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! 

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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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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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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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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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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Gareth Sharka Releases - Star System: Every Star A Destination - Still No Far West update over 12 Months Later

 Ah, sweet, sweet Gareth. No time to work on Far West. Time, however, to work on and release Star System: Every Star A Destination. 24.99 for PDF, 24.99 in Print, 24.99 in Print plus PDF.

BACK INTO THE BLACK...

The writers and editors behind some of your favorite releases for the greatest space-fantasy RPG of all time return to the D6 System!

Former West End Games Star Wars Creative Director Eric S. Trautmann assembles an all-star bullpen of veteran D6 System writers, including:

Bill Smith (Line Editor, The Star Wars Roleplaying Game.)

Peter Schweighofer (Editor, The Star Wars Adventure Journal.)

Timothy S. O'Brien (Pirates & Privateers.)

Drew Campbell (Cynabar's Fantastic Technology: Droids.)

Gareth-Michael Skarka (D6 Space: Ships.)

Michael Kogge (Star Wars Adventure Journal.)

Wayne Humfleet (Heroes & Rogues.)

...together again to bring you an anthology of eight brand-new D6 System-compatible space-fantasy adventures.  Each scenario is ready to be dropped into any existing campaign, or used to launch a new one!

Visit scenic Tekazzil, home to a royal society that views laws as optional and profit as king; slog through alien jungles in search of an ancient artifact... and the lunatic who hopes to find it first; battle octopoid pirates above the gas giant Arx; try to survive an ancient ghost ship trapped in a ruined sector of space; witness the fearsome might and utter horror of a planet of bureaucrats; avoid being caught in the fatal crossfire between vicious university academics; battle for survival against a brutal race, long believed to be extinct; and join a rag-tag fleet of xenoecologists as they attempt to preserve a pod of galactic leviathans...

The galaxy is vast and unforgiving... especially on the edges of known space.  Out there, a willingness to risk it all can be the key to survival. Every flight means danger, every landing field, starport, or orbital base can be the line between life and death.

EVERY STAR A DESTINATION

PDF and Print Edition are the same price -- and if you order the Print Edition, you get the PDF for FREE! Included with the PDF are a set of bonus files with all of the handouts, references and templates, ready to print.

This adventure anthology is the first of Adamant Entertainment's new line, STAR SYSTEM, a series of epic space-fantasy releases intended for use with any game using the classic D6 System. Follow Adamant on Twitter (@adamantent) to stay informed about new releases! (but not Far West. Never Far West)

 

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