Swords & Wizardry Light - Forum

Saturday, March 30, 2024

Kickstarter - Last Stop, Perdition! (Weird Frontiers/DCC)


An exciting new adventure for the Weird Frontiers RPG, also compatible with the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG.

I'm a huge fan of David Baitey's Weird Frontiers DCC RPG-powered weird west game/tome. I believe the book is even larger than the DCC RPG rulebook, but David nailed it. I got to play in a Weird Frontiers scenario at Shire Con and Rach and I, and the rest of the table, had a blast. I just have no inkling as to how to WRITE a Weird Frontiers adventure.

With Last Stop, Perdition! I'll have a 50-ish page 1st-level adventure to run for my regular gaming group. Win-win if you ask me.

This Kickstarter goes to fund a PDF and POD (print on demand) run of the module Last Stop, Perdition!, written by Steve Bean. This will be a 50 page level 1 adventure for Weird Frontiers and is compatible with DCC and includes a new character class, fantastic interior art by Marcin S, Christopher Torres, and Zohn D, cartography by Davin Kluttz, and a cover by Steve Kane. When we make the base level of funding ($8k) a PDF and POD version of the module will be available as well as a few levels that offer original art. PDFs and PODs will be delivered through Drivethru RPG, and with the PODS, the backers will need to pay the print cost of the book (about $3 at the time of this going live) as well as shipping. If we make the $10K threshold, everyone that backs at the Hero of the Weird West level (the Print and PDF level) and above will receive a traditionally printed module instead of a POD. At this level, shipping will be charged through Pledgemanager, but there will be no additional charge for the printing of the book. If we meet our last stretchgoal of $12K, a second full module will be included in both the PDF and print versions! This second module is called Mountain Devils of Muddy Creek and was written by Lee Neilson.


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.

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 29, 2024

Deal of the Day - GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Backdrops (5e/Systemless?)

I do love the GM's Miscellany series from Raging Swan. If you are a GM that enjoys flying by the seat of your pants and prefers improv over prep, this is the series you need to stay on top of.

Today's Deal of the Day is GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Backdrops, nominally for 5e but essentially systemless. Normally 9.95 in PDF, but until tomorrow morning it is on sale for 4.98.

So, what is GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Backdrops?

You are a GM, but you are busy. You want to write your own modules, but you just don’t have the time. And you don’t want to use commercial modules. You want to make your campaign your own. That’s where the Dungeon Backdrop line comes in! Each Dungeon Backdrop presents a fully fleshed out and lovingly detailed self-contained dungeon ready for you to use as you see fit. Stock the dungeon with your own monsters (and—perhaps—their treasure), decide their back story and you are good to go.

Every Dungeon Backdrop is carefully designed to be easily inserted into almost any fantasy campaign. Dungeon Backdrops: we describe the dungeon, you add the monsters (and the treasure).

GM’s Miscellany: Dungeon Backdrops comprises the following dungeons:

  • The Crumbled Tower
  • Dethur's Folly
  • Deszraul's Hold
  • The Death King's Forlorn Isle
  • The Shadow Fane
  • The Splintered Crypt



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.

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 28, 2024

Kickstarter - Cthulhu Crisis Comic & Monsters! Monsters! RPG Adventures


A Fantasy Comic Saga which includes Role-Playing Game adventures for use with Ken St. Andre's Monsters! Monsters! RPG.

I'm a huge Tunnels & Trolls and Monsters! Monsters! fan. The system works extremely well for solos, one on one, and small group sessions and campaigns. The Cthulhu Crisis Comic & Monsters! Monsters! RPG Adventures Kickstarter is a "must-back" for me.

What's in this Kickstarter:  As many of you know, we like to try new ways of creating stories and adventures; this time we have something very special! Tunnels & Trolls/M!M! creator Ken St. Andre, comic/gaming artist Steven Crompton, and wrestling promoter Chris Perguidi have joined forces to create Five combined comic and rpg adventures that can be read like a comic and used for running rpg adventures with the Monsters! Monsters! role-playing game. One of the 5 books is a solitaire adventure written by Ken St Andre specially designed to be part of the storyline of the comics. The 5th book is a new rules supplement Humans! Humans! that gives more detail on running human characters using the M!M! rules system. We're not sure a project like this has ever been done before! (Certainly it hasn't with any of Ken St Andre's rpgs). We'll also have a new set of standees and a miniatures map that will use characters and locations from the comics - plus some other surprises, including a pledge level that will allow you to own an ORIGINAL hand-drawn piece of art from Steve Crompton's archive! 

You can you can pledge for these 5 books in various combinations some of which include the exclusive Humans! Humans! RPG supplement and other rpg related items. 


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.

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 27, 2024

Bundle of Holding - Fiasco Classic

For years I've only heard good things about Fiasco, but I've never read the rules, let alone played in a session. Time to correct that!

Make your own cinematic tales of small-time capers gone wrong – of disastrous situations founded on big dreams and flawed execution, right out of films like Raising Arizona, Fargo, and other Coen brothers movies. This resurrected April 2019 Fiasco Classic Bundle once again brings you the tabletop roleplaying game Fiasco, its Companion, and lots of playsets, plus many live-action freeform games by Fiasco designer Jason Morningstar (Night Witches, Ghost Court) published by Bully Pulpit Games.

For just US$9.95 you get all five complete games in this revived offer's Starter Collection (retail value $42) as DRM-free ebooks, including the Fiasco Classic rulebook (2009), plus the card-based Civil War RPG Carolina Death Crawl; the live-action game Radioactive Bison; and the freeforms The Climb and Out of Dodge. And as a convenience for this offer's customers, Fiasco designer Jason Morningstar has curated Jason's Favorite Fiascos, a collection of seven free playsets.

And if you pay more than the threshold price of $20.29, you'll level up and also get this revival's entire Bonus Collection with six more games and supplements worth an additional $52, including The Fiasco Companion, the Fiasco playset collections Run, Fools, Run and American Disasters, and the freeform games Winterhorn and The Skeletons. And for this revival we've added Space Post, Jason's game about delivering the mail across interstellar space.


 

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.

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, March 26, 2024

Kickstarter - Installation 665 (MCC RPG Adventure)


A 3rd Level Mutant Crawl Classics Compatible Adventure by Julian Bernick -  MCC / DCC

I'm a huge fan of DCC and MCC adventures, even if my gaming group isn't a fan of the system. That's okay, good adventures can be played with any ruleset :)

The Installation 665 Kickstarter is 8 bucks in PDF and 20 bucks in Print plus PDF (plus shipping).

The book will be of the same quality as our previous offerings, saddle-stitched and printed locally on 8 1/2 x 11 premium silk paper. I’ll personally pick up the books, so there’s no added shipping time once the printer has them ready.

We are ready for print. The writing, editing, layout, and art are all complete. You will most likely get this book in your hands much sooner than the reward date suggests.

No AI was used for artwork or writing.


 

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.

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, March 25, 2024

Kickstarter - The Complete Virgin Mine AD&D/5E Mega-Dungeon!

I've been following Art of the Genre for years now. Scott's work is always high-end, and the artists he secures for the covers are second to none. His orange spin releases fit nicely with the orange spin AD&D 1e books.

The Complete Virgin Mine is Scott's latest Kickstarter and is a compilation of seven parts initially released as soft-cover adventures (Folios), brought under one hardcover, orange-spined book. Or snag the individual releases - but then you won't have the orange spine...

I really need to organize my 1e collection/Folio Hardcovers to get that full "orange shelf" look ;)

The Complete Virgin Mine is a 7 part mega-dungeon with another series of rooms in the higher levels that feature access to 'the shadow realm' in which even more monsters can be encountered!  It is a project that is four years in the making, and has taken on a 'life of its own', much like that original Roslof Keep campaign (see below). As this project compiles 6 Folio adventure modules (#26-#31) and 5 mini-adventures, and a bonus 'boss monster' encounter for the final endgame (is the book cover giving anything away?) I thought it was important to offer the first five modules in both physical and PDF format, AND also produce Folio #31, The Dungeon of Death, which can also funded ONLY in this Kickstarter (for all you looking to keep your Folio collection complete!). 

 

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.

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, March 24, 2024

Thought: Players, not the GM, are Responsible for Campaign Continuity

Thought: Players, not the GM, are Responsible for Campaign Continuity
This last week (or so) I have noticed that I haven't slung dice since maybe before Thanksgiving(?), even if I had since then it definitely was last year, so like....WTF? Work has been keeping me busy, but that's like a M-F endeavor that so doesn't impede on the normal every-other-Friday night game.

Now I'm not calling out my GM, which I probably should......but I realized that I was getting a weak-ass fix by playing a turn-based "RPG" on my Xbox....it's more like sustenance-gaming, just enough to take off the edge of withdrawal. Kind of like a Vampire feeding off of cow's blood. Sure, it'll kind of get the job done, but just isn't the same.

Now as much as it might feel good to throw my GM under the bus for me not playing, and I'm only saying this for sake of my fellow players who I know read this, I should have options.....and one of those options is to once again pick up the GM shield again...

....so I have been thinking heavily about running a game again, but I haven't broached the subject with anyone until now (SURPRISE fuckers!, I mean fellow players who read this...)

As is (probably) natural, I've been thinking of my last campaign. It was a current-edition (low magic fantasy) HackMaster game set in the last-edition (High Magic fantasy) game world, with a plausible (if you take the last two national-level tournaments as cannon) backstory explaining the transition from magic-rich to magic-poor. I had a blog for the campaign which is somewhat broken as I had hosted portions, mostly graphics, on my own domain. I fixed part of it today, so if anyone is interested (https://garweezewurld.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-adventure-begins-16th-haarkiev.html).

The whole idea wasn't so much to keep an online journal for sharing, but to help me keep track of NPCs and past events. The blog really was too much work, mostly because of the graphics. I should have used something like Tiddlywiki instead.

Reviewing all this info I have come to what might be an unpopular opinion: It is not the responsibility of the GM to provide campaign continuity.

As the GM I want to create the game world and let the players loose in it. I decide some big-picture stuff that'll happen to the game world and as the players interact, if they change to course of things I'll adjust and if they don't well the big things still happen. As far as actual campaign continuity, well that's the player's responsibility. As the GM I put things together and the players do what they do. As they discover and interact with the world, the onus is on them to remember the NPCs and to enjoy or suffer the repercussions of their interactions.

It is also the responsibility of the players to "pass down" information to other players and other player characters. If there is a total party wipe (Total Party Kill) then I hope the players arranged for some manner of contingency. Henchmen or protégés need to be created before the PCs kick the bucket specifically so that campaign information doesn't die out. 

This why I like when GMs don't necessarily ensure the party knows exactly what they're fighting unless they've met one/some before. I think the whole aspect of exploration, in every sense of the word, is... underrepresented in a lot of games. The big strokes for sure, but the little things that would actually be new to the PCs.....not so much. I know it's more difficult for players to not go off of player knowledge, but when PCs encounter zombies (for example) for the 1st time, that should be a HOLY SHIT moment for them. Hell, even with the glut of video games, movies, and TV shows with zombies in them....can you imagine how freaked out you'd be in real life if you stumbled across some zombies?!

I like it when games have a mechanic for these first-time interactions with what should be some horrific/strange/otherworldly encounters. Subsequent times not so big of a deal and if the party can maintain that campaign continuity then maybe those subsequent PCs can not be as scared/subject to penalty.

As a GM one of the ways I've encouraged players to do this campaign continuity, maintenance really, is to provide some bonus XP for keeping campaign journals. In-game they are remittances "back home" to those henchmen or protégés and allow the transfer of XP from one PC to another. This is really a HackMaster (4th edition) concept, so I'm just giving the broad strokes. PCs can funnel XP to future PCs essentially through "adventuring through correspondence", allowing for these future PC to not have to start at 1st level.

Just some thoughts I'm tossing "out there" as I'm contemplating a new campaign when I pick up the mantle of GM once again.