Humble Bundle - RuneQuest by Chaosium

My first experience with RuneQuest was Avalon Hill's Edition, but shortly after that, I found RuneQuest 2e (along with Pavis and Big Rubble) at an obscure convention at Columbia University. Before I knew it, I was running my first sandbox campaign, which was magical. The current edition of RuneQuest harkens back to the earlier editions of RuneQuest in flavor and rules.

The RuneQuest Bundle is all it at 18 bucks, but this is one of those rare Humble Bundles where you get something VERY valuable for as little as a single buck - the RuneQuerst Starter Set. All you need to begin playing RQ for as little as a buck.

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Deal of the Day - Downtime in Zyan (OSR Adventure)

Today's Deal of the Day is Downtime in Zyan by Ben Laurance. Normally 7.50 in PDF, but until tomorrow morning Downtime in Zyan is on sale for 3 bucks.

Downtime in Zyan presents a system for downtime, the activities characters engage in between adventures. The mole rat people of Wishery will be your guides to this enchanting subject. Brought to life by the whimsical art of Evlyn Moreau, the mole rats will show you how to transform the neglected space between adventures into a site where player-driven schemes and dreams grow with delightful results. The unified but flexible system of downtime procedures presented in this zine allows players to leave a lasting mark on the campaign world beginning at the end of their very first adventure. The zine presents flavorful but simple rules for building institutions, cultivating relationships, crafting splendid items, gathering intelligence, mastering martial techniques, researching obscure topics, engaging in wild revelries, plumbing the perilous depths of spellcraft, mastering skills, and seeking enlightenment through spiritual exercises. Supercharge your sandbox campaign with this elegant and innovative supplement! 

Downtime in Zyan is system agnostic. But it is written with older editions of Dungeons & Dragons, their retro-clones (such as Old School Essentials), and other rules lite OSR systems in mind. 

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Kickstarter - Gary's Appendix: Issue 6 - Dragons!

I'm on a Kickstarter kick, but there are so many good ones funding right now its impossible not to ;)

So, a peek behind the curtain. I know Jeff personally, and he was kind enough to lay out the first two issues of Torchlight. He is a skilled layout artist and project manager, and I've been very impressed by the prior issues of Gary's Appendix.

The Gary's Appendix: Issue 6 - Dragons! Kickstarter is 3 bucks in PDF (a bargain) and 16 bucks (plus shipping) for the print plus PDF.

Hot off the heels of Issue #5 after an apocalyptic detour with Journey to the Madlands, we present a new assortment of articles to inspire your games filled with deep dungeons and horrible dragons. For Issue #6 we're doubling down on that dragon bit with a dedicated issue to wyrms of all shapes and sizes.

Inspired by the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide.

Gary wrote and collected a vast amount of information, rules, and guidance. Its haphazard nature and perplexing subjects makes it as fresh today as when he penned the work almost fifty years ago. Indeed, Gary's Appendix draws inspiration from the past works of the gaming giants. 

Gary's Appendix is about our love for the past and our excitement for the future. We do not have the audacity to believe that we can produce a work that matches the magic of the AD&D DMG. Instead, we seek the spirt of that evergreen work by presenting an array of articles that are enjoyable to read, informative to the GM, and useful at the gaming table.

Each issue contains a collection of articles written for the OSR by a variety of authors. In addition, Jeff contributes an expanded entry for a collection of monsters from the OSE collection.

 

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Kickstarter - Pirates of the Goblin River (DCC RPG)

Legends of Lohre folklore-based roleplay for DCC delivers its most action-packed adventure module yet with Pirates of the Goblin River.

I'm a huge fan of DCC RPG adventures, from Goodman Games and third parties, even more so than the system itself. Legends of Lohre is a DCC RPG adventure, 5 bucks in PDF and 12 bucks in print plus PDF, and the adventure path would work well for a more traditional OSR-style system.

What are you backing? An independent DCC-compatible adventure module featuring tons of art from Stefan Poag, William McAusland, Alexander Moore and Brett Hess, inspired by Beowulf, The Odyssey, Treasure Island, and the tradition of nautical adventure stories. It's the third module in a five-part adventure path that emphasizes roleplay and character development, A Tale of Two Sisters. The adventure path tells the tale of villagers rising to become folk heroes, a saga PCs are at the center of, with NPCs and the setting evolving around them. 

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Kickstarter - Massacre Grounds (Weird Frontiers/DCC)

As always, full disclosure. I met Matt (the project creator) this past June at NTRPG Con. Aside from both of us being retired LEOs, we obviously shared our passion for RPGs. Matt talked about his upcoming adventure for Weird Frontiers (Massacre Grounds) and it sounded like a blast. So, here we are :)

Matt's Kickstarter is Massacred Grounds for Weird Frontiers (for those that don't know, Weird Frontiers is a Weird West Genre RPG power by the DCC RPG engine). Massacre Grounds is a funnel (God, I love DCC funnels way more than I should) for about a dozen zero-level PCs, so essentially 3 to 6 players if you do the math ;)

The Pitch: The story is a combination of local Arizona history and campfire stories from my own life experiences. In the cowboy way, I have added my own tall tales and a healthy amount of new content for the Weird Frontiers Core Rulebook. Players will interact with NPCs that are some of the colorful characters from my life and characters that are based on the history surrounding the Superstition Mountains of Arizona. PCs will also visit historical locations that surround the mountains.

In the new class, PCs will ride bears, mountain lions, or wolves. Each animal has its own characteristics. The chapáya rider class is compatible with other Weird Frontiers adventures. It can easily be converted for use with DCC (Dungeon Crawl Classics) and MCC (Mutant Crawl Classics) adventures.

The new monsters are based on the effect the Seven Days of Night had on the Arizona Territory. Cholla cactuses are dangerous in the Arizona Desert, but the new rattlesnake cholla is flat out deadly. I added a lot of normal critters that are found locally. Since you are playing Weird Frontiers, I added the un-dead versions of many animals as well.

PDFs for Massacre Grounds are 10 bucks, PDF + Print is 15 (plus 4 for the POPD on the DTRPG side) and 50 bucks gets you all the above and an online game with the author. Limited slots for the last, so if it interests you, don't wait too long!

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Kickstarter - Arduin Fantasy Map Art Collection

First, it's time to get the disclaimers out of the way. I've known George & Dave at Emperors Choice for a few years. I talk with George on the phone about once a month on average (Dave slightly less). These guys are passionate about Arduin and the legacy that they are stewards of. If only the D&D IP had such individuals steering that ship, it wouldn't be as off-course as it is. But I digress.

Last week Emperors Choice sent me copies of everything in the Kickstarter (except for the new mailing tube - it wasn't in stock yet). Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING was packed with precision and care. I need to find time to take some photos of it all - hopefully in time for this week's Talking Crit Live! on Wednesday Night, when George & Dave will be joining us for the live stream.

New Arduin Mailing Tube

So, what can I say about the Arduin Fantasy Map Art Collection Kickstarter? This is high-quality stuff. No slight intended to DriveThru's POD maps as they do their job as intended, but the quality of the paper (parchment-like) of the Arduin maps is second to none. You WILL be tempted to get these professionally framed. As for the art prints? They literally scream Arduin, and also are worthy of framing. The map index makes me want to sit on the floor with the map and check the hexes, but my back won't allow that, and tables apparently need to be used for meals and such. Trust me, I'm working on it :)

Everything exists and is completed and printed. This isn't a Kickstarter on a wish and a prayer. These are high-quality maps and prints that will look amazing framed - but the maps probably want to get used at the table. You know, you might actually want two sets...

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Awesome to See one Convention Actively Supporting Another!

I'm regularly amazed at just how awesome our RPG community can be. We have some great people, some of which actively try to come off as assholes, but that's a discussion for another day. I can think of one guy who kind of is an asshole, but also a good guy....just don't be a fanboy grognard or a psuedo-intellectual rules-lawyer....

...anyway, again something for another day or for shit-talking at the bar after-hours at a con.

Speaking of cons, (and this wasn't an intentional bad attempt at a transition) I've stopped going to the big cons (Origins & GenCon) and made North Texas RPG Con my "home" convention. Already stocking up for next year's event (more than halfway there as far as whiskey aquisition) but I decided to branch out a bit and attend Long Con again. We're 129 days out from that convention and I did go once, but it was a bit of a drive. It's only five hours, but the one time I went it felt a LOT longer. Not something I'm looking forward to, but will just have to suck it up....

....unless I decide to get on the NTRPG party bus! Wait, what? Yep, NTRPG is helping support Long Con by making it easier for people to attend. How cool is that?!

From Facebook: "NTRPGCON will be sponsoring the NTX Express from Dallas to Longview for LongCon this year. We are leasing a 60 passenger bus with WiFi and BYOB party favors. Anyone flying into Dallas is welcome aboard. We will be departing from the Westin Hotel in Irving. The Westin has also agreed to let anyone who wants to park there, from our group, park for free. More details to come as we have them."

I have to assume this bus won't work out for me because of timing, or if I need/have to stay at a Marriott to maintain my status (it's important to me), but I have at least few days out of the 129 remaining to get that figured out.

Deal of the Day - Into the Wild Omnibus

It will be a sandbox when I get my next campaign up and running. When I got my first campaign after returning to the DM role, it was. a sandbox using Rob Conley's amazing Blackmarsh.

Today's Deal of the Day is the Into the Wild Omnibus. Offering three volumes in one, the Into the Wild Omnibus is usually 25.95 in PDF, but until tomorrow morning it is on sale for 10.38 in PDF.

This 380+ page book combines three volumes into one: A Guide to Thieves' Guilds, Filling in the Blanks, and Into the Wild, all geared towards aiding Referees and characters in venturing out into the wilderness and high-level domain activities.

A Guide to Thieves' Guilds provides guidance on forming and running guilds, both for the PC interested in establishing a guild and for the Referee wanting to add guilds to their campaign.

Filling in the Blanks provides numerous tables and charts that help Referees flesh out hexes for use in hexcrawl and sandbox campaigns.

Into the Wild includes guidance for running hexcrawl campaigns, a random weather generator, rules for establishing and running domains, an abstracted mass combat system, rules for mercantile trading, guidelines for creating BX-style character classes, and some alternate classes for BX games that add a little bit of flair to the originals.

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Humble Bundle Comics - Cerebus

I remember stumbling across Cerebus at Forbidden Planet in lower Manhattan in the mid-80s. Soon after, I found a small cache of well-read earlier issues of Cerebus at St Mark's Comics. I was hooked, but finding Cerebus was spotty at best, and soon I was no longer regularly reading it.

Humble Bundle has the complete run of Cerebus, all 300 issues, for 18 bucks in PDF. I suspect the rest of my weekend is spoken for ;)

A giant of indie comics

Explore the pioneering indie comic saga Cerebus, a sprawling epic spanning 6,000 pages, touching on humor, political satire, and the wide-ranging philosophical musings of its creator Dave Sim. It also stars an anthropomorphic aardvark. What starts out as a send-up of Conan-style sword & sorcery evolves into something much bigger. Experience it all in this bundle, from early graphic novel chapters like High Society and Church & State, to the very end of the saga in The Last Day. Pay what you want for this essential cult classic and help support the Global Foodbanking Network with your purchase.

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Deal of the Day - How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox

I've got to say, I own everything Rob Conley / Bat in the Attic has published. Rob understands the OSR at a depth like few do.

How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox was a recent Kickstarter from Rob, and it is an Electrum Seller on DriveThruRPG (it will be Gold shortly, of that I am sure. Normally How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox is priced at 14.99, but as the current Deal of the Day, until tomorrow morning How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox is on sale for 3 bucks. Yep, 3 bucks - I kid you not!

How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox!

Starting in 2009, I wrote a series of 24 posts on the Bat in the Attic Blog covering the different aspects of creating a hexcrawl formatted setting.  Now that the blog posts are completed, I combined and rewrote these posts into a single book.  In addition to advice about creating your setting, the post fleshs out the Isle of Pyade into a small setting that you can drop into your own campaign.

What is a Hexcrawl-formatted setting?

This type of setting starts with a hex grid placed over the map with each hex numbered.  The hex locations of the various locales, such as lairs, are noted and arranged into an index.  This format provides a convenient way to reference detailed local information within the setting.

You can look at the map, see the hex number the location is in, and then look it up quickly in the book.  It works in reverse as well.  You can read about a location in the book, with its hex location noted in the text.  Then, look up where it is on the map quickly.  This format allows easy access to dozens of detailed locations scattered across the setting map, if not hundreds. 

Hexcrawls and Sandbox Campaigns

Sandbox campaigns are distinguished by the fact the players drive the campaign forward by their choices.  In a sandbox campaign, the players may decide to head west instead of east in pursuit of their goals.  The ease of looking locations up makes the hexcrawl-formatted setting a valuable tool for the referee trying to keep ahead of their players while running a sandbox campaign.

How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox will teach you how to make a hexcrawl-formatted setting and explain what details are essential to include to handle the different types of sandbox campaigns. 

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Bundle of Holding - Dyson's Delves

Just to clear this out of the way. Dyson and I do not get along. The story is long and likely uninteresting to the vast majority, but neither of us makes any secret of it. That being said, Dyson's maps are an amazing resource for the harried GM, and his Commercially licensed maps are a great service to the small publisher.

Note, with some work, you can find everything in this Dyson's Delves Bundle at Dyson's Dodecahedron blog.

Adventurer! This new Dyson's Delves Bundle presents hundreds of hand-drawn maps by master cartographer Dyson Logos suitable for tabletop fantasy roleplaying games. Famous in the Old School Revival community for his distinctive crosshatching style, Dyson has drawn maps for publishers including Wizards of the Coast (Candlekeep Mysteries, Glory of the Giants), Kobold Press, and dozens more. He's released more than a thousand maps and dozens of adventures free on his Dyson's Dodecahedron blog (funded by his successful Patreon campaign). The maps are unlabeled and (usually) in printer-friendly black-and-white. Many maps include gridded and no-grid versions. Most of them are provided in both .PDF and in high-res .PNG image files for use with VTTs (virtual tabletops) like Roll20 and Owlbear Rodeo.

You can download all these maps for free from the Dodecahedron blog, but this new offer gathers them in convenient collections Dyson has self-published through his ZERObarrier Productions imprint. And several of these titles grant royalty-free commercial licenses, so you can adapt them for your own published adventures.

For just US$9.95 you get all six titles in our Starter Delves (retail value $51.50) as DRM-free ebooks, including Dyson's Delves I and Dyson's Delves II; three installments of the annual Dodecahedron Cartographic Review – 2014, 2015, and 2016; and the Commercial Compass Rose Pack.

And if you pay more than the threshold price of $20.94, you'll level up and also get our entire Deeper Delves with eight more titles worth an additional $55, including three annual installments of Dyson's Commercial Map Archive – 2021, 2022, and 2023; four monthly installments from late 2023 of the Map Archive's successors, the Cartography Collections – August 2023, September 2023, October 2023, and November 2023; and Strange Stones.

The maps and images in the three Commercial Map Packs and the Commercial Compass Rose Pack are licensed for royalty-free use in your own published works. All the maps in the other titles are licensed for personal use only.

Four of these titles (total retail $33.50) – the first Dyson's Delves volume and all three Dodecahedron Cartographic Reviews – have appeared in one or another of three previous offers from 2014-2017, all in our Old School Revival series: OSR 2 (Nov 2014), OSR 4 (Nov 2016), and OSR 5 (Nov 2017).

 

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Deal of the Day - GM's Miscellany: Village Backdrops I

Sure, it says "5e" on the tin, but I find the GM's Miscellany series relatively system-neutral and an amazing resource.

Today's Deal of the Day is GM's Miscellany: Village Backdrops I (5e). Normally 11.99 in PDF, it is currently on sale (until tomorrow morning) for 6 bucks.

Village Backdrops are short, richly detailed supplements that each present a single village ready to insert into almost any home campaign. Perfect for use as a waystop on the road to adventure, as an adventure site themselves or as a PC’s home, Village Backdrop present the details so the busy GM can focus on crafting exciting, compelling adventures.

This GM’s Miscellany collects together twelve Village Backdrops, along with bonus, never seen before material, together in one place.

GM’s Miscellany: Village Backdrops is the work of many talented designers and features the following villages:

Creighton Broadhurst: Ashford, Coldwater, Kingsfell, Lanthorn, Longbridge, Thornhill, Wellswood

Jeff Gomez: Bleakflat, Suurin

Richard Green: Black Wyvern

Marc Radle: White Moon Cove

Mike Welham: Shroudhaven

This product is a Dual Format PDF. The downloadable ZIP file contains two versions, one optimised for printing and use on a normal computer and one optimised for use on a mobile device such as an iPad.

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Bundle of Holding - Orbital Blues (Indie space Western tabletop roleplaying)

Every once in a while, an indie RPG captures my attention. Orbital Blues hits that sweet spot - simple system, interesting default setting, and a bunch of support material already published for it.

The core rules for Orbital Blues are over 16 bucks alone, but with the Orbital Blues Starter Collection, you get the rules, a quickstart, and two full-length adventures. This may be a lot of fun for a convention game and a break from a regular campaign.

Outlaw! This all-new Orbital Blues Bundle presents Orbital Blues, the lo-fi space Western tabletop roleplaying game from SoulMuppet Publishing (Best Left Buried). This is the rock'n'roll future of yesteryear that never was – and nobody wanted. It's an interstellar age of cowboys, outlaws, and bandits, of hypercapitalism and a cutthroat gig economy. With your ship and your crew of Interstellar Outlaws, you eke out a living in the Frontier Galaxy, chasing the dream of freedom. Orbital Blues lets you play out rules-light old-school adventures in the style of Cowboy Bebop, Firefly, and Guardians of the Galaxy.

For just US$7.95 you get all three titles in our Starter Collection (retail value $37) as DRM-free ebooks, including the complete Orbital Blues core rulebook (plus the free quickstart set An Unchained Melody), along with two full-length adventures: Chega de Saudade and All That Glitters.

And if you pay more than the threshold price of $18.34, you'll also get our entire Bonus Collection with four more supplements and adventures worth an additional $47.50, including the sandbox setting A Starborn Resistance; the adventures Everjoy and Trouble at the Rock of Tariq; and the evocative Orbital Blues artbook, Wayward Stars.

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

My Accidental Free RPG Day

Yesterday was my birthday and I spent most of the day out & about, picking myself up a sweet-ass Bday gift that is not at all RPG related. On the way home I decided I should stop by my local Game Store to see about the newest HeroQuest expansion written by Friend of the Tavern Levi Combs. 

As I wandered in I was asked if I was there for Free RPG Day.

I had completely forgotten about Free RPG Day! After choosing a couple of minis that I will 100% most definitely paint....someday, I looked at the freebie table. Lots of stuff to be had, but I really try not to be "that guy" and I picked up two....only two items:

I really wanted to check out the Goodman Games offering and a 10 page (content) 1st level DCC adventure that has a couple pages of player handouts....hell yes!

I also grabbed up the Plague Bearer game offering from...Guillotine Press and CMON Games. As I was grabbing that up the owner of the shop told me someone was running the free adventure and was looking for players......

....I figured, why the hell not. I've got nothing better to do and checking out a new "Dark Fantasy RPG" would be fun. The shopkeep and his Mrs. joined in and he had a party of five. I did what I usually do and grab an archer type (I really try to play an archer when checking out a new system because my 1st D&D PC was an archer type and by doing this I can more easily compare one system against another).

The GM altered the adventure a bit to fit the time allotted and we all had a good time. I got to slay the BBG "single handedly" (not really, the rest of the party figured out just how awesome my PC's new ability was and they rallied around me and had my back. It felt like it was "all me" but it really wasn't). I think calling Plague Bearer a RPG is a bit of a stretch though. It was more of an amalgamation of a RPG, a board game, and a tactical miniatures game. While the GM did a good job running the game as a one-off, it felt like the game really needs a much longer playtime and I think if we created PCs instead of using pregens there might have felt more RPGish.

As a bit of an aside...there were RPG Pencil Dice! Smaller pencils, with erasures and the numbers 1 through 6 on the face of each side of the pencil. Noteworthy because our buddy Ken Whitman, or it is Whit Whitman (?), is still....well his last update on RPG Pencil Dice was nearly six years ago!

At the beginning of the game, the store drew names for some Free RPG Day prizes and I won a set of  The Legends of Drizzt Dice Set.

The store owner also brought over a quickstart rules set for the +1 System from Wet Ink Games that was used to run a one-off of Garbage & Glory Trashrun. He played it that morning and loved playing an anthropomorphic raccoon going on a literal trash run.

I'm looking forward to seeing if I like Wet Ink Games' Never Going Home, but I'm not sure if that will use the +1 System of not....

After the Plague Bearer game it was early evening and it felt like things were winding up a bit. I did a stroll by the freebie table and noted that most of the products I looked at were quickstart rules for new game systems....Runescape Kingdoms, Arzium, and Dragonbane. There might have been more, but I didn't look at everything on the table. I suspect there were at least a couple more new systems.

Gathering of Fools - 2024

It's a yearly tradition with my old gaming group from our high school and college days to gather at some point in June, usually on a Saturday, to remember Paul Benedetti. We lost Paul on 9-11nearly 23 years ago, and Paul's birthday was in June, so we gather in June each year (2020 being the obvious exception).

I always hand out gaming books to the other 4 members of our group. This year it was the Basic Fantasy RPG and Morgansfort.

Cherish your friends. Embrace them when they are with you and celebrate their lives when they pass on.

Paul, as always, your presence was missed...

Kickstarter - Gary's Appendix: Issue 6 - Dragons!

Yep, there's been a bunch of Kickstarters listed here at The Tavern over the last week or so, but that's simply because there is a large number of damn good old-school Kickstarters to cover.

For those that have missed the earlier Gary's Appendix Kickstarters, Jeff Jones essentially herds cats, er, creators, to all work on a similar topic. With Gary's Appendix: Issue 6 Kickstarter the topic is Dragons!

Inspired by the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide.

Gary wrote and collected a vast amount of information, rules, and guidance. Its haphazard nature and perplexing subjects makes it as fresh today as when he penned the work almost fifty years ago. Indeed, Gary's Appendix draws inspiration from the past works of the gaming giants. 

Gary's Appendix is about our love for the past and our excitement for the future. We do not have the audacity to believe that we can produce a work that matches the magic of the AD&D DMG. Instead, we seek the spirt of that evergreen work by presenting an array of articles that are enjoyable to read, informative to the GM, and useful at the gaming table.

Each issue contains a collection of articles written for the OSR by a variety of authors. In addition, Jeff contributes an expanded entry for a collection of monsters from the OSE collection.

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Kickstarter - Castles & Crusades Reforged

When I returned to tabletop RPGs in the early aughts, I found Castles & Crusades on Buy.com for 10 bucks, and I have been fascinated with it ever since. It feels very much like AD&D 1e, but built with the 3x engine.

In response to the great OGL fiasco of 2022, Troll Lord Games has decided to rewrite Castles & Crusades without referring to the SRD or the OGL. Thus we have Castles & Crusades Reforged Kickstarter.

Castles & Crusades is a TTRPG that focuses on imaginative gameplay, allowing everyone in the gaming community to utilize whatever play styles they desire. NOW with revised non-OGL content.

Its primary purpose is to give those who play the game an adaptable, responsive, easy to use mechanic that does not force any one style of play on the participants, and which does not restrict any playing style. 

The system was designed to be rules light, allowing new players to learn the system in under 15 minutes and make their characters in the same space of time. 

To achieve this, a simple and logical attribute check system, the SIEGE Engine, was created. By downplaying the role of rules in the game, it encourages imaginative play, unrestricted by predetermined rule sets.

Castles & Crusades was first created in 2003/2004 and debuted in Christmas of that '04. It was the first to use a simple attribute based system as its key mechanic. It predated and in many ways sparked the OSR publications that followed and heavily influenced D&D 5th edition. The core of this game has remained unchanged but for minor edits and a few revision. It has played the same all these years. Now with the revised non-OGL content, though it plays the same, even faster!

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar