I loved the Fighting Fantasy solo game books and the Warhammer Fantasy RolePlay1e ruleset. Both games were British and both oozed with flavor. I spent as many hours reading the WFRP rules and source materials as I did running it, and I ran a campaign of WFRP. It was a blast.
I own the Warlock! rules. I grabbed them last year when they were released. They are simple and fun. I really should mine them for some SWCL inspiration :)
Warlock! is today's Deal of the Day. Normally 14.10 in PDF, until tomorrow morning (5/16/21 @ 11 am Eastern) Warlock! is on sale for 2.77. All I can say is it is well worth the minimal investment for the pure joy you will likely get in return. There is a reason it is a Platinum Bestseller in less than a year's time.
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. - Tenkar
When I saw that today's Deal of the Day was Maelorum, I smiled. Not only do I remember backing the Kickstarter, but I remember playing through the adventure. It was well written and a lot of fun.
Now Maelorum is the Deal of the Day. Normally 9.99 in PDF, until tomorrow morning it's on sale for 5 bucks. How sweet is that?
The Gamebook is Reborn!
Enter into Maelorum, where an ancient evil has risen to remind the world that magic and monsters still exist. Choose one of three main characters to read the story, and play the game as. Explore old school dungeons with high res, hand drawn art that will take you back to your gaming roots. With multiple endings, and random events, you will never read the same story twice!
Rules and character sheet is included, along with a ten page item list in the back of the book. With ten years of R&D, this is an interactive adventure book unlike any other.
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. - Tenkar
So, yesterday I shared a quick pic of the box of the new Swords & Wizardry Collector's Edition Box.
Well, now I've opened the box and yes, the contents are impressive - and pretty :)
I will say the dice are eh, but I wasn't expecting Gamescience.
I'm sure the bookmark will be misplaced very shortly.
The character sheets look really good as well as useful.
I'm very happy with the goodies enclosed. Now to dig through the books and look for new material.
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. - Tenkar
Fighting Mythos in the Golden Age of Piracy - A Call of Cthulhu Campaign book.
Call of Cthulhu is probably tied for my favorite rule system I'll likely never run again, the other being Paranoia 1st Edition from West End Games. Note, I didn't say I'll never play them again, as it is possible I'll find a convention game I could sign up for, but neither game fits well will my fellow circle of players.
Why?
Because neither seems to do campaigns very well, but as one-shots or story arcs, they thrive.
So what does New Comet Games decide to do? They offer a CoC campaign book in the age of piracy.
Ben Burns, the man behind New Comet Games was the guest of Bad Mike & Myself on Talking Crit earlier tonight.
Corsairs of Cthulhu is a rules and setting supplement to the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game and focuses on the period between 1650 and 1730 CE. Your keeper can set up your investigators as crew on a pirate or privateer ship, freelancers in one of the Caribbean ports who love the gold doubloon more than a foreign governments rule, or even provide your investigators with their own ship. Working together the investigators must face evil Mythos, real and imagined. Curses left by ancient civilizations and hidden nightmares around the world.
The golden age of piracy is a time of spreading empires. England, France, Spain, Italy as well as several other smaller countries are planting their flags and colonies on any piece of land they can find. Empires rise and fall, Spanish ships are hauling new found gold from the new world back to Spain and ships are lost to pirates and storms regularly. Governments authorize privateers to sail under their flag but can raise the black when needed.
There are new skills, new professions, famous NPCs and new weapons that the investigators must learn to use if they want to survive against not only the dangers of the Mythos, but also against disease, dehydration, sea monsters, warships, and other pirates.
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. - Tenkar
As I announced earlier today on The Tavern's Youtube Channel, we will hopefully be releasing Swords & Wizardry Continual Light as a digest-sized edition in September 2021. It is a format that folks have been asking for since SWCL first released, and I'm happy to say I've assembled the right team to do such a project justice.
This will be a new printing but not a new edition. The rules will not be changing BUT there will be additional material, a professional layout, and new art.
James Spahn will be writing a micro-setting and introductory adventure. Think somewhere along the lines of B2. I'm totally stoked.
James Shields will be providing new cover art and a new Swords & Wizardry Continual Light logo.
Jeff Jones will be doing the layout. Jeff laid out Torchlight Issue #0 and he will be the layout artist when Torchlight Issue #1 releases, probably later this month.
Michael Gross will be editing the SWCL Digest Edition. Mike has (or is) worked (or is working) with Frog God Games, Troll Lord Games, Throwi Games, and others I've probably forgotten. Mike edited Torchlight Issue #0 and will also be editing Torchlight Issue #1.
Hopefully, I'll be able to add more names to this list in short order :)
We may add a basic magical items section to the rules. B&W or color art for the interior is currently being discussed.
Let me know what you think, tell me your wants and desires, and let's make this the Swords & Wizardry Continual Light that YOU want. :)
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. - Tenkar
Fast, modular character generation. Would-be heroes from 62 points and higher as player characters, henchmen, or supporting cast.
I've been a fan of GURPS from the time I found the Man to Man rules, along with the Orcslayer supplement. The only problem was that designing characters was always a pain in the ass as a player. As a DM, it is literally a compounded player. Still, the GURPS sourcebooks have always been a thing of beauty.
The other complaint I used to have is that GURPS never seems to do traditional fantasy tropes as one would expect from a D&D-type background. Sure, you had the Fantasy and Magic sourcebooks, but they seemed to lack flavor, unlike many of the other GURPS sourcebooks.
That is until Dungeon Fantasy was released. It literally was the GURPS rules with the D&D tropes that I have come to expect from a fantasy RPG, and my God, it does the genre well. Character generation of NPCs still sucked though, and become one of the intimidating factors that kept me from truly giving the Dungeon Fantasy rules a proper shake.
All this leads me to Douglas Coles' new Kickstarter, Delvers to Grow. Doug takes the most intimidating factor of GURPS, creating characters, and makes it easy as pie for the GM. No stress GURPS. Never thought I'd see the day. Of course, Doug is selling Delvers to Grow as a Player aid, but in my eyes, it's an amazing tool for the Dungeon Fantasy GM ;)
Even the mightiest delver started somewhere. An apprentice, a squire or man-at-arms, a backup singer with The Backstreet Bards.
Delvers to Grow allows you to take the part of those starting characters, supporting starting play as low as 62 points. Delvers to Grow provides pre-built modules and packages enabling a player to create a capable, playable character in minutes.
Fully compatible with the professional template system in the Dungeon Fantasy RPG Adventurers book, Delvers to Grow lets you start much earlier in the hero’s journey, letting both players and GMs ease into the full breadth of capability that the professional delvers of the Dungeon Fantasy RPG bring to the table.
Explore different challenges or use the modules to effortlessly assemble henchmen...or create a starting character to replace the dearly departed.
Doug has an amazing track record of fulfilling his Kickstarters on time and is one of the few third-party publishers licensed by Steve Jackson Games. In truth, he MAY be the only third-party publisher licensed by SJG, as I can think of no others offhand, but I could be wrong.
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. - Tenkar
So you may or may not know that I have my own blog, actually one of several, but I digress, where I like to semi-regularly point out some free gaming resources. Ideally I do a "Free GM Resource" over at Frugal GM every Monday, but if I'm not feeling it, can't find something, or life gets in the way I don't get too worked up about it.
I've been at it for 9 years already and that ends up being a lot of freebie posts.
Basically I'm always on the lookout for something I can share and I'm not above revisiting an earlier share to see if it's gotten better. Normally I happen along something during the week as I link-hop and generally screw around online....if I'm smart enough I bookmark it for future exploitation. Anyway I'm always looking at/for stuff and this last week I found a freaking motherload.
Thing is this is super fucked up and while you're already a couple paragraphs in, this "post" is really more of a "rant". I apologize for any perceived bait & switch, here's a 10' video of cute puppies as a peace offering:
We good?
Ok, if you're still reading this we've entered the social contract where you've accepted my consideration and now I get to piss and moan on my soap-box about RPG piracy.
Holy Fucking Shitballs.
For the record, I love having electronic versions of every RPG product I legally own, and I realize that in an of itself isn't always legit. I get that some products are very much Out of Print (OOP), for example HackMaster 4th Edition. You will not find a new copy of this game on the primary market....KenzerCo can't sell it and there is no way that Hasbro will ever renew the license. I fully understand there is a line somewhere between legal and moral, but too many people clearly don't see that line.
Last week I came across another website that was a HUGE depository of most every game system I've every heard of. There were literally HUNDREDS of game systems on this server where you could download pretty much everything made for that game. It was shocking.....and this isn't the first time I've come across such a collection of piracy, and while it was the largest, it wasn't the most shocking.
It was a while ago, but for some time OneBookShelf.....yes, the DriveThruRPG (among others) guys had a link, in their common footer IIRC that went to another depository of "free" resources that were clearly pirated materials. Thing is, something about this discovery really reminds me of the DTRPG info dump. Something about the structure is too similar, but I couldn't compare them now if I wanted to, and I don't want to.
I'd like to know who in the hell thinks it is ok to just dump a company's entire catalog online for everybody to steal. I know that odds are at least one Tavern patron here thinks it's OK to download something they didn't pay for. I know what I posted earlier could be interpreted as a rationalization, but I'm not condoning theft of IP. Now if Hasbro would work out licensing deal for electronic publication of the "back catalog" of KenzerCo products........I don't think I could get to my wallet fast enough.
Now clearly I think we need a mechanism to legally obtain electronic copies of OOP materials that will otherwise never see the light of day, but I'm really just torqued about this piracy in general. This last website just blew me away with the blatant theft of IP. To add insult to injury whoever owns the site has the gall to have a copywrite and claim "all rights reserved"!
I've talked to a couple content creators that have pirated files on this site and while they (the site) claims to honor copyright and DMCA notices, they do not. Even having a whole copyright page is just another "FUCK YOU" to those content creators. Of course the slimy bastard running this pirate site is doing what they can to conceal their identity.........most thieves would in this case.
Whoever is doing this is using a third party to purchase the domain, which was registered in another country. Lots of clear violations of laws, US and international, and definitely a few Terms of Services for these middlemen......
Lots of work, and certainly some, probably not too much $, has clearly gone in to stealing this information so what? Maybe they can earn some ad revenue off of traffic? Oh nevermind, these fucks accept all sorts of cryptocurrency as donations. Yep, the true mark of today's digital pirates.....untraceable underground currency.
...and I'm done. I just found one of my d30 tables on there.
Un-American Activities
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I am halfing prices for all False Machine books held outside the U.S.A.
This discount will last until sales the the U.S. are re-started, OR until
the ...
October Lantern Advance Copy Available
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I've finished the advanced version of the October Lantern, posted on
patreon. I've taken the requisite three hours rest and now I'm writing
about it her...
Grozz keeps gettin' graphic...plus, a Soldier!
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I hate to start out posts by just lamenting my lack of posts...
BUT...man, I'm really having a tough time working regular blogging back
into my schedule,...
Miskatonic Monday #370: Rryonn
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Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha
and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s
masterpiece of...
Return to the Cursed Labyrinth
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AI Toy catalogues make wildly inappropriate choices for the user. Automated
incencerity.
We had two drop in players joining our Sat...
Designing Tables
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In my Friday Twitch stream where I share my work in progress for building a
campaign world that is an ocean world with archipelagos instead of
continental ...
Monstrous Mondays: Guardians of the Library
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[image: Photo by Дмитрий Пропадалин:
https://www.pexels.com/photo/knight-in-iron-armor-9968878/]
Photo by Дмитрий ПропадалинStill working through a bunch o...
August ‘25 In Review
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Starting the month with a thunderstorm and a cold front making the
temperature much more bearable, and ending it with a long weekend was
definitely the w...
Music Monday - Cry Little Sister
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My friend Stew sent me think link to this video with the message "Relevant
to your interest" and before clicking it I knew at least one hot alt chick
would...
Greyhawk News You Can Use - Harvester 2025 Edition
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I’m well-overdue for another Greyhawk news roundup, and a recent post by
/u/talktoh in /r/Greyhawk prompted me to complete catchup on Greyhawk news
for the...
Brink of Calamity
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By Trent SmithStorm Fetish Productions1eLevels 1-6 The town of Warnell,
straddling a trade route that crosses two great forests, seems at first
like any ot...
Rock Troll #4 (and last, probably)
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Yet another 3d printed Rock Troll, this time painted red.
This will probably be the last one, unless I develop a pressing need for
more, which is unlik...
Random Links & Notes for 8/29/2025
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- 9 and 30 Kingdoms talks a bit about mapping. I'm okay with players
mapping or not mapping. It's up to them, as long as their characters can do
it. If the...
On Two in one Day!
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Free quickstart, has everything you need to get a group up and playing in
10 minutes. Contains *everything *you need to play.
drivethrurpg.com/en/produ...
Up Your Game with Rubber Stamps
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[image: Up Your Game with Rubber Stamps]
This isn't a Free GM Resource, but a product, well company really, that I
think is a useful resource for the prep...
Halflings (ODD Race)
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I discovered a handful of recent stripped down D&D hacks online this last
week. One immediately jumped out at me, probably because of the old school
aesthe...
Mythic Rivers
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Not *The *River, of course.
A typical *Mythic Bastionland* realm, following the procedure in the book,
has a navigable river. It’s an extremely fast way t...
Tomb of the Blind and Deaf Dead
-
So the cat is out of the bag thanks to Tobias Schulte-Krumpen, who posted
the above image to the Lamentations of the Flame Princess facebook group. I
...
Eyes of Idola, Part 2
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This is Part 2. Here is Part 1.
*Concept 1: Entering the Dungeon*
Descending the stairs into B1, the party reach rooms that are dark,
crowded, flooded, a...
The 'I Want' PC
-
Readers who do not live in the dank earth beneath rocks with only woodlice
and earthworms for company will no doubt have heard of something called *K-Pop
D...
More Star Wars/Traveller ship scale
-
Today’s contribution to I Made It So I Might As Well Share It. Might be
interesting or useful to someone else as well. A selection of some of the
most icon...
[BLOG] News on the March! Episode X.
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This post continues the series of brief play reports I have been posting on
Discord. This does not cover every single session (sometimes, recon and
setup...
A New Epoch: Stone and Spell...
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Why does fantasy have to be medieval? It doesn't, and our hobby provides
numerous examples (Call of Cthulhu comes immediately to mind). Great stuff;
but ...
GM Companion for Shadowdark
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Let's talk about Mr. Chubby Funster. Greg. If you go on RPG DriveThru and
check out the Shadowdark section you'll see he had three books in the top
ten....
Rulings, Not Rules: A Foundation, Not an Oversight
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There's been a lot of discussion over the years about how Original Dungeons
& Dragons handled (or didn't handle) the common situations you'd expect in
a ...
How I Run OD&D Combat
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Link to discussion
Over the years I’ve settled on a way to run 0e/OD&D/White Box combat that
keeps the action moving and is pretty simple, while covering...
A long overdue hobby update!
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Welcome back to the Vault everyone! 2025 is going by in a blur; I last
posted in February, almost started a post in March and now it's the end of
May. W...
Pulp: Adventure Location: Trindade & Martim Vaz
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History is fractally interesting. Start examine any event, or following any
citation, and interesting facts emerge. But some places, for whatever
reason,...
Playing at the World 2E V2 Arrives
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With the release of its second volume, the second edition of *Playing at
the World *is finally complete. The two books combined total well over
1,000 ...
Blogs on Tape season 6 has begun!
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Hi everybody! Its been a minute. How are you? Everything is awful all the
time? Horrors never cease? You’re being driven mad by the weight of the
unfathoma...
Articulations
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Creating house rules, custom rules specific to a local group or campaign,
has been common throughout the history of D&D. What makes an effective
house rule...
Writing playlists for all occasions
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Hello again! Going off the idea of inspiration elaborated on by the prior
post, I also have music playing while I write my various games and fiction
pieces...
The Tarot of Pips
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Somewhere in your dice collection is a die like this one, the humblest of
dice. Although you don't know it, this small white die carries with it a
secr...
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...
It's been a bit
-
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...
*'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!
-
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...
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 ...
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...
ToAD Monster of the Week: Crocoman
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Now that I'm back doing the blog thing I thought I would use Tome of
Adventure Design to create monsters for The Black Hack.
Using the monster tables in th...
Strange, Dangerous, and Inhuman: The Fey and Fairie
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When I was a boy I loved fairy tales. Jack and the Beanstalk, Puss in
Boots, Rumpelstiltskin - I devoured all of it. My fascination that there
was a strang...
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...
Fiction in Airhde
-
On a whim this weekend, I picked up some fiction off the TLG store. *A
Houseless God & Other Tales* and *The Mirrored Soul & Other Tales*, both by
the T...
Ravensburg Reboot: Streamlined City Map
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I mentioned in my last post how I was tweaking and reworking parts of my
Ravensburg setting. Today I streamlined the city map. The old map had lots
of redu...
And Now the News Draft Download on Patreon
-
It's self-styled Throwback Thursday and *having just released the 34-page
draft booklet of Hill Cantons news to my Patreon backers* I am going to
indulge m...
The Withered Crag available now
-
I just enabled the sale of the PDF version of The Withered Crag at
DriveThruRPG a few minutes ago, and the custom print version will be
available startin...
Annihilation Rising Goes live
-
The latest in Fail Squad Games’ Quick Kick projects has gone live and needs
your support!! This project is only running 11 days and ends on 5/28/2019!
...
James's Celebration of Life
-
We could not have asked for a prettier day for James's service. It was a
bit chilly and windy but gorgeous. A heartfelt thank you to all that joined
us tod...
Trap Tuesday: A step back
-
I will get back to Tomb of Horrors soon. I found a topic that was
interesting enough to take a break. While interacting in a 5E group on
Facebook I talked ...
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...
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...
Please, I don't do paid advertisements - don't ask.
-
A little note since people have asked me about this. My video channel's
*not* an advertising platform, so I'm not available for hire if you want to
promote...
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...
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...
Total Sales for WB:FMAG
-
Hi Folks,
It's been a long time since I provided an update for the sales of White
Box: Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game.
*LULU*
Print: 396
PDF: 433
*OBS*...
How can We Destroy this Campaign World?
-
d12
1. You must trick a bard into strumming the *Chords of Fate* on the *Lute
of Annihilation*
2. Legends tell of thermonuclear weapons beneath megadunge...
Mord Mar - Session 5
-
We had another successful delve into the dungeon yesterday. The delvers:
Moira, the Magic-User
Radovan - Human Cleric (of Odin?)
Khazgar Stonehand - Dwarf ...
Bundle of Fantasy Age
-
Bundle of Holding: Dragon Age/Fantasy Age: Available until March 12. PA
Presents: Fantasy AGE Freeport live play Green Ronin in 2018 The Fantasy
Age RPG ma...
New Free PDF Module: The Hyqueous Vaults
-
A new dungeon module—written in celebration of OSRIC's 10th Birthday—by
Rebecca Dettmann, Allan T. Grohe, Jr., Jimm Johnson, Matthew Riedel, Alex
Zisch, a...
Swords & Wizardry Light: Session # 6
-
Two months after our last session (thanks to things like 8th grade finals,
a 4 year-old's birthday and party, Father's Day, etc.), we finally had our
next ...