Death Announcement - Jim Ward Has Passed

James "Jim" Ward passed on March 18th, 2024 from heart complications and long-term diabetes complications. He was 72 years old.

You can read Jim's Wikipedia entry to see a list of his accomplishments in the gaming field and beyond. There are many.

Below is what Michael "Bad Mike" Badolato shared about Jim via Facebook:

Word has come down tonight that one of the greats in our hobby and a past guest of the con, James Ward, passed away tonight.  Jim was to attend our 2nd con and had to cancel due to having the first of what would be several heart attacks brought on my complications of diabetes. He attended our 3rd year and we had him every year until his health began to make travel impossible. James was a great guy, and excellent guest, and very down to earth. At NTRPG con #4 he sat at my booth for a few hours with me helping me take money, signing parts of my collection, and telling stories about gaming. His Metamorphosis Alpha games were always full and of course the boast was he never killed you, you killed yourselves by your actions, but dammit I think we all thought Jim had it out for us.

There are so many things I could say about Jim, not only the author of Metamorphosis Alpha but many other classicc TSR products. I'll tell you my favorite James Ward interaction. Doug Rhea had gotten word that Jim was going to be a special guest at Rose City Con in Tyler many years ago, Jim had called him and asked if we could meet him there. So Doug decided we were going to go to hang out with Jim, that weekend I jumped in the car with him, my brother, and Zach Glazar and we drove to Tyler. Jim was delighted to see us and invited us to play in his Metamorphosis Alpha game.  First, the con was woefully overbooked and we took one look at the table Jim was supposed to run the game at and Doug said no way, packed in a small room and surrounded on all sides, hot and stuffy and jammed full of humanity. Doug went to the front desk and rented a board room overlooking the lobby, a huge room with a mini fridge and bathroom, that was our headquarters the entire weekend and Jim was our personal DM! He ran his games in the luxury of the room and all of us played with the lucky attendees. 

Now Jim had made known at the beginning of the game (we were space marines exploring an abandoned spaceship) that if you survived three hours in his adventure you got a signed photo card of his, so we all had motivation not to die early. We were extra careful exploring an abandoned spaceship, and I will swear to you Jim was picking on me and trying to kill me, he kept making suggestions to my character (a medic) to enter combat when I only had a pistol and I kept rebuffing him despite Jim (with a twinkle in his eye) suggesting I was a coward and letting my fellow space marines down. I was taking no bullshit from the old man and dodged all his feeble attempts to lure me to my doom and deprive me of the signed card! Soon the entire party was dead except for Zach, Doug, and my characters. I looked at my watch and had 15 minutes to go. I whispered to Zach to follow my lead and asked Jim to tell us some stories about the old days running MA for Gary and friends. So Jim told tales to all three of us until I marked the 15 minutes as up, then said something like "Thanks for the stories, Jim, the three hours are up and we want our signed cards!!!" He started laughing and knew I had conned him but he was magnanimous and gave us all a card.  Then, of course, he killed us all 5 min later with an unescapable trap and we took him to dinner. 

That Rose City Con is to this day one of the best con weekends of my life thanks to Mr. Ward. If you never had the chance to meet him you really missed a nice guy and a great game master. Another piece of our hobby's history is gone and we are all poorer for it. Bad Mike

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.

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New Release - Tales of the Wolfguard (OSE)

Sandbox setting, adventure hooks, and more in a neat package for 2.99? Impossible you say? Not this time.

Priced at 2.99 in PDF (no print currently planned), Tales of the Wolfguard is priced at Deal of the Day pricing 365 days a year.

Released in February of this year, Tales of the Wolfguard is already a Gold Best Seller at DTRPG, with a solid 5-star rating.

LET’S TELL THE TALES OF THE WOLFGUARD!

Blizzard Vale is the northernmost province of the Empire, conquered with great endeavours centuries ago. It’s a frozen, hostile land with sparse patches of conifers, icy rivers, and lakes. The Wolfguard, an old garrison of soldiers and scouts, watches over the vale and protects the town of Ysvindur from the barbarian Elves and more sinister threats.

Tales of the Wolfguard is fully compatible with Old-School Essentials and most classic game RPGs.

Content:

• The description and map of the frozen province of Blizzard Vale, its features, settlements, dwellers, factions and many secrets!
• The description and map of the Faraway Den, the Wolfguard’s outpost. Rules to upgrade the den are also provided!
• An introductory adventure to start telling the tales of the Wolfguard.
• Seven encounter-related mini dungeons!
• Legends, rumours, encounters and adventure inspirations for all the areas of the vale.
• A random generator to create your quest plots!
• 13 new monsters and extras!
• Six pre-generated 3rd Level characters (each with its own background) to dive straight into the adventure with.
• Original art by Alessandro Paderi.
• An ambient soundtrack, specially composed for the module, to play during your game sessions!

Utility

• Interactive hyperlinked index and text.
• Color and printer-friendly versions of the module.

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  

Murderhobos Figuring Out How to Offload Their Loot (Merchant Thoughts)

I've been thinking of writing up the beginning area of my old (like a good 15 years ago) campaign into an....well not so much an adventure, but a larger drop-in area for a GM to use in whatever game world they desire. A big part of this beginning area revolves around (it's not obvious though) a general store of sorts....and the "of sorts" is the real meat of the setting, but that's what I'm thinking of today.

Now I don't know about your particular band of murderhobos, but I'm used to groups that I'm in or running for liking to take most everything that even looks like it has some value. Murder some armored brigands? Grab that armor and weapons...make sure you check their boots for hidden loot. Wipe out a Kobold nest, make sure to grab those "ok" shortbows and arrows. Wow, the front door of that otherwise ruined hovel looks nice.....toss it on the cart.....

...you get the picture.

Of course offloading won/stolen/scavenged loot can be problematic. Not like there's a ready market for "ok" shortbows and a nice front door. Armor and human-made weapons...maybe, but that other stuff...even if you found a buyer, just how much can you get? Who cares...every CP counts.

When I do this, well I blame computer RPGs. If you will let me take everything and sell it, I will. Usually there is something that doesn't have a carry weight, ammo is a likely candidate in modern/futuristic games, so I'll sell every piece of fruit, silverware, or random piece of crap and store it in the form of ammo (gems, or whatever works). This carries over for me in table-top RPGs, but there it can be hard to find a buyer.

I don't know what other GMs do, but when I GM'd I'd have a particular buyer available to either purchase all this crap outright, or to help broker sales for bigger stuff, like magic items. The absolute best price the party could get...and this was never advertised...was 49% of the value for their items. What I did was roll a d20 and subtract that, as a percentage, off of 50%. If the players wished to purchase non-magical "gently used" gear from the same merchant I reversed things, so the players could get items for 51% to 70% of "book" value. Often new gear would have a similar percentage added, so 101% to 120% of book value, unless the party wanted to haggle.

Now, when creating a character straight book-values are used, and usually parties are more than pleased with this setup because it gets them coin for their crap stuff quick and easy and there isn't a lot of time spent on "in town" stuff. They always have the option of spending time "shopping around", but they rarely care.

I once also had a campaign where I advanced the game world like 10,000 years (society had stagnated, for reasons, so still more medieval fantasy) and people generally didn't travel far from home. In that campaign/game world Halflings were basically the merchant class and were the only ones who actually travelled, usually along set routes. They connected communities with trade and information. Because they controlled merchant services outside of the community, they could generally buy/sell anything. If not personally, they could forward things to their extended family, getting that good door or "ok" bows from the party to some buyers.

Maybe I'm being overly generous, but I like the randomness of the d20 (maybe I should have used a d30?) introducing some price fluctuations and then some relatively easy math because I'd just figure out the total book value of everything and apply the appropriate percentage. I'd rather do that than role-play a crap-ton of sale/bartering interactions. Also, maybe.....just maybe....the party won't be trying to extract every CP of value out of the dungeon...

....yeah, right.

I have wondered how other GMs handle shops/shopkeeps in their own campaigns.... 

Free OSR - OSRIC Player's Guide

OSRIC has been around for over a decade. So how is it that what is old is also something new? Well, as far as I can tell, the OSRIC Player's Guide has the player-facing content of the OSRIC Pocket SRD, but the new layout seems a tad cleaner. Kinda reminds me of AD&D 2e, if that makes sense.

One small quibble - the PDF is long enough to benefit from bookmarks. Not a huge issue, just an observation.

The price is certainly right ;)

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  

Gamer in Need - Owen KC Stephens Has Cancer

Folks, as many of you know, I'm a cancer survivor. Rach was diagnosed with breast cancer this past fall and recently completed her radiation treatment. Cancer doesn't discriminate, it comes for those of all ages, all races, and all economic backgrounds.

If there's anything that you can use in the linked bundle below, I ask you to consider purchasing it to support Owen in this time of need - Tenkar

Owen KC Stephens is currently undergoing radiotherapy for cancer that went undetected for a decade. In the USA, this is really expensive. We want to help him.

If you’ve played an RPG in the last little while (as in ‘in the last twenty years or so’), odds are quite good you’ve seen, read, and enjoyed something Owen has worked on. As this bundle is up at DriveThruRPG, the odds are even higher. A brief bit taken from his resume:

"Hi, I’m Owen K.C. Stephens. I’m a tabletop RPG writer, developer, consultant, and publisher. I’ve worked on official products for four editions of Dungeons & Dragons, two editions of Pathfinder, and also the tabletop RPGs: The Black Company, Call of Cthulhu, d20Modern, Dragon Age, EverQuest, Fantasy AGE, Gamma World, Everyday Heroes, The Song of Ice and Fire, Thieves World, and Wheel of Time. I’m also the co-creator of the Starfinder and Star Wars Saga Edition RPGs, and founder of Rogue Genius Games."

Owen is a good friend to many creators and publishers across the industry (look at the list below!). We want to help him, but there’s a limit to what we can do medically (nobody’s the right class and level to cast remove disease). Surgery is inadvisable, chemotherapy didn’t do the job, and now we’re down to radioactive lasers shooting him in places no one wishes to be shot.

Instead, this bundle aims to help relieve his financial burden. Not only have the publishers below contributed to this bundle, DriveThruRPG is taking only a 10% cut: 90% of all proceeds — $27 per bundle sold — goes to Owen.

• 2 Kings Games, LLC
• AAW Games
• Ad Infinitum Adventures
• Applied Vectors
• Catacombs & Comedians
• Darrin Drader Designs
• Echelon Game Design
• Evil Robot Games
• Fainting Goat Games
• Fat Goblin Games
• Legendary Games
• McNabb Games
• Monster Mage Games
• Nerdburger Games
• Production Platform 3
• Random Wyvern Publishing
• Rogue Genius Games
• Rusted Iron Games
• Schwalb Entertainment
• Tabletop Adventures, LLC
• Wandering Star LLC

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  

Humble Bundle - Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay - Enemy Within Campaign & More

I've been a fan of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay since the first edition hardback. I ran an amazing Enemy Within Campaign back in the late 80s. Sure, it ended with a near TPK at the start of Death in the Reik, but it was probably the most fun anyone in my gaming group, including me, had up to then, and perhaps after. 

I own all of the Enemy Within Campaign installments for WFRP 4e in print, but I'm snagging the Humble Bundle for the convenience of digital copies to read on my iPad. 

For 25 bucks, you can snag Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Core Rules, WFRP Starter Set,  all 5 installments of the Enemy Within Campaign (and 5 companions), and 6 other WFRP Adventures. Phew! If you're not sure, you can grab the WFRP Starter Set, the first part of the Enemy Within Campaign, and a stand-alone adventure for a single buck. All purchases get a 20% coupon to the Cubicle 7 web store.

Bring the stirring legacy and grim, neverending conflict of the Old World to your table with this jam-packed library, and treat your players to the Director's Cut of The Enemy Within, the revered five-part campaign that inspired a generation of gamers. On top of the core rulebook and starter set, you'll get everything you need to get into the beloved Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay system. Dive into this storied setting with books like Middenheim: City of the White Wolf and Altdorf: Crown of the Empire, along with a host of sourcebooks and adventures to enable countless epic sessions for your group.

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  

DaggerHeart - Open Beta Playtest

While I don't think DaggerHeart is a rule system that will fit my gaming group, it may fit yours.

Here's the DTRPG link to the Daggerheart Open Beta.

Daggerheart is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game of brave heroics and vibrant worlds that are built together with your gaming group. Create a shared story with your adventuring party, and shape your world through rich, long-term campaign play.

This free download contains all the current materials for the public Daggerheart Open Beta Playtest, with the full game expected to release in 2025. As this is a playtest, future changes are coming and will be updated in this product. The current version is 1.2, released March 12, 2024.

After your play sessions, please head to daggerheart.com to bring us your feedback using the official surveys!

ABOUT DAGGERHEART:

When it's time for the game mechanics to control fate, players roll one HOPE die and one FEAR die (both 12-sided dice), which will ultimately impact the outcome for your characters. This duality between the forces of hope and fear on every hero drives the unique character-focused narratives in Daggerheart.

In addition to dice, Daggerheart’s card system makes it easy to get started and satisfying to grow your abilities by bringing your characters’ background and capabilities to your fingertips. Ancestry and Community cards describe where you come from and how your experience shapes your customs and values. Meanwhile, your Subclass and Domain cards grant your character plenty of tantalizing abilities to choose from as your character evolves. Craft your unique character through the cards you choose and the story you tell, and become the hero you want to be!

This download contains PDFs of:

• A Quickstart Adventure, plus 5 pregenerated characters
• The full draft core rules
• Print-ready card sheets for your character options (Ancestry, Community, and Subclass) as well as your abilities (Domain Cards)
• Character sheets for each class: Bard, Druid, Guardian, Ranger, Rogue, Seraph, Sorcerer, Warrior, Wizard
• Player and game master references
• And more!

 

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  

Deal of the Day - Sandbox Generator

Wow! I own the Sandbox Generator in Print. It is literally that good. As a Deal of the Day, it is a Don't Miss!

Normally 12 bucks in PDF, the Sandbox Generator is on sale for 7.20 in PDF until tomorrow morning.

The Sandbox Generator is a simple but powerful tool for DMs. It allows you to easily create a world from scratch when you prepare your next campaign. It will provide you with all the necessary information about your world: from the biomes map, to a lord’s coat of arms and the menu of the local tavern! It is also convenient for solo players and DMs who want to generate their world during the game session.

This book aims to create a pseudo-feudal fantasy world and is meant to be used with your favorite OSR ruleset and bestiary.

New worlds await: they are only a few rolls away…

This product includes procedures, generators, tables and examples for:

• Hex maps (biomes, features, content, factions, encounters),
• Landmarks (natural, artificial and magical),
• Settlements (names, hamlets, villages, cities, castles, towers and abbeys),
• Monsters lairs,
• Dungeons and megadungeons,
• Coats of arms,
• Criminal organizations,
• Dragons,
• Guilds,
• Houses,
• NPCs,
• Taverns (including menus and signs),
• Wizards,
• Sea adventures.

This book is black and white, is in A5 format and contains more than 80 hand drawn (vectorized) illustrations. The PDF version is bookmarked.

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  

Deal of the Day - Trilemma Adventures Compendium Volume I (System Neutral)

Sometimes having an adventure with a baked-in RPG system is refreshing. As a GM who likes to improvise, finding systemless adventures that are well-written and cleanly presented is a boon. This describes Trilemma Adventures Compendium Volume I to a "T".

Until tomorrow morning, Trilemma Adventures Compendium Volume I is DTRPG's Deal of the Day. Normally 15.00, until tomorrow morning it is on sale for 6 bucks in PDF. 

I'd be all over this, but I already own it ;)

This book brings together the award-winning Trilemma Adventures: 48 one- and two-page adventure locations for fantasy role-playing games. 2020 ENnie Award winner for Best Adventure (silver) and Best Cartography (gold)!

Each location is written to be usable separately, perfect for one-shot sessions, side quests, or to help populate your home grown campaign setting.

All have been lavishly illustrated and laid out to make them easy to run, straight from the book.

This book is packed with caverns, castles, underworld cities, labyrinths, mansions, flying tombs, hidden temples, and fallen shrines.

Also inside is more than 60 pages of new material:

• an illustrated bestiary
• an appendix of magical items
• ten solid pages of hooks, rumors and secret lore
• six regional gazetteers tying the adventure locations into a ready-to-use campaign setting
• a full-color regional map, in GM and player versions
• a complete index
• a bonus location, set in the aftermath of the Kickstarter invasion scenario

This compendium is an essential part of your GM kit!

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  

Roleplay Rev is AI Assistance for RPGs

So I was screwing around on my phone, as one does, and I came across this AI adventure generator called Roleplay Rev. While I'm not a huge AI fan, I have played around with it some and I liked the idea of a tool that could conceivably be used to help create an adventure quickly.

I know all too well that sometimes it takes a metric shit-ton of effort to create a good effort. Actually just creating an adventure can take a lot of time.....one that is good(?).....can take freaking forever. While I don't expect a ton of quality from an AI generator, I figure it could be good at getting some of the grunt-work done so I could edit the generated adventure. Editing/Tweaking can take a lot less time, at least in my experience.

So I created an account at Roleplay Rev and started out with three credits. My initial thought was, "Oh so it's kind of free...great" It costs a credit to generate an adventure and while it didn't state it upfront, you get a credit per day you log in. Pretty much up front is that if you want some of the cooler/finer tools it costs $5 a month (normally $10?). After the fact I can see $5 a month being worth it, but that's probably something that would be covered in a summary paragraph.

Anyway, I started with this prompt: "The world is dominated by Man and organized into distinct countries. A valuable mountain range has been taken over by the ruling country and the party consists of dwarves that have to organize a resistance to retake their ancestral homeland from the army of men." Now I'm not sure that was worded well for an AI prompt since I haven't used AI stuff very much but I was pleased to find that the generator re-worded my prompt, that I could then tweak if needed and it even gave the damn thing a title: 

The Battle for the Mountain

The dwarves must organize a resistance to retake their ancestral homeland, a valuable mountain range, from the army of men who have taken it over.

Nice, I can work with that.....I was led through a few options for potential plot hooks and I settled on my favorite:

The players start the adventure in the depths of the mountain range, where they witness the men's army setting up mining operations to extract valuable resources. The dwarves are outraged at the desecration of their ancestral home and feel compelled to take action to reclaim it.

Then the AI generated some lore/background and I got this:

The players receive a distress call from a group of dwarven miners who managed to escape the army's occupation. They describe the devastation brought upon their once-thriving community and plead for the players' help in organizing a resistance to retake their homeland.

The players witness a fierce battle between the dwarven resistance and the army of men, where the dwarves are outnumbered and struggling to defend their territory. Witnessing the bravery and determination of their kin, the players feel a deep sense of duty to join the resistance and fight for their people's freedom.

The central conflict stems from the ruling country's desire to exploit the valuable resources within the dwarven ancestral mountain range. The ruler of the country, King Thorian, seeks to strengthen his kingdom's economy and military power by gaining control of the rich mines and strategic location of the mountains. To achieve this, he has dispatched a formidable army led by General Rendak to forcibly occupy the dwarven territories, displacing the native inhabitants and suppressing any resistance.

King Thorian's ultimate plan is to establish permanent control over the mountain range, leveraging the resources to enrich his kingdom and solidify his rule. The dwarves, however, refuse to relinquish their ancestral lands and are determined to fight back. The villainous General Rendak is tasked with not only subduing the dwarven resistance but also ensuring that the mountain range remains under the control of the ruling country. His cruel methods and ruthless tactics have further fueled the dwarves' resolve to reclaim their homeland and drive out the oppressive army.

Honestly, for free, I'd have been good with what I got so far, but some actual encounters would help...and then it gave me three potential encounters. Thing was I didn't just get three potential encounters. No, I got three types of encounters to choose from and it defaulted to one skill encounter, one social encounter, and one combat encounter. If I wanted three combat encounters I could've done that. It's important to note that I got to establish the general "feel" for the campaign, the size of the party, and the level, which was all factored in. For the record, I went with "realistic", 6 party members, and 1st level.

So the thing spit out the three encounters, gave me some NPCs and saved everything. The $5 paid content would go so far as to let me generate battle maps (IIRC they don't actually generate battlemaps but they have a large stockpile of ready-made maps that the AI chooses from) and generate PCs. There is also, and I think this is free, a way to basically play a solo adventure through the adventure you just made as well. I started messing with that but didn't even start the adventure portion.

Pretty much everything is tweakable and while it looks like it's set up for maybe 5th Edition D&D, I don't know it's definitely not OSR, there's a LOT of meat on those bones. You can not only create adventures but also campaigns and worlds as well, all with AI assistance. I do not think it would be difficult to take a few minutes to create an adventure and basically tweak on the fly. Combined with your own map collection and your own bestiary......this could be a great help.

For $5 a month I think the organization factor (world, campaign, adventures) alone might be worth it, especially if I can get some AI assistance and prompts to help fill in gaps. For the price of free, definitely worth checking out Roleplay Rev.

GM's Day Sale Wraps up at DTRPG Monday Morning

In about 34 hours from this post going live, the DTRPG GM's Day Sale wraps up. Snap up some deals and support The Tavern by using the link below:

GM's Day Sale

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  

Humble Bundle - DCC & MCC Megabundle #2

Some of the most imaginative adventures in the OSR, and perhaps in RPGs at large, are written for the DCC & MCC RPGs IMHO. Maybe it's the default wackiness of the system, but I've run DCC RPG adventures with Swords & Wizardry rules, and the results were awesome.

The DCC & MCC RPGs hit Humble Bundle earlier today. For as little as a buck, you can get the DCC RPG Core Rulebook, two adventures, and a coupon to use at the Goodman Games website. 25 bucks gives you the DCC and MCC rulebooks, plus 77 adventures and supplements for the two systems. That's about 35 cents a book. Unbelievable!

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  

Humble Bundle - Dune Adventures Tabletop RPG

True confession - I've never read a single page of ANY of the Dune novels, and I have many friends who are HUGE Dune fans. It just never appealed to me. That being said, the first of the recent Dune movies was amazing, and I may even catch the new one in the theatre ;)

The Dune RPG from Modiphius is currently on Humble Bundle. While 18 bucks gets you everything, a single buck will get you the Dune Starter Box Set, the Quickstart, and a 50% discount on select physical Dune RPG products. If you are on the fence, just drop the buck.

Get ready for endless TTRP adventure in Frank Herbert’s visionary sci-fi world with Dune – Adventures in the Imperium! This bundle includes digital editions of everything you need to bring the mystery and intrigue of this beloved world to your gaming table. On top of the core rulebook, you’ll get the Dune: Agents of Dune Deluxe Starter Set, designed to get your group in the game with zero prep. You’ll also get sourcebooks full of lore and crunch, like Power And Pawns: The Emperors Court, full of setting info and game options covering some of Dune most powerful factions. Pay what you want for all this and more, and help support charity:water with your purchase!

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  

Bundle of Holding - A Magical Society

A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe was one of the first PDF purchases I made back in the day, and I was very happy with it. It presented a historical view of Western society, without feeling like a textbook. Over the years I've failed to follow up on later releases, but the A Magical Society Bundle should allow me to catch up instantly ;)

The Magical Society Bundle is 19.95, and includes the following titles:

• Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe 3E
• A Magical Society: Ecology and Culture
• A Magical Society: Silk Road
• A Magical Society: Beast Builder
• The Undead Leviathan
• The Slaver Fungus
• A Magical Medieval Society: On Place Names

Adventurer! This new bundle, A Magical Society, presents historical sourcebooks and "Aggressive Ecologies" from Expeditious Retreat Press. These system-neutral tabletop roleplaying game supplements, full of ready-to-run systems, generators, gameable nuts-and-bolts details about the High Middle Ages, let you create terrain, cultures, kingdoms, landholdings, economies, and trade routes that help make every fantasy campaign setting more authentic and believable.

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  

GMs'Day Sale - Up to 40% Off at DTRPG

It's that time of the year. There are some really deep discounts at DTRPG for their GMs' Day Sale, and I'm going to highlight a few PDFs over the next few days.

Call of Cthulhu Starter Set 

Normally 9.99, currently on sale for 5.99. Quite simply an amazing value, this starter set should be in everyone's collection, whether physical or digital (or both). This is the starter set for the latest edition of Call of Cthulhu.

RuneQuest Starter Set 

Normally 14.99, currently on sale for 8.99. Another amazing value from Chaosium, I own this in Print and digital. It is a very approachable way to get acquainted with RuneQuest. This starter set is for the latest edition of the RuneQuest Rules.

Dragonbane Core Set | Roll20 VTT + PDF [BUNDLE] 

Normally 54.98 in digital for the two, currently the bundle is on sale for 10.99. The Dragonsbane Core Set rules are usually 24.99 on their own. if you use Roll20, this could be a no-brainer. I was a backer of Dragonbane from Kickstarter, and it is an impressive box of content. 

Complete FlexTale Hexcrawl [BUNDLE]

Normally 27.95 for the Complete FlexTale Hexcrawl [BUNDLE] in PDF, currently the bundle is on sale for 8.39.   I own the core FlexTale Hexcrawl book in Print & PDF, so my cost for the remaining bundle is 5.39. I'm tempted to see if I can run an improvised campaign using FlexTale and the maps in the bundle. 

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  

Probably a Bad Idea: Tweaking PC Stat Scores

I know this particular post is a bit on the late side, but you know.....life stuff happens. Another beautiful weekend that wasn't too hot meant I really needed to get some outside work done. Unfortunately for me, a HUGE portion of the work I did last weekend needed to be ripped out and re-done because I didn't account for something important and the resulting build was effectively worthless. I'm relatively happy with the 2nd end result and my own little "maker space" will soon start to be productive....

Anyway I also had some relatively mindless "grunt work" to get done and while I was working on it, my mind wandered, as it does.

I bring up (probably far too) often my fondness of HackMaster and while I'm not really wanting to talk specifically about that game, it came up in my thoughts, and I'll circle round back to that.....just mentioning it now so the haters can just go fuck off not waste anymore of their precious time reading the rest of this post.

I was thinking about OSR OC creation and how, and I'm making a gross generalization here, nobody likes playing "bad" PCs, and by "bad" I mean ones with low stats...at least stats with negative adjustments. I know there seems to be a upward trend in increasing stat scores over the evolution of D&D, and in earlier editions it didn't necessarily seem like a big deal if you had the odd negative modifier here or there. I mean nobody wants a PC with a 3 STR and that lovely -3 to hit/damage, or a 4-5 DEX with the corresponding -2 to hit and +2 to AC, but at our core we're role-players.

Odds are, at best, most PCs would likely have more plusses than minuses and statistically speaking and "dings" are likely to be a -1 to something.

My thoughts were that maybe, just maybe, instead of "just" having a penalty to some stats we instead basically create a "floor" for stats, in the case of Moldvay B/X, 9. Your PC, not counting racial adjustments, won't have stats below 9. Stats are still rolled normally, but if you get a low score that would give you a -2, for example, the score gets recorded as a 9 BUT you have to take a couple rolls on a special table that gives your PC some deformity, birth defect, mental condition, etc., that gives you the appropriate -1 on things that stat controls.

For example instead of getting a 5 CON your PC gets a 9 CON and two rolls on the CON chart. The results could be hemophilia and asthma. The end result is a combined -2 to hit point rolls, but the player (and GM) now has some extra material to work with. I can imagine if we had some good low STR results and the PC gets a hold of some Gauntlets of Ogre Power, that PC would get the benefit of 18 STR, but since they have some physical ailments gained from the STR chart they'd still have some physical issues, just not the in-game -1/-2/-3 from the low STR score.

Now I'm not trying to make light of people with actual mental or physical limitations, and obviously, if the idea was offensive to anyone then I wouldn't recommend it.....and I'm sure any given thing I could conceive of would be offensive to someone somewhere......the larger the audience the more likely for this to happen. 

Anyway just a thought......but to circle back around to HackMaster, that game (both editions) have quirks & flaws and I thought they could probably be mined easily to create charts for each stat.

Adding a little variety and one could argue diversity to the game can't be all bad....can it?