Saturday, April 10, 2021
Review of The Vast in the Dark – a Zine About Exploring Dark and Alien Megastructures of an Infinite Realm (Guest Post)
Friday, April 9, 2021
Deal of the Day - Aryxymaraki's Almanac of Unusual Magic (ACKS / OSR)
I really enjoy the Adventurer Conqueror King System as more than just a ruleset but as a resource. The way ACKS defines classes makes for a great template that can be ported over to almost every other OSR system. Today's Deal of the Day is Aryxymaraki's Almanac of Unusual Magic for the ACKS system. Normally 10 bucks in PDF, until tomorrow morning, Aryxymaraki's Almanac of Unusual Magic is on sale for a mere 5 bucks in PDF.
Within the pages of Aryxymaraki’s Almanac of Unusual Magic, you will find four new kinds of magic-user, each of which uses magic in new and exciting ways:
- Dwarven earthforgers inherit an ancient tradition allowing them to draw on the spark of the divine found in all creation to power their magic.
- Gnomish alchemists are experimenters whose concoctions range from ‘helpful and safe’ to ‘incredibly poisonous’.
- Terran engineers are scientists and builders from another time, whose inventions and tinkering certainly appear magical to most non-technological societies.
- Warlords draw on the chaotic energy of battle, taming it with their practiced tactics and leadership to ensure that their side wins.
These new classes are built for use with Autarch’s Heroic Fantasy Handbook, which provides rules for ceremonial and eldritch magic. Because they use eldritch magic, the new spells (and tactics) described for the gnomish alchemist, the Terran engineer, and the warlord constitute more than one hundred new eldritch spells usable in any campaign that includes eldritch magic, even one that doesn’t include any of these new classes. Of course, it wouldn’t be an ACKS supplement without full builds for all of the classes and spells, and the source factors for gnostic magic, allowing you to build your own content to expand what’s in the Almanac.
Magic is all around you. Are you a forger of creation, an engineer of wonder, an alchemist of the unknown, or a lord of war? Discover what kind of unusual magic speaks to you, with the help of this Almanac!
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Thursday, April 8, 2021
Tome of Adventure Design 50% off Thru April 13th (PDF)
Frog God Games is offering Matt Finch's awesome Tome of Adventure Design at a 50% discount in PDF through April 13th, 2021. Use the above link to receive your discount.
Tome of Adventure Design is currently on the top 100 list on DriveThruRPG.
We’re proud of our books and we want people to see them, so we’d like to make you a special offer: 50% off Tome of Adventure Design. This is a limited-time offer, good until April 13th.
Tome of Adventure Design contains a huge number of random generation tables for fantasy RPGs, but that’s not why it has been a consistent best-seller in the gaming community. What’s unusual about it is that it’s a guide for creativity more than a set of quick-roll tables. Many of the tables fold into or branch out from other tables in the book, building adventures intuitively from the combination of many related elements. We hope you’ll take us up on this offer and see why the Tome of Adventure Design is our most popular adventure-writing resource!
The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern. You can catch the daily Tavern Chat podcast on Anchor, YouTube, or wherever you listen to your podcast collection.
Wednesday, April 7, 2021
Free RPG - The Lost Outpost, The OpenQuest Quick-Start Rules and Adventure
I'm a huge fan of OpenQuest. Were I to run my classic boxed sets of Pavis & Big Rubble again, I'd use OpenQuest for the ruleset. It's, IMHO, the best presentation of the RQ/BRPG d100 system that I've encountered.
The Lost Outpost, The OpenQuest Quick-Start Rules, and Adventure is a free taste of the new edition of the OpenQuest rules. 75 pages, hyperlinked and ready to roll ;)
This pdf is designed to get players and Referees up and playing OpenQuest, with the minimum of preparation.
It contains the following sections.
- Characters. A rundown of what an OpenQuest character is made up of, both in terms of numbers and concepts.
- Quick Rules. A concise version of the OpenQuest rules, enough to play the adventure.
- Combat. The rules for physical combat.
- Magic. The basic approach to magic, known as Personal Magic.
- The Lost Outpost. An introductory adventure set in OpenQuest’s example setting, the Empire of Gatan.
- A set of six pre-made characters. Players should pick one and get ready to play.
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Tuesday, April 6, 2021
Deal of the Day - Against the Darkmaster Core Rules
What is Against the Darkmaster? According to the Against the Darkmster Quickstart Rules (available at PWYW pricing, so please, grab the Quickstart before plunking down your cash for the full rules):
Against the Darkmaster (abbreviated in VsD throughout) is a tabletop pen & paper role-playing game of high fantasy, epic adventures, eldritch magic, and heavy-metal combat.
What is Against the Darkmaster inspired from? As we mentioned above, VsD is an epic fantasy game first of all. As such, it draws its main inspiration from the classic works of the masters of the genre, from J.R.R. Tolkien to Ursula K. Le Guin, passing through the two Terrys (Brooks and Goodkind) and their followers, Weis & Hickman, Jordan, and Williams. Anyhow, these are only the original sources of inspiration.
Against the Darkmaster is also inspired by the great fantasy movies of the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s and from the sword & sorcery genre. Think of The Lord of The Rings cartoon from Ralph Bakshi. Think of the cheap ‘80s barbarian movies. Think of the heartbreaker movies a whole generation was raised to: Dragonslayer, Krull, Labyrinth, Clash of the Titans, Legend.
Finally, think of VsD as a mix of all the above as seen through the eyes of a heavy metal music fan. And when we say “heavy metal”, we mean the original genre. The music of Malmsteen, Dio, Black Sabbath, Blind Guardian, Manowar, Iron Maiden. Lyrics and music bringing to life the very clash of steel versus steel, the power of elemental fire and thunder. These are all ingredients you will find in generous doses in the VsD recipe.
Why is it abbreviated VsD? I'm guessing the original is in Italian, and that is the abbreviation from Italian. I could be wrong, so I'll be happy to correct it.
But really, WHAT IS Against the Darkmaster? For all intents and purposes, it is a clone of the Rolemaster rules. It never comes out and says to, but just looking at the cover, you can see the similarities.
I no longer desire to play rules as fiddly as Rolemaster, but for those that do, Against the Darkmaster Core Rules may be an excellent option. Normally 20 bucks in PDF, until tomorrow morning at 11 am Eastern, the rules are on sale for 10 bucks. Remember, the Quickstart Rules linked above are free.
The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern. You can catch the daily Tavern Chat podcast on Anchor, YouTube, or wherever you listen to your podcast collection.
Monday, April 5, 2021
Kickstarter - Mythic Table (Open Source, Non-Profit VTT)
I'm a huge fan of Virtual Table Tops, which for brevity's sake I'll refer to as VTTs for the rest of this post. kLoOge.Werks (last updated in June of 2020) was one of the earlier ones I played around with. Screenmonkey (last updated in 2012) was yet another. Battlegrounds was another early VTT I tried, which is still in development. Maptools, iTabletop (I was a forum mod there briefly), Fantasy Grounds (1, 2, and Unity), Roll20, the list goes on. I've probably forgotten more VTTs than many readers have actually used.
All this is to give you my bonafides, not as a VTT expert, as I certainly am not, but as a consumer that enjoys following the development of VTTs and is still looking for that certain VTT that will hit upon all of my wants and dreams, even the dreams that I don't even realize I have.
This brings us to, in a less than direct manner, Mythic Table. An open-source VTT is NOT something I'm used to seeing, and although I am definitely NOT a programer (thus my love/hate relationship with Fantasy Grounds) I can see where a strong community could drive this software, and I think I want to be along for that trip, even if only in the passenger seat ;)
So, what does Mythic Table offer right now?
- Basic assets for out-of-the-box (ootb) playability - maps and characters.
- Campaigns - Viewing, joining, adding, editing, and removing campaigns
- Dice - Rolling, chat, security, rendering, persistence, etc
- User - Registration, login, authentication, guest users, and profiles
- Maps - Viewing, adding, editing, deleting, and more
- Smooth interface - User experience process, UI iterations, and user interviews
- Character - Viewing, adding, editing, deleting, frame, moving persistence, and more.
Stretch goals add more features, like Fog of War (a necessity for me) and World Anvil integration, and backers get discounts at the Open Gaming Network / Open Gaming Store, and at higher backer levels, World Anvil.
I'm a backer and I'm anxious to see how Mythic Table progresses.
The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern. You can catch the daily Tavern Chat podcast on Anchor, YouTube, or wherever you listen to your podcast collection.
Sunday, April 4, 2021
My Thoughts on a Point About the Recent Candlekeep Mysteries Brouhaha
Something you Tavern readers might not realize is that I don't always drink the Tavern's Kool-Aid.....as in I don't read every post here and listen to every podcast or watch every YouTube video. I like Erik personally and enjoy the OSR, and I suspect that most people here are closer to my POV and less overactive Tavern fanboy.
I mention this because recently there has been some drama over WotC editors......editing a writer's submission to meet the needs of the desired publication. Erik posted about it at the Tavern, and I'll state my opinion....he didn't really hit on the important points of the problem very well. (Note: I pre-wrote this post days ago......)
BUT, to be fair, I thought he did a much better job on the YouTube video, and for you non-Kool-Aid drinkers, that would rather listen than read....go check it out.
Now I'm not going to insult you by going over everything I just suggested you watch, but I have a couple of main take-aways from everything I've seen and some of it is from personal experience, which I'll get into in a bit:
- When you get hired to write something, there are established parameters that you need to conform to. Some are kind of understood, like "submit in English please" and others need to be (and usually are) spelled out, like "submit 5,000 words in this format". If you've been hired to submit a short adventure, regardless of word count, submit a short adventure! Regardless of word count, an adventure that is "a showcase to the deeper lore and history of the FR." kind of stretches the boundary for a short-story. Bringing back and or fundamentally changing a couple races......again stretches the boundary for a short story/adventure.
- Most every writer has some big idea or a series of ideas.....I assume it's part of the creative process, but a successful writer, in addition to conforming to their client's desires (as expressed in written and unwritten standards mentioned above) does a good job of differentiating between what is and isn't important for the submission. Not the story, the submission. The piece of work that has to be edited and published to meet the needs of the publication itself.
Point #1 is a bit common sense and easy to argue/debate. If a writer is contracted for 5,000 words on an adventure to be written in English for D&D 5th edition and they submit 7,000 words for a French version of 1st Edition AD&D, the publication will just reject it outright and refuse to pay. No brainer there.
Point #2, and this is what I'm seeing in all this drama, is when a writer doesn't do a good job of meeting the needs of the project or audience. Usually this is when they meet the technical aspects of the contract and either ignore the unwritten aspects or disregard the needs of the publication or end-user.
Back when I was in charge of organizing the GenCon and Origins Tournament Adventures for the HackMaster Association/KenzerCo, I ran into Point/Issue #2 more times than I'd have preferred. I'm 110% certain that my early drafts my own writing attempts were guilty of this as well, but I'm sure I've gotten at least somewhat better due to dealing with other writers.......have I gotten good enough, not my place to say.
I will say that as an adventure editor, the whole idea of a writer trying to explain their big "backstory" and/or NPC "motivation", pretty much pisses me off*. I don't want to have to sift through pages of details of shit that is pretty much never going to come into play, or matter, at the game table.....and that is as an editor. As a GM I don't have the time or inclination to read three paragraphs of details, buried in four pages of text, on why one NPC feels a certain way about another NPC.
Show, don't tell.
If you need one NPC to be a dick in an adventure, simply give the GM that direction instead of having to make a reader....or end user, glean that information from a large body of text. If it is something the PCs won't see, it can probably be excluded altogether. Motivations and backstories are internal adventure points, not external, or party-facing. If you don't consolidate and/or dumb-down this unnecessary information, your editor will do it for you....
.....and he/she will hate your for it, and you'll probably hate them for it as well. Current case in point.
HackMaster Tournament adventures, back in the day, had a pretty standard format in that there were a specific number of encounters and there was a general rule as to the numbers and types of encounters. You wrote to a specific level range and while you could tweak things a little bit.....you want to swap out a trap encounter for another combat encounter, go for it.....but expect there to be more editing issues. Unless you inserted combat stat blocks in the body of the text, something I did (in addition to them in the end as a battle-sheet) a tournament adventure ran six pages or so (it's been a decade so my numbers are fuzzy).
I had an author submit twelve pages of content. It took me so long to edit that it would have been easier to just re-write it myself and use the basic idea for each encounter, but no I did the editing back-and-forth with the author. Now I was also the Head GM and as such I have to make sure that all my table GMs have what they need, when they need it, to run a table smoothly as all the tables play concurrently. Depending on the complexity of the adventure this might mean I give the GMs the adventure the week before. Usually a day's advance notice is sufficient because I'd take the time to prep maps and other game-aids when I could. I'd been known to provide battle-matt overlays and even monster tokens, broken out by encounter, so GMs could focus on running the game and not looking for minis or drawing maps.
Anyway this author was going so far as to try and provide me updates to the adventure the morning of the tournament, making sure he was clear enough on some NPCs motivation. It was all too much, and when asked for an evaluation of his adventure I gave some bluntly honest feedback.
If you are able to do so, I encourage you to look at the adventure T1 The Village of Hommlet. I'd argue that there's a lot of game play to be had, multiple game sessions' worth for certain. My PDF copy is 25 pages, counting the covers. The "Backstory" for the entire adventure is roughly a page and half, spread between the intro and some more on the ruins of the moathouse. Even that is a bit of stretch because there is a generous three pretty much "read to the players" paragraphs and extra notes to the GM that are a mix of "backstory/motivation" and actual notes (like how some buildings aren't numbered). Everything else is condensed to a simple statement where needed.
For example, entry 25 states that the herdsman "and the Druid of the Grove are friends". As a GM, that's all I need. I don't need to know that the herdsman's prized ewe that won a blue ribbon at the last Spring-Fair came down with hoof and mouth and the Druid spent two days on round-the-clock care, bringing her back to a state of excellent health such that the herdsman was able to sell her twin lambs later that spring for a record price, allowing him to afford his middle- daughter's dowry so she could marry up in social standing. The herdsman now considers the Druid of the Grove a friend and ally and makes a small offering every week.
Yes, I have been given this level of ridiculousness before.....I wish I had saved the files, but at pennies per MB of storage, it wasn't worth the hard-drive space.
Lastly, nobody values your story more than you do. This is a given and just suck it up! If someone values it enough to pay you five cents a word, then make sure they feel they got five cents a word value! Just because you think you are worth ten cents a word, or than your extra 1,000 words are worthwhile....well they just aren't. Deal with it...preferably in some self-evaluation and not on Twitter/Social Media.
*This is why I'm not a fan of overly detailed drivel, er backstory and motivation. My frustration at having to deal with pages of ultimately useless information and distillation of days worth of my wasted time spilled out into a truthful, but clearly negative review of this author's work. Now I definitely know better now how to appropriate review or critique a body of work.....I'd argue I knew then and refused reason, I created an enemy that day. I'd argue long-term wise this guy got his revenge and then some.
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WIZARDS OF POHJOLA - 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...3 years ago
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Merlynd the Magician: A Remembrance of Don Kaye, TSR's Co-Founder Now Available - LINK to Description and Ordering: https://www.tlbgames.com/collections/the-red-book-line/products/merlynd-the-magician3 years ago
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The Withered Crag custom print version for sale again - Just re-enabled the direct sales button for the custom print (classic style detached cover) version of F4 The Withered Crag, and also for F3 Many Gates of...3 years ago
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Dungeons & Dragonmead Fall Schedule - *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 Warren...3 years ago
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D&D Sling Damage vs. Large Targets - 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...3 years ago
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James A. Smith, Jr. Memorial Video - 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...3 years ago
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Let's Talk About Pacing! - 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...3 years ago
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Profane and Profound Prep Part 2 - 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...3 years ago
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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.4 years ago
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Iain Lovecraft, 3D Sculptor - 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 doin...4 years ago
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New website! - 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...4 years ago
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Please Update Your Link! - 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...4 years ago
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Mord Mar - Session 6 - 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 ...4 years ago
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A Small, Quiet Plea - 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....4 years ago
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Don’t Sleep It’s Broken - Expanding/editing my comments from What Makes Something Broken G+ thread: “Broken”, for me, is anything that makes normal character choices, tactics, or ro...4 years ago
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Swords & Wizardry Light-Themed Birthday Party - 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...5 years ago