Bundle of Holding - Black Scrolls Map-Tiles

I used to view maps as less essential parts of RPG sessions. Give me Fog of War and a scanned map from a module, and I'm good. Slowly, I've become aware that maps, and visual aids like tokens, are useful in retaining a player's attention when gaming via a VTT (which is where I do all non-convention gaming these days).

JoetheLawyer scrounges the internet and beyond to find maps that fit the night's adventure, and I must admit that high-quality, full-color maps do look awesome on the computer screen.

The Black Scrolls Map-Tiles Bundle on Bundle of Holding looks like it would fit Joe's sessions perfectly, and probably save him hours of scrounging time ;)

Adventurer! We've resurrected our June 2021 Black Scrolls Modular Map-Tiles Bundle featuring beautiful full-color digital battlemat tiles for tabletop fantasy roleplaying games. Created by Hungarian graphic artist Antal Kéninger of Black Scrolls Games and funded in a November 2017 Kickstarter campaign, the mix-and-match tiles in the Cities of the Black Scrolls series depict medieval city and village buildings, castle and fortress walls, inns and arenas, cathedral aisles, and dungeon crypts. Print these modular PDFs and assemble them into gorgeous battle sites for your game table, or import the digital .JPG and .PNG images into your favorite virtual tabletop (VTT) like Roll20, Foundry VTT, or Fantasy Grounds.

Each Black Scrolls set includes dozens of digital tiles. Many outdoor scenes have day and night versions; many room tiles are provided both empty and furnished. Each set includes "cutout" props and accessories like tents, doors, gates, and dungeon traps. With the hundreds of tiles in this bargain-priced offer, you can build any inn, village, castle, fortress, or dungeon on the spot, and expand it by just placing another tile.

Note: These high-quality Black Scrolls image sets compose one of the largest offers we've ever presented. Each set is hundreds of megabytes in size, and the whole bundle measures 5.5 gigabytes. Clear space on your hard drive!

For just US$7.95 you get all four titles in this revived offer's Village Collection (retail value $35) as DRM-free titles, including Medieval Fantasy Village, Modular Inn, Cemetery, and – newly added in this revival – Docks and Canals.

(If you purchased this Black Scrolls offer in its original June 2021 run, you also receive the newly added Docks and Canals automatically on your Wizard's Cabinet download page and in your linked DriveThruRPG Library. When you buy a Bundle of Holding early, you never worry about missing a title added later – even much later.)

And if you pay more than the threshold price of $19.59, you'll level up and also get this revival's entire City Collection with seven more titles worth an additional $60, including City (plus the free City and Fortress Transition Tiles), Fortress, Castle, Moat and River, Cathedral, Dark Crypts, and – also newly added this time around – Trenches, a set designed for World War I scenarios but easily adapted to medieval fantasy battlegrounds. (And, again, if you bought the June 2021 offer, you get this new set automatically.)

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

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  

Humble Bundle - Terry Pratchett's Discworld (Fiction)

I've been a huge Terry Pratchett fan for 30 years or more. I could devour a Terry Pratchett novel in a single sitting over a weekend but would try to stretch it out for a few more days.

It's been years since I've read these, and I lost most of my paperbacks in a basement flood. I think I'm all in for a reading marathon of Terry's work on my iPad, or even convert to my Kindle. (exploring this website for conversion https://www.epubor.com/transfer-kobo-books-to-kindle.html)

You can get 38 books from Terry Pratchett's Discworld Series at Humble Bundle for 15 bucks. Jump all in. You won't regret it :)

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

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  

Death Announcement - Jennell Jaquays Has Passed

There are few times when I am at a loss for words, and this is one of them. Jennell Jaquays, an icon in the RPG industry, nearly since its creation, passed away this morning.

I could list Jennell's numerous accomplishments, in the tabletop RPG field, tabletop games, computer games, and more as an artist, writer, designer, and... more. Simple more. Jennell touched lives wherever she was, and the few times I was blessed enough to meet her were at NTRPG Con and she was always gracious and always kind.

Rest well. 

OSR Christmas - Gifting the Gifts of OSR Christmas Day 12

I'm still behind in the last week of gift emails, so if you have been waiting, I apologize. The weekend had little free time, and Rach had her last radiation treatment earlier today. With two more doctor's appointments over the next two days, time should be back to normal by this coming weekend. I'll try and dive into some of the current outstanding emails during JoetheLawyer's AD&D 2e game tonight ;)

Time to Gift the Final Gifts of OSR Christmas 2023. These are the gifts from OSR Christmas Day 12.

If you are named below, email me at tenkarsDOTtavern at that Gmail thing. In the subject, state "OSR Christmas Day 12". In the body of the email, state the gift you are receiving, your email, and in the case of Top Secret: New World Order, your full mailing address.

From DiceBro:

• PDF Bundle of issues1-3 of Wizard Funk, an OSR zine

DungeonMapper

From On the Tabletop:

•     PDF copy of Holmes & Clark, along with digital goodies

Hyrieus

From James Mishler Games:

• Set of 12 PDFs (by my count) of James Mishler releases for Shadowdark as well as the Isle of Eldisor for Labyrinth Lord in PDF

MGSherm

From Tenkar's Tavern/Solarian Games

New Copy of Top Secret: New World Order

Shipped in the US Only!

Ryan—Aqualith Media

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

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  

Humble Bundle - Call of Cthulhu

First things first, the past few days have not been useful for playing 'Catch-up', so if you are waiting on a response to an OSR Christmas email regarding a gift, it may be a day or so still before I get to it. You can still participate on the last day of OSR Christmas here until Tuesday evening, January 9th, 2024. Now, on to the subject of THIS post.

One of my unstated (until today) goals for 2024 is to run a few sessions of Call of Cthulhu for the first time in over 30 years. I was inspired after picking up the CoC Starter Set. It reads really well and has inspired me to return to some horror gaming via short campaigns.

The Call of Cthulhu Humble Bundle has two sweet spots in my opinion. If your pockets are nearly empty, forego the Starbucks coffee one day this week and put the monies towards the 5 Buck Bundle level. You get the CoC Starter Set, five scenarios for beginning Keepers (GMs), Sandy Peterson's Lovecraftian Horrors, and of course, a CoC Coloring Book ;)

Skip the 15 Buck Bundle level and jump right to the Call of Cthulhu 25 Buck Bundle Level. You get the two core books, three solo adventures, settings for pulp, French Revolution, Weird West, Dark Ages, and more. More Old Ones than you can shake a stump at! heh

Bring a taste of terror to your game nights with this bundle from Chaosium, complete with everything you need to run the dreaded (yet beloved) Call of Cthulhu RPG system! On top of the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set, you’ll get the Investigator Handbook, replete with expanded rules for creating player characters, as well as the Keeper Rulebook, brimming with all the information you need to keep things orderly as your table descends into madness. You’ll also get tons of adventures, including some aimed at first-time game masters, as well as entire campaigns! Pay what you want for over 25 books and game aids for this seminal RPG and help support the World Wildlife Fund with your purchase!

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

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  

So When Do You Call it?

Yesterday was a complete shit-show, as-in pretty much everything I tried to do on my Saturday went to shit. My day started waaaaay too early when I thought some idiot was trying to break into my home at 1 AM. No, I was the idiot, a fact I learned quickly...and painfully as I discovered the source of the broken glass that had woken me up......with my foot. It wasn't the window but a liter beer stein that fell down from a high shelf (still don't know how).

Fortunately that was the only bleeding I did yesterday and since I was working with power tools I consider myself rather fortunate. Instead of cutting off a few fingers I only managed to ruin $50+ of wood, make a mess of my garage, and put a few holes in my wall......

Honestly, I would have been so much better off lighting a Benjamin on fire and going to bed early, like 10 AM.

Even though the weather was cooperating, I finally decided to pack it in early and nope out of my projects. Patching the holes in the wall, cleaning my mess up, and tossing my project in the scrap heap can wait. Looking back I really wish I could've quit much earlier......

......I really wish I could've quit much earlier.

When I "called it" that actual thought was going through my mind, and as I did the patching, and the sweeping, and bought replacement wood, this mantra (for lack of a better word) kept running through my mind.

I think most of us have issues recognizing when things have gone too far and we should just pack it in. Obviously I'm giving a real-world example, but I've seen this a lot of times at the game table. I've seen it as a player, and definitely as a GM. 

Go ahead, reach in...

On the player side of things I've partaken in going down the rabbit hole of the GM tempting the party with an obscure "something" just out of easy reach. "You think you could reach it if you stuck your whole arm in...." I seem to recall a time my GM got one of us to dive under some water and into an empty cavern beyond the wall just because someone saw "a box" through a hole in the wall into said cavern. IIRC that water made the PC turn into some type of snake-man abomination....

Now as a GM, I've also teased players in a similar fashion: I had a spellbook "hidden" underneath a stove that was in danger of being consumed by some green slime, only being held back by a weak protective shield. Personally I had plenty of ideas on how the party's spellcaster could get access to that book, but evidently the player couldn't come up with two, and went with the only one that occurred to him, which was just reaching in and grabbing it*. End result was one spellcaster missing a hand because the ranger had to do a field-expedient amputation lest the green slime take over completely. Now that was a fun night.

Fun for me, but I'm certain that David wished he'd made better choices leading up to the ...well "incident".

I tend to see players take too long to nope out at conventions, mostly because they are playing for a set time period and have no real investment into their characters. Most of the TPKs I've seen (both sides of the screen) have been at convention games/tournaments. Since they have the time, or are trying to "win", they'll push one room too many, or opt to stay in the fight for "one more attack roll", thinking the tide of bad luck coming their way will subside in time. Head's up....it rarely does.

While defeat is par for the course, those times when you do manage to pull a W out of thin air are pretty sweet. I can think of a few examples and I'll spare you from a slew of tangent character stories, but I'm sure you probably have a few of your own.

*I've not been shy about just how much I loath Green Slime as a monster and I use it sparingly, with plenty of foreshadowing/forewarning. If your PC gets hit by green slime at my table it's very much your own damned fault.