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Saturday, March 4, 2023

Kickstarter - Hârn World: Medieval Fantasy RPG SETTING Hardback


Harn
was the second setting I found for use with AD&D IE, after the Greyhawk Folio. Harn was very different from Greyhawk because even though it was fictional, it felt very authentic. Where Greyhawk was fantastical, Harn was realistic. Harn was/is also systemless, so it could fit AD&D as easily as it could fit RuneQuest or Rolemaster, or any other fantasy RPG system.

Columbia Games is still publishing Harn, and hasn't moved the default timeline since the initial release, so your original material from the 1980s is still valid and usable with today's content.

Currently, Columbia Games is Kickstarting Hârn World: Medieval Fantasy RPG SETTING Hardback (and you also get the PDF). What exactly is included with your $69 pledge?


Not sure?

The HârnWorld Starter Kit includes HarnWorld and the Kingdom of Kaldor for 9.99 (full retail separately would be 69.98 - Harn's PDFs are not cheap)

I'm backing the KS at 69 bucks. I already have the current version of HarnWorld in PDF, but I don't have the Kingdom of Kaldor, and the bundle price is 75% of the price of that PDF alone, so I may be grabbing that too.

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, March 3, 2023

Kickstarter - The Village of Omelette a DuckQuest Adventure


The Village of Omelette is a homage to the legendary EGG. A duckly humorous adventure set in the wondrous, wacky world of AquaLoonia
.

If you don't take your fantasy with a bit of silly at times, you're missing out on a nice change of pace. Silly with a dose of realism, or vice versa, can really strike home. Thus it is with DuckQuest and The Village of Omelette.

My first knowledge of Ducks as characters in an RPG was in the old RuneQuest RPG books. Played straight, but also silly as hell, DuckQuest is a homage to those old RuneQuest adventures with ducks, and possibly even Howard the Duck. The Village of Omelette is a homage to the Village of Homlett by EGG. Homeages within homages ;)

You can snag The Village of Omelette for about 10 bucks US in PDF on Kickstarter.

Remember the old days when adventuring was fun? You set off from the village in the morning to explore the nearby ruins, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, to discover if the tales whispered in the tavern the night before were true. Welcome to Omelette, a quirky little village nestled in rolling hills a few leagues north of the Temple of Eggsistential Ennui. The villagers are keen to see what the adventurers will find, and are placing bets on who will come back in one piece. Will it be the bold knight, the clever tinker rogue, the eggcentric lizard wizzard, or the bawdy bionic bard?

The Village of Omelette

The Village of Omelette is an Adventure Zine for the tabletop roleplaying game DuckQuest, but is easily adapted to other classic RPGs. This digital release is part of Zine Quest 2023, supporting the Table Top Roleplaying Games Community globally. Join in the fun! Bring The Village of Omelette to life by backing with some ducats, and sharing the adventure with your friends!

 


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, March 2, 2023

Humble Bundle - Elf Quest - The Complete Dark Horse Collection

I was a huge fan of the ElfQuest comic back in my college days (the late 80s, early 90s) and still own the ElfQuest RPG from Chaosium. I lost track of the comic when my trips to Forbidden Plant in lower Manhattan, but I still have my originals bagged.

Elf Quest - The Complete Dark Horse Collection is currently on Humble Bundle, offering 13 ElfQuest graphic novels published by Dark Horse for 18 bucks. Needless to say, I'm all in :)

Discover the saga of Cutter, chief of the elfin tribe of the Wolfriders, and his epic quest across the World of Two Moons in ElfQuest, Wendy and Richard Pini’s long-running fantasy graphic novel series. This collection features every volume of the series published by Dark Horse, including The Complete ElfQuest, The Final Quest, and Stargazer’s Hunt. Celebrate 45 years of ElfQuest, and help support The Hero Initiative 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, March 1, 2023

Deal of the Day - Index Card RPG: Master Edition



Index Card RPG has been sold to me as the massively simple D20-powered RPG. There's lots of material in the IC RPG Master Edition, but the core rules are simple, in a good way. I have the IC RPG Master Edition in print and need to get around to giving it a solid read for review purposes, but all the talk I've heard about it has been extremely positive.

Until tomorrow morning, March 2, 2023, at 11 AM Eastern, Index Card RPG: Master Edition is on sale for 4.95 (marked down from 16.50). Do yourself a favor and snag the game that's on the lips of many in the OSR and beyond.

Index Card RPG has slowly built a die-hard following of DIY RPG creators and players over the past 5 years. Until now, it has been found in 3 hardcopy books and numerous PDF's published by Runehammer. 

This newest edition, the MASTER EDITION, combines ICRPG's numerous worlds, streamlined D20 rules and critically acclaimed GM know-how all in one PDF, all revised and updated with its latest playtest data, magic system, LOOT tables and so much more. 

-400 pages of DIY goodness: a D20 system YOU command

-Free PDF updates for life (all ICRPG past buyers will receive a FREE core rules update PDF)

-All 5 main ICRPG worlds: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Weird West, Superheroes and Ice Age

-Newly rebuilt advanced magic system

-Huge monster listing

-Collection of d100 LOOT tables and content creation tables 

-Includes FREE 150 page ADVENTURES supplement: all previously published adventures in one

-Includes portrait and landscape character sheets

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, February 28, 2023

Bundle of Holding - Advanced Fighting Fantasy


I have fond memories of the Fighting Fantasy Solo Books from my early days of roleplaying. Unlike other series of solo adventuring (with the exception of Tunnels & Trolls) the Fighting Fantasy series had a very strong RPG feel. I guess this makes sense as to why a solo series was converted into a more standard-style RPG release.

The Advanced Fighting Fantasy Bundle featuring the Arion Games tabletop roleplaying game is based on the phenomenally popular Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson (the British one) and Ian Livingstone. Originally published in 1989, and presented here in a .PDF ebook of its handsome 2011 Second Edition, Advanced Fighting Fantasy is a complete RPG set in the classic Fighting Fantasy world, with a fast and adaptable system ideal for beginners and well suited to long-term campaigns.

For just US$7.95 you get all four titles in this revived offer's Starter Collection (retail value $40) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the Advanced Fighting Fantasy Second Edition core rulebook, the Heroes Companion: rules expansion, The Sorcery Spell Book (the grimoire from Steve Jackson's four-book Sorcery! gamebook series), and the monster book Out of the Pit.

Advanced Fighting Fantasy Titan supplementAnd if you pay more than this revival's threshold price of $18.75, you'll level up and also get this offer's entire Bonus Collection with six more supplements and adventures worth an additional $59, including the full-length campaign Crown of Kings, the Beyond the Pit monster book, the Titan setting guide (plus the Titan Map), the Blacksand city book (and the Blacksand Map), and The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, a full-length RPG scenario based on the first and most famous Fighting Fantasy gamebook.

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, February 27, 2023

Kickstarter - FANTASTIC GEOGRAPHIC # 3


An RPG zine for all systems and none.

I love the guys from Silver Bulette. Seriously. In a completely platonic manner. :)

All of the Silver Bulette releases have a certain raw energy to them, with a willingness to not be what one might expect. Or something to that effect, it's hard to explain. heh

For example, look at the cover above by Chet Milton. It looks very familiar, and it should, and yet the more you look at it, the more you discover. Hidden pieces, and punchlines to jokes you may not have heard yet, but when you do, it morphs to another level. That's kinda my expectation with Fantastic Geographic #3.

We will be printing a 48 page digest sized 'zine.

This issue of Fantastic Geographic focuses on the theme of languages. You will find articles on:

  • Riddles and their use
  • Ciphers and how to include them effectively
  • An adventure set in a library
  • An adventurer for 5E involving a missing ticket, a forger, and a hermit in the woods
  • New magic items from McEwan's Mercantile
  • ..and more!

 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, February 26, 2023

Why a Cancelled Kickstarter is a Good Thing

Why a Cancelled Kickstarter is a Good Thing
You might have noticed that I didn't post last weekend, but I was laid up in a so-not-American hospital being doped up on pain meds and NOT being treated for the reason I was admitted. Was quite the shi.....it sucked.

This last week I noticed a little bit of unexpected activity, mostly on Facebook, about a particular Kickstarter: Exwyn's Handbook to Heroism.

Now I'll admit this particular project holds no interest from me because...well I don't play 5E so I don't usually even give 5E projects a look, though anything that gives an option for solo play probably deserved a look from me (it's been too long since I slung dice).

I won't pretend to know all the in's and out's of running a Kickstarter, or the in's and out's of Pacesetter Games, but I do have a good opinion of those behind the latter (don't get me started on those behind the former!), and I'd rather see their projects succeed even if I'm not into them.

When I read the Facebook posts about them cancelling this project I actually had a good feeling about it, and while I can be a dick, please don't get me wrong I'm not trying to be one here so give me a little leeway. Now on the surface it looked like that Pacesetter was going to make their relatively low funding goal, but that the minimum funding wasn't going to cut it. These kinds of things get planned out well in advance, so things like the Hasbro licensing brouhaha can really muck things up. The end-run is that Exwyn's Handbook to Heroism was probably going to be too much of a resource sink for the small company and Pacesetter Games decided to "pull the plug".

So why is this a good thing?

In my experience the average gamer thinks it would be "awesome" to run a game store or be involved in a gaming company, but both are a lot of work and jobs........not 24/7 fun and games. Sure there are cool aspects to those jobs, but don't many jobs have cool aspects top them?

I like it when businessmen "do the math" and make smart business decisions. Pacesetter Games realized that they wouldn't be able to complete Exwyn's Handbook to Heroism to the level of quality they wanted and instead of putting out a (my words) shittier product, they cancelled the project.

Now long-time readers of the Tavern have undoubtedly heard about numerous Kickstarters where the product was either shitty, or never delivered......sometimes a little bit of both! Ok, like a little bit of the project was delivered and that little bit sucks.

One thing I learned in school was that with product development you can, at best, choose two of three factors: cost, quality, time. You can have a quick and quality product, but it'll cost a lot of money. You want low cost and high quality? It'll take forever....you get the idea. Pacesetter games could probably deliver a high-quality product in a decent amount of time, but the resources (cost) just wasn't there and instead of delivering a crappy product or taking forever, since the cost was fixed, they made a wise choice.

I know Erik has blasted a few (I'd dare say idiots) who have made unwise Kickstarter decisions, as have I, but we generally don't say good things about those who make wise ones.