State of The Tavern - Anniversaries, Print Releases, OSR Christmas, Blue Hair and 2022

Today Rach and I celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. In the Spring of 2021, I wasn't even sure I'd be around to see our 9th anniversary.

I owe this very blog to Rach, as she encouraged me to start it and stick with it when we were dating. She has supported everything I've accomplished in this hobby of ours, and I can't thank her enough. I am far better for having her in my life than I would be without.

We missed GameHole this year, but thanks to Jeff Jones (layout artist and unofficial Tavern project manager), print issues of Torchlight Issue #1 were for sale at the Frog God Games booth. It is likely there will be a handful available at TotalCon and Gary Con. I've asked Bad Mike to ship me about 10 copies, and I hope to have some available for OSR Christmas.

Yep, OSR Christmas is sneaking upon us. If you are a publisher and you wish to participate in the gift of giving, email me at tenkarsDOTtavern at that Gmail thing with "OSR Christmas" in the subject and we'll add you to OSR Santa's Gift Giving List. This year, some of the gifts may be given away on the various Tavern Livestreams in addition to here at The Tavern's Blog. 

Possibly around Christmas, we may see the release of Continual Light - Digest Sized Edition. Yep, it's dropping Swords & Wizardry from the title to make it a bit easier to parse, but the rules remain the same.

We are looking at micro settings from James Spahn and Rob Conley in support of the new edition. Too early for details but exciting times.

Early 2022 should see the launch of Pub Crawls, the one-sheet OSR adventure series. Bad Mike has a few ready-to-go to editing and layout. He's chomping at the bit to get these published ;)

Also, early 2022 should see an exciting announcement for Torchlight and its future. More on that when we are closer, but if all goes well we should have a semi-regular release schedule, print issues, and more.

Tomorrow I dye my hair blue, due to the generous donors to St Jude's Children's Hospital and last Saturday's Tenkar Does Yoga LiveStream. More embarrassing madness to follow :)

http://events.stjude.org/tenkarstavern

https://www.tenkarstavern.com/2021/10/tenkar-is-raising-money-for-st-judes.html

Deal of the Day - Creature Feature Quarterly vol. 3 (OSE)

More monsters are always more better. Creature Feature Quarterly vol 3 from Jeremy Hart (check his stock art) gives us more monsters at a discounted price. Normally 6 bucks in PDF, until 11 AM eastern tomorrow morning, Creature Feature Quarterly vol. 3 (OSE) is on sale for $1.26.

NOT JUST STATBLOCKS!

16 new monsters for your OLD SCHOOL ESSENTIALS game.

+ Extensive Fluff including Descriptions, Lore, Ecology, Adventure Seeds and some ideas for memorable Loot.

+ Paper Mini designs for EVERY monster! Designed for easy print and play so you can easily get them on your table quick!

+ VTT tokens for EVERY monster if you prefer to play your oldskool on Roll20, etc.

+ The PDF is formatted to be easily printed at home on A4 sheets as A5 facing pages. (DIY!)

 

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 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. - Tenkar  

Deal of the Day - Cepheus Deluxe (OGL Traveller)

Today's Deal of the Day is Cepheus Deluxe, which draws its core from the Mongoose Traveller OGL. From what I've seen, the Cepheus Engine is widely supported and is compatible with much of the Traveller material available.

Until tomorrow morning at 11 AM Eastern, Cepheus Deluxe is on sale, marked down to 4 bucks from 9.99.

Cepheus Deluxe is a set of rules for playing classic science fiction games. It includes rules on creating characters, resolving actions, fighting other creatures, and engaging in space battles, generating worlds, handling the risks of interstellar speculative trading, exploring new worlds, and many other activities. While designed for fast, action-packed play rather than an accurate simulation of reality, Cepheus Deluxe encompasses a wide variety of rules and materials for building a science-fiction universe and playing in it.

Cepheus Deluxe draws its inspiration from old-school science-fiction roleplaying games. It shares many similarities with these games. Material from older rules sets and those created with Cepheus Deluxe, the old Cepheus Light, the Cepheus Engine Core, and old-school sci-fi roleplaying games, are easily compatible with only a moderate amount of adjustment.

 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 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. - Tenkar  

I've Ordered Blue Hair Dye - $1467 Raised So Far for St Jude's Children's Hospital

Holy shit!

I never expected this.

I said I'd dye my hair blue at $1000 raised for St. Jude's.

I also said I'd walk our dog at Forest Park in Queens for an hour in the same outfit I wore for the St Jude's benefit on Saturday night - WITH my hair dyed blue.

At $1500 I would go food shopping with blue hair, in Taco Cats Yoga pants (I need pockets for my wallet).

We are currently at $1467.

I NEVER expected this response. I am humbled and thrilled!

Thank you :)

Want to see my reaction to a $500 donation? Look below:

Do You Play a Seasonal Halloween Game/Session?

One thing I've always wondered, and maybe I should have been thinking about this last weekend, is if other gaming groups gather to play a holiday-themed session, whether it's a one-off or a regular integration. Maybe you play a different game altogether for the holiday.

Now my group had kind of a one-off this weekend, but it wasn't a holiday-themed game. Now I'm not saying I wanted a Halloween game....actually I didn't even consider it or I'd have made the suggestion. Now I know from my (unfortunate) time in retail that Halloween has pretty much become the #2 holiday after Christmas as far as consumer spending goes. I think it's still #3 after Thanksgiving as far as popularity, and for some it's easily #1.

Some folks just LOOOOOVE Halloween. Me....I'm a bit "meh". Probably doesn't help that my house is in a bad location and I just haven't had a single Trick-or-Treater since I moved here in 2018. I'm already so NOT a seasonal decorator to begin with, so why bother.

It also doesn't help that I swear my part of Oklahoma gets like one week of Fall. Granted it's been this last week, but it'll pretty much be winter by like Tuesday. Hard to get excited about fall activities when you jump from Summer to Winter. I've got stuff to do during the fall and screwing around with Halloween isn't one of them.

So right about now I'm sure that I'm coming across all "bah humbug".....I know, I know, wrong holiday, but you know what I'm saying.....

A couple years ago I wrote a small Tweak & Toss that was kind of inspired by the movie "Motel Hell". If you're not familiar with the movie.....well there's a link for you.

Now I don't really think if this Tweak & Toss as a straight-up Halloween "adventure", but if you are the type of GM that likes to slip a potential something-something into your regular campaign, it might work. It's not a scary setup by any means, but occasionally I do some meta-crap and the one thing I did was oversell the cover for those players that take too much notice of the "adventure's" cover (Something I think a lot of us have done as players....).

So while I was thinking of Halloween and this one Tweak & Toss I went ahead and took a second look at the thing. Ugh.....it had a link to a high-resolution map that was essentially lost when I close my Patreon campaign. So I fixed that and I made sure to change the "price" down to a buck and make it Pay What You Want. If you don't have that huge map, which you really didn't need anyway, not something I'd want a couple bucks for. 

Anyway, I know it's a bit of self-promotion, but Erik lets me do what I want on Sundays as it is, and since it's PWYW....feel free to grab it for $0. You can click on through to The Horrors of Halfling Hollow by clicking on the link or the graphic above. Do me a favor though, if you incorporate into your ongoing campaign, drop me a note to say how it went. Always good to hear from GMs.