DriveThruRPG Has Some Halloween Freebies

In prior years, DriveThruRPG has done a Halloween Pumpkin Hunt of sorts, having shoppers scour the DTRPG pages for hidden pumpkins in search of freebies. This year, there are freebies neatly grouped together and an accompanying sale.

Highlights from today's Halloween Freebie Page include Fear Itself 2e (GUMSHOE) and some seasonally appropriate soundtracks. It appears there will be new offerings daily.

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Free RPG Day is Tomorrow, October 16th 2021

Yep, as you may have noticed, Free RPG Day was pushed back this year. Normally held in June, this year, due to the pandemic, it was moved to October.

ENWorld has a surprisingly complete overview of what is available. As usual, the OSR relevant or adjacent are minimal.

Tomb of the Savage Kings for Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC RPG), a level 2 adventure designed by Stephen Newton.

Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound: Reap and Sow gives an introductory adventure for players interested in visiting the Mortal Realms in Soulbound. Great for Age of Sigmar fans.

 

 

 

Paizo's Staff Votes to Unionize - United Paizo Workers

I'm not sure what larger effect the decision of Paizo's staff to unionize will have on the larger TTRPG industry (likely little if any), but the 30+ staffers at Paizo are hoping that Paizo will recognize their union. 

From Dicebreaker:

Staff say they are “underpaid for their labor, required to live in one of the most expensive cities in the United States, and subjected to untenable crunch conditions on a regular basis”.

Most everyone in the RPG industry is underpaid for their labor, in large part because the profit margins are not as large as many would like them to be.

In any case, 30 some odd members does not make for a powerful bargaining unit. It is, however, likely, that Paizo has the largest staff of non-managerial job titles in the industry.

Interesting times.

My further thoughts are in the video below:

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You can catch the daily Tavern Chat podcast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Deal of the Day - Dark Streets & Darker Secrets

A modern-day horror setting with an OSR feel for 2 bucks? Say it ain't so! ;)

Until tomorrow morning, Dark Streets & Darker Secrets is a mere $2 in PDF (marked down from a regular price of $10).

So, what is Dark Streets & Darker Secrets?

Dark Streets & Darker Secrets is a Street & Sorcery Rules Light Role-Playing Game with an Old School spirit, just like its predecessors: Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells and Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells.

It’s a game about modern adventures in the world we live today, only with a layer of supernatural weirdness and horror. Characters are people who have found out about the mysteries and horrors that exist in the world and have decided to do something about it, be it battle it, join it, or simply explore its possibilities in any way they see fit. They will battle evil cultists, corrupted ghosts, bloodsucking vampires, and frenzied werewolves, or maybe they will be the horrors of others. This edition of the game assumes the reader knows the principles of what role-playing games are and how they are played.

What will you get with this book? Not only you will get a complete game system for urban fantasy, action horror and street and sorcery stories, you will also find tools and generators to create cities, neighborhoods, organizations, factions, NPS, monsters, ancient and sinister artifacts, complete adventures, which can all be of great help to inspire Referees of all modern games!

So grab your leather jacket, a baseball bat and whatever you can get your hands on to put the bad monsters to rest and come explore these dark streets and unveil these darker secrets.

It's essentially Chill with an OSR chassis. :)

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You can catch the daily Tavern Chat podcast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Why So Many Kickstarter Creators are Horrible at Communication

I recently posted about The Great Supply Chain Disruption. Surprisingly to me, I've gotten ZERO updates from ANY open Kickstarters I've backed since that announcement talking about fulfillment delays that could be blamed on shipping printed books from China - and I know a few fall into that category.

So, why no updates?

I think for the bulk of them, avoiding the issue until it can't be put off any further is simply a trait of human nature. No one really enjoys negative feedback, so if you can delay it, so much the better.

Take Far West for example. Gareth has no issue with using Twitter on a damn near-daily basis but hasn't updated the Kickstarter page since July 19th, 2019. Well over two years ago.

Why would that be? Well, He did say you can ask him questions about Far West on his Far West Forums, but you can't sign up for them - the sign-up app is broken and there hasn't been a comment there since February of this year. 

The thing is, comments on Kickstarter, and Indiegogo to the best of my knowledge, can't be moderated by the project creator. So, if the angry mobs of a late Kickstarter decide to engage with the creator, the creator can not control the ebb and flow of the conversation. The narrative belongs to the mob. Often a righteous mob but a mob nonetheless.

And this is why many creators don't engage on their project page when they go into the realms of the late, late, late project. 

Communication is where many Kickstarters fail horribly.

Kickstarter - Dice, Runes, and Magical Artifacts for RPG's and Witchcraft

I've been trying to cut back on backing Kickstarters these last few months. It's not just recent supply and delivery issues that made me decide that, but also the large number of RPG Kickstarters that I've received and have yet to read. I doubt I'm unique with this issue :)

The Dice, Runes, and Magical Artifacts for RPG's and Witchcraft Kickstarter requires minimal if any reading. Instead, it offers props I can use in-game or simply display on my shelves. The offerings are not something I'd ever expect to find on the shelves of a game store.

I'm partial to the casting runes pictured above. Heck, they can double as 4-sided dice. And it's hand-made. How cool is that?

My name is David Savedge and I am a blacksmith and game designer. I have a studio and blacksmith's shop on my farm, Ravenstead.

Ravenstead is my home and family business, with smithing and metal work becoming a bigger part of what I do to provide. This current project will help better establish the workshop at Ravenstead.

When I'm not working on the farm or smithing, I'm thinking about games and gaming. I love classic tabletop role-playing games. I'm excited to share my new project with you!

I wanted to bring another unique and magical project to the gaming table or altar that involved some serious blacksmithing and pewter work!

 

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Wanting to Combine My Gaming Circles (Again)

Like most of us, and I know this is an assumption, I'm not just a single type of "gamer". This week a couple of new console games came out, most notably Far Cry 6 and Back 4 Blood. Now I know there are a few "I don't give a damn" eyerolls at the very mention of computer/console games, but years ago my console and RPG gaming circles overlapped, and one of the big overlaps was Left 4 Dead/Left 4 Dead 2.

Now I've been hearing that Far Cry 6 is just more of the same, for good or bad and Back 4 Blood, which I purchased, is technically is an all new game. I say technically because the creative team behind the game worked together on the Left 4 Dead games and damn, does it feel like a difficult, updated version of those games. Since it is a different game/series, the zombies are not necessarily zombies, more like a zombie-like plague or some such called the "Ridden".....I think it's a parasite. The special Ridden have new names and I keep wanting to call them by the closest L4D equivalent.

Anyway I know this is a long intro, but basically I got this new game and really wanted to link back up with the old console gaming group and once again kick some zombie Ridden ass. 

So I did reach out to one guy I'm still a Facebook friend with to see if the rest of the guys still game.....I kind of dropped out when the Call of Duty games when "futuristic" and I refer current to past-era CoD games. I think I'm the only one who got the pre-order.

Now I'm not sure the game is worth the $100 or so for the "Ultimate" edition, but if you want to play an updated L4D......my gamertag is "Face275"

TL;DR I need "friends" to play Back 4 Blood with online.

Now I have a different console gaming/friends group for a different game......the Borderlands series. I'm a huge fan of all the games but one of my favorites was a DLC for Borderlands 2 called "Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep"

 Now if you haven't played this game or the DLC, the whole thing is essentially a game-within-a-game. Tiny Tina was a ancillary character in Borderlands 2 that is a little "explosives happy" and a lot deranged. In the DLC she is running a table-top game of "Bunkers and Badasses" that is an over-the-top homage to D&D. It's a great fusion of two disparate games, with plenty of puns and adult-ish humor tossed in.

My problem is that my circle of friends that play Borderlands are on the newest game and its DLCs, and you can really only play Assault on Dragon Keep so many times (odds are 3x per character).......

....unless you manage to pick up a copy of Bunkers & Badasses. Yep, the folks at Nerdvana Games is flexing the mashup the other way. I purchased a pre-order and while, like pretty much everything these days, production is running behind, allegedly the game has been produced and is on it's way to the fulfillment center for a mid-October arrival.

With any luck I will again get a couple of my gaming circle to align!