Bundle of Holding - Knights of the Dinner Table (Early KotDT)

If you didn't get on this early Knights of the Dinner Table collection back in 2018, here's your chance to grab it now.

Hoody-hoo! We've resurrected our May 2018 Knights of the Dinner Bundle, a huge collection of .PDF e-comics featuring the longest-running and most successful comic strip in tabletop roleplaying game history, Knights of the Dinner Table by Jolly R. Blackburn. This bargain-priced offer from Kenzer & Company – one of two KoDT bundles now in progress – gives you well over a thousand pages from this classic comic's 30-year-run. In every issue, the players in B. A. Felton's HackMaster campaign find so many devious new ways to torment their Gamemaster, you'll say "They're just like my players!"

For just US$9.95 you get all nine titles in our Starter Collection (retail value $86) as DRM-free comics, including the first five KoDT Bundle of Trouble omnibus collections that together compile the first 15 issues of Knights of the Dinner Table magazine (Volume 1, V2, V3, V4, and V5), plus three Tales from the Vault collections of scarce early strips from four different magazines (V1, V2, and V3), and The CattlePunk Chronicles Volume 1: Outlaw Trail.

And if you pay more than the threshold price of $25.83, you'll level up and also get our entire Bonus Collection with nine more comics worth an additional $88.50, including five more KoDT Bundles of Trouble that collect KoDT issues #16-30 (V6, V7, V8, V9, and V10); the second CattlePunk Chronicles collection, Four Herdsmen of the Apocalypse; and three standalone issues: Men That Hack, The Java Joint, and KoDT Special #1: Last Man Standing.

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  

Deal of the Day - Cthulhu Through the Ages (CoC)

Call of Cthulhu is a classic, timeless game. I still have my boxed set of CoC from the 80s. Quite simply, it is a classic. I also own the current 7th Edition of CoC, and I have to say the Call of Cthulhu Starter Box is an example of what every RPG should be looking to emulate.

Cthulhu Through the Ages is today's Deal of the Day at DTRPG. Normally 7.47 in PDF, but until tomorrow morning Cthulhu Through the Ages is on sale for 1.49. 

GUIDELINES FOR PLAYING CALL OF CTHULHU IN SEVEN DIFFERENT ERAS

On release back in 1981, the initial setting of Call of Cthulhu focused upon the “classic” 1920s-era of the early twentieth century — the time of H.P. Lovecraft. It did not take long for players to realize the potential of the game —that it could adapt easily to other time periods.

Over the last thirty-plus years, players have been confronting the Cthulhu Mythos in all manner of historical settings: be it the Dark Ages, Imperial Rome, the Dreamlands, Victorian Gaslight-era, or even the far future! The minions of the Great Old Ones can always be found, lurking in the shadows.

The latest edition of Call of Cthulhu includes investigator occupations, equipment, and weapons for both the 1920s and modern-day settings, allowing for games to be set either time-frame. In due course, other published settings will be updated to the latest edition of the rules; however, Cthulhu Through The Ages has been created to help players adopt the latest rule set for the wide range of settings published by Chaosium.

Here you will find straight-forward guidance and era-specific rules for investigator creation for seven different settings. Also offered are updated rules for combat and a sprinkling of other topics like scenario seeds, setting-specific monsters, and investigator organizations.

Eras & Settings included:

• Cthulhu Invictus
• Mythic Iceland 
• Cthulhu Dark Ages
• H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands
• Cthulhu by Gaslight
• Cthulhu Icarus
• The Reaping 

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  

Deal of the Day - The Pits of Brund (ShadowDark)

I am a huge ShadowDark fanboy. An old-school game built on the 5e engine, it hits my gamer's sweet tooth.

The Pits of Brund for ShadowDark is today's Deal of the Day on DriveThruRPG. Normally 13.99 in PDF, but until tomorrow it is on sale for 2.80.

Adventure awaits. Rumors swirl around the cities, speaking of evil awakening in the Pits of Brund.

A Shadowdark-compatible role-playing game adventure for level 1-6 characters.

Whispers talk of fish-faced man-monsters, gigantic venomous wasps, corrupt wizards, blind cave-mutants, and terrible monsters lurking in the labyrinth. A Shadowdark-compatible role-playing game adventure for level 1-6 characters.

The Pits of Brund are a recently re-discovered series of caves that descend far into the barrow-earth. The bravest and most foolhardy seek treasure, plunder, and lore within places such as this.

• The Tomb of the Hunters: A recently reopened cave. A trio of crawlers recently headed into this cave system looking for wealth and secrets.
• The Opaline Tower: A milk-white tower atop a high bluff within the Badlands. Rumors say the tower’s master is a magus of great art.
• The Caves of Brund: A lengthy series of caves under the Badlands, extending almost endlessly. Deep ones, fish-faced humanoids, worship foul god-beasts here.
• The Deeper Caves of Brund: Even farther underground, the deeper caves contain great danger and commiserate reward. Deep ones, grimlocks, and other monsters make their home within the depths.
• The Temple of Bloat: Ypsil the black mage studies Ord’s celestial temple, working to corrupt the temple’s divine sky stone.
• Phurshole: Blind, six-fingered grimlocks lurk in this subterranean waterfall cavern, devoutly serving an albino hydra, the avatar of their diabolic masters.

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  

Bundle of Holding - Dark Eras (Chronicles of Darkness)

World of Darkness was HUGE in the early and mid-90s. My initial venture into it was Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Good times!

Well, WoD has gone through various iterations over the past few decades. Currently, Bundle of Holding has a Dark Eras bundle, and damn it is tempting, just for the lore alone.

Adventurer! This new Dark Eras Bundle presents dozens of historic settings for the Chronicles of Darkness tabletop roleplaying game of gothic horror from Onyx Path Publishing. We have shared the world with monsters for millennia. In the time of Alexander the God-King, mages fought their secret wars. In Elizabeth's London, vampires built their own empire brick by bloody brick. Before the founding of America, hunters fought enemies within and without. And in the Cold War, as the clock ticked towards Armageddon, we could have been damned by fallen angels. Dark Eras reveals the world throughout its long and storied past. Learn secret histories from the flame-lit Neolithic to the 1970s, from pharaonic Egypt to the Scandinavian witch trials, from Arthurian Britain to the Great War and beyond. Each setting features character creation rules and story hooks for two or three Chronicles of Darkness game lines, including Vampire: The Requiem, Mage: The Awakening, Hunter: The Vigil, Changeling: The Lost, and more.

For just US$9.95 you get all four titles in our Starter Collection (retail value $50) as DRM-free ebooks, including the complete Chronicles of Darkness Second Edition revised corebook (2012), the first Dark Eras sourcebook, the Dark Eras Storytellers Screen, and a collection of short stories, Tales of the Dark Eras.

And if you pay more than the threshold price of $25.10, you'll level up and also get our entire Bonus Collection with four more titles worth an additional $64, including Dark Eras 2, the Dark Eras Companion, the Chronicles of Darkness sourcebook Hurt Locker, and a precursor to the Dark Eras line, Victorian Lost.

(PS: Chronicles of Darkness players, check out the 75% discount sale, while supplies last, on the limited edition Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras 2 hardcover at Indie Press Revolution – a US$50 retail value for just $12.50.)

 

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  

Bundle of Holding - KoDT TROUBLE 6 (KoDT BUNDLES OF TROUBLE #51-60)

I really love my Knights of the Dinner Table. I still have the first 10 issues of KotDT, nearly as dog-eared as my original copies of Shadis Magazine. Damn! Those were the days ;)

I've learned to love digital comics, as they fit easily on my iPad, read really well, and I don't need a warehouse for storing boxes upon boxes of comics and graphic novels.

Reader, take note! This all-new KoDT Trouble 6 Bundle is one of two offers in progress featuring Jolly R. Blackburn's long-running comic about tabletop roleplaying, Knights of the Dinner Table from Kenzer & Company. If you're new to the Knights, start with our revived May 2018 Knights of the Dinner Bundle in progress. Then return here for this new "bundle of Bundles" with KoDT Bundle of Trouble compilations #51-60, collecting KoDT issues #179-218 (2011-2015). These Trouble-some collections make it easy to pull up a chair and enjoy the longest-running and most successful comic strip in RPG history.

For just US$19.95 you get all Ten Bundles of Trouble (retail value $130) as DRM-free comics, including Knights of the Dinner Table Bundle of Trouble Vol. 51, V52, V53, V54, V55, V56, V57, V58, V59, and V60.

Remember to check this new offer's revived companion from May 2018, Knights of the Dinner Table, with the early issues and miniseries.

 

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  

The DragonSlayer RPG Has a Dungeon Design Contest

Greg Gillespie, best known perhaps for the megadungeon Barrowmaze, is running a dungeon design contest in the DragonSlayer Facebook group. Details below:

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  

Initial Campaign Questionnaire

Pretty sure I've posted about my buddy Topher's pre-campaign questionnaire. I was first exposed to this document when we co-hosted some variation of "How to GM" at Origins back in 2007 (or so). My part focused on how to run a more frugal (less resource-intensive) game and IIRC Topher focused on some of the broader game/campaign management, hence the questionnaire.

Back in my earlier HackMaster days, when I was trying to get some local tournaments going, I repeatedly ran into HackMaster players that had been playing with the same group for decades, but had never left one of the player's basement....and they never intended to...which is a problem when you need a specific number of players before a HackMaster tournament is considered valid. Topher kind of had one of these groups, but they had no qualms about playing with others at tournaments. 

Actually, they were pretty much a well-oiled tournament machine that eventually became the group that writers specifically wrote against, which always rubbed me the wrong way...but that's for another time. One big thing they did is create characters as a group, ensuring to fill specific roles within the party, and often the party, and campaign, was themed. I can think of three examples, but will only give two: One campaign was essentially Hogwarts where every PC was some type of magic-user and every level was a year of the magical school. The other was a group of thieves adventuring during the fall of Constantinople.

Now I'm not Topher and I'm not sure that I can pull off his type of game/campaign, but then again I don't have his players. Not a dig on my players at all. We haven't played that type of game and likely never will, partly because of the nature of the group. I am the odd man out, living in another state, and I highly doubt we'll have a steady Monday night game.....but you never know.

Even so, I am totally stealing Topher's campaign questionnaire, but I tweaked it heavily for my own use. The questions are fairly generic though and I think others might get some good use out of it, so here it is. I actually have two versions,  the "plain" PDF and a rather quick & dirty PDF form. I am not a fan of the form because I'm not willing to spend too much time on it, and it's a bit... finicky. For the list boxes you have to use the up/down arrows and then click on the box to set the answer. 

Meh...ugly but it works. Just click on the appropriate picture to open the document in your browser, then download.

Blank Questionnaire

Questionnaire Form

Happy Easter to All!

 

The AI Easter Bunragon blesses you ;)