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Saturday, October 19, 2019

Death Notice - Lucas Puryear / Sketchbook LP in the Tenkar's Tavern Discord, Has Passed.

Lucas Puryear / Sketchbook LP has passed. Lucas was an active member of the Tenkar's Tavern Discord Server and will be missed.

Lucas's family is attempting to raise some funds via GoFundMe to help with funeral and related expenses.

I'd like to express our sympathies to Lucas's family and friends on behalf of the Tenkar's Tavern Community. We will all be lessened by his absence.

Memorial details are below:



Please join us in remembering Lucas Puryear.

We will be having a short memorial at 2, followed by eating. There will be pizza there, but feel free to bring anything else.

We welcome anyone who would like to share memories.

Please dress casually. Clothes relating to comic books, animals, or dinosaurs are highly encouraged.

Please come celebrate Lucas' life.

If you plan to send flowers, please send them to Becky Puryear at 2706 61st street Lubbock, Tx 79413

Wish I could be there - Tenkar

Friday, October 18, 2019

Deal of the Day - The GameMaster's Apprentice: Base Deck

Today's Deal of the Day at DriveThruRPG is The GameMaster's Apprentice: Base Deck. I'll have to admit I'd not come across this prior, but having looked at the offering, I'm in for the printed deck plus PDF.

Deal of the Day pricing for The GameMaster's Apprentice: Base Deck in PDF is 3 bucks. Print plus PDF is 8.99.
The GameMaster's Apprentice is a genre-and-system-neutral deck of cards that can be used as either a supplement for traditional tabletop RPGs or as a complete game engine for GM-free solo or group RPGs.  
You can view the cards' complete instructions for free by clicking the preview link beneath the thumbnail above, or view the Quickstart Guide and a set of quick-reference PnP/PoD Instruction Cards here on DriveThru if you prefer (if you wish to purchase the Print on Demand instruction cards to keep with your deck, be sure to combine the order with the deck itself! They are only six cards, and DriveThru will not print orders that small). You can also scroll down to view the card overview image and watch a video of the cards in use!  
On each card is a set of fourteen individual randomizers; with 60 double-sided cards, you can generate literally millions of possible adventures, all without having to hunt through a book or PDF for a single table! 
With these cards, you can: 
Instantly generate NPCs with randomized names, motivations, and backgrounds.
Create random events or story seeds.
Provide sensory details or random loot for characters searching or stealing.
Run games without a human GameMaster!
And more--they even work brilliantly as creative writing prompt generators, and have been playtested by 9th-12th grade students of both English and Game Design.
Those are affiliate links above. When you use The Tavern's affiliate links, you help to support all things Tavern. I thank you in advance :) 

Thursday, October 17, 2019

Halloween Sale at DriveThruRPG


Yep, there's a Halloween Sale over at DriveThruRPG with a large number of titles at 25% off. If you want to go to a specifically OSR listing of for-sale products, you can go to this link: OSR Halloween.

Don't forget to click on all the Jack-o-lanterns, as they lead to free stuff. There is one on the main sale page.


Time to make a few Tavern Picks :)

The Stygian Library - The Stygian Library is a creepily genteel dungeon set in an infinite extradimensional library. Each expodition generates its route as it explores, resulting in new locations being iscovered with every visit. Included within: Systems for generating locations within the library, including Entrance Foyers, Map Galleries, Tea Rooms,  Planetariums, Calculation Engines, Phantom Databanks, Paper Beehives, Phantom Pumps, Jarred Brains and the Sheol Computer. 40 monsters tailored to the Library, including Lantern Bearers, Skeleton Crew, Origami Golems, Guardian Shades, Lost Souls, Ink Elementals, Animate Spells, Archivist-Liches, Infernal Merchants, Escaped Fictions, Educated Rodents, Conceptual Wells and the orders of Librarians themselves. A system for searching for specific knowledge within the library's depths, as well as 30 unusual books and the secret knowledge they contain.Tables for generating treasure, dreams, rumors, and various other useful details. A unique class of Mummified Sages, post-human academics who've dwelled in the Library for decades or more. It's a big spooky library full of dangerous knowledge, spiritual automata, and ghost-fueled computers.  5.00  3.75

Eldritch Tales: Lovecraftian White Box Role-Playing - Aeons before man arose from the primordial mire, ancient creatures descended from the stars or stepped through dimensional passages to inhabit the Earth. Whilst many of these Old Ones have since passed into inactivity, the secrets they carried with them have been shared with man and now terrible cults haunt the fringes of modern society. These ancient terrors thus still menace mankind and, if the prophecies are to be believed, the Old Ones shall return to reign again over the Earth! Eldritch Tales: Lovecraftian White Box Role-Playing in an OSR rule set with its roots in the Original version of the world's favorite RPG, but instead of exploring musty dungeons, characters in Eldritch Tales investigate Mythos horrors in the 1920s! The setting and background are based on the cosmic horror tales of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and other members of his writing circle. Within the pages of Eldritch Tales you will find four character classes representing many classic pulp archetypes, occupations, rules for insanity, spells, monsters, esoteric tomes, artifacts, a starting scenario, and setting material, as well as advice on using Eldritch Tales with other White Box games. This game is compatible with Swords & Wizardry White Box and other OSR games. To accommodate all devices, the PDF purchase includes versions in both high resolution and low resolution. PDF has a bookmarked Table of Contents, as well as linked terms throughout the book.  6.99  5.24

DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS - Survive This!! - Core Rule Book - Following in the tradition of SURVIVE THIS!! Zombies! comes SURVIVE THIS!! Dark Places & Demogorgons, a tabletop roleplaying game that uses the Original 1970s Fantasy Roleplaying game rules but mutates it into this retro nightmare. It’s sleek, slender and creepy as Hell. In Dark Places & Demogorgons, you play as high school students during the early 1980s. The town you live in has had a rash of disappearances and strange happenings. The adults seem lost as what to do, the police are as clueless as ever and aren’t helping and Reverend Phillips is on another witch-hunt. It’s up to you and your friends to figure out what’s going on and stop it from happening again!  4.99  3.74

SURVIVE THIS!! Zombies! 2nd Edition - Core Rule Book -STZ-2E is an OSR RPG with modern sensibilities, utilizing the time tested rules of the old-school and fusing them seamlessly with modern mechanics and game design principals to give you a fast, fun and dangerous, thrill ride-like gaming experience. “They’re coming to get you Barbara . . .”That’s the line that started it all. Sure, there were other zombies in movies and literature prior to the delivery of that iconic quote but George A. Romero’s Night of The Living Dead kicked off the modern zombie craze. From Day of the Dead to Return of the Living Dead to Dawn of the Dead to Shaun of the Dead to The Walking Dead, people can’t get enough of The Dead! Zombies can be found in abundance in film, TV, comic books, literature, video games, board games, card games, dice games and yes, of course, roleplaying games. That is where we come in. SURVIVE THIS!! – Zombies! was the first in the line of SURVIVE THIS!! Roleplaying Games to be released by indy publisher, Bloat Games. Dark Places & Demogorgons, the second game released under the SURVIVE THIS!! banner, brought about several updates and additions to the game rules and mechanics, which brings us now to the reason for the 2nd Edition of SURVIVE THIS!! Zombies!  We wanted to not only bring STZ up to date with the changes found in Dark Places & Demogorgons but also saw an opportunity to include the additions of Backgrounds, Skills, 6 New Classes, updated Savings Throws, Out of Action Table, Usage Die, Random Encounter Table, Adventure Hooks table as well as all the additional Zombies and Classes from the PDF only Supplement: SURVIVE THIS!! Zombies! Welcome to Zombie Land.  4.99  3.74

Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #5: Creep, Skrag, Creep! - A level 0 funnel adventure for DCC RPG – specially themed for horror! The ship is adrift and a crew is dead. When the passengers of the Star of Nostro awaken, drugged and bound, and discover the crew is missing, a desperate race for survival begins. The vessel was meant to transport your group of humble villagers to a brighter future. It is now a coffin ship filled with mysterious deaths, dark plots, and a stalking horror that will not stop until it has feasted on every last soul.  Will your characters’ ingenuity be quick enough to find a means to survive, or will you too fall victim to what creeps in the shadows?  6.99  5.24


There are affiliate links above. Affiliate links keep the beer cold and the taps flowing at The Tavern. Thank you :)

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Kickstarter - Advanced Fantasy Role-playing (oh boy!)



The Advanced Fantasy Role-playing Kickstarter is a fine example - of what NOT to do if you want your Kickstarter to be a success.

Seriously, let us count the ways:

1 - Sometimes no video is better than BAD video. The angle of the camera with the paneling close behind gives one the impression that the creator is laying on his back. And WTF is up with the neck cleavage? It's not like the top of the shirt is buttoned anyway.  And yes, the video is boring.

2 - No cover art. No banner. No nothing. The only images we get are the ones you screencap from the video.

3 - No art at all. Hasn't been commissioned yet. Now THAT is confidence in one's project. ;)

4 - No sample of the rules. Because of its Copywrite. We might just steal the ideas.

5 - No PDF. Mobi instead. Because one needs to protect their intellectual property.

6 - First created. Zero backed. It shows.

7 - Argue with backers in the comments section, tell them their feedback is trolling:
Who do you think you're trying to convince? Because the end effect is to discourage those who might be willing to contribute based on what is presented. So in that, you're no benefactor dispensing wisdom, you're a troll lobbing grenades from the safe anonymity of a computer screen.
As you see, in reaction to your negative comments, several backers have rescinded. I want to thank you so much for your untiring efforts to tank my Kickstarter project. I hope it gives you satisfaction that you were able to kill someone's dream. Well done. Sleep well tonight.
I apologize if it's not enough detail for you, but I will go forward with NO funding long before I expose our proprietary systems, methods, and rules before release. That's simply a non-starter.
I suspect he will go forward with no funding.

What is so wrong about wanting details of a project you are interested in backing? I'm guessing little is written at this point, therefore there is nothing to show potential backers.

Again, Kickstarter is not a magical money printing machine. If you put bullshit in, don't be surprised when you get shit in return,

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Monday, October 14, 2019

Indiegogo - Devil of the Murder Cliffs (S&W, PF1e and 5e)



Let's see, why should one back Devil of the Murder Cliffs?

Casey Christopherson is the author. Casy does AMAZING work and has done so for years. He is also awesome on a personal level. Fins him at a convention and share some drinks with him ;) Realy should need no other reason, but here, I'll give you more:
The Devil of Murder Cliffs pays homage to silver age pulp fantasy authors of the 1960’s and 70’s and has many plot twists and turns to keep the characters on their toes. It is written by RPG adventure design stalwart Casey W. Christofferson, author of City of Brass, Bard’s Gate and dozens of other products for various publishers over the last 18 years in the gaming industry. 
Within its cover you will find:
  • New creatures and magic items
  • A challenging man-hunt through bandit infested mountains
  • Supernatural foes
  • NPCs who may be allies or antagonists
  • Full-Color Map by Robert Altbaur
  • Interior art by Casey Christofferson, Josh Stewart, and Lloyd Metcalf
  • Brilliant cover art by newcomer phenomenon Adrian Landeros
The Devil of Murder Cliffs uses the same formula introduced in previous Indiegogo releases. These focused enhancements (stretch goals), improve the product as total funding increases with new art, extra written encounters, and digital play enhancing extra such as player handouts, NPC profiles, and interviews with creators.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Kickstarter - Adventure Design Booklets (SquareHex)

"A 16-page booklet printed on heavy paper with a mix of lined, hex, and grided pages for writing mini-modules for RPGs."


I really like the Adventure Design Booklets from SquareHex / Peter Regan. This is perfect for writing out adventures on the go or while killing time at the doctor's office. The price is pretty good too - 24 booklets for 15 bucks. There is a catch though - shipping to the States was another 19 bucks - but 1.50 per booklet seems a fair price overall, so in for 24 :)

Truth to tell, I love all of SquareHex's mapping material.


Tenkar's Tavern is supported by various affiliate programs, including Amazon, RPGNow,
and Humble Bundle as well as Patreon. Your patronage is appreciated and helps keep the
lights on and the taps flowing. Your Humble Bartender, Tenkar

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