RPGNow

Saturday, October 3, 2020

There Was a Metallic Demon in My Mail Today!

I'd like to give a huge thanks to Rafael Chandler for sending me copies of both the Metallic Tome and the Demonic Tome. Holy shit but I've got lots of good reading to accomplish in the next few days.

You can grab the pair in print at Lulu. PDF copies can be found at DriveThruRPG (14.99 for the Metallic Tome, PWYW pricing for the Demonic Tome).

Combined the two make for an awesome resource for a modern OSR game in a John Constatine like setting.

Demons feed on innocent souls and obliterate cities. Human victims are possessed, devoured, and damned. Unfortunately, the world's last line of defense is a group of ultra-violent cannibals wielding unholy magic.

They needed a hero. Instead, they got you.

Demonic Tome is a sourcebook for old-school role-playing games set in the modern day. It includes new spells, monsters, magic items, and setting information.

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Pollution chokes our seas, nuclear war has destroyed our cities, and worst of all, guitars are illegal. Surveillance satellites monitor our every move. Conformity is the law! There is only one thing that can save us: METAL.

Metallic Tome is a sourcebook for old-school role-playing games set in the modern day. It's inspired by heavy metal music. Created by the reprobate who wrote the Teratic Tome.

Features include: 

  • New character alignments, including Awful Good, Chaotic Player, and Neutral Vague
  • New starting equipment, including department store mannequin, 4 scorpions in a shoebox, and an audio cassette recording of Nuclear Assault's "Survive"
  • New Cleric spells like Necrotic Blasphemous Desecration, Interval of the Devil, and Party Hard
  • New Magic-User spells like Power Word Mosh and Air Raid Siren
  • Strange new foes, including asbestos elementals and nuclear dragons
  • Wondrous magic items, such as the Brigandine Loincloth and the Revolver of Lordly Might
  • Random tables to pad out the last few pages

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPGAmazon, and Humble Bundle are the affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  

Friday, October 2, 2020

Kickstarter - Midderlands 5e


Back at the start of the pandemic, we had an earlier attempt at Kickstarting Midderlands 5e. It was horrible timing. No, six months later we are still in the midst of the pandemic, but questions of personal financing have mostly resolved. Now we have a second chance at a D&D 5e Midderlands. 5e players best take notice, this is a setting like none other.

I own the Swords & Wizardry version of the Midderlands, the expansions, and every other Kickstarter Monkeyblood has published in the interval. Glynn simply does amazing stuff and I'm excited to see the Midderlands open up beyond the OSR to the latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons with the Midderlands 5e Kickstarter.

Quick note: Midderlands 5e is being published and distributed by Necromancer Games, a sister company of Frog God Games. I am affiliated with Frog God Games as I work the table at conventions and wrote Swords & Wizardry Light. All that doesn't change the fact that the Midderlands is awesome!

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPGAmazon, and Humble Bundle are the affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Deal of the Day - Eldritch Tales: Lovecraftian White Box Role-Playing (Swords & Wizardry)


Sometimes you find a game you are just itching to run. Eldritch Tales is one of those games for me. Its what you get when you cross the comfort of Swords and Wizardry with the horror of Call of Cthulhu. I really need to hack some of this into Swords & Wizardry Continual Light.

Until 11 am Eastern, October 2nd, 2020, Eldritch Tales: Lovecraftian White Box Role-Playing is half off -  a mere 3.49. Do it! Your players will alternatively thank you and curse you ;)

Aeons before man arose from the primordial mire, ancient creatures descended from the stars or stepped through dimensional passages to inhabit the Earth. Whilst many of these Old Ones have since passed into inactivity, the secrets they carried with them have been shared with man and now terrible cults haunt the fringes of modern society. These ancient terrors thus still menace mankind and, if the prophecies are to be believed, the Old Ones shall return to reign again over the Earth!

Eldritch Tales: Lovecraftian White Box Role-Playing in an OSR rule set with its roots in the Original version of the world's favorite RPG, but instead of exploring musty dungeons, characters in Eldritch Tales investigate Mythos horrors in the 1920s! The setting and background are based on the cosmic horror tales of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and other members of his writing circle. 

Within the pages of Eldritch Tales you will find four character classes representing many classic pulp archetypes, occupations, rules for insanity, spells, monsters, esoteric tomes, artifacts, a starting scenario, and setting material, as well as advice on using Eldritch Tales with other White Box games. This game is compatible with Swords & Wizardry White Box and other OSR games.

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPGAmazon, and Humble Bundle are the affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Coinage in Fantasy RPGs - Why So Large?

 


One thing that has irked me since my early days of gaming was the 10 coins to a pound ratio in AD&D. Even in my teen years it seemed outrageously large, and I vaguely remember an issue of The Dragon from the early 80s discussing such.

Above I have a pic of some Roman coins and a US Quarter. One pound of quarters gives you 80 quarters, so a coin in AD&D is the weight of 8 quarters I (2 bucks of coins jangling in your pocket)

At 10 coins per pound, a gold coin weighs in at 1.6 ounces. That's roughly $3k in today's dollars.

The denarius (Latin pronunciation: [deːˈnaːrɪ.ʊs], pl. dēnāriī [deːˈnaːrɪ.iː]) was the standard Roman silver coin for about 450 years (211 BC to 244 AD). There were 72 denarii to the pound of, though by the end of its mintage that had lighted to 96 to a pound or (and lighter still at the end).

So, 100 coins to the pound isn't a stretch, its historically accurate. Certainly more realistic.

So, why 10 coins to the pound in AD&D 1e? I'm guessing to make retrieving the spoils a worthy effort. I just don't see the need for such heavy coinage and never have.

What are your thoughts?

Further thoughts at tonight's podcast:

https://anchor.fm/tavernchat/episodes/E846---Are-Coins-in-ADD-Too-Heavy-eke117

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Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Announcing the Old School Gaming Forums - Embeddable Everywhere :)

As many of my readers know, I've been looking to upgrade The Tavern website for a while. Part of that mission was to find a forum provider that was easy to embed in a Blogger powered blog. Why Blogger? Because if it works on Blogger, it will work on ANY website.

But why does it have to work on any website? Quite simply, the concept is to have a forum that can be accessed from any blog or publisher website that joins the community. Just drop a few lines of code into a Blogger widget, drag the widget beneath your posts and Bamn! You are hosting the same forum as a dozen other sites. Literally, all doors lead to the Old School Gaming Forums. :) Yep, that is the direct link, but you can see the embedded forums below the posts on this page.

Want to add the Old School Gaming Forums to your blog or website? Use the code below:

<a class="muut" href="https://muut.com/i/old-school-gaming">old-school-gaming</a> <script src="//cdn.muut.com/1/moot.min.js"></script>

If you add the above to your blog or website, let us know in the comments below. It is kinda baren at the moment, but its only hours old. It needs you to come fully to life.

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPGAmazon, and Humble Bundle are the affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  

Monday, September 28, 2020

Deal of the Day - Monster Stand-Ins (Paper Minis) {Inkwell Designs}



Most of the sessions of Swords & Wizardry Light at various conventions have been with the Mouth of Doom 3d printed dungeon. I learned to appreciate the use of miniatures, which I sorely lack. Pogs are useful but get lost in the 3d terrain. Printable minis would have been awesome and extremely portable, as well as affordable. Normally 9.95, you can snag Inkwell Designs Monster Stand-Ins (Paper Minis) for 1.99. perfect for the frugal DM ;)
Monster Stand-Ins is a PDF of creature miniatures.  Print as many as you need!  Over 350 images (originally 250+) cover all the most common creatures (orcs, skeletons, goblins, etc.) as well as many uncommon creatures such as a devourer, vegepygmies, and sahuagin. Most of the more common creatures come in several versions--get a kobold as a melee fighter, an archer, a shaman, or a buffed-up leader.

The PDF also includes many animals & insects (horses, cats, dogs, lions, bears, bees, bats, rats, etc.) and over different 50 PCs/NPCs.

The back of each creature is a silhouette of the front. Each mini is available with or without a label.

As much as possible, creatures are grouped on pages of similar creatures to make printing easy.  (If you need hobgoblins, you'll likely want goblins.)

Each mini has a front and back on the same side of paper and when folded: Small creatures are 1.25" x 1", medium are 1.5"x1", large are 2"x1.5", and huge creatures are 2"x3" and a few are 4"x3".

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPGAmazon, and Humble Bundle are the affiliate programs that support The Tavern. 


Sunday, September 27, 2020

Painting Day (allegedly) at the Game Store

 

Painting Day (allegedly) at the Game Store
News flash: I suck at painting minis.

I've actually done a good, I dare say great, job painting some of my minis in the past, but evidently miniature painting is a perishable skill and my expiration date came and went sometime in the last five years since I last painted something.

I could show you pics of minis I'm proud of, but I'm also lazy and they're roughly stored away in another room, and this post is more about my recent, shitty paint job.

My local comic book store, that has a decent RPG selection, was hosting a miniature painting event and I scored a spot in the event. For better or for worse I also had forgotten about this event and I had a date later that day so instead of painting it in the store, where I could watch a painting video, I took it home to paint where I figured I could use my personal painting "stuff" as well. A bit of a double-edged sword. If I was more skilled, having my own setup to use would have been optimal, but since I'm not.......that painting guide would have been useful.

Manticore Painting Day Box

Supplies in the painting day kit

The kit was $20 and had a Manticore mini, two brushes, and a selection of paints. I do wish there was a painting guide, but the idea was to watch the video........so a URL to the video would have been awesome as well. That way, even in the store I could watch on my phone and rewind/fast forward at my leisure.


One good thing about being at home with the mini was that mine had a severely cupped base, which I could easily fix at home with some hot & cold water before supergluing it to a thicker base of my choice.

Manticore mini

I didn't use most of the colors in the kit, choosing to use a few colors and mix on my own. Luckily there was a generous quantity of paint in the pots, easily enough to cover the entire fig with each color if wanted. I think of the Manticore as a top-tier (but not #1) apex ambush predator, so I wanted a more muted color palette than what the picture on the box implied. I did try to do some subtle thinned down coloration using a drop or two of paint and a bunch of matte medium. The main body was one color with this thin opaque darker reddish-tan color on top and a lighter yellowish on the underbelly. I thought it'd look cool to have that color darken and extend to the base color used in the wings and the tail.  I did the same thing with the "veins" on the wings. I think it was a good idea, but I didn't pull it off.

Finished Manticore Mini

Instead of using the wash supplied, which I should 120% should have done, I tried making my own and effed it up so bad. How bad? Yeah I went and tried to wash it off in the sink bad. I got most of it off, dried the mini with a hair drier, and then watered down my wash even more and re-applied. Meh....


I felt rushed, because of my date, but I personally think I needed the pressure or I would probably gotten little more than basing done. 

Overall though I loved the idea of a painting event at a game store and I really hope that this can be a more regular thing. The store gets the traffic, you get a social event with other like-minded players\gms\whatever label you use, and you get to brush-up on your panting skills (pun intended). I've already started getting my supplies together and am setting up a painting desk in my office just for working on terrain and minis.

I really hope WotC keeps supporting this type of thing. I do hope though that they pick a better intro mini to work with. Something with fewer tight spots (that tail) and fewer mold/flash lines. Still, you got to pick a cool mini to get people in the door.

Saturday, September 26, 2020

Deal of The Day - Lordling: Fantasy Role-Playing Game for Kids (Goblinoid Games)

I'm a huge fan of youth accessible RPG gaming. My niece is now 9, she was 5 when Swords & Wizardry Light released. When she realized what I wrote she told me: "Uncle, you can use this to teach me to read, and then I can play D&D too!" 

The fact that Lordling: Fantasy Role-Playing Game for Kids was written for kids is awesome. Normally 4.49 in PDF, until tomorrow morning Lordling is on sale for 2.69

Lordling is the baton to hand off fantasy role-playing to the next generation!

It is an introductory role-playing game for kids. Play all of the classic race classes from Labyrinth Lord, but with a new streamlined system perfect for young new players.

Lordling is meant to be used by a mentor to teach young kids how to play role-playing games. It is a self-contained game, but as the players become more experienced it will benefit from using Labyrinth Lord for additional material.

Finally! Your kids are ready to play. But can you handle their imaginations?

Lordling presents rules very similar to B/X, but uses 2d6 or 1d6 for resolution. The overall system is streamlined for kids, but with enough detail that it can also be used as a "beer & pretzels" RPG for adults or older kids.

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPGAmazon, and Humble Bundle are the affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  

Friday, September 25, 2020

The Tavern is Looking for a Web Designer to Design The Tavern 3.0

I know that I've been talking about upgrading The Tavern for well over a year now, and its time for me to admit to myself that I lack the skills and the time to do so.  Hell, I'm far behind on every project at the moment - "knock on wood" I am working on the assumption that further hospitalizations are no longer a thing, and if they are a future thing, expanding The Tavern will ensure things continue smoothly even if I am unable to temporarily participate.

This is what I would like for the next / future version of The Tavern:

  • rotating header art
  • portability of the web address. currently registered with Google/GoDaddy.
  • the ability to host multiple blogs by multiple authors, each with their own feed
  • integrate Discord Chat into the website
  • add a forum
  • possibly a web store
  • further features the community may pitch, that are feasible and doable

Note: This is a PAID position for the initial design and a monthly stipend to keep things up and running smoothly. No, I am not made from money, nor do I print my own, but I do want to see people paid fairly for the work they do. Call me Old School.

Email me at tenkarsDOTtavernATgmailDOTcom with Tavern 3.0 in the subject and we can discuss potential web hosts and other such details :)

Shit is becoming real :)

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPGAmazon, and Humble Bundle are the affiliate programs that support The Tavern. 




Thursday, September 24, 2020

The Tavern is More Popular in the US than RPG.net - Thank You for the Support!

I was running some websites through the Alexa.com ranking system of web traffic. I was VERY surprised to see that in the US, The Tavern ranks higher than RPG.net (worldwide RPG.net places significantly higher)

The Tavern

RPG.net

I'd like to seriously thank each and every one of you for spreading the word about and supporting The Tavern. There are plans to expand on what you currently get, and with a little luck and a healthy streak, we should have something to show by the New Year. Wish us luck :)

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPGAmazon, and Humble Bundle are the affiliate programs that support The Tavern. 


Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Humble Book Bundle: Dungeons & Dragons: R.A. Salvatore Showcase

When I was younger, the Cleric Quintet was one of my favorite fantasy series. That led to more Drizzt and R.A. Salvatore's rising star. If you missed the releases or don't want to pay "dead tree" prices, the Humble Book Bundle: Dungeons & Dragons: R.A. Salvatore Showcase is a bargain and then some.

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPGAmazon, and Humble Bundle are the affiliate programs that support The Tavern. 

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Frog God Games - 50% off Sale on PDF - Swords & Wizardry Picks

There is just over a week left on the Frog God Games PDF Sale over at DriveThruRPG. While nearly everything for 5e, Pathfinder, Swords & Wizardry, and more are on sale, I'm going to highlight some Swords & Wizardry relevant picks (and one Pathfinder pick that is just a HUGE bargain)

Monstrosities - NOW 7.50 - Probably THEE monster book in the OSR, each entry has an adventure hook.

You can never have too many monsters, and this book is filled with them! No matter what kind of campaign, there are foes galore to stock its wildernesses and dungeons, even the unknown depths of its mysterious oceans. This is a compendium that contains the monsters from the rulebook and many monsters from the First Edition of the original roleplaying game, but there are hundreds and hundreds of completely new beasts. Note: this is a second printing of the original Swords & Wizardry monster book, updated with errata and hundreds of illustrations.

The largest compilation ever of monsters for Swords & Wizardry/0e. If you play the very first edition (0e) of the game, or if you play Swords & Wizardry at the gaming table, this book is a must-have! 186 brand new monsters await, along with hundreds of the older monsters so that they're all in one book.!

Monstrosities was created with the generous help of the Swords & Wizardry internet community, as you can see from the list of unusually brilliant authors whose erudition and eloquence grace these pages. The book’s successes are due to them, whilst any errors or failures in the transcription of their noble work are doubtless my own.

Tome of Adventure Design - NOW 6.30 - My go-to book for inspiration when I'm looking to design a new adventure.

A fantasy adventure game, at its very heart, is about developing an open-ended "story" of the characters. The referee is in charge of the fantasy world, and the players direct the actions of their characters in that fantasy world. Neither the referee nor the group of players has complete control over what's going to happen, and the result is an evolving set of surprises for both the referee and the players. Unlike the players, as the referee and creator of the game world, most of your "work" is done ahead of time. To some degree or other, you have to create the groundwork for the adventure before the game starts. Even though no battle plan survives contact with the enemy - and if you're an experienced referee you know exactly what I mean - the game has to start ... with a starting point. This might just be a vague set of ideas, or it might be as complex as a set of maps with a detailed key and well thought-out encounters for the players to run into.

The Tome of Adventure Design is organized as a series of "books," each one providing resources at every step of the way. The vast majority of the content of each book is made up of random generation tables that we created over a quarter of a century (sigh) for our own use. It shoud be said up front that these are tables for deep design - in other words, most of them are too long, and contain too many unusual or contradictory entries, for use on the spot at the gaming table. There are already many excellent books of tables for use on the fly; the tables in these books are different. They work best as a tool for preparation beforehand, providing relatively vast creative resources for browsing and gathering, rather than quick-use tables designed to provide broad, fast brushstrokes. Our shorter tables tend to d - eliver cryptic results designed to shock the reader's creativity into filling in the gaps, whereas the longer tables are unusably vast for easy random generation, being designed to shock the reader's creativity into operation by presenting a sea of possibilities.

The Lost City of Barakus - NOW - 10.00 - I had a blast running this for my old gaming group. So much fun.

The Lost City of Barakus, designed to take characters from 1st to 5th or 6th level (or higher), is as much of a campaign setting as an adventure. Detailed within these pages is the great, bustling metropolis of Endhome, the Penprie Forest and Duskmoon Hills located north of that city, and, finally, the huge dungeon that is the Lost City of Barakus. Within all these areas are many adventures, NPCs, and locations for the party to explore, interact with and conquer. How and in what order the party chooses to take on the various challenges before them is entirely yours (the GM’s) and the players’ choice.

Stoneheart Valley - NOW 8.00 - Three classic Necromancer era adventures make for a nice micro-setting and an excellent campaign kickoff.

Finally, welcome to the World of Necromancer Games! From Bill Webb and Clark Peterson's home campaign comes the old-school setting of The Lost Lands: Stoneheart Valley. For over a decade, fans of Necromancer Games and Frog God Games have been asking to see the world behind the adventures. And at long last, here is where it all began, in the Stoneheart Valley near the town of Fairhill. This mini-campaign was originally presented to the fans of Necromancer Games in three separate modules: "The Wizard's Amulet", "The Crucible of Freya", and "The Tomb of Abysthor". Frog God Games has taken the full series from the 3E version plus supplemental material previously available only online, and converted it all to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game system and the Swords & Wizardry Complete ruleset.

Razor Coast (PF) - NOW 3.00 - Yes, the Pathfinder version is far cheaper than the S&W version. My God but this was a fun read. Three bucks? Snag it!

Razor Coast is the long anticipated Caribe-Polynesian flavored, Age of Sail swashbuckling RPG campaign envisioned and designed by Nicolas Logue. It is applauded for its ambitious and original design, its epic flavor and its lurid, full-color art – including a cover by the award winning Wayne Reynolds. Logue tapped a team of veteran designers to help develop and write Razor Coast, including Lou Agresta, Adam Daigle, Tim Hitchcock, and John Ling.

“Razor Coast isn’t just an adventure,” according to Agresta, Razor Coast Project Manager, “it’s part setting, part adventure path, and part toolkit to build your own unique campaign. It’s non-linear. It’ll never play the same way twice.”

“We filled it with corrupt municipal Dragoons, dastardly smuggling rings, weresharks – lots of weresharks, desperate naval battles, oppressed tribes craving heroes, witches, cursed islands, legendary treasure troves, an impending apocalypse or two, demon pirates, retired assassins, undead worms, gator men, failed heroes waiting to be redeemed, dark conspiracies brewing in the oceans depths, vengeful ghosts…oh – and mutating cannibal pygmies. Who doesn’t like those?”

Bill Webb's Book of Dirty Tricks - NOW .75 - That's right, Bill Webb's Book of Dirty Tricks is a mere 75 cents. If you pick up nothing else, you should be grabbing this :)

This fun little tome is a GM utility for use during regular play when either too many good things happen to the players due to luck or just whenever the GM feels they need a little push to remind them that success is fleeting. 

Dirty tricks are intended to create great players. That is and should be the only reason a GM springs such things on them. It also has the effect of creating a great game, where even mundane tasks cannot be taken for granted, and boredom is rare.

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPGAmazon, and Humble Bundle are the affiliate programs that support The Tavern. 

Monday, September 21, 2020

Deal of the Day - Mike's Dungeons: The Deep Levels (OSR)

Sometimes all you want to do is dungeon crawl like we did back in 1984. Back when we didn't worry about what went on outside the walls of the dungeon. Backstory? Setting? NPCs? Bah!

Mike's Dungeons: The Deep Levels allows you to game like the old days. Normally 2.99 in PDF, until tomorrow morning it is a mere 1.49.

MIKE'S DUNGEONS: THE DEEP LEVELS includes 39 dungeon levels that take 10th-level characters up to 14th level.

DETAILS, PLEASE?

This is a massive dungeon of 39 hand-drawn levels, for character levels 10th through 14th. It was made with Moldvay/Cook's 1981 Dungeons & Dragons rules, but it can be used with other versions of the game.

WHAT IT IS NOT:

These dungeons are not for collecting, not for reading, not for gazing at, and not for displaying on your coffee table. It has no art, no stylish formatting, no production values at all. If you aren't going to use and abuse this in a game, there's no reason to buy it.

WHAT IT IS:

The word for this is FUN. These are the dungeons you could have made when you were 12 years old, but were too lazy. It is a no-nonsense dungeon for playing D&D. You don't even need to study it beforehand. You can run it on-the-fly.

YOU CAN PREVIEW ALL 39 LEVELS.

You read that right. You can freely preview every single page of this book. It's like you're flipping through this in a bookstore before you make your decision to buy.

The price comes to less than 8 pennies per level for the PDF, and a quarter per level for the print+PDF option.

Fight on!

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPGAmazon, and Humble Bundle are the affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  

Sunday, September 20, 2020

Some Personal Experience with one of the KenzerCo D-Team

Some Personal Experience with one of the KenzerCo D-Team

If you've been reading my ramblings here at the Tavern for the last couple of months you've got to have learned by now that I was a fig HackMaster player and used to volunteer for the folks over at KenzerCo.

I really considered the D-Team (Development Team) at KenzerCo as friends and when you're doing things for friends, working conventions and doing all the extra stuff I did really didn't feel like "work"....until it did and unfortunately that soured things for me. I could easily blame KenzerCo and if I layed everything out some of you may very well do so as well, but I clearly have to shoulder some of that blame not matter what.


I really try not to live with regrets and be accepting of the past that I cannot change, but one regret I have comes with souring my relationship with Steve Johannson, one of the D-Team. I'm not 100%, but I'm pretty sure Stevil from Knights of the Dinner Table was based on Steve Johannson and even though I think the character is an asshole, I lovingly called Steve "Stevil". This Stevil was also a character and could easily come across as an asshole, but in reality he was a great guy who had some awesomely epic rants. You'd be talking to him about something and BAM!, he'd go off on some long tirade sounding like Grandpa Simpson, but without (much) malice.\

One time when visiting the KenzerCo office, which was a hole-in-the wall small warehouse with a conference room and some odd office space (most of the guys worked from home 90% of the time), we we talking about printed modules and I mentioned I had a couple older ones that were in good shape except for some highlighting I had made. Stevil started just going off on how pristine printed adventure modules were an abomination.....an affront to gaming in general. Adventures were meant to be used and abused, dog-eared, and marked-up......basically giving up their "lives" in creating a great gaming session and memories that will last a lifetime.

For all the years volunteering for KenzerCo and with personal visits, etc., I actually had limited gaming experience with the D-Team. I wrote a tongue-in-cheek adventure for GMs at Origins one year and Stevil bellied up to an otherwise full table to play. Instead of playing an "appropriate" PC and overbalancing that table he decided to run a NPC torchbearer....a halfling IIRC. Now I was too busy GMing another table, but I remember seeing Stevil sitting on the floor, barely able to look over the table, his hand held high as he asks one of the PC's, "Do you have enough light?" At another Origins I actually got to play in a Roll-n-Run adventure (you quick roll up 1st level PCs and go on an adventure). Stevil rolled up a Magic User, which is usually considered a bit of a waste for this type of game. Since this was HackMaster 5th Edition you could (at an expensive cost) have your Magic User take a pole-arm for a weapon. For the rest of the game Stevil's Mage loved the spell he called "Cast Spear", which was of course just him using the spear like a really shitty 1st level Fighter. I also got to play at his table at GaryCon (2013) during a Sunday morning pickup game. We ran a few encounters out of the Temple of Existential Evil......I remember enjoying the game, but since it was Sunday morning at a Con...details will be lacking. I do remember the group had a barbarian so poor he had nothing but his weapon....yep, running around "adventuring" nekkid. To throw the guy a bone Stevil threw in as "loot" some nasty, used underwear just so the barbarian wouldn't be completely naked.

A Sewer Runs Through It

Well actually I did play in another of Stevil's games at GaryCon. He had a rough shell of an adventure seed that he ran a group of us through and towards the end of the adventure my Halfling Cleric saved the life of another PC using a particular spell. When that happened Stevil just freakin lit up and he had to stop and tell the rest of the D-Team what I had just done. These guys play together on the regular and when they wrote the new edition they pretty much all thought the spell I had used was pretty much useless and he/they were surprised to see if actually used for once, much less that it worked! After the game Stevil approached me with the idea of me writing/fleshing out the adventure and then he could edit it. Evidently he had the idea, but not the time to do the leg-work. I was elated at the opportunity to write a "real" adventure and went so far as to churn out a map, add art, and even do the cover. There was a drowning mechanic I wrote up, as the adventure required one. Stevil had a better mechanic and had to do some reformatting, but the adventure ended up largely as I wrote it. He even kept the title and cover (but he did change the font for the authors on the cover, which is the only change I didn't care for).

Unfortunately this was our only collaboration because initially I wasn't reimbursed for my work and since I was unemployed, taking a few days "off" to do unpaid work wasn't something I could afford to do. I HIGHLY suspect that in the end Stevil gave me $100 out of his own pocket to pay me for that adventure. I'm not really playing HackMaster anymore (but would like to!) and now that I have a good paying job I could afford to flesh-out more of Steve's ideas......

.....but unfortunately Steve passed away a year ago this weekend. Yes, I intentionally "buried the lead" (pun NOT intended, although I think he'd like that one), but I've been thinking of Steve lately and miss him more than I expected to. His "hands" were intimately involved in so much of my favorite gaming memories, basically anything involving HackMaster or Knights of the Dinner Table.

I appreciate getting the opportunity to share this here and hopefully someone here will tear off that shrink wrap on some saved adventure and start making some notes in the margins in preparation of running their home group in a dice-slinging session. You can always bag it and protect it for use again in the future.......

Saturday, September 19, 2020

Reminder - The Tavern in its Various Incarnations is a Neutral Ground

The US Presidential Elections are a month and a half away.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg just passed.

Social media is going to be on fire.

The Tavern will not be joining the drama.

Fact: Ginsberg's closest friend on the Supreme Court was Justice Scalia, a staunch conservative and Ginsberg's ideological opposite. How could that be? Because their friendship was based on commonalities, not differences.

We are gamers. We are geeks. That is our commonality. That is what we stress here at The Tavern. We do not discuss politics or social issues. Sure, such issues exist, but there are more appropriate venues for such discussion. It isn't here. Not the blog, not the Discord, not the Facebook Community nor the MeWe Group.

Social media ensures that discussions on any sensitive subjects that are even tangentially touching upon politics or social issues will devolve into a dumpster fire at best.

Being a Neutral Ground does not ensure that you, personally, will not be offended by subjects, content, or discussions that may arise. My personal neutrality means that the politics of personalities does not influence what I do or do not cover.  I am remarking about the relevance to us as gamers, I am not covering their politics. 

I am, however, certainly swayed by personal attacks on myself. If your tactic is such in the hopes of me sending traffic your way, you will be sorely disappointed.

Game on dude! Game on! 


Friday, September 18, 2020

Need to Update the Free OSR Pages - Suggestions Welcome

It's been a long time since I sat down and went through the Free OSR Lists on the right side of this page to see what is missing and what has dropped off.

If you have a moment, I ask that you check out the links. You might find stuff that you don't have. Heck, you might find stuff that I don't have listed. If that's the case, drop a link or two in the comments below.

Here are the links to the pages:

Free OSR Rulesets - Fantasy 

Free OSR Rulesets - SciFi 

Free OSR Rulesets - Other (needs entries)

Free OSR Adventures

OSR Resources (needs entries, and I can already think of a few)

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Thursday, September 17, 2020

State of the Tavern Keeper - Doc, Doc, Goose!

I could really use a do-over for 2020. Three hospitalizations, and yet still no Covid - knock-on-wood. 

The latest hospitalization found that my left carotid is fully occluded - blocked. Needless to say, the result of this was more doc appointments and tests. Here's the summary:

The right carotid has fully compensated for the blocked left carotid. The left carotid's blockage is almost certainly due to radiation treatment for Hodgkin's 14 years ago. Low blood pressure and dehydration (I fainted) was the reason for the hospitalization. Days of testing revealed I was overmedicated for a healthier heart than expected. The carotid blockage was bonus knowledge.

The blockages in my heart that were revealed with my hospitalization in May for Congestive Heart Failure were likely a consequence of chemo and radiation treatment for Hodgkin's. The damage was not new. The first hospitalization, back in March, for pneumonia and sepsis, apparently put the heart muscle in a weakened state of shock. The 4 stents I received for my CHF seem to have woken the heart muscle up, and the heart is now working strongly enough that it would not now be considered CHF - although I believe once diagnosed it is always a threat.

I've lost about 25 to 30 pounds from my "convention" weight with a goal to lose at least another 20. Anything I can do to help the heart I am willing to do.

In the last two and a half weeks since my latest hospitalization, I've had 9 days of doc visits and medical testing. Things are finally slowing down.

I am behind on everything. Torchlight. The Watchman Project. Fireside Chats on the podcast. Chores and projects around the house. You name it, I'm behind on it.

I'm hoping this weekend to start climbing out of that hole, but it will take time. At least, things are looking up, healthwise. All that and I knocked my A1C down by 3.2 points - which tells you how out of control it was.

I thank you all for the support. It really has given me strength.

Onward and upward - Tenkar

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Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Tome of Adventure Design now available from Amazon (Matt Finch)


There's no secret that I'm a huge fan of Matt Finch's Tome of Adventure Design. I have it in the multi-volume set hat Matt self-published in addition to two printings in hardcover from Frog God Games. I've used it to design adventures multiple times as well as posted the process here at The Tavern.

Now you can grab the out of print Tome of Adventure Design via from Amazon, in either softcover or hardcover. The Softcover is 34.99 and the Hardcover is 49.99.

Issuing ToAD and other out of print Frog God releases on Amazon is huge, especially for fans across the pond or across the world, as it avoids the outrageous American postal rates.

A fantasy adventure game, at its very heart, is about developing an open-ended "story" of the characters. The referee is in charge of the fantasy world, and the players direct the actions of their characters in that fantasy world. Neither the referee nor the group of players has complete control over what's going to happen, and the result is an evolving set of surprises for both the referee and the players. Unlike the players, as the referee and creator of the game world, most of your "work" is done ahead of time. To some degree or other, you have to create the groundwork for the adventure before the game starts. Even though no battle plan survives contact with the enemy - and if you're an experienced referee you know exactly what I mean - the game has to start ... with a starting point. This might just be a vague set of ideas, or it might be as complex as a set of maps with a detailed key and well thought-out encounters for the players to run into.

The Tome of Adventure Design is organized as a series of "books," each one providing resources at every step of the way. The vast majority of the content of each book is made up of random generation tables that we created over a quarter of a century (sigh) for our own use. It shoud be said up front that these are tables for deep design - in other words, most of them are too long, and contain too many unusual or contradictory entries, for use on the spot at the gaming table. There are already many excellent books of tables for use on the fly; the tables in these books are different. They work best as a tool for preparation beforehand, providing relatively vast creative resources for browsing and gathering, rather than quick-use tables designed to provide broad, fast brushstrokes. Our shorter tables tend to deliver cryptic results designed to shock the reader's creativity into filling in the gaps, whereas the longer tables are unusably vast for easy random generation, being designed to shock the reader's creativity into operation by presenting a sea of possibilities.

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Tuesday, September 15, 2020

New PWYW - Guildhall Goods (Frugal GM)

In case you've missed it, the Frugal GM has been offering quality RPG resources at rock bottom prices for a while. His latest is Guildhall Goods, which is available for Pay What You Want pricing.

This short location set-up is designed to act as a loose framework for you to tweak & toss into your current campaign and everything listed here is a suggestion for use only. Several details, especially those on this page, are deliberately vague in order to make integration easier. Use as-is, or slice & dice the information given to suit the needs of your game.

The idea behind this Tweak & Toss is that a frontier location has a market that has been around "forever". This market also offers services for adventurers that join up as members of the "Guildhall". 

I was having some PDF production issues, so instead of my normal half-page sized PDFs that should be booklet printed, this product is a full page landscape print that is designed to be folded in half. That puts the map of the building on the inside spread and you can easily just print off that page if it helps, but it comes at the expense of easier navigation through the document on a tablet or other screen.

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Monday, September 14, 2020

Kickstarter - OpenQuest 3e (d100 System)



I'm a huge fan of OpenQuest. I jumped on the earlier editions when they released, and its one of the few non-old school D&D derived rulesets I feel comfortable with.  Needless to say, I'm backing for the latest edition, but this time I want a signed copy ;)

OpenQuest is a straightforward, easy to play D100 role-playing game.

Inspired by the tremendous D100 rulesets put out in the late 1970s and 1980s,  OpenQuest uses the Legend SRD as a base and includes innovations from more recent indie RPGs to give it a modern edge.

The first edition of OpenQuest came out in Summer 2009. This version of the game refines and updates the text of the game, making it more straightforward to use than ever before. 

You can back for as little as 13 bucks for the year PDF & POD.

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Tenkar's Tavern is supported by various affiliate programs, including Amazon, RPGNow,
and Humble Bundle as well as Patreon. Your patronage is appreciated and helps keep the
lights on and the taps flowing. Your Humble Bartender, Tenkar

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