Humble Bundle - Cypher System

Cypher is Monte Cook's house system. I have no experience with it, but I understand it is fairly popular. Part of this bundle is The City of Ptolus, written for 3e but easily converted to the system of your choice. I may pull the trigger for the various Ptolus products alone.

Looking for your new favorite tabletop RPG? This bundle is your ticket to the fast-running, easy-to-learn, and infinitely adaptable Cypher System, created by the famed RPG scribe Monte Cook! Whether your tastes run from hard Expanse-style sci-fi to whimsical Princess Bride-flavored fantasy to anything in between, the Cypher System is your gateway to infinite TTRPG possibilities. This bundle includes the core Cypher System Rulebook, and dozens of adventures, supplements, digital game aids, and more. Treat your players to Ptolus, Monte Cook’s beloved setting sourcebook clocking in at over 900 pages. Create your own Cypher System post-apocalyptic setting with Rust and Redemption.

 

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Humble Bundle - Ice Caves of Mt. Fuji: Call of Cthulhu© Adventure

I've said it before and I'll repeat it, Ben Burns and his publishing label New Comet Games KNOW the CoC RPG like the back of their hands. I've picked up prior CoC releases from Ben, and each has been awesome and well worth the investment of time and money.

Ice Caves of Mt. Fuji is a Call of Cthulhu 7th edition adventure book licensed by Chaosium. The book will feature the beautiful art work of  Keith Draws,  brought to you by the award-winning company, New Comet Games, the same people who brought you the Call of Cthulhu books Devil's Swamp, A Time for Sacrifice, Star on the Shore, and Corsairs of Cthulhu.

Ice Caves of Mt Fuji is 6 bucks in PDF and 15 bucks for the Print plus PDF. 

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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 Comics - Doctor Who Megabundle: Explore The Whoniverse

As I've mentioned in other posts (and videos) I'm a HUGE fan of digital comics and graphic novels. The best sale prices are literally at Humble Bundle (although Bundle of Holding does get some nice collections of KotDT at times).

The most recent comic book bundle at Humble Bundle is the Doctor Who Megabundle: Explore The Whoniverse. Some titles offered are single comics in length, and others are graphic novel collections.

Haven't tried digital comics yet? For a buck, you can get the series below (about 500 pages in length). You can always return for the "full boat" of 61 titles for 25 bucks ;)

Here's the rest of the $25 bundle:

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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 - Traveller4

Traveller! We've resurrected our September 2019 Traveller4 Bundle featuring the 1996 Fourth Edition of the star-spanning tabletop roleplaying game Traveller. Originally published in 1996-97 by Imperium Games, Marc Miller's Traveller is set in "Milieu 0," the earliest years of the Third Imperium interstellar empire. This revived T4 offer once again gives you everything you need to venture out from Core Sector in your scout ship (or your battle squadron) to recontact the Pocket Empires lost in the Long Night.

For just US$14.95 you get all six titles in this revived offer's Starter Collection (retail value $70) as DRM-free ebooks, including the complete T4 Marc Miller's Traveller core rulebook (plus the Traveller4 Game Screen); the T4 equipment book Central Supply Catalog; the T4 versions of the ship-design system T4 Fire, Fusion, & Steel and the Naval Architect's Manual for ship interiors; and Milieu 0, a setting guide that describes the brave new Third Imperium, a thousand years before Classic Traveller.

And if you pay more than the threshold price of $26.05, you'll level up and also get this revival's entire Bonus Collection with seven more titles worth an additional $70, including the weapons guide Emperor's Arsenal; the Pocket Empires guide that lets you own and operate your own star system; the fleet action guide Imperial Squadrons; Psionic Institutes; the two-part adventure Long Way Home and Gateway; and the nine-scenario collection Anomalies.

These PDFs are decent image scans of the original 1990s hardcopies. Text is always clear and usually copiable, though a few books have background graphics that interfered with the OCR (optical character recognition).

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  

Announcing Blades & Sorcery Light (OSR)

Folks have been asking me about the status of SWL for years. Well, SWL is now Blades & Sorcery Light, or BS Light (BSL).

We've got plans!

Bundle of Holding - Moon Toad Cepheus

The Cepheus RPG is built off of the Mongoose Traveller SRD and is written to emulate the classic "Black Book" Traveller from the GDW days, and it does it very well.

Adventurer! This all-new Moon Toad Cepheus Bundle presents Cepheus Engine tabletop science fiction roleplaying ebooks from Moon Toad Publishing. Cepheus adapts the rules from Mongoose Publishing's Traveller First Edition (2008), released under the Open Game License, to help you create an experience similar to the original 1977-81 Classic Traveller "little black books." UK designer and illustrator Ian Stead and his fellow Moon Toads have produced a popular edition of the Cepheus rules, followed by major rules expansions and a flotilla of fully illustrated, full-color starship guides. This bargain-priced Moon Toad Cepheus offer lets you populate your Cepheus or Traveller campaign with scout ships, Far Traders, transports, escorts, and planetary vehicles of every kind. It's a High Passage ticket for travellers everywhere.

For just US$9.95 you get all five titles in our Moon Toad Collection (retail value $80) as DRM-free ebooks, including the complete Cepheus Engine Core Rules, the Spacecraft Design Guide and Vehicle Design Guide, the Bounty Hunter Handbook, and the scenario Scout Base 947.

And if you pay more than the threshold price of $21.78, you'll level up and also get our entire Bonus Starship Collection with twelve more titles worth an additional $85, including Class E Starports and no less than ten starship guides – Atticus Freelancer, Catino Fast Trader, Celeres Escort, Kambala Freighter, Mainstay Freighter, Quixote Scout, RAX-Type Merchant, Rivington Medium Transport, Roanoke Merchant with Raccoon Landing Craft, and Starguard System Defense Boat – as well as Ship Record Sheets for many ship designs.

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  

No Love for TTRPGs?

I'm prepping for what is scheduled to be my last business trip of the year and part of that prep is getting my travel computer squared away. I'm not so rich that I have a dedicated computer for travelling, but I did pick up a gaming handheld computer and most of my PC gaming is done on the road so....good enough.

Anyway, the numerous bots that undoubtedly track my online activities decided that the nexus of TTRPGs and PC gaming means I have to see every story about Baldur's Gate 3 there is. Hell, I haven't even played Baldur's Gate 2, but I have gotten maybe 75% of the way through Baldur's Gate a handful of times on multiple computers.....BTW I highly recommend staying away from Baldur's Gate on XBox and it's kind of crappy playing with a controller, but I digress.

This morning I was confronted with this bit of clickbait from GameRant:  "Why Baldur's Gate 3's Most Loved Feature Could Never Work in Tabletop"

Now I'm used to PCs games falling short of TTRPGs, and not the other way around, so I was enticed...only to find that allegedly "Romance" is the "one part of Baldur's Gate 3 that players love". Really? The "one part" that people love? So the rest of the game is unloved? I really find that hard to believe. If "romance" was the real reason that 10 million copies of BG3  were sold, I'd expect to have had a newer version of Leisure Suit Larry since 2020.

Now I get it, TTRPGs probably aren't a good place for romance plots for various reasons and most GMs shy away from any adult themes, or at least romance & sex/sexual violence in their games. The trade-off really isn't there.

I will admit that I've "gone there" a few times of the decades of gaming, and I've only had one game system that had some baked-in:

1. My 1st HackMaster PC was married to my wife's 1st PC and the extent of the sexy times was when our PCs had been adventuring separately for a few years in-game and real world. The first time back together we had a week off in-game to prep for the next adventure and I rented out a ship for the week as private accommodations and informed the group "If this ship's a rockin, don't come a knockin". I know, I know...wildly salacious. 
2. I've probably told this story before, so I'll keep it short. My 1st game of D&D 3.5 my party member whored me out to an NPC for the night and I thought I could use a Command spell to satiate the NPC without having to "perform", only to learn the spell had been changed in this edition of the game. My NPC died shortly thereafter, I like to think it was not from an arrow, but from embarrassment.
3. In the current version of HackMaster there's a few "interesting" tidbits. One is that Orcs can & do breed with pretty much any humanoid, through rape. It's a thing and can be glossed over by not ever having the party come across an orc lair. There are some messed up evil deities as well and one time the party I was GMing had a party member abducted by some cultists and by the time the party caught up to the kidnappers they entered upon a particularly vile ceremony where the party member, along with a certain urchin they had taken an interest in, were basically going to be ritualistically raped to death. It was most certainly fucked up, I will not attest to anything less than that, but the whole event (and resulting PC driven bloodbath) tied up a bunch of loose ends on some issues/events that the PCs had experienced, but never thought were related.

Now clearly the level of adult themes are dependent on the group involved and restrained to a home game. I cannot imagine trying this at a con game with strangers, although I have heard some horror stories of GMs who have.

In general I think that romance, much like humor, is the purview of the players. I don't even think GMs should set things up, outside maybe of some story driven elements and even then that's a high-level pass.