Kickstarter- Drinking Quest: Journey into Draught (Drinking Quest IV)

My Gods, how did I miss this? Jason Anarchy is kickstarting Drinking Quest: Journey into Draught, which is actually Drinking Quest Volume IV. I'm so in!

Seriously, if we get to organize an informal PubCon spring / summer of 2016, Drinking Quest WILL be played.

Cards, dice, RPG elements and booze. What could be better?

Well, more content for DQ is always better. Instead of 4 quests like each of the original games consisted of, Drinking Quest IV has 6. 50% More drinking!

as for the Risk & Challenges:

Risks and challenges 

I do this for a living so my reputation is on the line if I don't keep backers happy. 

I'm very experienced with the printing and fulfillment process. 

The game is done but I'm just doing final text editing and formatting so the files will be ready for print with no delay after the campaign ends. 

It is my mission to keep backers happy and get them their games!

To think I actually played a session with Jason Anarchy himself of DQ Volume 1...

edit - did I mention it's funded and blowing away stretch goals with 24 days to go?

GM's Day Sale OSR Picks at RPGNow - 30% Off PDF Titles - Part 3

The more I look, the more I find.

Yep, RPGNow's GM's Day Sale is in full swing and The Tavern is picking out some of the OSR highlights. This is the third post in the series. Post One is here and Post 2 is here.

Goblinoid Games appears to have put it's entire catalogue on sale. That means titles such as Labyrinth Lord, Crypt World, Rot World, Starships & Spacemen, Realms of Crawling Chaos and others.

Kort'thalis Publishing has also put it's entire catalogue on sale. My picks would be Liberation of the Demon Slayer and Revelry in Torth.

Expeditious Retreat Press is another publisher that has put their entire catalogue on sale. Looking for OSR adventures? Look no further. ERP has you covered.

Kobold Press looks to have nearly it's entire line up on sale. Have holes in your Kobold's Guide to... series of releases? Now is the time to fill them.

How about +Kevin Crawford 's Sine Nomine Publishing collection? Yep, 30% off the lot of it. If you can get only one I suggest Red Tide: Campaign Sourcebook and Sandbox Toolkit

Purple Sorcerer Games has put 6 of it's 7 DCC RPG releases on sale. Sunken City Omnibus. Enough said.

GM's Day Sale OSR Picks at RPGNow - 30% Off PDF Titles - Part 2

Yep, more OSR picks for RPGNow's GM's Day Sale:

Sisters of the Aquarian Order for White Star (mystics) - Print & PDF is on sale for $5.99!

Pretty much all of Troll Lord Games releases are one sale.

Goodman Games / DCC RPG is also on sale.

The AD&D 1e MM and DMG are 30% off, but not the Player's Handbook. Go figure.

Castle of the Mad Archmage and Adventures Dark & Deep from BRW Games

Ghost Ship of the Desert Dunes, Beneath the Comet and Forgotten Fane of the Coiled Goddess and the rest of the North Wind Adventures catalogue.

Warriors of the Red Planet (swords & planet sci-fan) and Colonial Troopers

GM's Day OSR Picks at RPGNow - 30% Off Titles - Part 1 (because I'm sure I missed many)

Yep, the GM's Day Sale is in full swing at RPGNow. There is a whole swath of RPGs on sale at 30% off, but what if you are looking for an OSR focus?

White Star has a bunch of selections. You have the White Star Core Book, The Graveyard at Lus, Have Death Ray, Will Travel, Between Star & Void and others.

Other White Box powered RPGs on sale include White Lies (spy thriller) and Skyscrapers & Sorcery (modern day magic).

Want OSR Supers? Guardians has you covered.

Enjoy +Dyson Logos ' maps? Pick up the 2015 Dodecahedron Cartographic Review

Somehow haven't yet grabbed Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea? Now is the time.

How about Adventures! for less than a buck?

Looking for a system neutral city setting? Check out Drakonheim: City of Bones

Sale prices are in effect until March 17.

Tavern Chat Tonight - 930 PM Eastern - State of the Tavern Answers (if there are Questions)

Yesterday was a State of the Tavern post. There is much in the hopper, both near term and longer term.

I'll answer any related questions tonight as best I can. There will, of course, be the usual Tavern Chat banter in addition.

Lots of good stuff coming up at The Tavern in the near future ;)

State of The Tavern - March 2016 - The Party Starts in 2 Weeks

If all goes as planned, St Patrick's Day (March 17th) will be my last working day before pre-seperation leave kicks in and official retirement rolls around this summer. So, what does that mean for The Tavern and it's loyal readers?

First things first, I've got a shitload of content that needs to be put in PDF and Print format for my Patreon Backers. It's long overdue, but no longer working overnights is going to be wonderful. Hoping to have PDFs start distribution by 3/24 and Print copies moving by 3/31.

StarSlinger posts have been quiet these past few week and I'll squarely blame it on work and illness. I've been drained. Goal is to have something ready for distribution by mid to late April. More content and more posts coming before that.

PubCon NYC 2016 should have more potential locations scouted by mid April. Small, informal with lots of beer is the goal. Mmmmmm.

Speaking about beer, I'd like to have Tenkar's Taproom, the blog about beer, microbrews and (hopefully) homebrewing back with a fresh post BEFORE St Patrick's Day. We shall see. (still need a custom blog banner)

As for Saturday Night Special, that should kick off again once I am officially retired in July. There are reasons for such a delay, not the least of which is that the posts takes days (sometimes weeks) to properly compose.

Oh, and of course, more posts here at The Tavern. More gaming content. More game reviews. Simple more... ;)

Kickstarter - Godbound: A Game of Divine Heroes (Kevin Crawford)

When it comes to RPG Kickstarters, +Kevin Crawford is the Gold Standard. On time if not early, art from the project placed into the public domain, excellent products one and all. Yep, Kevin is "The Man".

Godbound is Kevin's latest Kickstarter. It's funding goal was $8k. That was surpassed in less than a day.

So, what is Godbound?

Godbound is a tabletop role-playing game of newborn divinities awakening to unimaginable power. These men and women find themselves bound to the Words of Creation, the primal powers of a fallen cosmos where the Throne of God stands empty.
The world is shattered, its scattered realms racked by the aftershocks of the Last War and the final terrible struggle of the Made Gods who strove to replace the vanished Creator. 

Some realms have been reduced to nothing more than blasted wastelands and silent bones, while others still endure in faded splendor and growing hardship. Their natural laws flicker, for the great engines of Heaven have begun to fail from lack of care. Their angelic guardians were long ago dispersed by the Made Gods and now nurse a bitter hatred of humanity's usurpation. 

There are heroes still, and shining cities, and peaceful villages where a son may grow old in his father's trade, but these things darken with each new year's passage. The world winds down by slow inches. Into this twilight age have come the Godbound. Some say that it is the decaying husks of the Made Gods that give them their power, gobbets of divinity falling like rot to congeal about the souls of humankind. Others believe that it is the work of the Creator, reaching out from Their silence to touch Their creations with new light. Most do pretend to know why it is that a common peasant girl should ignite with the sun's own brilliance, or a grizzled old soldier should suddenly find half an army falling before his notched blade. 

The Godbound bring hope and terror in equal measure. Even the freshly-awakened among them have incredible powers, able to hurl thunderbolts like lesser men throw stones, or spit curses that kill five generations of their enemy's kin. They are burnt to ashes, and rise anew. They are buried under hillsides, and shout the stones apart. They sing up gold from barren earth or pour out an autumn harvest from their saddlebags. They work miracles, and men tremble. 

Yet they are men and women, with the dreams that men and women dream. Some are saviors, determined to lift their people from their hardships and lead them to a better day. Others are mercenaries, lending their aid to whatever lord or sorcerer-prince can pay them in suitable coin. And some, of course, are blind fools who wield their powers with the recklessness of children, building their dreams on the bones of the poor mortals around them. There are few who can gainsay a Godbound's will. 

Even so, such terrible powers do exist. In the wilderness the wretched parasite gods swell on stolen celestial power, sucking the world's blood from its wounds. Grim eldritch adepts plumb nameless secrets and forge pacts with the monstrous Uncreated for power enough to tax even a divinity. Hulking Misbegotten shamble from the darkness and bring their numberless spawn behind them. These and other foes can force a Godbound to flee or perish if the newborn wielder of the Words hasn't the help of a faithful pantheon of allies. 

The heroes of Godbound are hurled into a world unprepared for their coming. They will shake the pillars of fallen Heaven and scar the thrones of the kings of earth. Some will seek adventure, others the pleasures of rule, and a few no more than the small and homely things that fate would conspire to deny them. Yet what they will find, in the end, only you can say.

Would You Back a Project Titled "Live Project Novel Vomit"?

Sometimes being known as someone with their fingers on the pulse of various Kickstarter projects is more bane than boon.

The Prefundia page is in pretty poor English, so if this is a sample of a future translation...

The Kickstarter itself is in German. No, I didn't bother to let Google translate it.

As an aside, I guess it would make a good title for a LotFP adventure...

Kickstarter - 21 Steps To A Million! = Book + Real World Game (RWG). (no idea WTF it actually is)

I guess it got stuck on step 4.

There is a video. Please, drink heavily. Extra points if you make it to the end without falling asleep

and who really cares about his degrees?

I never would have guessed this was a First created, Zero backed project. Really...

Remember the Dragonwars of Trayth Kickstarter "Meltdown" at The Tavern? It's been Released as a Free PDF on RPGNow

My God. I remember the Dragonwars of Trayth Kickstarter fiasco like it was yesterday. Actually, it was October of 2014 but hey, whose counting?

The posts regarding this Kickstarter probably generated more comments than anything else that's been discussed here at The Tavern, and that's not including the comments from one of those involved in the KS that were subsequently deleted (but saved as screenshots for the sake of history and entertainment value).

Here's the original posts:

Kickstarter - Dragonwars of Trayth - Tabletop RPG (Pathfinder / OSRIC) - Revised with new Pics and Awesome Legal Threat!

Wayward Kickstarter - Dragonwars of Trayth - Tabletop RPG (Pathfinder / OSRIC) - Indtroducing The PR Fail

Tales from the Backwater Tavern

Closing the Door on Dragonwars of Trayth Kickstarter - Restoring the Deleted Comments

So, here we are and the first installment of a 25 piece epic series known as Dragonwars of Trayth (yes, 25 parts) is available as a free download on RPGnow. Oh, and a free character sheet download (ignore the misspelling in the file name, "character" is spelled correctly on the actual sheet. DO NOT print out all four pages, the first two are simply ads and color ink killers)

Did I mention you can get the character sheets in Pathfinder and OSRIC flavors but the module is only available for Pathfinder thus far.

You know you want to. I WANT TO. And I shall. It is, sadly, pushing away other titles from the top of the review pile (Ed Greenwood's the Terrible Revenge of Simpering Malexineuss the Pretender may still go first)

Remember, the download is free and your time is precious.

OD&D Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-gods & Heroes - $4.99 in PDF

and now the circle is complete.

white box and tan covers.

three plus four ends the tour.


Yeah, my poetry sucks. Thank the gods no one comes to The Tavern to read my poetry.

OD&D Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-gods & Heroes (0e) is available in PDF for $4.99 at RPGNow. Sure, you can snag a poor quality scan off of a torrent or two (as has been mentioned ad nauseam by the same commenter) or you can grab a legit and cleaned up scan from RPGNow for about the cost of a large / grande / tall / wtf they call a large coffee at Starbucks these days. Wait, they may add in a stale cookie for that price.

Note: the Melnibonean and Hyborian mythos have been removed due to copyright issues.

Kickstarter - The Mystery at Port Greely (OSR)

What can I say about The Mystery at Port Greely? It's written by +Jeff Talanian and inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. If that isn't an awesome combination of OSR goodness, I don't know what is.

See the cover above? The stuff nightmares are made of. Good nightmares I hope, but nightmares none the less.

Did I mention the Kickstarter funded in a day?

That 20 bucks gets you a signed and numbered copy as well as a PDF version?

That higher levels allow you to snag original art?

For now I'm in for 20, which is a steal...

The award-nominated role-playing game, Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea™ is back with a brand new, exciting adventure, written by the game's creator, Jeffrey Talanian. 

This sword-and-sorcery adventure module is site-based, fleshing out a small portion of the Hyperborea setting and providing classic, memorable adventure material. 

The Mystery at Port Greely is designed for the AS&SH™ game, but it is suitable for use with the traditional editions of the world's most popular RPG, as well as its modern simulacra, such as OSRIC™ and Swords & Wizardry™. 

Physically, this module will be saddle-stitched, ranging from approximately 32 to 40 pages, and measuring 8.5 x 11 inches. It will feature a full-colour, card stock cover, and sharp, black & white interiours on durable paper.

My POD D&D 5e Basic Rules (with screwed up cover ;)

Yeah, I had a feeling the cover was going to be screwed up, but I didnt expect superimposed text to be the culprit. Does it really matter though?

Nope!

The insides of my D&D 5e Basic Book appear to be fine and really, that's what I need for the soon to be no longer be secret project...

White Star Companion released in PDF - More White Star from the Spahn Himself

Last night the White Star Companion was released. I know, because I got the message from +James Spahn while I was sitting at my work desk last night. Worst thing was knowing it was released and I couldn't peek yet. You know, that whole work thing.

Now I have peek although I have yet to give it a thorough read from front to back. Actually, it's rare that I read any RPG release from front to back these days. Still, I suspect you know what I means. I still need to sit down with this book longer than I have. That being said, I very much like what I see.

Daring Men of Tomorrow and intrepid Deep Space Explorers face off against a horde of savage White Simians in the floating jungle of a lost world. Plucky Sidekicks escape relentless Bounty Hunters aboard their modified skyboards. Somewhere on the edge of the galaxy, an Orbital Battle Station is about to obliterate an entire planet with the push of a button. 

The White Star Companion brings nearly one hundred pages of new options to your White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying experience. New classes, new aliens, new creatures, new weapons, and new starships are all revealed. Complete rules for planetary vehicle combat are provided along with ways to generate complete star systems simply by rolling a few dice. The brand new skill and Serial systems can instantly flesh out a character's history and talents. 

With the White Star Companion, you'll expand your game to the edge of the galaxy and beyond! White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying is completely compatible with Swords & Wizardry WhiteBox and many other old-school roleplaying products.

Here's the list of new classes:

Bounty Hunter
Deep Space Explorer
Freed Assimilant
Man of Tomorrow
Novomachina
Plucky Sidekick
Two-Fisted Technician
Yabnabs

Did I mention the hyperlinks in the PDF yet?

Oh and it gives options for a simple skill system.

Alright, fuck this post. I'm reading the White Star Companion from front to back starting now...

Humble Bundle RPG Book Bundle - Pathfinder - Starting at a Buck

I don't normally post much about Pathfinder as it is WAY too crunchy for my tastes. I will, however, make an exception today with the Humble Bundle RPG Book Bundle - Pathfinder. Why? Simply because for as little as a buck you can get some excellent value even as an OSR gamer.

The 1 buck level gives the core game and some other goodies - the ones that stand out are the GameMastery Guide and the Pathfinder Beginner Box. Really, if the only value you find is using 1% of each of those 2 items, you've made your buck back and then some

The Bestiaries available at the higher levels are ripe for OSR conversions, but by far the best value is a single dollar.

Bundle of Holding - Castles & Crusades - Starting at 12 Bucks

I like Castles & Crusades. I like it a lot. I've referred to it as the Rosetta Stone of the OSR in the past and I still see it that way. You can pretty much grab an adventure from any edition (can't speak for 4th) and run it in C&C pretty much as is.

On a side note, I've also referred to C&C's Classic Monsters as the frugal DM's Tome of Horrors Complete. Much of the same source material, compatible with most editions and much more affordable.

Really, you can't got wrong with Castles & Crusades and it is a HIGHLY supported system.

12 bucks gets you in the door. Just over 20 bucks get's you a whole lot more.

Creature Compendium only 1 Measly Buck (0e/1e - limited time - PDF)

Has New Big Dragon Games ever released a product that was less than excellent? I think not.

200 creatures for a buck? That's half a cent a monster.

The Creature Compendium is on sale right now for 1 (one) small (inconsequential) buck (dollar) in PDF. Do yourself a favor if you don't already own a copy - grab it now!

Remember those flashes of inspiration
that electrified your brain when
you first picked up that hardback volume
of monsters all those years ago? 

The countless nights you sat up thinking of how to use those monsters,
where to put them, and when your players would meet them? Those unceasing
waves of joy that swam over you and your players as you unleashed
those creatures, critters, beasts and behemoths upon their characters? 

Collected herein are over 200 monsters from Abysmal to Zathoa,
instilled with that same spirit, presented in a “dual-stat” format,
and designed to be used with most early editions of the world’s
original role-playing game and comparable retro-clones.

Looking at Possible PubCon Locations in Queens, New York

Damn, the post title looks official ;)

As we head towards the end of February and to March (and therefore closer to me putting down the gun and shield and spending more time with the pen and keyboard) there are a few things to touch upon. Tonight, I'll touch upon the one I hear the questions asked about the most:

PubCon

I'd like to get an informal PubCon set up for a saturday afternoon in late spring / early summer here in Queens. So far, I've "scouted out" three potential locations:

1 - a local pub (The Grandstand) where I know the owner. We would have to ensure that it's a day they haven't reserved the hosting room. Probably could comfortable fit 50 or so gamers. I'd be happy with a dozen ;) - close to the subway

2 - a Korean BBQ (Unidentified Flying Chickens) place with a dozen beers on tap and a basement that is used for overflow customer seating. Food is good as is the craft beer collection - close to the subway

3 - a local brewery (Finback) with about a dozen taps of it's own brewed beer. Does not serve food but encourages patrons to bring their own. The have board games available for customer use, so they should be open to gaming. Does occasional community events. Probably wouldn't charge for use of their picnic tables - not close to the subway

As I said, if we get this off the ground it would definitely be as informal as possible.

How Many Facebook Accounts Does One Whitman Need?

Only Ken Whitman could be friends with... Ken Whitman

https://www.facebook.com/ken.whitman.374/friends

How many Facebook Accounts does one Whitman need?

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009540615587

https://www.facebook.com/Whit-Whitman-1015112031881963/

Does he talk to himself among the various accounts? Does he have others?

Damnit! I could clone myself via Facebook! Why didn't I ever think of that?

Oh, THAT's why!

Kickstarter - LAND, the game (24 hour funding period)

The Tavern's Community is awesome, especially when they can bring wonders like this to my attention. LAND, the game has a funding period of 24 hours. I've seen Kickstarters run as little as a week, but this is the first time I've seen one that will only last a day. Act fast, because when LAND is gone, it's gone - at least until it comes back. Maybe 24 days next time? Or is that 39? The graphic says one thing, but the countdown says another.

Sadly, this shot in the foot isn't going to be helpful even with a relaunch.