Kickstarter - Magic and Shit: Weird Fantasy for Your OSR RPGs

I must admit I've been remiss in my Kickstarter coverage of new projects, so there are now a few in the hopper. The first one I'm looking at is Magic and Shit: Weird Fantasy for Your OSR RPGs by Levi Combs.

10 bucks for the PDF, 15 for the Print plus PDF.

Levi has been active in the OSR for years, so let's see what his latest project is all about.

Following up on the success of our RPG zines The Phylactery and The Phylactery 2, Planet X Games is stoked to bring you an all-new, all-different zine dedicated to weird fantasy magical items and artifacts with a heavy metal vibe. Magic and Shit is a cover-to-cover 48-page, saddle-stitched, 5.5-inch by 8.5-inch B&W printed zine with a bad ass color cover by Planet X favorite (and consumate, lifelong metalhead) Lawrence Hernandez. Like all of our zines, this poser-free fanzine is stacked with a ton of new plug-n-play content that you can drop directly into your fantasy role playing games. No rambling charts or useless page-filler to suck up space - just our usual grindhouse-style content infused with some denim and leather love for the 70s-80s metal scene.

 The magical items in this zine have been designed to bring something a little weird and altogether new to your campaign, while still giving a knowing nod to the games of yore that we all love and remember so fondly. What will your players do when confronted with the Mummified Hand of Gilly Yonder? Dare they slip on the Graveshroud of Nanthos the Black? What the hell is a Corpsehatch Seed? Dare they summon the dread powers of the Moaning Head of St Barach?

This zine is full of surprises and all-new takes on magical treasures to keep your players guessing. Will they partake of the Blood of the Bol-Gatha and harness the power of the Faceless One? Will they read aloud the Screed of Black Lore and gain the powers of darkness for themselves? Perhaps a villain is in possession of the Ossuary of Yeth and its only a matter of time before the players find themselves at the mercy of howling demons from the great beyond? With options galore, there's a hundred ways to make this zine a staple at your tabletop game. 

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Virtual Gary Con Notifies Attendees of Need to be ID'ed via Video / VoiP Chat Prior to Attending Convention After Purchasing Badges (Updated)

Imagine my surprise when I was pinged by a Facebook thread to a new thread in the Gary Con Facebook Community.

My initial assumption was that it was a fake email, but apparently, that is NOT the case, and it was an email sent out on the behalf of Gary Con.

The concern from many attendees, registered and potential, was that the vetting was possibly going to be on political ground, but it was later clarified that the vetting of potentially thousands of attendees was to weed out one asshole. An asshole that committed an offense at last year's Virtual Gary Con and apparently was already known to convention staff.

Edit 2335 1/22/2021: I've conversed directly with Luke Gygax, and he has updated me with the following:

ID buyer to badge so right person has right badge.  Link badge to Discord ID to help lost players get to right GM.  Verify is VOIP or webcam.  No interview or vet process.  No time or desire to do that. Just like a badge check in.

Second purpose is to help deter bad actors and ban those that are proven bad actors from future events.  The rules are con policies and thats been the case for years.  So nothing new there.  Gamers are good people by and large but any big group may have some bad actors and it’s a responsibility to take prudent action to deter, dissuade and limit those bad actions.

I've included some relevant screenshots from the thread below, but I'll make my observations known here:

This is simply a horrible implementation of a vetting policy. It sounds like someone on the Gary Con Staff realized late last night they may get trolled again by last year's bad actor, and this was the solution they came up with. Registration for the convention opened in late 2020, and this policy should have been in place BEFORE anyone put their dollars down for badges.

The argument that picking up your badge at a physical convention is your vetting process does not hold water. I doubt everyone manning the badge table during the usual early convention mad-rush is matching badges to faces. No one is being asked for ID in my expereince.

If you have a bad actor at a physical convention at your game table, the GM needs to get support staff and have the person removed. At a virtual convention, you simply boot the bad actor from your VTT. 

Not every attendee has access to internet speed high enough to effectively transmit video. Is that now a requirement to attend a virtual convention? 

The man-hours required to implement this for thousands of attendees, as well as the joy of scheduling such interviews, is more than daunting. 

In the future, are we going to be asked for ID and to pay for background checks before attending a physical convention? 

All of this drama, disruption, and annoyance of your community to weed out one bad actor? I don't know what their offense was, but to take action like this, at so late a time, makes me suspect that at a physical convention it would have been an arrestable offense. This is literally panic mode. late in the game. Someone dropped a ball and this is the result.

It's very simple to fool the video vetting process - simply have someone else sit in for the video. I suspect it is more likely an innocent person will be denied attendance to the convention than the bad actor will reveal themself.

I agree with weeding out bad actors from convention spaces, but this is not the way to do it.

Obligatory screenshot dump. The original thread is currently locked.

Deal of the Day - Grand History of the Realms (Forgotten Realms D&D)

The Forgotten Realms can be a fetid mess to figure out as a timeline with all of the products released over the decades. Grand History of the Realms kinda solves that problem, at least through the 3.5 era.

Clocking in at 162 pages, I see this as a trip down memory lane from when I was waist-deep in Forgotten Realms fiction and source material

Normally 9.99 in PDF, until tomorrow morning the Grand History of the Realms can be had for only 4.99.

From the history:

What It Is. The Forgotten Realms is a huge and rambling place. That's no surprise, considering the number of authors and game designers who have added to the Realms over the past decades. At least in theory, all of these stories and events interlock into one cohesive world history (although admittedly sometimes better than others, depending on the extent of the authors and editors' Realms-lore).

With the quantity of products, however, it's often impractical for a single DM to understand the scope of a campaign's history or to understand what's happening at the same time elsewhere in the campaign world. Brian James made it possible by creating one massive and coherent timeline of the Forgotten Realms' published history, listing dates and events from every single Realms product published by TSR and Wizards of the Coast. The amount of work and attention to detail needed to pull this off somewhat boggles the mind, but the results are delightful for fans of the setting.

 It's particularly effective to see this history collected in chronological order because the Realms' rich history has a variety of ways to count years in its calendar. There's Present Reckoning, Dalereckoning, Northreckoning, the Shou calendar, the Netheril Year, the Aryselmalyr calandar, and the Roll of Years (Year of the Cauldron, Year of the Bent Blade, Year of the Starving, and so on.) Tracking what happens at what time isn't easy for DMs who set their game there. This book solves that challenge neatly.

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Free OSR - Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game (1999)

The Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game from 1999 is an often forgotten piece of D&D / TSR history. Sitting somewhere between AD&D 2e and the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, it avoids character generation by presenting character folders. I understand what it was attempting with its approach - lowing the entry bar for new players. It just doesn't quite feel right.

In any case, why don't you peek for yourself, as The Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game is available for the price of Free. :)

Tip of the hat to Epi!

The classic game of fantasy returns with a new look and approach for a new generation. You control the action. You create the story. You use your imagination to enter a world of mythological monsters, heroic knights, and magical spells. You take on the role of a brave warrior, sly thief, crusading priest, or powerful wizard. You become the Dungeon Master, making the adventure come alive!

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Deal of the Day - Bone Age (OSR)

One of the things I love about the OSR is the ability to mix and match from the various rulesets without breaking anything. Rulesets that are genre or setting specific are great resources for use with other systems. Bone Age is an excellent resource for other OSR games if you don't want to use its ruleset.

Normally 10 bucks in PDF, until tomorrow morning, Bone Age is on sale for a mere 3 bucks.

The Bone Age is an old-school RPG of neolithic-era tribes struggling against the sudden arrival of bug-eyed aliens. You play a Tuzanian, a tribe of jungle-dwelling, vine-swinging, pterodactyl-riding, bone-wielding savages, or a Cruach, giant-crab riding cave-dwellers living in mountains bordering the jungle. Radiation leaked from the Invaders' crashed flying saucers spreads on winds of purple, blue, and white, mutating the land and its inhabitants. Meanwhile, a race of turtle-apes and ape-turtles sleeping in stasis beneath the surface awoke...1,000,000 years later than planned. And they were not impressed by the native population – or the alien Invaders.

The Bone Age isn't based on a specific OSR system, but comparisons can be drawn to Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and Dungeon Crawl Classics. The base mechanic uses a d20 where higher rolls are better than low rolls, and works in a similar fashion to the way saving throws and attacks work in Labyrinth Lord. Thus, an ability might be expressed as 12+, meaning you want to roll a 12 or higher on a d20. Placing the target number in the hands of the players means they get the thrill of shouting "My attack hits!" or the agony of lamenting "I failed my mutation roll," as opposed to the Game Master setting a secret Difficulty Class.

The Bone Age uses a class & level system, with levels maxing out at 10. While most of game mechanics in The Bone Age will seem familiar, there are some things that stand out in contrast to many other games. The most important is the concept of Attunement. The land of The Bone Age – called Kalsentia – is itself a living entity, and the creatures that inhabit it can develop a spiritual connection to various geographic regions. These regions are represented by hexes on a map. If you are attuned to a hex, you function more effectively in it. You can attempt to attune to new regions, but you risk the wrath of the land if you offend it – rock slides, earthquakes, and floods are just some of the signs that you have angered Kalsentia.The land is brutally hot. The north is dry, the south is humid. Many regions see rain only once per solar cycle.

Some bullet points of interest:

With the exception of the PCs and NPCs, The Bone Age harbors no terran life forms; no horses, no dogs, no bumblebees, no bats, no platypuses.

The methods necessary to create metal have not been discovered.

The bones of ancient creatures litter the landscape. Bone is thus a resource used for a variety of tools, including weapons.

Three alien ships crashed on the planet one solar cycle ago. Radiation leaks from those ships continues to be carried by the wind, infecting the land and its inhabitants with horrible mutations. The aliens are collectively called the Invaders. 

Advanced technology has been pilfered from Invader ships and Invader dead. Wise men and women have attempted to understand the strange items, to varying degrees of success. Player-characters will discover Invader tech in various states of repair. The use of these items can be unpredictable, wondrous, and dangerous.

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News - Saddle-stitch to be Discontinued at OneBookShelf / DriveThruRPG

I got this email yesterday and talked about it on last night's podcast, but it's important enough to both publishers and their customers that I felt I needed to share it here too.

From DriveThruRPG:

Dear publishers, 

Our printer, Lightning Source, has informed us that they will be discontinuing saddle-stitch printing very soon. The format will no longer be available as of March 1, 2021. We apologize for this change; we realize it is happening without much notice and have voiced our concern with Lightning Source. They have determined the format is not profitable, however, and they cannot continue to support it.

For those publishers who currently have saddle-stitch titles, you will need to convert your title to perfect-bound and, where necessary, add blank pages to reach the minimum allowable size of 18 pages. 

However, currently our site automatically treats premium color books under 49 pages in length as saddle-stitch. We are in the process of updating to handle any premium color book of 18 pages or more as perfect bound. Once we have made that change in our site code, we will let you know so that you can begin uploading your conversions of previously saddle-stitch titles to perfect-bound.

In the meantime, you might also decide to update your premium color saddle-stitch titles to perfect-bound standard color, which can be uploaded now to our site.

If your saddle-stitch title has pages the customer would remove from the book, or has so few pages that adding blank pages to get to the 18-page minimum size for perfect-bound does not seem an ideal option, you might also consider converting your title to use card tiles, card sheets, or even a mini-poster instead of a book. See our Publisher Knowledgebase (https://onebookshelfpublisherservice.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/227867627-Printed-Card-Formats-Costs) for more information on those formats.

Yours, 

OneBookShelf Publisher Relations

Link to the Tavern Chat Podcast Episode on Anchor

Link to the Tavern Chat Podcast Episode on YouTube

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New Kickstarter Scam - Cloning a Current Indiegogo Project (but the tells are damn telling)

This isn't a scam I had seen before, and I'm kinda surprised by that. I actually stumbled across this with a suggested YouTube video while watching YouTube. I guess Google knows me well at this point ;)

Here's the video in question:

Here's the long story short. Vinnie Tartamella is an independent comic book creator that has 5 prior projects under his belt at Indiegogo. His latest, Shadow of the Kraken is currently funding on Indiegogo. The project launched at least 15 days ago, so around January 3rd, 2021, judging from the oldest comment on the page. Note, Vinnie's location comes up as Weston, United States.

On January 9th, 2021, Shadow of the Kraken launches on Kickstarter. Now, the Kickstarter account is named "Vinnie", but the account owner is Sergey Erentsenov.

Where is Sergey from? Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Something is rotten in Kazakhastan I think.

Now, is there ANY likelihood of the Kickstarter clone of Shadow of the Kraken funding, thus defrauding the 5 backers (of which I am one, in for a buck). None whatsoever, as Kickstarter is an "all or nothing" funding platform. What is sad, and telling, is that the creator of the above video reached out to Kickstarter, and they saw nothing wrong.

I'll be sharing this post with Kickstarter. I expect a similar automated response.

Now, just as an FYI, the Kickstarter page copies the Indiegogo page word for word, except for the Risks and Challenges section, as Indiegogo doesn't have such. It appears Fake Vinnie used our very own long time Kickstarter Scammer Whitless Whitman to write it:

Kickstarter scams in 2021: a new year, a new scam, and an indifferent Kickstarter, as usual.

Update - 1/20/2021 - The project is suspended on Kickstarter

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From Fever Dream to Initial Thoughts on New Disease

 

[I'm recovering from what I assume is a bad cold/light flu....NOT COVID....doubt I'll even get tested at this point, and last night I didn't have much of a temperature, but I did have one.....and this post comes straight out of my dreams last night.]

Rarely do I dream about gaming, and even then it's a pretty one-sided affair, like I'm dreaming about being in a game (as a player slinging dice) or I'm dreaming in-character. Last night I had the same dream over & over, but from different viewpoints. The result was an odd stream-of-consciousness that I think was about a HackMaster game, but the reasons for that should be apparent.

Starting from a player perspective there was one player at the table that had the hots for the woman playing a female druid at the table. He wanted to force her PC to fall in love with him, er his Sorcerer PC (yes, it was as creepy as that sound like) and created some magical potion that would do the trick. At this point another female Druid, this was the in-character mother of the would-be victim, discovered the ruse and was all, "Over her dead body". That phrase was a bit off, but I remember it clearly. So this older Druid performs some ritual that twists the magic of the potion so it doesn't work, but it has an unexpected side affect.

The younger Druid drinks the potion and appears to get rather sick, looking a little gaunt. The symptoms fade quickly enough and the Sorcerer, and player, leaves the group before his plans get out.....evidently the older Druid did not just out the guy, which would have made more sense to me. What isn't discovered is that the potion has a nasty side affect that remains hidden until the Druid changes into an animal form. Instead of changing into an expected form the Druid becomes an undead abomination that is an amalgamation of undead and lycanthrope. What's worse is that this state is transmittable through bite or claw attacks. The Druid is able to shape-shift back to human form, but her victims......they're stuck in this undead state.

This new disease, commonly referred to as Zycanthropy, starts off slowly at first and is confined to a single game world. Soon though PCs start getting affected and these PCs are taken to tournaments (why I think this is a HackMaster game) and the infection spread through the greater gaming community. Some game worlds the infection is recognized early and eradicated, but in others.....it just takes over. One issue is that Zycanthropy creates these pseudo-undead, but in doing so it usually severs the connection Clerics have with their Gawds, so higher-level Cure Disease spells are just about non-existent.

Zycanthropy is just decimating the gaming industry as game world after game world falls to this plague. Patient Zero and her home group hops from game table to game table trying to find the Sorcerer that created the original potion. They do end up getting to the right game table/game world, but this world is one the verge of being completely overrun by Zycanthropes. The Sorcerer is unrecognizable as he's some sort of Vampire now, but he's been working on a cure ever since he got infected. The cure is finished, and it works, but there is a big drawback in that it turns you fully Human (even of you were another race before infection) and if you get re-infected that infection is fatal. Doesn't sound terrible, but if you're the under 1% of humanity of a world of Zycanthropes......you're pretty fucked.

My dream kind of ends there. Actually it generally restarts and shows things from another perspective, or just re-hashes aspects already covered.

Zycanthrophy: A disease in which the affected become an racial-undead hybrid which is based on their level. For example a 1st level Elf affected by Zycanthrophy would appear extremely gaunt and skeletal, where upon approaching 2nd level their appearance becomes much more ghoul-like. Infection sets in if a creature loses 1/2 of their hit points to a Zycanthropes natural attacks (claw/claw/bite for 1d2/1d2/1d3).

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Core Books Available for the Blind and Print Disabled

I've been involved in many discussions regarding making gaming material available for those that are blind or visually impaired. It just so happens that Rach is legally blind and as such accessible gaming material for the visually impaired has been of interest to me.

Most RPGs are available in PDF format, and thus can be read by computers or tablets and the print can be enlarged, or used by "readers" that many blind or visually impaired members of our community use, but WotC does not release any of its 5e material in PDF format, thus severely limiting the access to the world's most popular RPG.

Or so I thought. I stand corrected, as it was pointed out in the Thursday Night Hangout on The Tavern's Discord Server that there WAS a version of the 5e Player's Handbook for the visually impaired. I did a bit more research and found all three core books are available (as well as a 1980 version of D&D Basic ;)

NLS produces Dungeons & Dragons core books in navigable audio

core books in navigable audioIf you’ve ever attacked a cave full of Orcs with your Vorpol Sword, right after losing 12 Hit Points that lowered your Strength score (which you mitigated with a Cure Wounds spell), you might already know the fun of playing Dungeons & Dragons—D&D to its fans.

Because it’s a role-playing game, a shared experience between a Dungeon Master who describes events and players who describe how they want their characters to respond, D&D is an ideal game for players with visual impairments.

“At its heart, it’s about using your imagination,” said Megan McArdle, an NLS senior selection librarian. So it makes sense for NLS to make D&D books accessible for its patrons.

“I checked our holdings,” McArdle said, “and saw that even though we had not updated it since we did it back in the 1980s, the D&D Basic Rule Book by Gary Gygax still got a respectable number of downloads on BARD,” the NLS Braille and Audio Reading Download website.

Clearly, the demand was there for NLS to take on a bigger D&D project to address requests from the large community of visually impaired players. So a team formed to update the D&D collection at NLS.

McArdle and Vincent Castellucci, a production control specialist, agreed that NLS should produce all three core Dungeons & Dragons books, starting with the Player’s Handbook (DB 91838).

When NLS released the fifth edition of the format this summer, D&D players were delighted.

“Fantastic to be part of a mainstream gaming community that is making their visually impaired players feel so welcome,” one wrote on the NLS Facebook page.

Another wrote, “I’m not sure I can describe how happy this makes me!”

Two other core D&D books—the Dungeon Master’s Guide (DB 91839) and the Monster Manual (DB 91840)—are also now on BARD.

The project was a complex one for producers and narrators, especially because of the difficulty of accurately replicating a print-book experience for visually impaired readers. One challenge was including descriptions of charts and graphics that are essential to game play. Another was figuring out how to correctly pronounce the name of monsters and magical items, such as the magical mini-submarine in the world of D&D, otherwise known as an Apparatus of Kwalish. For the latter, NLS went to Wizards of the Coast, D&D’s publisher. “They offered to help with pronunciations and provide other primary sources we might need during the recording process,” Castellucci said. “Wizards was very responsive, and even their franchise creative director, Mike Mearls, helped with our producers’ pronunciation questions.”

“As a player, watching these books go through the selection process and being able to add them to NLS’s collection has been very exciting,” Castellucci said.

For McArdle, there was an added bonus. “As I researched what books to get for D&D players,” she said, “it was fascinating to read about the work folks are doing in the arena of making board games accessible.”

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New Classic Print on Demand - Planescape Campaign Setting (2e)

I was a HUGE fan of the Planescape setting back in the day (the mid to late 90s ). Come to think of it, it was probably the last TSR Era setting I truly invested in, both monetarily as well as emotionally. There were just so many adventures laying in that initial boxed set, waiting for one's players to stumble across them. Ah, memories.

WotC has put the Plansecape Campaign Setting back into print as a PDF book. For 17.10 you can snag the softcover print plus PDF, or 21.47 for the hardcover print plus PDF. I may save wear and tear on my boxed set and grab the hardcover. Just a thought :)

Glory? Majesty? You don't know the dark of it!

Discover the multiverse! Enter infinite universes of infinite variety, worlds beyond the prime-material settings of the AD&D game. Explore Sigil, the City of Doors, filled with portals to every layer of every plane. All you need is the right key, including. . .

• A Player's Guide to the Planes: A 32-page primer that introduces DMs and players alike to the grand design of the multiverse.
• A DM's Guide to the Planes: A 64-page book of valuable information solely for the Dungeon Master.
• Sigil and Beyond: A 96-page gazetteer that introduces Sigil and its surrounding plane as the starting point for planar adventures. From Sigil all the Outer Planes may be sampled by novice and veteran explorers alike.
• Monstrous Supplement: a 32-page, full-color Monstrous Compendium booklet.
• Four poster-size maps depicting the planes.
• A four-panel DM screen designed especially for planar campaigns.

Until now, only the most powerful wizards could peek into the magnificent multiverse, but no longer! Gone are the unimaginable distances and the insurmountable obstacles that only the ultrapowerful could hope to overcome. Now even the greenest adventurer can enter the planes, though surviving long is another matter . . . .

Have at it, berk! Powers, proxies, planars, petitioners, and wondrous monsters await just beyond the portal. Step through and partake of the infinite excitement of Planescape.

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(Re)New Release - Lost City of Gaxmoor Bundle (D&D 5e)

The Lost City of Gaxmoor is currently available for D&D 5e from Troll Lord Games. Yes, there is a current trend / market for the conversion of OSR releases to the 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons rules. There just might be a Tavern Chat podcast episode hiding in that trend.

The main Lost City of Gaxmoor book is 19.99 in PDF. The Lost City of Gaxmoor Bundle (including the main book) is 31.99 (a 10% saving) and includes Weapons of Gaxmoor and The Long Valley.

5th Edition Lost City of Gaxmoor -- The sun sinks slowly over the desolation of the ancient and once grand Empire. In the distance, just upon the slopes of a broad cliff, lie the ruins of a city. Her alabaster walls wind their way along the rocky mesa, guarding buildings both fair and ruined. It was a great city in its day, now long since fallen to the ravages of time and war. Long ago she stood as a shining doorway to the east, a place for rest and restocking of provisions for those on the long trek into the wild lands of the barbaric frontier in the Western Empire. But all that is past for this, the ruins of the Lost City of Gaxmoor.

The Lost City of Gaxmoor, written by Ernest G. Gygax and Luke Gygax is a sandbox adventure converted to the 5th Edition of the world's most popular role playing game. Designed for characters that range from 1st to 10th level. It is a monumental city adventure where your characters are plunged into city dominated by fighting factions, monsters, demons and all manner of creatures. Use it as a stand alone, integrate it into your own world, play in the Burning Sands or the World of Aihrde.

City Map by Alyssa Faden!

Complete with a host of celebrity contributions including James M. Ward, Jeffrey Talanian, Stephen Chenault, Davis Chenault, Stefan Pokorny, Joe Goodman, Bill Webb, Satine Phoenix, Elisa Teague, Joe Manganiello, Alex Kammer, Rob Schwawlb and Stephen Radney-Macfarland!

The Lost City of Gaxmoor is a game master's dream. The setting is full to overflowing with adventures, adventure hooks, set ups and more. With almost 200 Areas of Interest and a veritable host of NPCS, as well as factions of monsters at war with each other, the NPCs and soon the characters as well, it offers countless hours of fun. Throw in the machinations of ancient gods and the rise of a demon prince and you suddenly have a campaign setting that just won't quit.

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Bundle of Holding - John Carter of Mars

Maybe you aren't a fan of the 2d20 system but you are a fan of John Carter of Mars and the Sword & Planet genre. At these prices, I'm in it for the source material. I can always convert to the OSR system of my choice later ;)

For 9.95, you get the Starter Bundle for John Carter of Mars. It includes the John Carter of Mars RPG, John Carter Narrator Screen & Kit and Barsoom and Korad maps.

For about 30 bucks, you add in the Phantoms of Mars Campaign Guide; three "Era" supplements that describe different phases of the Martian sequence (Dotar Sojat Era, Jeddak of Jeddaks Era, and Prince of Helium Era); and two 52-card print-and-cut decks of artwork (Landscapes and Locations Deck and Characters and Tokens Deck).

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

You can catch the daily Tavern Chat podcast on Anchor, YouTube, 

or wherever you listen to your podcast collection.

   Don't forget to subscribe to The Tavern's weekly Newsletter! We currently have 162 subscribers.

Lankmar Area Rug for Sale (and others) - Now, If Only We Could Arrange for a Bard's Gate Rug

Teezons is a website I had not visited prior to tonight, but one of the links on BellofLostSouls led me down one hell of a rabbit hole.

You can get the above pictured Lankmar city map for as little as 70.45 at 3'x5' or 99.45 for the 5'x8' rug.

Damn, very tempting, and there are lots more maps of official Dungeons & Dragons  🐉settings available, although I am unsure of the legality of such offered items.

The wording of the item description likely indicates a non-native English speaker:

Still, a Bard's Gate or Lost Lands rug would be awesome. Or maybe the new map for The Mouth of Doom from the Rappan Athuk Map Collection. Or one of Doug Kovak's awesome DCC maps. The mind boggles :)

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

You can catch the daily Tavern Chat podcast on Anchor, YouTube, 

or wherever you listen to your podcast collection.

   Don't forget to subscribe to The Tavern's weekly Newsletter! We currently have 162 subscribers.

Diversification of Social Media is a Necessity These Days, Even as a Tabletop Gamer

Once upon a time, there was Facebook and Twitter and it was good. We'll before the once upon a time, there was MySpace, and that was bad, but now it is gone. Then Google+ made a splash, and the three were huge before Google killed Google+, and then there were two.

Or where there?

MeWe, Gab, Parlar, Instagram, Tumbler, Reddit, Discord, and more stood up, and they were noticed. And thus it was, that the social media universe got crowded, and confusing, and occasionally there were de-platforming of platforms. What is a content creator or content consumer to do?

As an avid "old school gamer", I still mourn the loss of Google+ and have yet to see a single platform replace the amount of gaming focus that was there. Maybe that is a good thing, as relying on a single social media platform can be, need I say it, dangerous. Poof, and it's gone. Much like Google+ itself. April 2nd will mark 2 years of its passing.

The Tavern has a presence on more than one social media platform and uses more than one medium to reach its community.

The Tavern has a huge presence on Facebook, with The Tavern's Facebook Community having over 2,600 members. But we can't put all of our eggs in one basket, and neither should you.

The Tavern's Group over on MeWe has over 700 members. Should it be more active? Probably. MeWe's interface takes some time to adjust to after Facebook. Join us and make it more active ;)

Over on The Tavern's Discord Server, we have 2,200 members. Discord is much different than Facebook or MeWe, as conversations run in real-time, and we do a hosted voice chat every Thursday Night at 9 PM Eastern. It is a lively place to be. Be wary, as it can be a hidden time sink, and you will wonder where the hours went.

I'm also on Twitter, but that simply shares updates of the blog and podcast. I'm @tenkar on Twitter.

The YouTube Channel for The Tavern is YouTube.com/ErikTenkar. We have LiveStreams every Wednesday and Friday night. Every episode of the Tavern Chat Podcast is also shared on The Tavern's YouTube Channel. If you want to show your support to The Tavern in its various formats, please subscribe to the YouTube Channel. The more reach the podcast achieves, the greater the reach of The Tavern as a whole. Besides, we love the live feedback on our LiveStreams.

I've been asked if I'll be sharing The Tavern's video content on a platform/platforms other than YouTube. I'm looking into it, as the idea is not just valid, but probably a necessity.

Did you know that I'm an admin at the largest Dungeons & Dragons Group on MeWe? Join JoetheLawyer, Tim Shorts (fellow admins), and nearly 5,200 other D&D gamers for some very lively discussion. We've added over 200 members since this past Friday. Now THAT is growth!

There are many other gaming-based communities to be found on the various social media platforms. Do yourself a favor - make a presence for yourself on more than one platform and in more than one Group, Community, and the like. If you, like me and many others, like to avoid political discussion and related topics and drama in your social media (and the associated stress that comes with such discussion), I strongly advise that you focus your attention and energies on Groups, Communities, and the like on the various social media platforms. It's the main, general feeds that are a free-for-all of name-calling, shaming, grandstanding, chest-thumping, and worse. I have a close friend that has "unfollowed" all of his "friends" on Facebook. A genius solution to avoiding the general shitstorm that can infest social media, while still allowing for notifications of activity occurring in the groups, as well as participating in those that one is a member of.

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

You can catch the daily Tavern Chat podcast on Anchor, YouTube, 

or wherever you listen to your podcast collection.

   Don't forget to subscribe to The Tavern's weekly Newsletter! We currently have 162 subscribers

On Minis and Convention Parties

 

Lately, for reasons, I've been a bit nostalgic about my early (non) gaming days. I remember hanging out with my one friend in middle school that had slung dice before....and more importantly, had some game catalogs he brought to rural Bumfuckistan Iowa from "the city".

I remember just pouring through those catalogs and while I cannot recall who put out the catalog I clearly remember the line-art drawings of the miniatures inside. I remember making little checklists of these Ral Partha and Grenadier minis I wanted, not that I ever got them.

Looking for these particular catalogs/graphics has been a fruitless endeavor, but I have discovered a couple of cool websites specifically for looking at these old minis, namely the Lost Minis Wiki (Minis Workshop) and DnD Lead.

When doing my quick down & dirty research I did discover that I can still get some HackMaster minis if I wanted them from Iron Wind Metals. 

I'm pretty sure I was at a GenCon (might have been Origins) party where Iron Wind Metals was throwing an epic room party to celebrate something.....a successful Kickstarter campaign maybe? My memory, for a couple reasons, is fuzzy, but I remember getting a few (older) Ral Partha minis, a large cup-full of loose weapons, and a kick-ass knife. Evidently one of the guys behind the party owned a knife company as well and rumor was he was something-military-that-I'd-normally-call-bullshit-on. Thing was this "thing" was a rumor about him and not something he was pushing. Anyway we're having fun, bullshitting, and he mentions he spent some time in the same bit of turf overseas that I had. After giving me a nice, way-too-expensive-for-my-taste smoky Scotch I told him in that overseas turf-language "Stop, or I'll shoot". It was a phrase we not only had to memorize, but carry around on a card.

That got me a laugh and some more bullshitting. I had a great time and thanked my host by giving him one of my challenge coins. Actually the one from my 1st duty station 'cause that's the one I had on me. He was moved and had his girlfriend go and get "the good stuff" from his room, the good stuff being a $5K bottle of Scotch. Beautiful hand-blown bottle and hand-carved wooden carrier. Can't tell you how it tasted because I declined.......because my palate is not sophisticated enough and the Scotch would have been wasted on me. I think he understood because he got me another shot of the smoky stuff (not normally my thing, but the smell......so good) and handed me a large box of knives for me to take my pick. Not sure if it was a good idea to give someone in my state a nice knife.......but I still have it and I've been working on improving my palate.

I know I started talking about old minis and went to a Con party gift, but you know....that's what happens when you start to get all nostalgic. I kind of warned you in the 1st sentence of this post.