Tenkar's Tavern: 2023-07-09

Saturday, July 15, 2023

A Successful Venture to The Compleat Strategist

Rach and I did something we rarely do these days - we ventured into Manhattan (often referred to as "The City" by New Yorkers). I had forgotten that hell's Furnaces are directly linked to the Subway system in The City, and I couldn't wait to venture out of the warrens known as the NYC Subway System and into the surface reaches of Manhattan.

Heh!

In any case, we were meeting up with Professor DM, JoetheLawyer, and a few others for what is now a yearly tradition of gamer shopping, followed quickly by gamer eating and gamer drinking.

A fun time was had, stories were told, and the attendees left (hopefully) satiated.

As usual, we forgot to take a photo to commemorate the event, but I'm toying with the idea of adding a January meet-up to the schedule. I mean, gaming purchases, Irish food, and good beer are timeless, correct? ;)

The picture above shows my acquisitions for this trip :)

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Friday, July 14, 2023

Kickstarter - Infinite Archipelago: The Isle of Sedra (The Fantasy Trip - 24 hours left in funding)

I'm a huge fan of Gaming Ballistic, ever since I first laid hands on Dungeon Grappling. It simply showed that Doug was wired into what people want AND can readily use at their game table. Be it for OSE, Dungeon Fantasy, The Fantasy Trip, or his own system, Doug releases top-notch products.

I love fantasy settings, and I'm looking forward to seeing what Doug has put together. I've also promised to run The Fantasy Trip at NTRPG Con 2024.

The Infinite Archipelago: The Isle of Sedra Kickstarter has about 24 hours left in its funding period as I type this, and it's hit its funding goal, so we should be seeing the results around November of this year. Print plus digital is 50 bucks (plus shipping) and purely digital is 30 bucks.

A setting guide to the land that includes Gwalathar and Ironskull Castle. The major cities and locations are expanded on, and factional alliances and conflicts provided, supporting all manner of adventures, including dark gothic fantasy, monster hunting, labyrinth and wilderness adventuring, and political intrigue.
The Barony of Gwalathar: A fertile land surrounded by deadly foes, and a vassal state to the Holy Kingdom of Elazar over the sea. With the baron's soldiers fighting overseas, it's up to heroes to step up, especially with neighbors like....
The Duchy of Thorn: A tormented ruler sees conspiracies and threats everywhere. In a land where even the duke's daughter was taken and slain by a vampire, who can blame him? Can his new Monster Hunters' Guild turn the tide?
The Warlock Kingdoms: Five petty states ruled by sorcerers and inhuman lords, locked in a bloody conflict. One free city that has cast off the ancient chains of feudalism in a parliamentary revolution. Can it survive?
Vixengard: Fabled city of beasts, ruled by a kitsune queen said to be fabulously rich in spices. What ships would dare the long voyage to treat with her? And what of the rumors of dire threats from the Queen of Swarms?
The Emerald Mountains: Home to gold, gems … and dragons. There, the goblin prince Rykzaor schemes against his neighbors.
The City-State of Tamaz: Sitting on the fringe of the Red Desert and its Scorpion Sands, trading caravans and adventures cross the monster-haunted expanse. Ruins of the ancient Scorpion Empire dot the rugged waste. Its entombed queens and warlords may not be as dead as they appear....
The Reaver Coast: Dotted with the ancient burial mounds of the Sea Reavers and relics of times where they sacrificed and worshipped in the strange rites of serpent cults. It is an unquiet place, peppered with treasure-filled barrows.

Thursday, July 13, 2023

Humble Bundle - Classic Swords & Sorcery TTRPGs

Holy crap! This RPG collection just went live on Humble Bundle and it's stunning! Not just OSR releases, but some truly classic D20 era picks.

My OSR picks, simply best of the best, are:

Monstrosities, Dark Secrets Darker Secrets RPG, The Beaten Path series, Gangbusters B/X RPG, Hall of the Rainbow Mage, and a bunch of others. Damn, it's such a good selection!

My D20-era picks are:

Rappan Athuk: Reloaded, Demonheart, Lost City of Barakus, Tome of Horrors, The Bonegarden, Book of Taverns, and a few others.

I'm already in for 25 bucks. 54 RPG releases. Impossible to beat...

The sweet spot of the Classic Swords & Sorcery TTRPGs Bundle is 25 bucks. Unless you need a print copy of Monstrosities, which you can step up to get in print.

Gritty fantasy, bands of thieves & barbarians, and dark necromancy rule in this treasure trove of tabletop RPG resources! This eclectic collection of rulebooks, campaign settings, and supplements explores the pulpier side of fantasy role-playing. Delve into Rappan Athuk, the world’s deadliest dungeon. Discover Wonders of the Ages in the Tome of Artifacts. Stock your temples, forests, and seas with creatures of the massive, popular Monstrosities tome. Get all the digital goods for $25, or double down with the 580+ page softcover edition of Monstrosities for $65—and help support Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society with your purchase!

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Deal of the Day - The Dread Thingonomicon (System Neutral Tome of Random Tables)

I am a HUGE fan of The Dread Thingnomicon from Raging Swan Press. I went ahead and ordered The Dread Thingnomicon in hardcover, after snagging the PDF on sale, it is that good in my opinion. The Dread Thingnomicon is over 475 pages in length, and the first 50 pages are available for free to preview on the sales page (20 of which literally are the Table of Contents). Yes, The Dread Thingnomicon is simply huge ;)

The Dread Thingnomicon is normally 27.95 in PDF, but until tomorrow morning it is marked down to 16.77. Yes, this is not a cheap offering by any stretch of the imagination, but you get what you pay for and The Dread Thingnomicon is the rare beast that I feel comfortable paying that price for a PDF.

Are you a busy GM? Does session prep take too long? Do you never have time to design the cool little details that bring your game to life? Fear not! That’s where the Dread Thingonomicon comes in.
Crammed full of system-neutral themed lists, flavourful NPCs and more, the Dread Thingonomicon is designed to give you—the time-crunched GM—the tools to effortlessly add flavoursome verisimilitude to your game.
If your campaign features abnormal lesser undead, alchemist’s laboratories, ancient necropolises, archives & libraries, bandits & brigands, besieged castles, black dragon lairs, blue dragon lairs, bustling marketplaces, corpses, creepy graveyards, crypts & catacombs, cultists’ lairs, curio shops & pawnbrokers, dark caverns, fairs & festivals, fallen dwarven holds, fanes of evil, fanes of good, farming villages, fecund jungles, forts on the borderland, ghostly hauntings, goblin lairs, green dragon lairs, haunted houses, henchfolk & hirelings, hill giant steadings, items most wondrous, kobold warrens, lich’s lairs, local landmarks, lunatic asylums, merchant caravans, minions of evil, necromancer’s lairs, noble’s manor houses, noisome marshes, noisome sewers, ocean voyages, orc villages, red dragon lairs, roads, ruined castles, ruined cities, ruined monasteries, ruined wizard’s towers, seedy taverns, shadowed borderlands, slavers’ compounds, smugglers’ villages, smugglers’ lairs, snow and ice, subterranean mines, sun-scorched deserts, sunken ships, thievish doings, torture chambers, travellers’ inns, troublesome treasures, urban chases, urban events, urban landmarks, urban oddities, vampire’s castles, war-ravaged lands, white dragon lairs, wilderness camps, windswept moors, wizard’s towers and wrecked ships (and whose doesn’t?) the Dread Thingonomicon is for you!
Comprising the entire 20 Things line, the Dread Thingonomicon weighs in at 476 pages of content and is the culmination of seven years of design.
Use the system-neutral material herein either before or during play and bask in your players’ adulation.
This product is a Dual Format PDF and comprises two versions, one optimized for printing and use on a normal computer and one optimized for use on a mobile device such as an iPad.

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Deal of the Day - Through Sunken Lands and Other Adventures (Swords & Sorcery OSR)

Through Sunken Lands and Other Adventures is one of those RPGs I'm dying to run, or at the very least, steal liberally from for my own games. Using the character generation system (and low prep game engine) we first saw in Beyond the Wall & Other Adventures, Through Sunken Lands and Other Adventures port much of that over to the Swords & Sorcery genre.

Through Sunken Lands and Other Adventures is normally 9.99 in PDF, but until tomorrow morning, it is on sale for 4 bucks. This should be a bargain that is hard to pass up...

In the common rooms of the great city’s countless inns, in the bathhouses of the merchant quarter, and before the altars of a thousand gods, brave and desperate adventurers meet and make plans. They leave every day and seek their fortunes in the Sunken Lands.
Travel with us through sunken lands...
Lots of times, we want to play a roleplaying game but just don’t have the time for all the prep work involved. No more. Through Sunken Lands is a kit to make a motley crew of ruthless sellswords, gifted sorceresses, and cunning thieves, and send them off in search of gold and glory. Now we have this simple swords and sorcery roleplaying game that gives a group all the tools they need to play an exciting adventure in a single evening, no homework, no fuss.
Anyone with a background in OSR games will already be comfortable with the core rules of Through Sunken Lands.
• Inspired by the works of Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, and Robert E. Howard.
• Character Playbooks and Scenario Packs for play in a single evening with no prep.
• Player driven setting design for fleshing out the great city and the world beyond.
• A sample sword and sorcery setting: the impossible city of Jundarr and the Hundred Seas.
• Nine Character Playbooks, including the Spell Thief and the Eldritch Sorcerer King.
• Three Scenario Packs: the Mysterious Island, the Treasure Hunt, and the Wizard’s Tower.

Monday, July 10, 2023

Deal of the Day - Monte Cook's World of Darkness

Back in the later years of the first half of my time in the RPG World of Gaming, I became truly infatuated with The World of Darkness series of games, especially Werewolf the Apocalypse and Mage the Ascension, to the point that my collection of said releases was fairly complete and included the GURPS conversions. Never actually had a chance to run any of it, as my players had ZERO interest, but they were good reads.

Flash forward to the decade or so when I wasn't actively gaming, just collecting and reading, and the release of Monte Cook's World of Darkness. THIS was a version of the setting my old group would have gladly played, but alas, we were no longer gaming at that point. I still have my copy on a bookshelf.

Monte Cook's World of Darkness is today's Deal of the Day. Normally 13.99 in PDF, but until tomorrow morning it is on sale for 7 bucks. Not bad a version of The World of Darkness that even today's 5e players should be able to wrap their heads around ;)

One year ago, eldritch horrors of cosmic malevolence called the Iconnu attempted to destroy our reality.
They failed, but the attempt left the world in rapidly darkening shadow. Dead souls returned to claim living bodies, creating blood-drinking undead fiends: vampires. Bestial spirits came as well, to create werewolves, and demons formed bodies from worldly matter. Magic crashed back into the world, and mages wield its power for whatever purpose suits them. Humans called the Awakened unknowingly keep the darkness at bay.
These supernatural creatures struggle against each other and clash in the shadows, most attempting to destroy the world, but a few fighting to preserve it. And over it all, the Iconnu still lurk, squeezing the world like an eggshell.
This book includes a complete setting: a new vision of the World of Darkness.
Characters play as vampires, mages, werewolves, demons or Awakened and wield frightening supernatural powers against their own kind.
The world is the one we know, but now much darker: destruction in the central United States, nightmares coming to life and beasts roaming shattered cityscapes.
This game uses a variation of the most popular roleplaying game system in the world.

Sunday, July 9, 2023

Should Adventures Be All Wore Out?

I'm busier than expected today, just life & work "stuff", but I've been (im)patiently waiting for a particular online auction for an old adventure I want to pick up. This last week I started going through what printed adventures I have, cataloging them, and then putting into storage. A select few I'm going to display (somehow) and I've always wanted to have a big display of every version of Tomb of Horrors from each edition. Maybe it'll happen, maybe it won't.

I have a few old TSR adventures that have never been played. Whenever I look at one of them I'm reminded of an old friend I know I've posted about here at the Tavern (Link if it matters). I still wish I had a microphone handy when he went on a truly epic rant about how about the only pristine adventure should be the one that wasn't sold. Adventures should be dog-eared, highlighted, notes in the margins, maps all marked up.....

.....and I kind of agree with him, but I'm not going to do that to an adventure that is almost as old as I am!

Since most of the adventures I've written were made for specific tournaments, they didn't have print runs, but local copies. I fondly remember taking my outline, doing a preliminary copy, and then marking the ever-loving-sh....stuff out of it. Those notes went back into a re-write and I wish I had the foresight to keep that original marked up copy.

Now I know I'm no Gary, but can you imagine how many people would lose their shit (I said it this time) and the contents of their wallets to get their hands on a personally-destroyed Gary Gygax copy of an adventure? Or maybe his initial outline/notes/whatever his system was? That would be an epic auction, for sure!

I haven't GM'd in far, far too long, but I assume I'll do more like last time and play a little fast & loose by stitching parts of multiple adventures together. I like to have set "events" planned with each event mostly taking place at the player's pace, but some stuff just happens and if the players aren't involved they'll get to see any aftermath, assuming there is one.

Until then though, I'll probably still be picking up new, or just new to me adventures and not destroying them through play.....

Why "Swords & Wizardry?"

Believe me when I say I have them all in dead tree format. I have OSRIC in full size, trade paperback and the Player's Guide. I have LL and the AEC (and somewhere OEC, but I can't find it at the moment). Obviously I have Basic Fantasy RPG. Actually, I have the whole available line in print. Way too much Castles & Crusades. We all know my love for the DCC RPG. I even have Dark Dungeons in print, the Delving Deeper boxed set, Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. BOTH editions of LotFP's Weird Fantasy and some dead tree copies of the Greyhawk Grognards Adventures Dark & Deep

I am so deep in the OSR when I come up for breath it's for the OSR's cousin, Tunnels & Trolls

So, out of all that, why Swords & Wizardry? Why, when I have been running a AD&D 1e / OSRIC campaign in Rappan Athuk am I using Swords & Wizardry and it's variant, Crypts & Things, for the second campaign? (Actually, now running a S&W Complete campaign, soon to be with multiple groups)

Because the shit works.

It's easy for lapsed gamers to pick up and feel like they haven't lost a step. I can house rule it and it doesn't break. It plays so close to the AD&D of my youth and college years (S&W Complete especially) that it continually surprises me. Just much less rules hopping than I remember. (my God but I can run it nearly without the book)

I grab and pick and steal from just about all OSR and Original resources. They seem to fit into S&W with little fuss. It may be the same with LL and the rest, but for me the ease of use fit's my expectations with S&W.

Even the single saving throw. That took me longer to adjust to, but even that seems like a natural to me now. Don't ask me why, it just does. Maybe it's the simplicity of it. At 45 52, simplicity and flexibility while remaining true to the feel of the original is an OSR hat trick for me ;)

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