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.
Peril Below the Pile
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By Louis Kahn Starry Knight Press OSR Levels 4-6 The Pile is a lone hill
which overlooks the forest village of Naofahill, which lies on the far
eastern bor...
Miskatonic Monday #185: Game Night
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Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of
books for *Call of Cthulhu* under the Miskatonic University Library
Associati...
New Release - Swords & Wizardry Treasure Generator
-
*tl;dr:* Stephen Faure and I are releasing a fork of the original Swords &
Wizardry Treasure Generator created by Brian Ramsay (foont.net).
Our version ...
Campaigns I’d like to run one day
-
Old-School Essentials Sword & Sorcery West Marches campaign set in Kaendor,
exploring the ancient ruins of the northern forests which have only
recently be...
Magical Magic That Feels Magical
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*14. Heart Of The Beast: Cast this spell on a slain monster’s heart (or
reasonably equivalent organ or portion), then consume it. At any time, you
may ...
Incident Report
-
On Monday, July 20, the Mentor™ learning service suffered an outage that
lasted from 4:53AM until service was fully restored on Wednesday, July 22
at 6:1...
Warsmith's Words: March to Victory
-
Welcome back to the Vault! I can't believe it's over a month since my last
post; time is flying by these days. Whilst the blog has been quiet, my
hobby ...
DF Felltower, Blink, and Grapples
-
So apparantly this came up as a question to one of my players online, and
was related to me.
Desmond was grappled from behind (no defenses!) by a torturer ...
How to Handle Parley as an OSR DM
-
One of the most unforgiveable things that mainstream D&D has ever done was
to make Diplomacy a skill.
Weapon skills and knowledge skills, sure. We can't...
Anthem, G.I. Joe Trooper
-
Time for me to start putting some actual stats to figures I plan on playing
with. I'll get to make up some characters in the process. Win win
win...win...
Reviews Again, the never ending battle vs new stuff
-
Finally finished this
*Advanced Adventures Compendium Four 💓💓💓💓*Not quite as good as some
previous ones but still very good. Was on LuLu and I've...
More Thoughts on 5e and D&D
-
Real life has again stepped into the path of our gaming sessions which have
stalled - but I'm kind of ok with that.
You see, as an old-school DM running ...
Universal Creature Profile
-
It was fun playing around with another type of Universal Profile last week,
so let's keep it rolling. Can we make this work for creatures?
*UNIVERSAL CR...
Dragon Magazine's Banner Year...
-
1982; it was a banner year for AD&D, and a banner year for yours truly,
both thanks to Dragon Magazine. Not only did its awesome Out on a Limb
feature co...
Megadungeon DM Overview
-
As I have said before, running a megadungeon is fundamentally different
than running other types of campaigns. As such, it must be approached
differently t...
Sci-Fi: Unexpected Desirable Outcome
-
Paul Pepera
Unexpected Desirable Outcome
They’d let him name his ship. He picked “Hope”, after the virtue and after
his sister. Translating Hope into Gal...
Post-Singularity Hardcopy Concepts
-
Chatbot evolution, deepfakes. conspiracy and counter-conspiracy and
counter-counter conspiracy. re-editing of children's books (is your copy of
'The Twits'...
pledge allegiance
-
*Booty and the Beasts* is a 1979 monster and treasure book from Fantasy Art
Enterptises. Art by Erol Otus, text by Otus, Mathias Genser, and Paul
Reiche ...
Analysis of Causes of PC Death in OSR Games
-
In my previous post, I mentioned that in my weekly campaign we average
around one PC death a month. In the comments somebody asked me about the
causes of...
Arnesonian Time Keeping
-
The original Blackmoor game as Dave Arneson ran it between 1971 and 1975
may be described as a living world campaign. - that is, the world moves
through ...
Dark world
-
While I'm still working on my greyhawk saltmarsh campaign, I did have an
idea the other night for a different campaign.
I recently got the fifth edition ...
Monster Manual (AD&D 1e) (1977) - Third Printing
-
From the front cover:
"An illustrated compendium of monsters: Aerial Servant to Zombie"
From the back cover:"*OVER 350 MONSTERS*
This book provides a com...
Into the Unknown vs 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons
-
I learned about the *Into the Unknown *fantasy role-playing game last
summer at the RPG Pub. Intrigued, I ordered it from *DrivethruRPG *(both
PDF and pr...
Flux Space
-
I’ve been inspired by my time working with Gus on Tombrobbers of the
Crystal Frontier, and want to play at making something similar: a big intro
adventure ...
Free GM Resource: Syrinscape 2nd Look
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[image: Free GM Resource: Syrinscape 2nd Look]
I covered Syrinscape back in .....2013(?!). It's been just shy of a decade
and when I got an email from the...
[Review] Lost Dungeons of Tonsiborg
-
Received this thing in the mail a couple days ago, purchased as part of the recent
Kickstarter. It was originally only offered as a deluxe hardcover
"col...
On the Final 48 hours
-
Sinless has just been amazing guys.
If you haven't checked it out, you should back now. Campaign ends Friday.
It's around 700 people, which is enough fo...
Harnworld in Hardback Kickstarter
-
I have been a fan of Harn, both the setting and the Harnmaster rules, for a
long time. Ever since I encountered the original Harn setting folio at Games...
Beneath the Temple of Elemental Evil now in Spanish
-
Hello! A while ago, Manuel Martinez offered to translate one of my ToEE
expansion modules, T5 Beneath the Temple of Elemental Evil, into Spanish. I
am plea...
Gargax's Glorious Gewgaws & Pryce's Price
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Good Day to You All!
There is no better way to start off a New Year than with -- not just one
but TWO -- brand-new, never-before-published creative, exc...
OGL Rollercoaster – End of the Ride?
-
The end of 2022 was full of rumbles about the OGL, but WOTC said it would
be OK. January, 2023 soon revealed WOTC’s (Wizards of the Coast) claims
that all ...
The Blade Itself
-
I just finished listening to the audiobook of The Blade Itself, volume one
in Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law trilogy. This was my first exposure to
his wo...
Seven Sins of RPG Writing
-
The Seven Deadly Sins of RPG Writing
All these sins are relative. For example, you might find a system is your
jam that I found unusable due to complexit...
Genteel Magistrate at FenCon XVIII
-
Victorious author Mike Stewart will be a guest at FenCon XVIII this weekend
at the Sheraton DFW Airport hotel, 4440 W. John Carpenter Freeway, Irving,
TX, ...
Starter Set: Dragons of Stormwreck Isle Review
-
I thought it odd when I saw big name YouTubers talking about the new
starter set WotC published, but I hadn't heard anything about it. I don't
keep up...
This is an Important Game Mechanic
-
*"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
-
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 ...
People of the World, Spice up Your Life
-
I have seen the *Dune*. It’s good, but, like all “content” now, too long.
The forms of many designs are quite nice (love the costumes of the imperial
de...
My RPG Zine Trilogy is on Kickstarter!
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
*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
-
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
-
*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...
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...
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...
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...
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
-
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...
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...
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 ...
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....
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...
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...