Deal of the Day - Bloodshadows: Fantasy-Noir RPG (Third Edition)

I remember getting Bloodshadows in the good old days of West End Games. It was a very pulpy feeling homage to the Cthulhu Mythos, dark fantasy, and other similar fiction. Seeing the third edition of the ruleset as the Deal of the Day on DTRPG is making me want to dig my original copy out of storage - or simply buy the third edition PDF. I guess the latter will be quicker ;)

Today's Deal of the Day is Bloodshadows: Fantasy-Noir RPG (Third Edition) from Precis InterMedia. Normally 14.95 in PDF, it is on sale until tomorrow morning for 5.98.

The spellslinger upstairs conjures too loud. 

The guy down the hall drinks blood from a six-pack.

That stiff you left in the alley is walking again.

The undead factory workers are on strike.

Your client skipped town before paying.

And your landlord is looking for his rent.

"Think Harry Dresden, Cast a Deadly Spell, and The Shadow rolled into one exquisite mix, and you’re playing Bloodshadows…"

Bloodshadows combines pulp adventure with dark fantasy and noir stylings. Tough detectives in weathered trenchcoats swap biting comments with vampires in evening gowns. Humans walk the dark streets of the city alongside demonic breeds and long-dead ghouls. Magic is everywhere, even if just to light a cigarette. Death waits around every corner--undeath sometimes follows. The Wilderness holds even more danger, kept at bay only by city gates and those who patrol them. It's a dark, brooding world filled with shadows and wonders.

Picture a medieval world with two opposing cosmic forces locked in battle -- the Godwar. As their armies dwindle, new soldiers are called into the fight via magical constructs and exotic species summoned from other planes of existence. Then the war comes to an end as if its leaders abandoned the battlefield. The perversions of the war flee to the Wilderness, while Humans shelter in cities, the two avoiding each other as much as possible.

Almost a millennium later, Humans run the civilized cities and guard against the Wilderness. Some Unnatural breeds, undead, and shifters have been accepted by the Humans, though not as equals in most cases. Some, like Vampires and Succubi, hunt Humans and are able to freely roam the cities as long as their true natures are hidden. Others, like the garbage-eating Gris and fast but smelly Skethspawn, often conduct their seedy business in the shadows. Then there are the Taxims, demons who inhabit the bodies of the dead in order to indulge in all manner of vices. Man walks beside them in the streets of the cities, but often unaware of their true natures. Humans and Unnaturals share one common trait--they simply want to live their lives. Indeed, this is what drives some Humans and Unnaturals to work together for a common goal.

Now picture these cities as they would appear in film-noir. Combine violence and ambiguous morals with a dark and brooding world. Envision cities built on magic, but limited by the status quo imposed by the Big Rich or others in charge. Law and crime is a microcosm of a greater struggle between order and chaos that has been reborn after centuries of relative inactivity -- a new Godwar brews. Magic is everywhere. Some know enough to light a cigarette, while others like Spellslingers, can animate the dead or create portals to other locations.

Combine elements of Noir, Pulp, Fantasy, and Horror and you have the world of Marl. The dead struggle for the same rights as the living. Unnaturals compete for the scraps of civilization. Magic rules, but only so long as it doesn't blow your head off. And you'd be lucky to end up dead in the Wilderness, for the other options may not be so pleasant.

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GameFound - Fighting Fantasy Adventures: The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain And Other Stories

I have some very fond memories of the original Fighting Fantasy books. It was like endless quest books with random elements, hit points, and combat. It added a certain depth that one didn't get from most of the "choose your own adventure" style of fiction gaming (is that a thing?).

To bring back Fighting Fantasy as a Solo and Co-Operative card game is unexpected, but on many levels, makes sense, as it might be the next natural progression for games like Fighting Fantasy Adventures.

Fighting Fantasy Adventures is 30 bucks for the basic box, and 60 with all the bells and whistles. Not bad pricing at all.

A bit in the game play:

Here I'd like to share some of Martin's notes about each adventure as well as some thoughts about the nature of the game.

So this is one box, with 5 (actually 6) games inside it. They have an overarching storyline and you carry items and abilities forward with you. Each one of these adventures will take between 60-180 minutes to play, depending on your dice rolls and choices. So there are some elements that you will know if you play again (just like a regular Choose Your Own Adventure book) but there are also things you may not find on your first pass, you might hit a dead end and fail, you might have TERRIBLE (I promise you, you will!) dice rolls and die and need to restart.

This is not a legacy game where components are destroyed. You can enjoy the adventures multiple times, especially if you play with other people and let them make the choices the next time around. You can run this for your kids, you can lean into the RP element and act in ways that might mean you drive your other party members crazy and mean you miss important stuff. It's really fun to run this as a GM. There is a tonne of value in the box.

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

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

Cosmic Horror Sale at DTRPG - Spotlight on the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set

I personally would have run a Cosmic Horror Sale the first week of October, to tie it in with Halloween, but DTRPG usually does a separate Halloween promotion, so I'm guessing they didn't want to saturate the season.

There are a bunch of excellent choices for the Cosmic Horror Sale (all at 25% off in PDF), but I'll focus on what I consider to be the best value by far - The Call of Cthulhu Starter Set. Normally 9.99 in PDf (and a bargain at that price), The Call of Cthulhu Starter Set is marked down to 7.49 for this sale.

The Call of Cthulhu Starter Set contains books, dice, premade character sheets, maps, and enough content to keep a group busy for several roleplaying sessions.

This updated Starter Set also includes:

Three softcover manuals are broken into rules and scenarios to guide you in playing Call of Cthulhu. The physical boxed version also includes all the dice you need to play the game: a D4, D6, D8, D20, Percentile D10, and an extra D10 in a different color for use as a bonus/penalty die.

Learn to play in the best way possible—by playing! The special introduction “Alone Against The Flames”, a solo Call of Cthulhu scenario, teaches you the basic rules of the game and character creation as you find yourself in the rural New England town of Emberhead—but can you escape?

(Also includes) three scenarios designed for 3, 4 and up to 5 players.

 

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

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

Humble Bundle - Tabletop RPG Resources Bundle by DiceGeeks

Random tables are very much like dice. You either collect them, or you have the minimal number you need to run the games you GM. I am more of the collector type. For me, more dice are more better, and more random goodness is, quite frankly, more goodness at my game table.

The Tabletop RPG Resources Bundle has 32 digital books of random tables for RPGs for 18 bucks (or as low as a buck for 4 digital books)

Embrace the will of the dice gods with this bundle of gamemaster resources from Dicegeeks, designed to help you improvise fun and imaginative scenarios at the table! You’ll get more than 30 books to help quickly randomly generate content for your tabletop RPGs, including the The Great Book of Random Tables and a vast library of spin-offs, covering genres from fantasy to cyberpunk, and a multitude of scenarios, like adventure hooks, dungeons, inns and taverns, and more. Also included are titles packed with GMing guidance, like The No-Prep Gamemaster, full of practical advice for running spontaneous RPG sessions. Pay what you want for this bundle of handy GM tools, and help support Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals 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. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

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

Kickstarter - Tome of Horrors: Enemies of the Valiant (TotV and 5e)

Ah, the OGL debacle from earlier this year. It was a scary time. It was a beautiful time. It was nice to see third-party publishers pulling together for the common good. One of the more direct results of the OGL drama was Kobold Press's Tales of the Valiant (even though the seeds to TotV were planted last summer).

Many third-party publishers are still wary of supporting D&D 5e directly, but with Tales of the Valiant, they can support 5e and a capable system that they will never lose access to.

Which brings us to Tome of Horrors: Enemies of the Valiant. Written for both TotV and 5e, Enemies of the Valiant brings creatures from recent Frog God Games and Necromancer Games releases (as well as totally new adversaries) under a single cover. PDF is 25 bucks, Hardcover is 45 (POD is available for overseas backers)

In our latest bestiary, Frog God Games and Necromancer Games brings a host of creatures to Core Fantasy Roleplaying, the new 5e-compatible system from Kobold Press.  This massive collection of more than 200 creatures includes several thematic sections, including class-based characters (NPCs), Winter Holiday Specials, and creatures from Tehuatl (a South American-themed locale), along with the main volume of creatures large and small (and gargantuan and …).  None of these creatures have been published in our previous Tome of Horrors collections, and all are freshly written using the most updated guidelines from the Core Fantasy Roleplaying ruleset provided by Kobold Press.

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

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

Bundle of Holding - Hyperborea 3e

Hyperborea 3e (formerly known as Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerors or ASSH for its prior 2 editions) is the game I own in all three editions and have yet to play - I will do so at an upcoming convention, guaranteed! It reads so well and I know many that speak highly of the system.

Hyperborea 3E is a current bundle on Bundle of Holding. For 12.95 you get the following: Hyperborea 3E Player + Referee Manuals, Atlas of Hyperborea, The Late Trapper's Lament, and the Hyperborea Referee Screen. If you don't own Hyperborea, you really owe it to yourself to pick it up.

Adventurer! This new Hyperborea 3E Bundle presents the 2022 Third Edition of Hyperborea, the tabletop fantasy roleplaying game from North Wind Adventures. Hyperborea, the isolated Land Beyond the North Wind is a flat hexagonal realm hemmed in by the mystical boreas. In the unchanging scarlet radiance of a bloated, dying sun, roiling seas spill eternal over the world's rim. In this land of perpetual decay, heroic cataphracts, pyromancers, runegravers, purloiners, legerdemainists, and sublunary Gnoph-Yikks delve dungeons and ruins, explore frontiers, and plunder gold and treasure.

This new offer presents the two-volume Hyperborea 3E rulebook, atlas, and introductory adventure from the successful July 2021 Hyperborea 3E Kickstarter. Third Edition reworks character abilities, makes spells easier to acquire, streamlines combat, and adds many races, monsters, magic items, and languages. The layout and artwork are new, and the text has been completely re-edited for clarity. (And all older 2E AS&SH material remains compatible with Third Edition!)

 

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

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

When is Enough is Enough (GenCon Rant)?

 

I've mentioned, probably far too often, that in a previous life I served as a tournament/convention organizer for a game company. In that capacity I used to travel to the Origins Game Fair every year and I tried to go to GenCon, but only went 2 or 3 times.

The difference between the two, from an organizer's perspective, was night and day.

Origins would have convention staff come by and make sure the GMs were happy. They'd give us, as a group, convention money that could be doled out as needed for food, drinks (the best bang-for-convention-buck), con badges, and even hotel space (worst bang-for-the-buck). The staff would make sure our tables/room had what was needed and if there was an issue, they made sure we/I knew where to go for assistance. One time, before my tenure, we had a problem player we ejected from our games and the convention just straight-up banned him for a few years. We didn't care if he played elsewhere, just not with us. The convention just figured that if an attendee was an issue with one group, he'd probably be a problem with other groups and didn't want to subject other attendees to the hassle.

GenCon.....ugh. In all the games I organized there I saw the staff away from their designated table once.....ONCE. They clearly didn't care about anything other than getting their paid tickets for events. When I approached the staff table, they literally held out their hand for tickets before I said anything. Our games were scattered all over the place in different buildings, but usually the majority were relatively close and in the same building. I do clearly remember having problems once when they double-booked one of our tables. The other GM showed up early and was rather obstinate about moving.....honestly I think he was bitter because he rarely had players as it was. The convention staff did come by, that one time, to talk to him, but their answer was to have us "work it out" on our own. Really?

I'm sure I've bitched about this before, 'cause these experiences have been seared into my brain. The thing is everybody knows that GenCon is the "big boy" in the room that is gaming conventions, and they have been getting bigger and bigger. I'd argue too big at that, and clearly this growth ....in my opinion... has come at the expense of customer service.....if.

IF you think that the "customer" primarily GenCon attendees. I don't think that GenCon is there to cater to attendees, but to gaming companies/vendors. What I saw seemed to me that it was all about the vendors and I recall far-too-many vendors telling me that they've got resource restrictions, most notably time, and it's getting to the point where they need to pick one summer convention and if they can only do one, it's going to be GenCon.

Now most of my favorite companies do attend both GenCon and Origins, as well as some smaller cons during other times of the year, but in the summer? Well I doubt I'll see any of these guys at NTRPG. 

Photo Courtesy WDW News Today

Now there is a LOT more than just OSR games, hell I'd argue that GenCon is lacking OSR in general, but that's a different argument. I'm just saying there are a lot of non-gaming vendors at the big cons...well non RPG gaming vendors. Cards & cosplay come to mind immediately. So we get a lot of vendors, some/many that only do GenCon in the summer. Because of this they tend to bring out their new and/or limited offers to that dealer room (why not, a huge audience) which just dials up the crush of people trying to get into the dealer's room ASAP to recockulous levels.

Organizational Failures Lead to Dangerous Mob at Opening of Gen Con 2023 and Disney Lorcana Release

GenCon is reporting they've set a new record for attendance at 70,000 unique attendees, and that is a metric shit-ton of people in not that big of an area. That isn't counting vendors and staff! GenCon is saying that their convention is bringing $75M to Indy..........wait, what? That's a bit more than $1K per attendee. That isn't counting money actually spent at the con, getting to the con, or attendance fees.

Now I realize I'm biased, but what I see is a con that is growing to an absurd size and growing away from the core that established it decades ago. It's definitely no longer a RPG con and barely a gaming con these days. If you want to attend you need to get your hotel room in the first 10-15 seconds that the hotel blocks open up (no shit), have a lot of money to burn, and we willing to be crushed to death in the throng of other attendees. Good luck getting assistance if you need any (seriously, you should see those lines!)

Yes, you can literally suffer if you want to get some GenCon dealer's room exclusive (read the WDW News Today article), but you might be too late and doing so undoubtedly will come at the cost of some gaming time.

You're best off supporting a local gaming con, but that's my 2cp. Better bang for the buck. If you want a "big con" experience that has more upside than downside, go to Origins Game Fair.