Luke Gygax Statement re: Sale of Gary Gygax Estate Items at The Collector's Trove

The following is from Facebook and is shared without comment:

Luke Gygax:
Heads Up Collectors: Gail Gygax is auctioning items that may be part of my father’s estate through Paul Stormberg and the collectors trove- his business. There is a legal action filed to open probate and recognize the Last Will and Testament of my Dad that I was only made aware of late last year. Gail is contesting the Will because it leaves some items to my siblings, Ernest Gary Gygax Jr. Elise' Gygax-Cousino Heidi Gygax Cindy Gygax, including the rights to his legacy after Gail passes away. Currently there is nothing illegal about Gail selling the estate items in auctions but in my opinion, it is immoral. If you agree please don’t bid on them. And I let Paul know about this months ago as well.  So he is choosing to do this with full knowledge.

and:

Luke Gygax:
For full disclosure there are questions as to the ownership of the property being auctioned on behalf of Gail Gygax. Paul is aware of the questions and although not illegal it is morally questionable. There is an action in Walworth county to open probate and execute the Last Will and Testament of Ernest Gary Gygax initiates by my siblings minus Alex. It is being contested by Gail because it leaves items to us and she doesn’t want to part with anything despite what the will says.

http://thecollectorstrove.com/the-trove-news/

https://anchor.fm/tavernchat/episodes/E754---I-Find-Some-Overlooked-Details-in-the-Current-War-of-Wills-of-the-Gygax-Estate-eg0sdl (Observations)

Frog God Games Sale - 35% Off at the Webstore

Yoked from the Frog God Discord Server

***__35% Off__*** everything on the webstore! Use code **June-Bug-2020** at checkout. https://www.froggodgames.com/ **Offer Ends July 1st**. *Excludes subscriptions and The World of the Lost Lands*. @everyone

Looking for Current / Retired Former LEOs to Crowdsource RPG Material

Publisher’s Choice Quality Stock Art © Rick Hershey / Fat Goblin Games 

I've been asked over the years to produce a supplement for Swords & Wizardry / OSR rulesets dealing with Town Watches, City Guards, and the like. I think to produce such with other LEOs that are gamers would not just be fun to do, but could fill a hole in many fantasy campaigns.

Want to participate with ideas, art, layout, or the like? Email me at TenkarsDOTtavern at that gmail thing with "Town Watch" in the subject and we'll see where this goes :)

Free - After the Bomb® Map Pack

For the price of free, the After the Bomb Map Pack is a pretty cool assortment of maps for Palladium's After the Bomb RPG and other post apoc RPGs. Seriously, how often does Kevin give away anything for free? ;)

It was recently pointed out that the map on page 1 of the original After the Bomb® sourcebook was left out of the After the Bomb® Second Edition RPG, so we thought we would grab all of the maps from the sourcebooks and make them available for everyone. Enjoy!

There's an affiliate link above. Although this is free, anything you might buy with it ould put some coin in The Tavern's coffers. 

Kickstarter -The Book of Dungeon Encounters, for use with Fantasy RPGs

A collection of 100 different dungeon encounters that gamemasters can use with almost any fantasy roleplaying game.

I've been a huge fan of Phil Reed since damn near the turn of the century. I remember subscribing to his email list of GM tips WAY back. His recent Kickstarter releases have been well done and affordable. Heck, you can even back The Book of Dungeon Encounters for as little as a buck and still get a ton of content.

The Book of Dungeon Encounters is a 48-page 8.5" x 11" saddle-stitched book that is packed with 100 different dungeon encounter ideas. These are for use with almost any fantasy RPG, especially old-school RPGs that use square grids for combat, though imaginative gamemasters will no doubt find ways to adapt everything detailed within these pages to any system, including those that use hexes for combat maps.

The book is presented as a giant d100 table, giving the gamemaster 100 different encounter ideas that can either be randomly rolled or selected to construct a dungeon. 90 of the encounters are presented as descriptions only -- no maps -- and range from low-level fights against dungeon beasties all of the way to strange gateways that lead to other worlds. 

Ten of the encounters include square grid maps that were created using the SkeletonKey Games 2e Adventure Tiles. (Please see below for more information.)  

Regardless of how you use the encounters in the book, all of them exist for two reasons:

• To give the gamemaster the tools necessary to run a dungeon adventure with little to no prep time; just grab some stats from your favorite book of monsters and mix in the ideas in this book and you're ready for freeform dungeon crawls!
•  Inspiration! Maybe an entry doesn't meet your exact needs, but each one will help drive your creativity and give you ideas. As always, change everything within the book to fit your tastes and needs!

Bundle of Holding - Tunnels & Trolls

Sometimes Bundle of Holding really knocks it out of the park. The Tunnels & Trolls Bundle of Holding is definitely one of those times. I happen to be a HUGE T&T fan, so I MAY be biased in its favor ;)

For just US$9.95 you get all thirteen solo adventures in this revived offer's Solitaire Collection (retail value $53) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks:

• A fun 64-page manga-style set of Tunnels & Trolls quickstart rules, produced by T&T Adventures Japan (where T&T is big) and presented here in English translation. A perfect intro to the game, this booklet gives all the rules you need to play the solos in this collection, plus a solitaire and two gamemastered scenarios.
• Four starting T&T solos: Battle School, Sea of Mystery, Sorcerer Solitaire, and the first solo RPG adventure ever published for any game, Buffalo Castle.
• Three mid-level T&T solos: Agent of Death, Naked Doom, and Sewers of Oblivion.
• Three killer T&T solos: Arena of Khazan, Deathtrap Equalizer Dungeon, and perhaps the most fondly remembered of all the solos, Michael A. Stackpole's City of Terrors.
• Goblin Lake Deluxe (previously presented in our November 2016 Old School Revival 4).
• New in this revival! Elven Lords Deluxe, Mike Stackpole's 1990 follow-up to City of Terrors, in an expanded edition with new art by Liz Danforth. (If you bought this offer during its original run, you automatically receive Elven Lords too.)

And if you pay more than the threshold price of $20.22, you'll level up and also get this revival's entire Gamemaster Collection with ten more titles worth an additional $53:

• The latest and greatest version of the rules, the complete 386-page Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls core rulebook (2015), plus the Deluxe GM Screen (both previously in the OSR 4 offer).
• Monsters! Monsters!: The 1976 First Edition of Ken St. Andre's standalone spinoff game, based on T&T, that lets you play the monsters, guarding your dungeon home from so-called heroic intruders.
• Adventurers Compendium: An 88-page collection of nine solo adventures and three gamemastered scenarios unearthed from Sorcerer's Apprentice magazine.
• Four classic T&T gamemastered scenarios: The Complete Dungeon of the Bear, Dwarf World, Seven Challenges of Kartejan, and Uncle Ugly's Underground Doom.
• New in this revival! Vault of K'Horror, a looting expedition into a tomb of ancient vampire lords. (And the original September 2018 customers get this one too.)

Speaking Dwarven at the Table......WITHOUT a Scottish Accent

One of the things I do regularly, but probably not often enough, is to go through my digital files and try to clean things up. These days with storage becoming cheaper it's too easy to simply ignore the inevitable bloat of directories and files.

So I'm looking at my directory of PC files....if I'm not using a digital PC sheet I'll often scan my physical sheets every level. Then I can use "old" PCs for NPCs or if a pick-up game comes along and the GM goes "the group needs a 3rd level Magic User...." I'm good.

Anyway I'm in this directory and I found a word document entitled "Dwarven Slang", which kind of cracked me up. As a player in a 5th Edition HackMaster game I had a Dwarven Fighter named Balen.....

......don't sweat it, this isn't really a PC story. Two of those in a row is a bit much.....

5th Edition is crunchy AF, especially compared to the average OSR game, and Balen had a terrible grasp of the Common/Human languages. I can kind of relate because while I know tidbits of multiple Human languages, they get all jumbled up in my head and at best I can speak a phrase or two.

In-game I got this. One thing I did was assign a language to Balen.....I mean a real-world language. I thought that Icelandic was a good choice and since he had such a low ability in "Common" he wouldn't be able to speak the same language as the other PCs, but he'd understand a bit more....kind of like me with German or Spanish.

To this end I made a small custom Icelandic/English dictionary so at the table I could use Dwarven, er Icelandic to a little "point & talk" when dealing with the rest of my home group. Simple stuff, numbers, nouns mostly, but the crown jewel of my RPG linguistics were phrases (idioms) and swears.

Balen the Dwarf (commissioned from Tina Bongomo)

I don't know how many of you have spent much time in another country dealing with another language, but I was fortunate enough to have served overseas in Germany and a few other countries. One thing that always fascinated me when it came to the language barriers were idioms and swears. A lot of things technically translate, but don't actually translate in practice. For example I briefly had a Dutch girlfriend and I said something about someone "taking the short bus to school". Most all Americans got right off the bat that I insinuated that someone was slow/stupid/not to bright. My gf, knew what a school-bus was, but a short school-bus? No clue. Later on that trip I heard her swear and I was straight-up shocked because the literal translation was what I'd argue is the strongest swear possible here in the US (and no, I'm not going to repeat it), but in Dutch was basically the equivalent of saying "shit".

I loved learning Dwarven/Icelandic swears.....my favorite was basically telling someone to "Fuck off" but I think the literal translation was "Go to the asshole!" I wish I remembered the actual phrase, but alas I could only find my Dwarven Slang list and not my dictionary or Dwarven Swear list.

Dwarven Slang (really idiom) List:
Aagh pissa e sko sin (to pee in his shoes: only works for a while)
Al-jeort rasgat (absolute butthole: adorably cute)
Ekki-oop e nos al-ketti (not enough to fill a cat’s nostril: small amount)
Av tefla viv pal-vaan (playing chess with the pope: taking a shit)
Rasgat e bala (butt in a tub: nothing or next to nothing)
Tea-oo dropar (ten drops: a cup of normal sized coffee)
Oondin tuska (wound-out rag: exhausted)
Av-hafa ekki ge-erst svo fraig (Having not been so famous)
Ens auk itla ge-erdur helot-ur (like a poorly made object)
Av stok-va oop a neff si-er (to jump up one’s nostril)
E-ek to khan e bakri-el (took him to the bakery: kicked his ass)
E-ek ska see-na pie-er-I e tavo heymana (I’ll show you the two worlds: kick your ass)

The cool thing is when doing something like this......it doesn't matter so much if you get your pronunciation correct as long as you are consistent.