Some Swords & Wizardry Houserules For Your Perusal

The link below will take you to the INVULNERABLOG. At it, you will see an article on some Swords & Wizardry Houserules by +Joshua Kubli .

It was supposed to have appeared in the Unofficial OSR Zine that never fully got off the ground, so Josh posted it on his site. It's a really nice piece, and I'm tempted to steal bits and pieces of it for my current games of S&W Complete.

I'm posting the beginning of the the article here, but you'll need to go HERE for the full article:

MY OSR HOUSE RULES

I’ve got a set of house rules I use for most OSR games I run. They add a simple “hero point” mechanic, skill system, and critical damage system to the game. Why did I add these rules?

It gives the players something to look forward to between levels, without adding a lot of complexity or minmax potential.
It gives players the option of surviving with lasting injury or trauma, instead of dying immediately from serious injuries. I don’t use these rules when running Dungeon Crawl Classics, for example, because heroes characters are supposed to die in droves in that system. That’s half the fun.
It gets players involved and moving forward. They don’t get rewarded for playing it safe and cautious, they win big, and if they screw up, they have a chance to survive.
My first DM used an ad-hoc “point reward” system, to give us stuff when we rolled well or had great ideas. My beloved fighter-wizard had a peanut butter point, a “Knight of the Bone” point (it was because he saved the party by striking up a conversation with a lich, although the name certainly suggests other tales of bravery…) and assorted other silly points by the time that first campaign was done. This is a similar idea, just implemented in a slightly less silly way.

The rules have two parts: Valor and Cunning, and Anguish and Trauma.

VALOR AND CUNNING POINTS
This section provides a rudimentary “hero point” and “skill/feat” system.

GAINING VALOR AND CUNNING POINTS
Each time a character gains a Valor or Cunning Point if they roll:

Any extremely effective, clever, entertaining, humorous, and/or successful plan or action.
01 to 05 on a Thief Skill check.
 20 on an attack roll.
 1 on an Attribute roll.
Any other roll, if the player rolls the best possible result. If the best possible result occurs less than 5% of the time, round up. So, for example, players would gain points on a roll of 1 or 2 on 1d30 (roughly 6.67% chance).
Gaining Valor Points: Characters that roll well on physical actions, or that act with vigor, speed, force, and good combat tactics, earn Valor Points. Attack rolls using physical weapons, lockpicking, and tumbling earns Valor.

Gaining Cunning Points: Characters that roll well on mental actions, or that demonstrate good long-term or large-scale planning, ideas, puzzle-solving, deductions, foresight, and persuasive skills, earn Cunning. Well-placed attacks with spells, social interaction, and abstract thought are all worthy of Cunning Points.

As you might expect, fightery types, including rangers and paladins, are more likely to earn Valor Points, while spellcasters are more likely to earn Cunning Points. Characters that act in both a physical and a mental capacity, like thieves and bards, have a good chance of earning both.

(go to the INVULNERABLOG for the rest)

Unofficial OSR Zine - Where It's At and Where I'm At

I've had no time to devote to the Unofficial OSR Zine over the past few months, between increasing work responsibilities and the impending loss of my mother-in-law - they had said 4-6 weeks last week, but it's now day by day. So yeah, little time and many distractions.

This is the current plan for the zine and such:

1 - The Unofficial OSR Zine is officially on hold. I need to block out some major time to get it organized and I need focus - both of which are at a premium these days.

That being said, I have a collection of work, both articles and art, that were submitted. If you submitted to the Unofficial OSR Zine, drop me an email at tenkarsDOTtavernATgmailDOTcom so I can send your beer money your way. Even if the zine is on hold, you should still get paid. I'll be going through my records to find who I owe, but nudging me at this time is best.

When work on the zine picks up again, I'll pay again in beer money to use your work if you wish to submit again as well as paying for new submissions.

2 - I'll be starting a new feature here at The Tavern in the meantime. The Unofficial OSR Column will (hopefully) feature guest authors and artists. Again, I'll pay in beer money (5 bucks in RPGNow Credit or Paypal per used submission). Stuff that would have fit in the zine would fit well in this feature. Stuff that has been submitted to the zine may also work well, and will get paid for both the original submission and use on the blog if you decide to post it to the blog.

Email me at tenkarsDOTtavernATgmailDOTcom with your inquiries and ideas. You retain all copyright, I just get to use it on the blog until hell freezes over or some such. This serves the purpose of mixing things up, frees up some blog time for use otherwise and (hopefully) should be fun. Aiming for once or twice a week, but we'll see how it goes.

Remember, there are some awesome OSR zines out there right now, in print and PDF. Support them and they will reward you with some awesome reading :)

In any case, if you can spare some kind thoughts or prayers for my wife and her family, they'll gladly take it.

Last Call For Submissions to the Issue #1 of the "Unofficial OSR" Zine

This weekend I plan to do a physical print out of the submissions we have so far, just so I have a better time visualizing everything. Then I start organizing, proofing and editing and finally get it into our amazing layout volunteer for this issue.

We could still use some art. Not that I don't have a large amount of stock art to pull from, but I'd rather showcase original art when possible. Paying beer money doesn't help, I know ;)

Hardish deadline for submissions is August 12.

Send them to: tenkarsDOTtavernATgmailDOTcom

Received Two More Excellent Submissions for the "Unofficial OSR" Zine Today

I think I'll be printing out all of the current submissions this weekend just so I can physically hold them - and get an idea of how big the first issue of the Unofficial OSR zine is heading to be. We are getting submissions at a nice steady pace (two today) and they've all been "very good" or better. I'm humbled. I'll also be buying lots of beers it seems.

There is still nearly a month to submit (details on this post)- and we pay with "beer money" - no one is getting rich, but the least I can do is buy you a beer ;)

One thing the zine lacks is an actual header / title / whatever the f' you call the graphic that would be "Unofficial OSR". If you're good at that stuff, send your ideas to tenkarsDOTtavern at that gmail thing. I'll pay more than a beer for the one we use. Heck, if we get a couple of decent submissions, I'll even put it up for a vote with prizes and shit.

In the meantime, a heartfelt thanks to all that have submitted or are thinking of doing so. It is your zine after all.

Tavern Activity - Zine, Reviews and Assorted Plans for the Summer of 2013

As the recent heat wave in the North East reminded me, we are knee deep in summer. One always needs to make some summer plans.

The aim is to get the first issue of the Unofficial OSR zine out the first week of September. We have some excellent submissions this far (including a scenario for the original Chainmail rules) but there is always room for more. Remember, we pay in "beer money" ;)

I'd like to average a review a day, but now that I'm back from my week of vacation, it will probably slow to 3 or 4 a week if I'm lucky. I think Sailors of the Starless Sea will get reviewed tonight.

What I'd also like to do is a "DCC RPG Content Post" a day for the month of August (much like I did with Swords & Wizardry back in May) but getting the zine together may preclude me from hitting it daily. Maybe I'll aim for every other day. Crap, maybe I need to start working on that stuff now ;)

Oh, and tentative plans for a Swords & Wizardry Online Con / Gaming Event towards the end of September.

God bless my wife for being a good egg :)

There's Little Better Than a Week of Vacation - Except Maybe Reading Zine Submissions Over Vacation.

Well, except maybe two weeks :)

I'm on vacation for until the 8th of July. The plan to head to the Poconos for the first half of the vacation has now changed to the second half of vacation, as my beautiful wife was unable to get off the 1st and the 2nd but has off from the 3rd.

Still, plenty of time for reading, reviewing and hopefully looking over some more zine submissions to Unofficial OSR. You still have more than a month to get your submissions in, but the sooner is always the better so I can guesstimate the number of pages we'll be running at. Fun times. Send you thoughts, questions, ideas, etc to tenkarsDOTtavernATgmailDOTcom

Hey, being home on Tuesday means I'll be around for my Reaper Bones delivery! Rockin!

Call For Submissions to the Unofficial OSR Zine

I've got vacation time coming up from the real job. I'm off the first week of July and the week that covers the end of July / first week of August. I'd like to devote much of that time to reviewing / editing submissions to the Unofficial OSR zine.

What are we looking for? Monsters, adventures, spells, magic items, classes, house rules, design thoughts, series of articles, whatever the fuck is on your mind that your think others might want to read and is OSR related.

In all seriousness, this zine should belong to the OSR community and as such needs to be written by the community. If all you wantred to read was my thoughts, this blog would suffice.

The plan is to cover all of the OSR games out there, dependent of course on the articles submitted. Can't publish articles for AS&SH or LotFP Weird Fantasy and the like if no one submits them. Some articles may be "generic" OSR, some may be more system specific. Some may be multi-system stated. Depends on the submission.

The Unofficial OSR Zine pays in "beer money" - either thru RPGNow credit or Paypal. "Beer Money" is $5 per accepted article or piece of art. Grumpy Dwarf (that's us / me / whatever) gets the rights to publish your work in the PDF issue it's initially published in until the end of civilization, and the right to publish it in a print on demand collection of the PDFs in question. You keep the copyright. You can republish it as you will.

We are also offering free 1/4 page ads for any and all OSR zines out there, in print or PDF. This is a community project, at least from my POV, and giving back to the community is the least I can do.

Want to know where the RPGNow affiliate credit this blog earns goes when it isn't given away in some random contest? It will be going to pay the "beer money" for this zine until it breaks even.

Send inquiries, ideas, submissions, threats to tenkarsDOTtavernATgmailDOTcom. Put "zine" or some such shit in the subject heading.

Oh, and for those that are inquiring about submitting articles for OSG (Old School Games) send me an email and we'll figure out if it fits.

Thoughts on a "Mad Libs" Style Mini Dungeon

Sometimes thoughts come from out of the blue and trip you up bad - they derail your ability to think of anything else.

This is one of those times.

As I sit here thinking about some regular sections and such for the Unofficial OSR Zine, the idea of a "Mad Libs" styled Mini Dungeon came to mind. Instead of using nouns, verbs and the like, it would be things like "choose humanoid", "choose mindless undead" and "giant _____" in the room encounters. Could even work out a system for traps too.

Maybe it's silly, but no two dungeons would run the same. Besides, silly can be fun too.

If you have no idea what Mad Libs are, Wikipedia defines it as:

Mad Libs (from ad lib, a spontaneous improvisation) is a phrasal template word game where one player prompts another for a list of words to substitute for blanks in a story. The game is frequently played as a party game or as a pastime.

Maybe under the title "Spontaneous Dungeons".

Or maybe i just need some sleep ;)

 

"Unofficial OSR" Envelopes the "Copper Droppings" Zine

Here's today's second announcement:

I'm going with the title "Unofficial OSR" for the fanzine under The Grumpy Dwarf as the publisher, as feedback that I've gotten indicates that many folks would prefer a zine that covers the whole of the OSR.

So, with a spread starting with ACKS and Ambition & Avarice and running through Raggi's Weird Fantasy and everything in between, there is a lot of ground to cover.

That doesn't mean the end of Copper Droppings before it even starts. Copper Droppings will be it's own section, edited by +Michael Garcia and will be exclusively Swords & Wizardry - so yes, a zine within a zine. Think of the old Dragon issues with the Ares section.

I'll be aiming for Sept 1, 2013 for release - if we can hit earlier, great, but this timeline gives me 2 weeks of vacation a and 2 1/2 months to get things up and running.

Same payment plan for submissions - beer money and you keep the rights to your work ;)

submissions for Unofficial OSR should be sent to tenkarsDOTtavernATgmailDOTcom

submissions for Copper Droppings should be sent to socialATdeadratpublishingDOTcom

Cut off for Issue 1 submissions is August 3, 2013

(if time and ability permits, there may be a "Zero Issue" release -