...
SHORT BREAK.
-
I'm going to take a break for a week or so and will start up again in the
New Year. Thanks for reading and we'll start with Level 6 when I get back.
Iain Lovecraft, 3D Sculptor
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Nope, it's got nothing to do with Cthulhu. I just did a video conversation
with Iain Lovecraft, who designs 3D miniatures and terrain. If you're not
doi...
New website!
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Slowly but surely, all the content here will make its way — in updated
form! — to my new website: timbannock.com. For fairly obvious reasons, that
site wil...
Please Update Your Link!
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If you're seeing this, it means your link to the Greyhawk Grognard blog is
out of date.
Please update your link to www.greyhawkgrognard.com (RSS feed is
h...
Mord Mar - Session 6
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We weren't able to play Mord Mar last week, due to a family funeral. This
week we played on Monday for the first time, due to kids returning to
school and ...
A Small, Quiet Plea
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There has been a great deal of discussing political agendas, social
grievances, and personal attacks within the little corner of gaming that is
my hobby....
Don’t Sleep It’s Broken
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Expanding/editing my comments from What Makes Something Broken G+ thread:
“Broken”, for me, is anything that makes normal character choices, tactics,
or ro...
Swords & Wizardry Light-Themed Birthday Party
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Last month, my wife and I helped our oldest to celebrate his birthday in
style. Ever since 2013, we have hosted a themed birthday party for our
now-15-ye...