RPGNow Specials for June

Sometimes you get thrown a curve ball.  Sometimes the curve ball is a sweet one.  This is a sweet one ;)

OneBookShelf / RPGNow / DriveThruRPG has supplied certain bloggers with a discount code to give to their readers.  I happen to be lucky enough to be one of those bloggers.  (Even luckier that I heard about the program in the first place).  The code for June is:

JunePodBlogDriveThru2010

It's worth 20% off all products from the following list of publishers. It's good for one month from today (actually, yesterday), with unlimited uses (but only three per customer).

AEG

Bards and Sages

Battlefield Press

Chaotic Shiny Productions

Crafty Games

Cubicle 7

Dream Pod 9

Fabled Environments

Fat Dragon Games

Goodman Games

Inner City Games Designs

Mongoose Publishing

Palladium Books

Pinnacle Entertainment

R. Talsorian Games

Ranger Games

Reality Blurs

Sceaptune Games

There are some really nice games from these publishers.  Damn, now I really need to work on a review of Starblazers from Cubicle 7.

I also have some freebies to reward individual readers with.  I'm going to need to think on this one.  Should be fun.

Back later with the weekend's buybacks, but in the meantime enjoy the 20% savings ;)

Irregular Thoughts

Or is it just thoughts on an irregular column?

I'm thinking of writing some Tales of the Blue Knight as an irregular column for this blog. Kinda my work experiences mixed with my gaming experiences and life observations in general. I'm learning after a year of doing this i'm a bit more focused when I can stick to a general theme. We'll see how I do over the weekend ;)


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

A Thought About Free...

Earlier this week, a valid point was raised about the cost of "Free".  Would I want someone to do my job, law enforcement, for free?  People already do.

Steven Seagal - Lawman - Reserve Officer with full police powers.  I've never watched the show, but he's doing it.

NYC doesn't give arrest power to it volunteers.  NYPD Auxiliary Police Officers serve more as eyes and ears, as well as a visible deterrent to crime.  Their job is probably more thankless then mine. Later tonight I need to pick my son up from the Police Academy... he's taking his first class to be an Auxiliary Police Officer.  God bless him.

I got into this line of work partially because I was taking every civil service / utility company test I could find.  I wanted a union job, just like my father.  I was also looking for something a bit more rewarding, emotionally and economically, then retail sales.  I was tired of being inside 8 hrs a day.  I wanted to be outside and get paid for it.

I was also the geek that tended towards playing Paladins in his early AD&D days.  Being a cop kinda puts you in that Paladin / Knight in Shining Armor role - at least until you put the domestic abuser in cuffs and now his girlfriend is attacking you because, despite the black eye and loose teeth, you weren't supposed to do that.
It plays out like a great roleplaying game, with twists and turns and the need for creative solutions thought up on the spur of the moment.

If someone wants to do my job, or aspects of my job, for free, God bless them and keep them safe.  There's more then enough crime and abuse and problems to go around.

One day I'll have to relate some stories about how my experience playing D&D helped me solve problems on the streets of the South Bronx ;)

Happy Hour at the Tavern June 2

So, my plan was to pimp Starblazers with a short review, but that will wait a day or so. Instead, Fantasy Flight Games has been busy pimping out their Warhammer 40k RPG lines with some free offerings in June. I'm not a huge fan of quickstart rules in general... most leave me unsatisfied, even uninterested in the product they are intended to showcase. Not so the case with FFGs latest quickstarts. Nice flavor and decent introductions to the rules in question. (Of course, I have both Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader in hardcover... even played in a FG2 campaign of Dark Heresy for the better part of a year).

Anyhow, lets see the latest offerings:

Dark Heresy Edge of Darkness - Quickstart - 48 page long Dark Heresy introduction. Nice presentation and decent adventure. But I'm biased - WFRP and 40kRP settings are some of my favorites. The fiction is generally good too.

Dark Heresy Salvation Demands Sacrifice - 8 page supplement, it offers 3 new radical careers for your Dark Heresy game. Of course, it requires the Radical's Handbook, which I don't own and isnt mentioned on the download page. If I thought I was going to be playing in a Dark Heresy game in the near future I'd think of picking it up.

Rogue Trader Forsaken Bounty - Quickstart - 24 page long introduction to Rogue Trader. The included adventure is about 10 pages long. Between the 2 quickstarts you should have a decent idea if you like the system and the setting. Cool cover art ;)

Rogue Trader Dark Frontier - 12 page sequel adventure to the quickstart.

Rogue Trader Epoch Koronus - 13 pages of game history / timeline. You either love this stuff or you hate it.

Rogue Trader Drydock - 7 pages - more like 4 pages on ship design, 1 page on ship combat. Handy reference if needed, but little more

K, that's it for tonight. Some nice free samples from a very well produced and written sci-fi line (with heavy fantasy overtones). Enjoy!

Creative Mountain Games $1 Sale

If you, like me, never brought your gaming out of the 3.5 era, this sale might just be for you.  Creative Mountain Games has put just about their whole RPGNow catalog on sale for a buck.

My favorite, which I've owned for years and can't say enough about, is the SRD 3.5 Revised (Full) Bundle.  It's a very convenient way to carry your 3.5e rules, and 3500 pages for a buck is a steal. 

The Favorites Bundle is also a buck.  It includes a low level adventure, some small source books, a tile generator and a dwellings generator.  

Really, you can't go wrong even if you are just into Old School Rules.  Everyone needs a SRD to call their own ;)

The Price of Free

Yeah, i know with my current schedule of posting weekend freebies, it appears I am focused on free stuff.

Truth is, price is just one factor I look at when I make my purchases.  Cubicle 7 has sucked 55 bucks from me with 2 PDF purchases:  Starblazer Adventures and Legends of Anglerre.  I got majorly screwed when I picked up this piece of sh!t for FG2 a while back.  What a painful waste of 20 bucks.  Then again, I bought into the Dresden Files Preorder, and I couldn't be happier.

Here's the deal as I see it.  Most of the QUALITY free stuff available hits one of the following categories (with some major overlap):  OSR or the Classics Re-imagined, The Full Piece Company Sample, and the Hobbyist Publisher.

Most game companies these days are run by hobbyists, so this category will overlap with the other two in most cases.

OSR games tend to have a no-frills FREE PDF.  In these cases I've bought the still low prices art-filled PDFs, but its nice to have the option not to have to.  The vast majority of OSR adventures are not free (but there are some quality free ones to be found).

The Full Piece Company Sample that is given away for free is the typical retail loss leader.  I spent 8 1/2 years working retail for a major NYC Department Store... I sold electronics, men's clothing, candy, the bargain table.  The major sales had items that were sold at cost or less to bring people in to buy higher profit margin items.  Some RPG companies do something similar.  Heck software companies do that daily at Give Away of the Day.

Many of the hobbyists are just happy to see their work being read, used, praised and critiqued.  Some might be building up their resume for a shot at the big(ger) time.

Then you have the handful of companies that are not one of the elite, yet they are still trying to make a living (or supplemental income) off of their hobby.  God bless them.  They are aiming high yet the market makes their prices seem out of whack, excessive even to some.

That's the market.  You can't change it.  Either make yourself stand out from the crowd and justify your price, join the crowd and adjust your price, or find your own solution.

I spend a good time of my shopping at Indie Press Revolution.  Very little free.  Most of it is what I would call "premium pricing".  When there arent too many low priced items to shop against, the prices seem fair.  When you price yourself against free and low priced, you can price yourself out of competition.

95% of free is total crap.  50% of the not free RPG gaming material is easily total crap.

I don't like crap.  I doubt many do.  I cull through the crap to post items that I think have value, whether they are free or not, so others can avoid crap.  It takes a lot of due diligence before I'll spend my cash on something to check it out.

I'm not trying to demean the time or effort that writers, artists, publishers, programmers, etc put into their work.  I'm just reminded of a recent thread on EnWorld.  A certain new publisher was selling stuff on RPGNow.  His writing was atrocious, his editing worse, his art was computer manipulated to hide the plagiarism, and his data was stolen word by word from computer games.  His books were "premium priced".  He was reported and after a long couple of days his items were removed.

No consumer should have to buy something like he was selling.  And his selling that sh!t (beyond just crap) devalues other products that are worth their premium pricing.

Not sure if this became a rant or not.  I know pricing of products is a very personal thing to publishers... its their bread and butter.  Thing is, as a consumer, if I can get value for free I will.  If I can get an awesome product for a premium price that I can use and afford, I will.  Same goes for a great product at a reasonable price.

Who decides what price is reasonable?  What price is premium?

The customer.  I always hated that little f'er when I worked retail, cause the bastid changed his mind constantly. ;)

Weekend Buybacks for May 31st

Wow, nearly 11 am and no calls or texts from work.  Phew!  Time to enjoy the last day of my 3 day weekend ;)

Lets see what buybacks we have for this weekend:

TrollZine #2 from Flying Buffalo:  Tunnels and Trolls holds a special place in my personal Golden Age of Gaming.  Before MMORPGs or even the Gold Boxes of AD&D from SSI, before the average gamer had access to a computer, Tunnels and Trolls allowed one to game solo.  With books and dice. And it was fun!  Enjoy this fan created magazine for T&T

The Hounds of Adranos for Fantasy Grounds:  Free module for Fantasy Grounds 2.  You need the Basic Roleplaying Ruleset to use this (which I have and must say its a beautiful ruleset).  It includes tokens and maps.

Dark Dungeons in the D&D Rules Cyclopedia retro-clone.  Its a huge beast of a book.  If you play any of the D&D retro-clones I'm sure there is stuff you can lift.  PDF is free.  It is also offered in hard and soft cover versions on Lulu.com.

At 11:18 am I got the call from work.  Sigh.  They hopefully can handle the problem.  Hopefully.

Zoom Zoom Zoom!

Alright.  My chauffeur service lasted about 3 hrs.  I didn't have a single drink during my son's 17th birthday party, but I certainly did after I drove everybody home.  Black Cherry vodka and coke... damn nice.  30oz tin cup... way to big.

Anyhow, I'm playing the holiday weekend card.  I'll do the buybacks tomorrow.  I'm off.  That is, assuming work doesn't go all to shit and I get called in.

Celebrating a Year at the Tavern

Yep, I started posting on this blog on May 31, 2009.  I've been doing this for a year.  Can hardly believe it.  It's morphed a bit since the beginning as it (and I) have tried to find the proper voice.  I expect to some extent it will always be a work in progress.

It's also my son's 17th Birthday.  My god but time flies.  Party Time!  Excellent! (Wayne's World Flashback... heh)

I'll post some buybacks later today.

Dead Tree 4e Dungeon Crawl Classics

Tanga.com had a deal last week on a collection of Dungeon Crawl Classics for D&D 4e.  I don't play 4e... I have the core books but I would need to find a way to de-miniaturize the rules (this coming from a major user of VTTs and virtual miniatures)

Still, for less then $40 bucks I received DCCs 53 - 63 (I'm working on the assumption that the $2 DCC is number 59).  11 books.  Not bad for over $150 worth of gaming material of any kind.

I prefer PDFs for most of my gaming these days, but this was a price that could not be beat.  Time for me to steal ideas for Labyrinth Lord ;) 

Happy Hour at the Tavern 5/26

Today's Happy Hour is going to highlight an offering from West End Games.  Not sure if you've been following the drama, but things have been a-changing over there.  My first experience with West End Games was playtesting a Paranoia adventure in their Manhattan offices back in the 1980s.  The company has changed hands over the years, and now they have made the D6 system open, and offer the core books for free.

This is free and complete in one package: Bill Coffin's Septimus 364 pages of D6 goodness.

Yes, it almost wasn't published, as preorders were refunded amidst West End Game's recent drama.

It's a non-standard sci-fi RPG.  There is a dent review at the Roll for Initiative blog.

I've found it well to be well produced, and what I've read so far looks good, but its a damn huge product on a plate filled with lots of RPGs.  Still, I felt it best to share it.

Twilight of My Years

In my early college years we would play just about anything.  AD&D was our go-to game, but everything else was good for a session or three.  Twilight: 2000 was one of those games.  I don't think we ever got past the first edition of the rules and maybe one sourcebook / adventure, but it was certainly fun.  We were a NATO squad that got separated from the main NATO forces when the Soviets invaded.  Trying to survive off the land and remain undetected was fun while it lasted.

I never actually owned the rules, I was just a player in the campaign.  It is $1 on RPGNow at the moment.  Damn cheap for a memory.

Lulu is running a 20% off sale through May 26:  code is ROADTRIP305. (e-books are not eligible)

There appears to be a free shipping promotion going on at the same time at Lulu.  Very nice.

Weekend Buybacks for May 23rd

The first official (second actual) Weekend Buyback at the Tavern. This week's offerings are a smorgasbord. Actually, I expect every weekend will be offering a smorgasbord.  Remember, Buybacks were free when I posted them...

First up is Somnium Mundus from Terra-Sol Games. Nearly 30 pages of adventure for your Traveller game. I don't think I've played Traveller since my early college years, but I've always loved the system (and the system withing a system of character generation).

Next is Into the Star, another Traveller product from Terra-Sol Games.  30 odd pages of optional rules.  No idea how well this conforms to the Mongoose Traveller rules.  Let me know.

Neverwhere from Postmortem  Studios.  I'm a damn huge Neil Gaiman fan, ever since Sandman Issue 1.  Damn good stuff.  Of course, I just found this game in the midst of a large number of other products, so I haven't had a chance to see how close it hues to the book.  Four 5 Star reviews on RPGNow tho out of four reviews. 

Last Buyback for the weekend is The Boarding House at Arkham Street from Three Fourteen Games.  Billed as a system-less horror adventure, it is pretty close to Basic Roleplaying / CoC compatible.  Decent layout and an excellent price (and nice reviews on RPGNow) but this in a must download situation, especially if you are thinking of running a Horror game.

Back to the random thought process tomorrow, Happy Hour on Wednesday ;)

Bringing Method to Madness

There is generally little rhyme or reason to my posts. I post what I want, when I want. Which is fine until you realize that your Blogger's GADD keeps your from posting all that you want to, as you either get scatter brained or overwhelmed.

So I've decided on a loose schedule for my posts, inter-spread with random thoughts.

Weekends will consist of at least one posting of Tenkar's Tavern Buybacks... free RPG PDF goodies that I find and pass on to you. (see last weekend's post for an example)

Wednesday will be Happy Hour at Tenkar's Tavern. Usually a product review, it may not be free, but hopefully it will make someone happy to learn about it.

Tomorrow should be this week's posting of some buybacks ;)

GADD - Gamer's Attention Deficit Disorder

It's amazing how easily I am distracted from my original idea of reviewing some of the major VTTs. Instead I find myself reading more and more PDFs as they are released, or as I stumble across them.

I'll try to focus myself. No promises. ;)

Still, I found another treasure trove of free RPG goodness over the last two evenings, so it isn't all bad. I'll try and link that up over the weekend.

Real Life Intrussion

So, I'm about to leave work when my cellphone rings - I don't know the number, but I pick up anyway - which is rare.

"Trace the phone and wipe it!  I think he had a gun, or maybe a knife... CLICK!"  Yep, my son's phone call put me into panic mode.  Rain kept my commute home at a standstill.

Long story short:  my son had his cellphone snatched in the NYC Subway this afternoon by another "youth".  He was going to fight for it when something didn't seem right to him, and he stood down and let it go.  In the end he thinks the other kid had a knife, as he didn't run and was enjoying the confrontation.  My son then used one of those rare payphones you occasionally find in NYC to tell me briefly what happened.

Discretion, the better part of valor.  Property can be replaced.  People can't.

Of course, I'm a father and a sucker, so tomorrow I'll be supplying my kid with a new phone... no contract discount... ouch!

The thing is, after I was comfortable with the idea he was OK, after he talked about what happened, the story he painted, the details he remembered (and those he couldn't), were laid out like a damn good DM setting the scene for the party's latest encounter.  My son weaves an entertaining story.

My kid get's robbed, and I think about his gaming potential at the table. ;)

Most importantly, he is fine, and learned a lesson about showing valuables in public.  Course, my wallet is paying for that lesson...

ICONS on the iPad

My iPad is gonna need a sneeze guard.  I just got my preorder PDF of the ICONS superhero RPG.  Its FATE based, so it should be fun.  K, time to read.  I'll give my feedback after I digest this for a bit.

Allergies Suck Azz!

I sit here before my 28" computer screen (a TigerDirect.com bargain this past winter) wondering how long I have before one of my sneezes nail it dead center.  This afternoon the sneezing started full blast, and it hasn't left yet.  Would this count as an "At Will" power in 4e?  Alright, stepping away from the keyboard for a bit.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll be less congested.

Weekend Buy Backs at the Tavern

It never ceases to amaze me:  the amount and free and quality publications that are usable in old school (or really any school), gaming.

This weekends freebie finds:


Zor Draxtau, Issue 1 - official newsletter of the USHERWOOD ADVENTURES.  OSRIC compatible, it consists of 6 pages you can steal for any of the Old School D&D homages.


The One Page Dungeon Codex 2009, Deluxe - Dozens of dungeons (and other maps) that fit on a single page and are system generic.  If you can't mine this for ideas you need to go back to GM school.

Signs & Portents 80 - Yes, it is Mongoose's house organ, but its an excellent house organ.  This issue is lighter then others in the past, but still priced well.

D6 Core Set - D6 Adventure, Fantasy  and Space.  For free.  Under the OGL too.  (when you follow the link to the download page, download each book separately.  My "Bundle link" just game me the D6 Adventure book).  Further downloads for the D6 system (including the books I just listed) can be found here.

PDF Apps to Read RPGs on the iPad

I'll get back to reviewing more of the VTT market shortly.  At the moment the damn iPad is occupying way to much of my time.  The main use it is seeing, besides surfing the web and emails, is reading my gaming material.  There are different apps that allow it, each has its own quirks.

In brief, we have the following (that i have used so far):

GoodReader - probably the best all around choice based on price, features, and convenience of importing PDFs.  It works nicely will most of the popular Cloud Computing services out there.  I've been using DropBox and Me.  It handles every PDF I've sent its way, even the over 100 MB ones.  Can do bookmarks and search your document.  $0.99

DropBox - my first choice for Cloud Computing.  It also serves as a bells and whistles free PDF reader.  Free

FastPDF - it has a pretty looking bookshelf like Apple uses for their iBooks app.  Damn pretty.  Getting your PDFs there is a damn PITA.  The bookshelf does look very nice with all those striking Old School Covers.  $0.99

Downloader - this app lets you got to websites and download whatever... music, videos, PDFs, etc and let you open them with another app.  So, using this app, I log into my DropBox via the web, download some PDFs, open them, then click to open with FastPDF, and they land on my pretty bookshelf.  Seems to choke on PDFs larger then about 50 MBs or so.  $2.99

iAnnotate PDF - let me start by saying it is a bit buggy right now, as importing PDFs is more then a PITA.  However, for those that you do import, you can highlight, underline, mark up, pin notes, bookmark - it is simply an amazing tool to use when you are going thru a PDF and want to make it yours.  Needs the ability to erase your changes, which I haven't found yet.  Pricey at $6.99, but will be priceless when they work the bugs out and refine it.  Amazing what it can do right now.

Alright, stepping away from the iPad...