Bundle of Holding - Fat Goblin Planners

I've been a fan of Fat Goblin Games for years. They publish some of the most useful, system-neutral material I've ever seen, and I'm currently tempted by the planners included in the Fat Goblin Games Planner Bundle of Holding.

For just US$7.95 you get all fourteen titles in our Planner Collection (retail value $55) as DRM-free ebooks:

• Five campaign planners: Cartographer's Companion, DIY Monster Manual, Gamemaster's Star Log, Pocket Campaign Planner, and Starmaster's Campaign Journal (for Starfinder)
• Four gamemaster journals (all previously in our Worldbuilder's Toolkit 4, November 2016): Allies and Adversaries Journal, Gamemaster's Adventure Planner, Monster Memoir, and Worldbuilding Journal
• Three class-oriented journals and record books for D&D Fifth Edition characters: 5th Edition Cleric's Chronicle, Fighter's Chronicle, and Wizard's Chronicle
• The Roleplayer's Arcane Spellbook and Roleplayer's Divine Prayerbook

I suspect I'll get more than value for my dollars even leaving the D&D 5e titles on the table ;)

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Bundle of Holding - GURPS 4e Bundles - Essentials, Fantasy, & Space

I've always enjoyed GURPS for its sourcebooks. It's a solid system and well balanced. The sourcebooks are amazing, and often can carry over to other systems without too much work.

If you never experienced GURPS, go to the Bundle of Holding website and grab the GURPS 4e Essentials Bundle. It will give you what you need to enjoy the the bundles, GURPS Fantasy and GURPS Space.

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Deal of the Day - Index Card RPG: Master Edition

One of the players I infrequently game with, but frequently bust balls with is none other than OSR Mapper extraordinaire, Matt Jackson. Matt is a HUGE fan of the Index Card RPG. I guess it is time to see what his words of praise are all about.

Until tomorrow morning at 11 AM Eastern, the Index Card RPG: Master Edition is the Deal of the Day at DTRPG, and is on sale for 8.25. Print plus PDF is 16.50.

Index Card RPG has slowly built a die-hard following of DIY RPG creators and players over the past 5 years. Until now, it has been found in 3 hardcopy books and numerous PDF's published by Runehammer. 

This newest edition, the MASTER EDITION, combines ICRPG's numerous worlds, streamlined D20 rules and critically acclaimed GM know-how all in one PDF, all revised and updated with its latest playtest data, magic system, LOOT tables and so much more. 

-400 pages of DIY goodness: a D20 system YOU command

-Free PDF updates for life (all ICRPG past buyers will receive a FREE core rules update PDF)

-All 5 main ICRPG worlds: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Weird West, Superheroes and Ice Age

-Newly rebuilt advanced magic system

-Huge monster listing

-Collection of d100 LOOT tables and content creation tables 

-Includes FREE 150 page ADVENTURES supplement: all previously published adventures in one

-Includes portrait and landscape character sheets

 

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Deal of the Day - Black Pudding Heavy Helping Vol. One (OSR Zine)

In case you've missed it, Black Pudding is a well-done OSR Zine. So, what is Black Pudding Heavy Helping Volume One? It is the current Deal of the Day and marked down from 6 bucks to 3.00 

It glorps! It shlorps! It absolutely bevoorps! It is the first official Black Pudding zine collection, available in glorious print!

This collection features everything from the first four issues of Black Pudding, a zine of OSR RPG gaming goodies. Monsters, spells, character classes, character sheets, adventures, and more!

The materials from each issue are presented here in categories. Flip to the classes section and roll up a Black Knight or a Summoner. Scoot over to the monsters and stock your dungeon with a horde horror or a gravity guard. Drop the Glittering Tome of the Silver Sage into your adventure and make the wizard drool with anticipation. Send the PCs to the Bleeding Ox to hire Jilliantha Stormshot or Father Mug to join them on the quest.

You can use this tome to enhance your old school dice rolling adventure sessions but remember... do not EVER strike the tome! If you must kill the pudding, kill it with fire.

 

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OneBookShelf - Updates to Publisher Conduct Guidelines (Updated June 27th, 2022)

Here's the link to the original: https://onebookshelfpublisherservice.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/227866447-Publisher-Conduct-Guidelines

There are no prior pages saved on the Wayback Machine BTW

We have outlined below several issues that we feel would jeopardize our working relationship with publishers. The intent of this document and its contents are tripartite: to protect customers’ shopping experience, to promote the interests and business goals of all publishers, and to ensure that our team is protected from bad actors. 

Our goals are to operate a fair, ethical environment where you can sell your titles and to have a professional relationship with you, built on trust, cooperation, and mutual respect. 

Quality of Titles: The quality and content of your titles and cover images directly affects the quality of our store and our customers’ shopping experiences. 

Please see our Product Standards Guidelines for details.

Pricing: We expect fair treatment on the pricing of your titles. Please price your titles as low on our marketplace as you do anywhere else; we understand that short-term sales on backlist titles can vary between stores temporarily (for up to a week or so), but having titles constantly reduced elsewhere for cheaper, or pricing them differently upon initial release, does not constitute fair treatment in our view. Likewise, including extra content for no extra cost in alternate versions made available only elsewhere is not fair treatment. 

Release Schedule: We expect that if you create a title that you wish to sell at our store, you will release that title on our store within 24 hours of releasing it elsewhere. 

We expect that once you release a title on a particular date, you will not try to manipulate or maximize marketing exposure by re-creating or re-releasing that same title at a later date. Any unethical manipulation of site features or algorithms to get more front-page exposure for a title is unacceptable.

Links: We ask that you put a link to our store on your website. In turn, we offer consumers a link to your website from each of your titles’ product description pages. We currently allow some links to social media and news sites, which can be seen under “See More” above Description on the “Edit a title listing” tool page for any title. 

Aside from the links described above, we do not allow external links on title product description pages. An exception to this rule is that titles listed only within the Publisher Resources category may contain external links to a license or licensing guidelines or to external reviews in their descriptions. 

You may not add links or suggest even vaguely that customers should go to other websites to acquire or purchase your titles. 

If you have any questions regarding links within product descriptions, please feel free to contact us by email (at publisherservice@onebookshelf.com).

Trade Dress: We expect publishers to respect one another’s trade dress, designs, and motifs. It is not acceptable to copy the look and feel of other publishers’ titles. 

Front-Page Flooding: Please do not flood the front page of our site (under New Releases) with many releases on the same day. Not only does flooding the front page in this way use all your “new release” marketing clout up at once, but our research indicates that publishers typically see more sales from regular releases over time than from a large group of them launched all at once.

We will attempt to back-date any more than two (2) titles released on the same day. If you would like to release several titles at once, please notify us so we can adjust the release dates for you. 

Reviews: Publishers may not review their own titles or those of other publishers. Similarly, people having a professional relationship with a publisher, such as authors or illustrators, are also barred from leaving reviews of associated publishers’ titles. 

Sending complimentary copies of your title to an alternate customer email that you have created so that you can review your own titles is also not allowed.

We periodically check for publishers who abuse our marketplace review system and have suspended publishers from our marketplace for such abuse.

Note that titles listed under the “Publisher Resources” category or any subcategory thereof are an exception to this rule and may be reviewed by publishers or contributors, since such titles are meant to be purchased by other publishers. 

POD Process and Print Proofs: When you upload new files for print-on-demand (POD) to a title listing, once they are approved, you must order a proof copy of your title, at cost, to make sure that everything is working as intended.

After your POD title is activated, if you make changes to the print files and upload a new version, then that print format of your title is deactivated automatically. Without exception, you must go through the entire premedia process again, regardless of how minor the changes to your files, and you must then order a new print proof before we can reactivate your title for sale. 

Treatment of Staff: We do not expect our staff to deal with publisher clients who demonstrate abusive or threatening behavior, whether personal or professional, either in business communications or on social media.

We consider any of the following behaviors to be grounds for immediate closure of a publisher account: 

Threats of physical harm or violence

Threats to disseminate or share anyone’s personal information on the internet

Threats or derogatory comments that are homophobic, sexist, or involving other forms of discrimination based on a person’s protected characteristics

Inappropriate comments or insults regarding religion, culture, or race

Social Media Behavior: We know we are not perfect. When we make mistakes, we hope that our publisher clients will bring it to our attention first. Publishers who make derogatory or defamatory statements on social media about OneBookShelf or our staff may be subject to modification or termination of their publisher account. 

Hostile Marketing: Our policy regarding potentially offensive content (see Product Standards Guidelines) reported by customers is to deactivate such titles while they are being reviewed. Publishers who deliberately court controversy by making public declarations or accusations of censorship resulting from this process in order to draw attention to their products will be considered to use hostile marketing. 

Publishers who direct or support public accusations of impropriety or censorship toward OneBookShelf when their controversial titles are rejected or removed from our marketplace will also be considered to use hostile marketing. 

This behavior will not be tolerated. We have adopted a strict one-warning policy for those who engage in hostile marketing: The first incident will prompt a warning, and after a second incident, their accounts will be removed from our site permanently and immediately.

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My Thought on Amending Saves vs. Death

While I technically started playing something akin to D&D in the winter of 78/79, I'm probably better off saying that my first "real" D&D experience was in 6th grade....so spring 1983? We had some weird elective period thing where I elected to sling dice out of the Magenta box.

My first PC was an Elf and he should have died in the first adventure when some Green Slime landed on him. The GM was rather gracious and treated the slime attack more like a degenerative disease and allowed my PC to continue adventuring as the slime slowly overtook his body. In retrospect a good idea to not kill off a newb's character in the first session, but....

...well I've NEVER liked Green Slime and I've only used it a couple of times as a GM. Both times I telegraphed it's presence big time and the best I did, adversarial-speaking, was get a Magic-User to voluntarily have the Ranger lop off his (MU's) hand at the wrist. That was actually good times as a GM, but the player did that to his own PC....as that interaction was completely avoidable.

All of this is more of a related side-note to a larger issue I've always had with essentially instant-death. Now if a PC jumps off a big-assed cliff unprepared and plummets hundreds of feet to the ground....splat-city and no sweat off my ass. Suck it up and start rolling 3d6.

Right up there is the whole idea of Save vs. Death. Seriously? I've got an AD&D 20th level Magic User and his Save vs. Death is 10......so outside of having a Ring of Protection or some magical aids, he's got a 50/50 shot at surviving. Years of me playing this guy and some event comes down to a single die roll? Sure lots of crap comes down to a single die roll, but usually it's really more like a series of die rolls. A monster has to hit and has to roll high enough to do the PC in, but some random creature has an overpowered effect and your PC just happens to be nearby? Roll that d20 and hope it rolls high.....

OK, clearly something happened in last night's game.....

My group was fighting some plant-based monster and it had a spore attack that was Save vs. Death. Half of the party died, well would have if the GM didn't roll it back. Statistically it should have killed half the party and I don't think he expected that. Now I'll admit I didn't have a huge attachment to this PC, so death was no big deal, and even if I had said attachment......I know I should have taken my own advice and reached for the d6's.

Thing is it's not the PC loss that bugs me, it's the unexpected sudden and seemingly randomness that gets me. I just don't like that at all. 

My thoughts on this aren't just to complain, otherwise this would be just a whiner post.

Harkening back to my earliest experiences, I think that the results of a Save vs. Death shouldn't be just straight up death. At a minimum I'd add in another die roll. If you fail the initial Save, do a 3d6 CON check. If you fail that, then kill off the PC. Otherwise, the PC's hit-point maximum is halved, and increases back to normal at the rate of level per day (i.e. a 6th level Fighter PC currently at 25hp, but has a maximum of 60hp, fails the Save vs. Death, but makes the CON check, his new maximum HP is now 30hp. He still only has 25hp and magical healing will only bring him to 30hp. The next day his maximum will be 36hp, the next day 42hp, etc.) The GM should describe the degradation to the PC appropriately and the nature of the injury should be such that magical aid (specifically healing spells) will not restore the damage, but it will bring the hit points back up to the current maximum. 

My thought is that a Save vs. Death should be serious, but not detrimental to the point that a single die roll will doom the PC. The PC might luck out and make the Save, but if that is failed there is still a chance that the PC takes a serious blow that might very well lead to its death....., but if the PC is careful, the damage can be overcome.