Humble Bundle - Castles & Crusades from Troll Lord Games

Seek gold and glory in worlds filled with treasure-hoarding dragons, terrifying undead, and creatures of legend in Troll Lord Games’ tabletop RPG Castles & Crusades!

Castles & Crusades was the first OSR game I found, finding the C&C Players Handbook for less than 10 bucks over at Buy.com.

It's a very solid system, plays very well, and has tons of support. It reminds me very much of AD&D 1e in its feel and play.

You can get the complete Castles & Crusades Bundle, 37 items, for 18 bucks.

If you want to check out the C&C Players Handbook, you can snag it for free in PDF at the Troll Lord's website.

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 cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Shadowdark Session Zero/Session 0.5 Will Be Tonight's Random Party Generator Livestream @ 8 PM Eastern

Tonight we are going to be breaking a few rules as we test some new rules. I always swore that I would NEVER broadcast an actual gaming session with my group, as it would likely fail all tests of civility and any sort of correctness. But when my cohosts on the Random Party Generator Livestream started talking about running a session of Shadowdark as a live stream, I never thought of saying "we can't do it". My cohosts actually double as my gaming group, and it was a perfect fit.

Now, I need to state the following, which should be obvious to anyone that follows this blog or our YouTube Channel:

No one at the Arcane Library contacted ANY of us to run and broadcast this session. None of us know anyone at the Arcane Library. Kelsey likely doesn't know us from a hole in the wall. No of us have been offered ANY compensation of ANY sort to run and broadcast this session. 

I'm sure most of you are wondering why I felt I had to include the above. Let's just say there are some who feel the coverage of Shadowdark is "less than organic". As I've seen ads for Shadowdark on Facebook, and it is certainly being pushed, but we, the above, are doing this live stream out of our own curiosity. Go figure ;)

Here's the blurb from tonight's live stream:

Tonight on the Random Party Generator Livestream, Matt Jackson (mapper extraordinaire) will be putting Tim Shorts, Rob Conley, JoetheLawyer, Greg Christopher, and yours truly, Erik Tenkar, through a Session Zero/ Session .5 of Shadowdark, the 5e/OSR "bridge system" that everyone is talking about. The best way to grasp an RPG is to put it through its paces, which is what we intend to do tonight.

 

Jonathan M. Thompson Memorial Bundle (DTRPG)

When I was at Totalcon two weeks ago, I found out that Jonathan M. Thompson had passed. I was blessed to be able to share the GoFundMe to help Jonathan's family with their related expenses. 

Today I'm sharing the Jonathan M Thompson Memorial Bundle over at DTRPG. Pinnacle took the lead on this, but there are dozens of donors of RPG material, including yours truly, as every purchaser of the bundle gets a copy of Swords & Wizardry Continual Light as well as 147 other titles for a mere 25 bucks. It's for a good cause in the memory of a good man, and I ask that you simply give the page a look and decide if the offer interests you.

In addition to the $250 already donated to the above GoFundMe matching the donations of the members of this community, all monies raised from affiliate sales at DTRPG over the next 5 days will also be donated to Jonathan's GoFundMe.

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 cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Bundle of Holding - Mystical Throne Guides (Historical Gaming Guides)

Mixing real-world history with RPGs mixes two passions of mine. Mythical Throne Guides do just that.

For 9.95, you get thirteen historical guides aimed at gamers like you and me.

What's included in the Mythical Throne Guides Bundle from Bundle of Holding?

Celts, pirates, Vikings, Knights Templar, Roman legions, feudal Japan, Renaissance France, Mongols, the Three Kingdoms, the Pinkertons, and gangs of New York!

Yep, I'm sold ;)

 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 cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Kickstarter - FIE, I SAY! The D6 Comedy-Fantasy-Parody RPG

I am a HUGE fan of Tim Sinder was my wife's, Rach, first GM at NTRPG Con many years ago, and definitely turned her into a gamer. TimeMaster for the win :)

Tim has a great sense of humor in gaming, and I expect nothing less from his FIE, I SAY! The D6 Comedy-Fantasy-Parody RPG Kickstarter. I've played in his TimeMaster and Toon games at NTRPG Con (along with Rach) and his comedic timing is second to none.

FIE, I SAY! is a humorous RPG in the vein of all of those other Serious Fantasy Roleplaying Games. (You know, the “Ampersand RPGs” that have dungeons, dragons, tunnels, trolls, castles, crusades, wizards, warriors, and other alliterations.) In this light-hearted parody of Old School Fantasy RPGs,  FIE, I SAY! encourages madcap adventures where the characters are out of their league, the villains are out of patience, and the players are likely out of their minds/

FIE, I SAY! is based on classic D6 RPG systems. For the newer gamers, you roll some six-siders and try to beat a difficulty number based on the difficulty of the task at hand. Roll high? Huzzah! Roll low? FIE, I SAY!

Every PC has four attributes that represent their core abilities, i.e., how strong, dexterous, intelligent, and charismatic they are. (NOTE TO SELF: I should find a way to abbreviate those.) Each attribute also has a specific skill the PC has trained in. The player rolls as many dice as their attribute/skill score and tries to beat the aforementioned difficulty number set by the Dice Meister, or "DM". (Ha! See what I did there?) The higher your score, the more dice you roll, increasing your odds of beating the difficulty number and succeeding!

I'm in for the $7 pledge,  FIE, I SAY! The D6 Comedy-Fantasy-Parody RPG Kickstarter, PDF plus POD at cost. I love Tim Snider, in a most platonic manner. Total respect Tim ;)

 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 cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

Kickstarter - Shadowdark RPG: Old-School Gaming, Modernized

There's a bit of a debate going on online about Shadowdark. Is it 5e-based? Is it OSR? Something a bit of both? Does it even matter?

From what I've read of Shadowdark (you can snag the free Shadowdark Quickstart here) it has an old-school feel with some 5e-isms, such as advantage/disadvantage and the healing of ALL damage after 8 hours of successful rest (definitely NOT old-school healing). Combat is deadly, power increases much slower than 5e, and magic is NOT Vancian in nature. 

Shadowdark IS a very resource dependant system, and light (torches) are a huge part of that. Realtime=gametime when it comes to torchlight, and as none of the PC races/species/heredities have dark or infra-vision, it makes pacing a very integral part of the game.

No feats or skills, and abilities gained at each level are mostly random. I am not sure I'd run Shadowdark as written, but it has many intriguing twists that I do like. Heck, I'm not sure if I'd house-rule Shadowdark into something I'd prefer, or take another OSR system like Swords &Wizardry and add aspects of Shadowdark to it. Decisions, decisions ;)

I AM backing the Shadowdark Kickstarter at $159, for all the loot. If nothing else, I feel confident I'll give it an honest shake before trying to morph it into something similar and yet not. Again, the Shadowdark Quickstart is free, and you can grab the Shadowdark hardback via Kickstarter for $59 (PDF for $25).

Shadowdark RPG has familiar elements of classic fantasy gaming, but it isn't a retro-clone. A lot of new game design ideas have emerged in the last 50 years, and we wanted to bring our favorite concepts together into a nostalgic-but-new adventuring system.

In this game, torches only last one hour of real time. The characters (and players) must make decisions quickly, or they'll run out of precious light! 

A few other features include: 

• The four core classes: fighter, priest, thief, wizard
• A d20-based, roll-high system
• No darkvision — total darkness is dangerous 
• Treasure grants XP, and tracking it is dead simple
• Roll-to-cast spells — magic is exciting and risky
• Simple distances (close, near, far)
• Monster morale and reaction rolls
• Always-on initiative — time is easy to track
• The six classic stats (3d6 in order) 
• No skills — just ability checks and advantage/disadvantage
• Separate ancestry and class
• Randomized character class abilities — emergent character growth!
• Low hit points — fast and deadly combat
• Simple encumbrance (gear slots)

 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 cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar

International GM's Day

 

Yesterday was International GM's Day designed to "to honor and praise the incredible diligence and impartial rulings of a game master."

Now I don't know about that "mission statement", as it were, but it sounds laudable. To me March 4th is more about remembering the man, well one of the men, that brought us not just Dungeons & Dragons, but role playing games in general.

It seems lately there's been a huge upswing in books and documentaries about the early days of D&D and about Gary Gygax. I've backed a couple of documentary Kickstarters and picked up some of these books, but I haven't gone through them all (some have yet to arrive).

It's been 15 years now and I still remember hearing about Gary's passing. Unfortunately I never met the man, but I was friends with plenty who have met and gamed with him....and even though my contact, as it were, was 2nd hand, RPGS have been a huge source of joy to me and most of my friends have been made through gaming connections.

Back in 2008 I was working my way up the HackMaster GM ladder (Technically I only made it to being a Level 4 GM, but I had met the requirements for Level 5....just never submitted that paperwork). My (ex)wife and I had planned on a gaming weekend at our local university and we had guests coming in to Idaho from California, Utah, and even Tennessee! I was able to put our guests up at a local hotel (since I'd earned a lot of Marriott points at work) and we were able to take over a small conference room at Boise State's Student Union.

I don't remember if we had four or five games scheduled, but we did end up cancelling the late afternoon Saturday game and we all headed out to a local pizza place to just hang out and socialize outside of the gaming table. We talked about a lot of stuff.....conversations long since forgotten, but it was not lost on me how this one common thread of RPGs connected us, and thankfully, still connects some of us.

Fifteen years later some of those in attendance at our very own Garycon are still friends. Life happens and managed to get in the way of some of our bonds, but I still keep in touch with those I can. One buddy will be joining me at North Texas RPG Con, which I am really looking forward to. I think we're only scheduled for one game together (so far), but we'll have plenty of time to socialize outside of the table....again.

Gary Gygax day is on July 27th and that's the time to celebrate the man himself, but this weekend, at least for me, it's a time to reflect on the game in general, and how much it has impacted my life.