Free OSR - DragonsFoot.org

Most of you know about DragonsFoot. In the days of forums and bulletin boards, before the coming and waning of blogs, places like DragonsFoot were the place to be. Say what you will about forums, but Facebook, and Discord, and X don't hold a candle to what forums often offer - a static location to upload and download files.

Are you looking for adventures for your OSR campaign and have a tight budget? Let your fingers do their scrolling at DragonsFoot, and you may be amazed at what you find, freely given to the public.

Yes, even I need to remind myself to visit Dragonsfoot on an irregular basis...

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It's Been a While Since I've Dropped in on Dragonsfoot

I know I've told this story elsewhere, but at my first NTRPG Con back in 2014, I had an in-person Dragonsfoot sighting, kinda sorta ;)

The Wednesday night before the convention we (Rach and I) arrived at our hotel. Not knowing ANYONE we decided to use the hotel pool. One other was using the pool at the time, a male probably in his late 30s.

Rach decided to introduce us because she figured he must be here for the convention too, and EVERYONE read Tenkar's Tavern. She couldn't have been more wrong. Heh. My proud wife dropped my name and the other swimmer had no clue who I was (and he was there for the convention). Rach was confused. How could this be?

I asked him if he read blogs. The answer was no. Then I asked which forum he frequented? Dragonsfoot. There was my answer :)

It's been my experience that the audiences for blogs and forums, while they do overlap to some extent, certainly favor one over the other depending on the individual in question.

The thing is, not going to Dragonsfoot can mean missing out on some damn good stuff. Free stuff. I'm not even talking about the message boards. No, I'm talking about the AD&D 1e, BFRPG, C&C, and so much more downloads section. If you want access to high quality and abundant material for your OSR campaign, you can do your one-stop shopping at Dragonsfoot.

Link to adventures

Link to settings

Frank Mentzer Follows Up With The Tavernkeeper

Frank Mentzer Facebooked me via personal messages earlier today about his upcoming Kickstarter and other recent events. It was a personal conversation, but one piece in particular was pointed out by Frank to be something I could share with The Tavern's Community. It is screen shotted for authenticity below:

"A common characteristic of most Old-School sites is adherence to one specific point in the Past, generally out-of-print game systems. Very cool. Nothing wrong with that, most systems have value to many. But of all the tabletop RPG fans, the OSR buys the fewest New Products. This is fine I want to give things away... strongly preferred in these circles of course. Culturally the OSR is unique and priceless, and I applaud it. But they have chosen to be irrelevant to the current market." -FM 

I'm withholding comment until I can spend more time thinking on this, but it may very well be relevant to the recent issues over at Dragonsfoot.

Here's the source:

As I said, the rest of the conversation is private so I've only shared the piece that Frank specifically mentioned I could quote.

TSR luminary Frank Mentzer Booted from Dragonsfoot

Its been a weird couple of days over on the Dragonsfoot Forum. I wish I could explain it, but in all seriousness, I can't. I strongly suspect there were some very strongly worded PMs going back and fourth between Frank and the admin of Dragonsfoot.

We'll start with the end because sometimes stories make more sense that way. Not that this makes much sense as written:

Wow! Like, damn Wow!

So, lets follow what we can, shall we?

Not quite goodbye yet but damn close to it.

I have no words after reading the above. Or rather, I have words but I'm not sure how to put them into coherent sentences. I will say this - in June the launch date was late July. Now we'll know "by October" which doesn't mean an October launch. I'm curious as all hell but it looks like Dragonsfoot won't be a source for the info.

Obviously I should have been spending more time on Dragonsfoot.

Which leads to Frank's removal at the front of this post. Its obvious that there's more going on than meets the eye, but this is what we have. I'm withholding my opinion until there's more info to form one.

Can someone shed light on the harassment of the game designers over on Dragonsfoot? Links would be useful.

Here's another link to the thread.

edit - I left this out by mistake - not sure exactly how it fits but included for completeness:

Stepping Around the Dragon's Foot

My big forum hangout location, when I hang out in forums, has been ENWorld.  I guess more for reason of habit then anything else.  I've noticed that posting has slowed down on the site, or at least, that's been my receipt perception.  As today is the start of the new year, I figured I'd pop on over to Dragon's Foot.

I had forgotten the atmosphere in the Dragon's Foot forums can be a bit more... confrontational.  Someone was complaining about the amount of reviews done by one poster and wondered if anyone else had even read the products in question.  Did he ever think if he wanted more variation in reviewers, maybe the complainer should step up and do some reviews himself?

Of course, now I remember all f the great free adventures available at Dragon's Foot.  More stuff for ME to review here at the Tavern.

I'll be hanging around Dragon's Foot more often these days.  Not sure how much I'll be posting on the forums, but I'll definitely be lurking.