RPGNow

Saturday, October 1, 2022

Bundle of Holding - Psi-punk


FUDGE
was one of the first, free to use and able to publish to rulesets I remember finding on the internet "back in the day". It is literally the roots of the Fate RPG system

I mention this because the Psi-punk deal on Bundle of Holding is based on FUDGE. At 7.95 for 7 titles, I'll be buying this just to see the FUDGE system in action ;)

Adventurer! This new Psi-punk Quick Deal presents Psi-punk, the psionic-cyberpunk tabletop roleplaying game from Accessible Games. Based on the Fudge universal system, Psi-punk takes you to the North American Union of 2096, where ghosts, psiborgs, technomancers, and soul jackers walk among us. To compete, you'll build your ideal body, implant a few high-tech devices, sign up with a megacorp or government, and discover what it means to be more than human.

Everyone Games. This new Quick Deal ties in to Everyone Games, an online event (30 Sept - 01 Oct 2022) that promotes accessibility options for partially-sighted, blind, and otherwise disabled gamers. Psi-punk designer Jacob Wood helps coordinate Everyone Games. "Games are for absolutely everyone," says Jacob. "Not every game is designed for every person, but I believe every person should have the opportunity to find a game."

 

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. 

DTRPGAmazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on AnchorYouTube or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Friday, September 30, 2022

Kickstarter - Board Game D20 Delving


Ah, D20 Delving. I was a very early backer the first time around, which did not fund, due in part to the trolling of a certain individual that will not be named (no - it's not "Candyman" ;)

The Board Game D20 Delving Kickstarter is nearly funded this time around, with over two weeks to go in funding, and I'm excited. Don Semora is a good game designer and an honorable man, and I'll take that combination any day. As for releasing on target, Don has his own printing facility, so the number of things that can go wrong out of his actual control is minimized.

Did I mention Tim Kask doing voicework for it?

I'm a backer of The Board Game D20 Delving Kickstarter at $120, which included the Krampus expansion pack, but you can get the game for as little as 70 bucks for the base game.


The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. 

DTRPGAmazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on AnchorYouTube or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar


Thursday, September 29, 2022

Humble Bundle - All About Tolkien Book Bundle

With Amazon's current Middle Earth "Masterpiece" the current talk of the internet (for good or ill, I haven't watched it yet and I'm unsure if I will), Tolkien is on the minds of many.

The All About Tolkien Book Bundle on Humble Bundle is likely not what the average buyer will expect. While it does NOT contain Tolkien fiction, it does include historical and biographical books on Tolkien, fiction that included his writings, and later fiction that was influenced by Tolkien.

Delve deeper into Middle-Earth and the art, life, and cultural impact of J. R. R. Tolkien! This expansive library features over two dozen books filled with entertaining explorations of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, in-depth scholarly analysis of Tolkien’s mythology, fascinating biographies, and much more. Discover something new about one of the most influential authors of the 20th century, and help support Active Minds with your purchase!


 

 

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. 

DTRPGAmazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on AnchorYouTube or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Wednesday, September 28, 2022

LABYRINTH LORD second edition COMING Q1 2023

 


Times have changed, and so is Labyrinth Lord!

First released in 2007, Labyrinth Lord is the premier Basic/Expert compatible fantasy role-playing game. Back then "retro–clones" were a new concept, exemplified by Matt Finch's and Stewart Marshall's work on the first edition compatible game OSRIC.

We were treading new waters in pushing the limits of the Open Game License and available System Reference Documents from Wizards of the Coast. The rule of thumb at that time was to err on the side of caution to avoid publishing content that might be considered "art" rather than system.

Fast forward 15 years later, and the slew of additional games following the same path but in a less cautious manner has proven that some of the design choices made earlier are not necessary in the current state of the industry.

Coupled with being essentially out of the game publishing market for several years, it's clear that the time has come for Goblinoid Games to publish a new edition of the ever popular Labyrinth Lord game!

Labyrinth Lord, Second Edition

Game presentation will be updated to account for the new standards gamers expect. Things like experience tables, level rank titles, and other smaller changes originally made to avoid the perception of reproducing art, will all be brought to closer compatibility with the original Basic/Expert rules.

In addition, much of the rules presentation will be streamlined for easier reference at the table. This will be done while accounting for known errata.

What does the future hold?

Labyrinth Lord second edition is set for release in Q1 of 2023. Its release will be concurrent with a new solo adventure (the writing stage is currently almost finished). These products will be released directly to the public, not via any fundraising effort ahead of time. 

Later, there will be a second edition of the Advanced Edition Companion, and if the public desires it, these books will be compiled to create a second edition of Advanced Labyrinth Lord. All editions will remain in print, but clearly labeled with our vendors as to which books are first or second edition.

Goblinoid Games will continue to publish additional adventures and other works regularly going forward.

I'm excited for this relaunch, and I hope many of you join me on this new adventure. Let's make the next 15 years of Labyrinth Lord even more groundbreaking than its early years.

 http://goblinoidgames.com/ 

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. 

DTRPGAmazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on AnchorYouTube or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

New Crowdfunding - By Feather and Coop, a Zine for The Hero's Journey 2e (James Spahn)

It's no secret that James Spahn is virtually my brother from another mother. I just want to remind folk, as I am highlighting a new release for The Hero's Journey 2e. For those that don't know, The Hero's Journey is as close to James' ideal vision of an RPG as we'll likely ever see, and it's pretty amazing.

So what is By Feather and Coup? Well, as stated on this post's header, it's a zine for The Hero's Journey 2e.

By Feather and Coop is a small zine supplement for Barrel Rider Games' The Hero's Journey: Second Edition! It features a new character lineage (the Bantam - yes, you can play a chicken), new spells, heirlooms, and a small menagerie of creatures!

The final zine is around 25 pages, and features new art from Nicolas Giacondino!

The PDF is fully laid-out, art complete and ready to go! You'll get the PDF when you help GallantFund this item, with the option for a printed zine. The print edition of this zine will only be available from the GKG webstore. If you get the print+PDF edition, it can take up to 48 hours for your PDF to fulfill (it's a manual process on our end at this time.)

By Feather and Coup is 3.99 in PDF, 6.99 for the Print plus PDF.

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. 

DTRPGAmazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on AnchorYouTube or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Monday, September 26, 2022

Bundle of Holding - Quick Deal - KoDT Trouble 3

I'm a huge fan of the Knights of the Dinner Table series of comics, although I tend to do my reading in binges. I've recently moved most of my reading of comics to the digital world, as the iPad is easier on my aging eyes.

KoDT Trouble 3 is a collection of 10 Bundles of Trouble. It includes Volumes 21-30, which cover KoDT issues #69 through #100 (2002-2005). Not bad for 19.95

Note: Just over 2 days left as i post this

Some bedtime reading ;)



The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. 

DTRPGAmazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on AnchorYouTube or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Sunday, September 25, 2022

In-Game SOPs

In-Game SOPs
I was watching...something, not the salient point here...and one of the characters basically SOPs the door and it struck me as odd because it wasn't a bunch of military or police "stacking up". I'm not used to seeing this too often out in the wild...

..."too often" because I am a Veteran and in that capacity I am quite used to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs or "sop/sops"), but honestly higher-level established SOPs are usually (at least in my experience) called TTPs, or Tactics Techniques, & Procedures. I have seen unit-level SOPs and I like to think that I had some individualized SOPs....I know I do on my job now, but it took me a few minutes to think about it. I have a little black book I use to keep notes in and that's where I keep a record of my SOPs....

...well, I thought I kept a record of those SOPs. I just took a look at the book and it's filled with notes on how to do certain things for each of my main work tasks, but no actual SOPs, more like remarks on how the big boss likes specific things done...again, more like problem solving than SOPs.

My current home group kind of has some SOPs, but as far as I know they aren't written down and they were established (probably decades) before I joined the group. It's more a short-hand between the party Thief and the GM.

"You going to SOP the door?"

"Yes, but I'll let the junior thief do it and I'll follow up to check their work."

Now to me it makes a lot of sense for Thieves to naturally have a series of SOPs and maybe a party when it comes to certain things:

  • Marching Order
  • Room searching
  • Post-battle recovery
  • Night Watches
Some SOPs are clearly the product of player experience vs. player-character experience, but not necessarily in the realm of using Out Of Character knowledge. Often in pick-up or convention games I'm more than happy to take a backseat, as it were, and be the rear-guard, assuming I have an appropriate PC. When I get to do this, I make sure to tell the GM my main SOP is to regularly be looking up ahead of the group and behind the group, even if that's to my PC's detriment. If everybody ahead of me falls silently into a trap there's a good chance I'll fall in as well if I happen to be shuffling backwards during that moment. 

In my old HackMaster group I recall two specific SOPs, both of which really seemed like OOC, I'll dare say "cheating", but both were established kind of painfully (well, as far as PCs go). I'll be a bit generic in the explanation 'cause there's no need to be bogged down by rules for a game you're not playing....
  1. The first happened after a long zombie campaign. In HackMaster a zombie is no big deal, but put a few together, and you're on the menu. Zombie have an interesting mechanic in that when you get a couple "on you" pretty much every other zombie in reach gets a free bite. Thing is that in HackMaster armor technically makes it easier to be hit, but reduces the amount of damage taken......and these free bites bypass this damage reduction. Armor can also make you fight/swing slower so.......when zombies come around, it's time to remove the armor. One group figure this out in-character after several large zombie battles where they barely survived and this TTP became party lore shared long after the original group's members were no longer around. Also, we kind of got in the habit of decapitating foes as a matter of course........to prevent zombie retaliation (so kind of a zombie twofer).
  2. Speaking of armor, when fighting HUGE foes, like really big humanoids/anything (Bugbears, Ogres, up to & including Giants), ditch the shield. Shields are literally designed to take a hit, and if the foes hits really hard to begin with, sometimes it's better to reduce the number of times you're hit instead of getting your shit kicked in because you put up this piece of wood and metal as an intentional target, backed by your body. We learned this one after having a couple of shields just shattered off of our PC's arms...and of course the PCs took some decent damage as well. 
Now these were two specific SOP examples, but they were actually developed during the course of the game as opposed to players reading the rules and doing the math. Now I'm not saying that players doing player type stuff is bad per se, but I like the idea of SOPs developing as lore that gets passed down from one set of PCs to another over the course of (hopefully) years of in-game adventuring.

Now we just need to establish a SOP of an in-character journal to pass these nuggets down the line....


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

Blogs of Inspiration & Erudition