I loved the Fighting Fantasy solo game books and the Warhammer Fantasy RolePlay1e ruleset. Both games were British and both oozed with flavor. I spent as many hours reading the WFRP rules and source materials as I did running it, and I ran a campaign of WFRP. It was a blast.
I own the Warlock! rules. I grabbed them last year when they were released. They are simple and fun. I really should mine them for some SWCL inspiration :)
Warlock! is today's Deal of the Day. Normally 14.10 in PDF, until tomorrow morning (5/16/21 @ 11 am Eastern) Warlock! is on sale for 2.77. All I can say is it is well worth the minimal investment for the pure joy you will likely get in return. There is a reason it is a Platinum Bestseller in less than a year's time.
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When I saw that today's Deal of the Day was Maelorum, I smiled. Not only do I remember backing the Kickstarter, but I remember playing through the adventure. It was well written and a lot of fun.
Now Maelorum is the Deal of the Day. Normally 9.99 in PDF, until tomorrow morning it's on sale for 5 bucks. How sweet is that?
The Gamebook is Reborn!
Enter into Maelorum, where an ancient evil has risen to remind the world that magic and monsters still exist. Choose one of three main characters to read the story, and play the game as. Explore old school dungeons with high res, hand drawn art that will take you back to your gaming roots. With multiple endings, and random events, you will never read the same story twice!
Rules and character sheet is included, along with a ten page item list in the back of the book. With ten years of R&D, this is an interactive adventure book unlike any other.
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So, yesterday I shared a quick pic of the box of the new Swords & Wizardry Collector's Edition Box.
Well, now I've opened the box and yes, the contents are impressive - and pretty :)
I will say the dice are eh, but I wasn't expecting Gamescience.
I'm sure the bookmark will be misplaced very shortly.
The character sheets look really good as well as useful.
I'm very happy with the goodies enclosed. Now to dig through the books and look for new material.
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Fighting Mythos in the Golden Age of Piracy - A Call of Cthulhu Campaign book.
Call of Cthulhu is probably tied for my favorite rule system I'll likely never run again, the other being Paranoia 1st Edition from West End Games. Note, I didn't say I'll never play them again, as it is possible I'll find a convention game I could sign up for, but neither game fits well will my fellow circle of players.
Why?
Because neither seems to do campaigns very well, but as one-shots or story arcs, they thrive.
So what does New Comet Games decide to do? They offer a CoC campaign book in the age of piracy.
Ben Burns, the man behind New Comet Games was the guest of Bad Mike & Myself on Talking Crit earlier tonight.
Corsairs of Cthulhu is a rules and setting supplement to the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game and focuses on the period between 1650 and 1730 CE. Your keeper can set up your investigators as crew on a pirate or privateer ship, freelancers in one of the Caribbean ports who love the gold doubloon more than a foreign governments rule, or even provide your investigators with their own ship. Working together the investigators must face evil Mythos, real and imagined. Curses left by ancient civilizations and hidden nightmares around the world.
The golden age of piracy is a time of spreading empires. England, France, Spain, Italy as well as several other smaller countries are planting their flags and colonies on any piece of land they can find. Empires rise and fall, Spanish ships are hauling new found gold from the new world back to Spain and ships are lost to pirates and storms regularly. Governments authorize privateers to sail under their flag but can raise the black when needed.
There are new skills, new professions, famous NPCs and new weapons that the investigators must learn to use if they want to survive against not only the dangers of the Mythos, but also against disease, dehydration, sea monsters, warships, and other pirates.
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As I announced earlier today on The Tavern's Youtube Channel, we will hopefully be releasing Swords & Wizardry Continual Light as a digest-sized edition in September 2021. It is a format that folks have been asking for since SWCL first released, and I'm happy to say I've assembled the right team to do such a project justice.
This will be a new printing but not a new edition. The rules will not be changing BUT there will be additional material, a professional layout, and new art.
James Spahn will be writing a micro-setting and introductory adventure. Think somewhere along the lines of B2. I'm totally stoked.
James Shields will be providing new cover art and a new Swords & Wizardry Continual Light logo.
Jeff Jones will be doing the layout. Jeff laid out Torchlight Issue #0 and he will be the layout artist when Torchlight Issue #1 releases, probably later this month.
Michael Gross will be editing the SWCL Digest Edition. Mike has (or is) worked (or is working) with Frog God Games, Troll Lord Games, Throwi Games, and others I've probably forgotten. Mike edited Torchlight Issue #0 and will also be editing Torchlight Issue #1.
Hopefully, I'll be able to add more names to this list in short order :)
We may add a basic magical items section to the rules. B&W or color art for the interior is currently being discussed.
Let me know what you think, tell me your wants and desires, and let's make this the Swords & Wizardry Continual Light that YOU want. :)
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Fast, modular character generation. Would-be heroes from 62 points and higher as player characters, henchmen, or supporting cast.
I've been a fan of GURPS from the time I found the Man to Man rules, along with the Orcslayer supplement. The only problem was that designing characters was always a pain in the ass as a player. As a DM, it is literally a compounded player. Still, the GURPS sourcebooks have always been a thing of beauty.
The other complaint I used to have is that GURPS never seems to do traditional fantasy tropes as one would expect from a D&D-type background. Sure, you had the Fantasy and Magic sourcebooks, but they seemed to lack flavor, unlike many of the other GURPS sourcebooks.
That is until Dungeon Fantasy was released. It literally was the GURPS rules with the D&D tropes that I have come to expect from a fantasy RPG, and my God, it does the genre well. Character generation of NPCs still sucked though, and become one of the intimidating factors that kept me from truly giving the Dungeon Fantasy rules a proper shake.
All this leads me to Douglas Coles' new Kickstarter, Delvers to Grow. Doug takes the most intimidating factor of GURPS, creating characters, and makes it easy as pie for the GM. No stress GURPS. Never thought I'd see the day. Of course, Doug is selling Delvers to Grow as a Player aid, but in my eyes, it's an amazing tool for the Dungeon Fantasy GM ;)
Even the mightiest delver started somewhere. An apprentice, a squire or man-at-arms, a backup singer with The Backstreet Bards.
Delvers to Grow allows you to take the part of those starting characters, supporting starting play as low as 62 points. Delvers to Grow provides pre-built modules and packages enabling a player to create a capable, playable character in minutes.
Fully compatible with the professional template system in the Dungeon Fantasy RPG Adventurers book, Delvers to Grow lets you start much earlier in the hero’s journey, letting both players and GMs ease into the full breadth of capability that the professional delvers of the Dungeon Fantasy RPG bring to the table.
Explore different challenges or use the modules to effortlessly assemble henchmen...or create a starting character to replace the dearly departed.
Doug has an amazing track record of fulfilling his Kickstarters on time and is one of the few third-party publishers licensed by Steve Jackson Games. In truth, he MAY be the only third-party publisher licensed by SJG, as I can think of no others offhand, but I could be wrong.
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So you may or may not know that I have my own blog, actually one of several, but I digress, where I like to semi-regularly point out some free gaming resources. Ideally I do a "Free GM Resource" over at Frugal GM every Monday, but if I'm not feeling it, can't find something, or life gets in the way I don't get too worked up about it.
I've been at it for 9 years already and that ends up being a lot of freebie posts.
Basically I'm always on the lookout for something I can share and I'm not above revisiting an earlier share to see if it's gotten better. Normally I happen along something during the week as I link-hop and generally screw around online....if I'm smart enough I bookmark it for future exploitation. Anyway I'm always looking at/for stuff and this last week I found a freaking motherload.
Thing is this is super fucked up and while you're already a couple paragraphs in, this "post" is really more of a "rant". I apologize for any perceived bait & switch, here's a 10' video of cute puppies as a peace offering:
We good?
Ok, if you're still reading this we've entered the social contract where you've accepted my consideration and now I get to piss and moan on my soap-box about RPG piracy.
Holy Fucking Shitballs.
For the record, I love having electronic versions of every RPG product I legally own, and I realize that in an of itself isn't always legit. I get that some products are very much Out of Print (OOP), for example HackMaster 4th Edition. You will not find a new copy of this game on the primary market....KenzerCo can't sell it and there is no way that Hasbro will ever renew the license. I fully understand there is a line somewhere between legal and moral, but too many people clearly don't see that line.
Last week I came across another website that was a HUGE depository of most every game system I've every heard of. There were literally HUNDREDS of game systems on this server where you could download pretty much everything made for that game. It was shocking.....and this isn't the first time I've come across such a collection of piracy, and while it was the largest, it wasn't the most shocking.
It was a while ago, but for some time OneBookShelf.....yes, the DriveThruRPG (among others) guys had a link, in their common footer IIRC that went to another depository of "free" resources that were clearly pirated materials. Thing is, something about this discovery really reminds me of the DTRPG info dump. Something about the structure is too similar, but I couldn't compare them now if I wanted to, and I don't want to.
I'd like to know who in the hell thinks it is ok to just dump a company's entire catalog online for everybody to steal. I know that odds are at least one Tavern patron here thinks it's OK to download something they didn't pay for. I know what I posted earlier could be interpreted as a rationalization, but I'm not condoning theft of IP. Now if Hasbro would work out licensing deal for electronic publication of the "back catalog" of KenzerCo products........I don't think I could get to my wallet fast enough.
Now clearly I think we need a mechanism to legally obtain electronic copies of OOP materials that will otherwise never see the light of day, but I'm really just torqued about this piracy in general. This last website just blew me away with the blatant theft of IP. To add insult to injury whoever owns the site has the gall to have a copywrite and claim "all rights reserved"!
I've talked to a couple content creators that have pirated files on this site and while they (the site) claims to honor copyright and DMCA notices, they do not. Even having a whole copyright page is just another "FUCK YOU" to those content creators. Of course the slimy bastard running this pirate site is doing what they can to conceal their identity.........most thieves would in this case.
Whoever is doing this is using a third party to purchase the domain, which was registered in another country. Lots of clear violations of laws, US and international, and definitely a few Terms of Services for these middlemen......
Lots of work, and certainly some, probably not too much $, has clearly gone in to stealing this information so what? Maybe they can earn some ad revenue off of traffic? Oh nevermind, these fucks accept all sorts of cryptocurrency as donations. Yep, the true mark of today's digital pirates.....untraceable underground currency.
...and I'm done. I just found one of my d30 tables on there.
