Deal of the Day - Troika! The Science Fantasy RPG

I've owned Troika! for a number of years. It's a sweet little RPG that sadly does NOT fit well with my current gaming group (always know what games/genres your group is comfortable with).

Troika! The Science Fantasy RPG is today's Deal of the Day. Normally 4.99 in PDF, but until tomorrow morning it is on sale for 2 bucks!

Troika! is a complete yet wildly open role-playing game. Players can expect to fly through mystic space, get lost in infinite cities of the gods, and meet strange & wonderful people all the while using a robust and familiar game system. 

With just one book and a couple of six-sided dice you'll be able to provide years of adventure for you and your friends. Once you're ready for more there is an abundance of material printed by the Melsonian Arts Council and Troika!s huge number of third party publishers and fans.

Inside the book you will find:

• A fully automated character creation system that generates exciting starting points for players to build upon
• Weighty lists of spells and enemies to encounter
• A baked-in plane-hopping setting which draws you into the world and allows you space to build upon its sturdy foundations
• Lavishly illustrated by Jeremy Duncan, Dirk Detweiler Leicthy, Sam Mameli, and ENnie award winning Andrew Walter

 

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  

Venger Con III - July 19-21, 2024

If I weren't limiting myself to one "fly to" convention in a year, so if it were just a tad closer, I'd be going to Venger Con this July. If it's within driving distance for you (which is subjective), Venger Con may be on your bucket list.

VENGER CON III: Revenge of the OSR is happening this July in Madison, WI. This is a small and exclusive (100 attendees max) con held in a very nice and new hotel focused on old-school, OSR, and traditional RPGs, organized by game designer, adventure author, and GM Venger Satanis.  No more shouting to be heard in noisy, distracting rooms packed-full of gamer-sardines: 

https://tabletop.events/conventions/venger-con-iii

Humble Bundle - Battletech Fiction Collection

For those who are into Battletech fiction, the 2024 Battletech Fiction Collection on Humble Bundle is a goldmine of reading material. You get 70 books in .mobi and .epub formats for 18 bucks. If you missed the 2023 Battletech Fiction Collection Bundle, you can snag that for another 12 bucks (so, 30 bucks gets you an ADDITIONAL 60 books, so 130 books!)

Dive deep into one of the most revered, long-running and influential universes in geekdom with this massive collection of BattleTech fiction! In Kell Hounds Ascendant, you’ll learn the origins of Morgan and Patrick Kell, two of the most fearsome MechWarriors in the Inner Sphere, straight from their creator Michael A. Stackpole. A Rock and a Hard Place follows the Gray Death Legion, another legendary merc company, on an adventure packed with BattleMech action and no shortage of political intrigue. Pay what you want for these and more—dozens of volumes and fiction plus issues of the Shrapnel, the official BattleTech magazine

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 - 13th Age MEGA

From the Bundle of Holding website, a 13th Age Bundle:

Adventurer! This revived December 2022 13th Age Megabundle once again presents .PDF ebooks of the freewheeling tabletop fantasy roleplaying game 13th Age from Pelgrane Press. 13th Age combines the best parts of traditional d20 RPGs with story-focused rules that let you run the kind of game you want. 13A gives you unique characters who, through their icon relationships, are immediately embedded in the setting in important ways – customizable monsters – and escalation dice for exciting, fast-moving battles.

Especially suited for new 13A players, this bargain-priced Megabundle revival once again gives you everything you need to run your own 13th Age campaign in the Dragon Empire. And all the scenarios and source material are 100% compatible with the new 13A Second Edition coming to Kickstarter this summer!

For just US$19.95 you get all nine titles in this revived offer's Starter Collection (retail value $158) as DRM-free ebooks, including the complete 13th Age Core Book (plus the Free RPG Day adventure Make Your Own Luck), the 13 True Ways rules expansion, the Bestiary and Bestiary 2, The Book of Loot and Loot Harder, The Book of Ages, the introductory adventure Crown of Axis, and the Game Master's Screen and Resource Book.

And if you pay more than the threshold price of $40.08, you'll level up and also get this revival's entire Bonus Collection with ten more titles worth an additional $172, including the supplements The Book of Demons and Book of the Underworld; the adventures Shards of the Broken Sky, Elven Towers, Eyes of the Stone Thief (plus the conversion for D&D 5E), and Shadows of Eldolan; three sets of iconic Battle Scenes (with their accompanying Map Folios) – High Magic & Low Cunning, The Crown Commands, and Fire & Faith; and the 171-page adventure Diamonds and Shadows, a collection of seven modules from the 13th Age Organized Play program available exclusively in this offer and nowhere else.

Bundle of Holding - Discworld (GURPS)

 

I'm a HUGE Discworld fan and own the first edition of the Discworld Roleplaying Game (powered by GURPS). It is a great resource for fans of the fiction and quite a nice introduction to the GURPS ruleset. 

Adventurer! This new Discworld Bundle presents the 2016 Discworld Roleplaying Game Second Edition standalone tabletop RPG Powered by GURPS, the Generic Universal RolePlaying System from Steve Jackson Games, and based on the Discworld comedic fantasy novels of Sir Terry Pratchett. Visit the magic-infused flat world resting on the backs of four elephants, venture to the far end of the probability curve, and THRILL to the distinctive sights, sounds, and smells (especially smells) of Ankh-Morpork, most dubious city in the multiverse! SAIL the Circle Sea in pursuit of glory, pirate gold, or a suntan! INTERVENE in the cultural interactions of trolls and dwarves (watch out for flying axes)! AVOID the attentions of Death, Fate, the Lady, Granny Weatherwax, and the Patrician! WONDER why you bought a second meat pie from Mr Dibbler!

For just US$14.95 you get all three titles in our Disc Collection (retail value $59) as DRM-free ebooks, including the complete 411-page Discworld Roleplaying Game (2016) along with two GURPS Fourth Edition supplements that enhance the setting: GURPS 4E Fantasy-Tech 1: The Edge of Reality and (from our June 2022 GURPS 4E Essentials offer) GURPS 4E Low-Tech.

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 - We Deal in Lead (Weird West)

I'm a huge fan of Spaghetti Westerns, as well as more recent classics like The Unforgiven, 3:10 to Yuma, and similar movies. It's purely American folklore and fantasy. I'm also a fan of post-apocalyptic settings and rulesets. Mix the two together and it seems like you got your chocolate in my peanut butter! ;)

We Deal in Lead is today's Deal of the Day at DTRPG. Normally 12.67 in PDF, but until tomorrow morning it is on sale for 6.33.

Edit - For what it's worth, I just bought and downloaded We Deal in Lead at the sale price and it looks very interesting.

We Deal in Lead is a weird west wanders TTRPG by Colin Le Sueur for 1 or more players. Streamlined rules, fast character creation, and gameplay built on exploration and player choice. Based on Cairn by Yochai Gal.

Features: 

• Set in a strange post-apocalyptic world eerily close to ours, where the borders of time and space wear thin
• You are Gunslingers, mythic champions holding off the forces of chaos with lead and grit
• Combat and exploration gameplay designed for 1 or more players, including solo or group play
• Streamlined d20 roll-under rules based on Cairn, Into the Odd, and Knave
• Hard-hitting gunslinger combat with new gun mechanics
• Compatible with other Cairn adventures and settings; journey with your gunslingers into other genres and times
• Recruit heroes from other worlds to join your quest, even those fallen to death; death is just another door, after all
• Keep the bonds of fellowship strong within your Gunslinger Order and your aim will remain true
• Wilderness survival and exploration through a world that has moved on — the known and unknown lands are dangerously unpredictable
• Friend and train beast companions to act as your eyes, ears, or fangs, including hawks, wolves, and bumblers

 

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  

We Lost Dave Arneson 15 Years Ago...Today

Today is the 15th Anniversary of Dave Arneson's passing, a little more than a year after we lost Gary. Now I never had the opportunity to meet that latter, but I did briefly meet Dave at GenCon 2008*. I'm not quite sure what kind of sense of humor the man had in life, but I had an idea what it was in death. He was being wheeled around in a wheelchair and it was obvious he knew that his end drew near. I know that sounds a little macabre and I'd apologize, but that's exactly how it sat with me.

Anyway, he was going around visiting the booths and handing out these little baggies. I was at the KenzerCo booth as I was still a volunteer then, and Jolly Blackburn took the offering and didn't really look at it. Not surprising really for him, which isn't a negative commentary. He gets handed cool stuff all the time and he's more into the interaction that the "thing". Jolly hands it to me saying something like, "You want it?" 

Sure.....I take a look and it's two Grey Gamescience D20's. Fuck yeah I'll take them....I am a Gamescience dice snob after all!

Upon closer inspection there is a small piece of paper. A note with a signature. The note read, "Rubbed in the hair of a live game designer." I do not think that was a snub against Gary, but a commentary on his own situation.

I've never rolled those d20's, and I likely never will.

The Empty Chair

Eulogy for a Gamer, by Jolly Blackburn

There is an empty chair,

at the table this day.

A hallowed place where,

a friend once played.

The roll of his dice,

my ears long to hear.

Or perhaps it would suffice,

if he should suddenly appear.

With character sheet in hand,

and a bag of Cheeze-doodles to share.

All his friends would stand,

as he sat in the empty chair.

I hear his voice a-callin’,

and it ties my heart in a knot.

For he cries, “Though a comrade has fallen,

You must play for those who cannot.”

We conquered worlds on the run,

he and I in the name of fun.

And as others may come and go,

I make both both friend and foe.

But what I long for most,

is our past now long a ghost.

Dave Arneson

 October 1, 1947 – April 7, 2009

*It could have been Origins. I remember the meet, not the event.