The Return of the Tavern Chat Podcast to Anchor/Spotify is Now!

As many have remarked recently, and justifiably complained, I had stopped uploading recent episodes of the daily Tavern Chat Youtube series to Anchor. The reason was simple - it could take up to half an hour for Anchor to upload and format a 15-minute video as a podcast, and the process often crashed. The process was worse for the live streams, as they are often 2 hours in length. The process hadn't always been so long and tedious (it was never quick), but something had changed on the Anchor side of things.

Recently, Anchor invited me to apply for their new "videocast" program, which promised to have uploaded videos available as video AND audio feeds on Spotify, and audio elsewhere. I applied and was accepted.

Late this afternoon I uploaded one of the recent videos I had recorded on Arduin. I went to the YouTube page to copy and paste the description, and in that time, the file had uploaded and converted. Literally, as fast as I could copy and paste, episodes were going live on Anchor.

I put up five episodes thus far, all touching on Arduin. I'll likely start uploading some Talking Crit live streams next, and see how long that process takes. I'm very hopeful.

I never thought I'd be saying this, but Anchor not just fixed a problem, but they improved the process from where it was before the slowdown.

It's almost like an early Christmas gift :)

(edit - the new episodes are now Season 2, with numbering starting from 1)

(edit two - this week's Talking Crit took less than 5 minutes to upload and process to Anchor - holy shit!)

Here's the link to the Anchor Tavern Chat Channel

Kickstarter - Uncommon Monstrosities (3d Printable Miniatures)

One of these days I'm going to have to take the plunge and get a 3d printer. I've been saying that for at least two years now, and when I see things like James Shields's latest Kickstarter, it makes me want it more and more. The issue for me is space, but I may have a solution after Christmas. Of course, I'd have to back for the STL files now. Hmmm, maybe I'll ask for a nice 3d printer for Christmas...

Oh, and look at that! 25 bucks for the base buy-in. 75 bucks if you want a non-exclusive license to print and sell the minis. At 125 you also get non-exclusive stock art rights to the art. Damn you Uncommon Monstrosities! I'm in for $125.

Some monsters get all the attention. Why use the same old monsters when there are so many diverse creatures in fantasy worlds? Challenge your players with... Uncommon Monstrosities!

This project offers 20 unique creatures with unusual approaches to classic monsters. Every model is inspired by tabletop artist, Jeshields and modeled by Dionizo Lopes.

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  

Kickstarter - Nordlond Bestiary and Enemies Book (Dungeon Fantasy/GURPS)

A bestiary and enemies book for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG (Powered by GURPS).

I'm going to fanboy for a moment, so forgive me. Doug Cole is one of the rare Kickstarter producers that dots his "I's" and crosses his "T's", and then double checks himself before launching his page. The writing and editing are high quality and the art is simply to die for. Although I don't currently run GURPS or Dungeon Fantasy, I'm a backer of the Nordlond Bestiary and Enemies Book Kickstarter and intend to convert on the fly, as needed, for Continual Light.

Whether riffing off Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, or the more genre-appropriate Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith, there’s no question that a giant book of creatures is a boon to gamers wanting to keep campaigns fresh and exciting.

For a long time, the classic big book of monsters has been hard to come by as a fully supported work for Powered by GURPS games. 

No longer.

The Dungeon Fantasy RPG is purposefully generic: It is Powered by GURPS, after all. The Norðlond setting is not generic, borrowing from the literary tradition of the Viking culture. The sagas of looting, pillaging, and raiding for wealth and fame made a natural match for a game with a tag-line of “Smash Evil for Fun and Profit.”

Even with that in mind, the monsters here can be—and should be—repurposed and transplanted to other campaigns. Many of them are thinly disguised transplants from other cosmologies anyway: The nautamaðr is clearly based on the Minotaur; the Blóðughúfa, or “bloody hat” is the redcap, a fixture of Northumbrian folklore, perhaps derived or parallel to the Irish fear dearg, meaning “red man,” said to wear a red coat and cap.  Animals—normal, giant, and dire—don’t require any work to move between campaigns. Much as the player characters pillage loot, GMs should pillage the worked examples here to make their lives easier when running games in any campaign.

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  

Roll20 Goes Mobile (VTT)

Over the weekend, Roll20 announced their Mobile App. At the moment, it only works with Dungeons & Dragons 5e, but other rulesets/character sheets are apparently in the works.

Available for Android and iOS

Roll20 Player Companion

Your characters. Your friends. Your table.

Take your Roll20 characters with you, wherever you go. Keep your character in your back pocket at the game store or your living room! Reference and make rolls on your TTRPG character sheet from your phone or tablet.

* Free for all Roll20 users!

* Swipe and tap to select your games and character sheets.

* View your character’s stats, skills, features, and proficiencies.

* Roll for skill checks, combat, and spells (don’t worry, Roll20 will do the math for you).

* The sheet displays your character’s important information including their armor class, HP, speed, and character portrait.

* Send all your rolls right to the VTT chat, powered by Roll20’s signature quantum roll server.

 

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 - The Game Master's Book of Random Tables (System Neutral)

I prefer posting DTRPG Deal of the Day sales earlier in the day, but today's events kept me out of the house for most of the day. In any case, the following is on sale until 11/17/2021 at 11 AM Eastern.

Today's Deal of the Day is The Game Master's Book of Random Tables. I must admit, I'm a sucker for random tables, be it Frog God's Tome of Adventure Design, New Big Dragon Games D30 Companion series, Ultimate Toolbox and so many, many more. 

The Game Master's Book of Random Tables is normally 10 bucks, but until tomorrow at 11 AM Eastern, it is on sale for 5 bucks.

Welcome to The Game Master’s Book of Random Tables: A Collection of Quick Roll Tables for the Busy Game Master – your one-stop resource offering more than 80 quick roll idea inspiring tables to help you quickly create encounters, describe objects, build NPCs, add depth to your descriptions and much more for your favorite fantasy role playing games.

Chapters include:

• Towns - 27 tables to help you build towns and shops.
• NPCs - 10 tables to help you quickly build and describe NPCs for any situation.
• Weather - 12 tables to add the richness of weather conditions to your game.
• Quests - 7 tables of quests including city, forest, mountain, sea, dungeon, roadside and tavern quests
• Magic - 14 tables to help you quickly build unique magical items and curses for your adventurers enjoyment and befuddlement.
• Miscellaneous - 19 tables covering a variety of topics from gemstones and jewelry to oddities, riddles and landmarks.

Each table can be mined for ideas and in many instances, can be used as random roll tables to quickly gives you details without needing to make a (perhaps time-intensive) decision. For even more rich scenarios, combine elements from several tables to build a rich, immersive experience for your players. Let the tables do the heavy lifting so you can concentrate on spinning a tale that will be remembered by your players long after the gaming session ends.

Whether the tables are used to spawn ideas you can flesh out or just quick descriptive bits to enhance the descriptions of game objects, conditions and moods, this massive volume is one you are sure to refer to again and again as you create and play your favorite fantasy role playing game.

 

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 

Bundle of Holding - Traveller Imperium Tour (Classic Traveller)

I started my Traveller experience with the Starter Set, which was essentially the 3 digest-sized black books re-laid out to standard-sized. I always liked Traveller, even if I had issues with some of the science - I'm talking about YOU room-sized computers ;) 

The Traveller Imperium Tour Starter Collection is a bargain at $14.95. In many ways, this is the beginning of sci-fi RPGs, and certainly the first successful one, and it's a great price for a piece of history.

For just US$14.95 you get all eleven titles in our Starter Collection (retail value $69) as DRM-free ebooks, including the new Classic Traveller Facsimile Edition -- a "Little White Book" that reproduces the 1981 rulebooks in new scans with errata corrected; two landmark 1983 releases, The Traveller Book and The Traveller Adventure, six sets of starship deck plans by longtime Traveller developer Loren Wiseman; Supplement S12 Forms and Charts; and the Classic Traveller Orientation Pack, a collection of resources originally compiled for the February 2014 Classic Traveller Bundle of Holding.

And if you pay more than the threshold price of $33.07, you'll level up and also get our entire Bonus Collection with thirteen more titles worth an additional $162, including all eight Alien Modules and all five of GDW's 1980s M-series guides to the Imperium: Tarsus, Beltstrike, The Spinward Marches Campaign, Atlas of the Imperium (plus the 2016 Enhanced Edition), and Alien Realms.

Damn. I may need to get this in PDF myself, even though I have much of it in the original print.

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 

Any Non-Gaming Gaming Plans for this Upcoming "Season"?

By my rough mental math, and I hate to be the person to point this out (but....), we've got only a good week of gaming left for the foreseeable future. That's right, make sure you have a game scheduled, hopefully, for next weekend, or wait until 2022.

Think about it. We have next weekend free and then it's Thanksgiving. Turkey Day rolls into Black Friday, Cyber Monday and then it's all fricken downhill until Christmas. Holiday parties, Christmas shopping, and all the crap that comes with the social obligations of work, school, church, extended families, etc. Sure, you might have some good blocks of free time, but do they align with those free blocks for the rest of your gaming group? Probably not.

So what are you going to do to get your gaming fix on?

There are always video games, maybe some board games with your family (assuming you're lucky enough to be able to do so. Don't get me started about the 3 hour attempt to teach my in-laws a "quick" game of Munchkin.).

Now for me the holidays is a time I try to work on my gaming projects. "Try" is usually the operative word as I tend to bit off more than I can chew. For example, this holiday season I have on my "to do" list:

1. Build a miniature storage case
2. Work on reformatting my d30 tables for publications
3. Create some player tablemats
4. Create some miniature dioramas
5. Paint my minis (well, some of them)
6. Build some dice-rolling towers
7. Work on my digital gaming table
8. Frame the last of my RPG Art
9. Work on my travel table-side RPG case
10. Add to my Appendix N library
11. Work on my mobile arcade rig(s)
12. Build some table-top terrain

Now some of these items have to wait on my getting myself into a new house where I can setup a small woodshop I can actually use during the winter. Assuming that happens I can get some of these done...if it doesn't then all I can do is refine my blue-prints. 

Oh, and we all already know that I'm not going to get my minis painted. That's a pipe dream for certain!

Everything else, is doable and realistically I'll get about half of this list done between now and the end of January.

Now that I'm publicly stating what I'm working on it'll be really embarrassing if I can't follow-through! 

Assuming that you've made it this far and, presumably, have had a hot minute to think about it, do you have any specific non-gaming (as in not around the table) gaming plans for this "off season"?