Bat in the Attic

 I am happy to announce the release of the Premium Color edition of Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: The Northern Marches. Because of a mistake on my part, I wasn't able to enable this version of the Northern Marches during my public release on April 30th. For those wanting to purchase this version, I have attached a $5 off coupon valid until June 15th. 

Discount DriveThruRPG coupon

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?discountId=9ceee3becb

Product Link

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/555490/into-the-majestic-fantasy-realms-the-northern-marches

Here are some examples of what the Premium color version looks like.

Note the shine on the image of the watchtower

Last year, I launched the Kickstarter for Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: The Northern Marches. Over 800 backers brought my projects to life, and now it is time to let the rest of the hobby into this project and experience the Northern Marches and the freedom that a well-supported sandbox campaign offers. At 8pm EDT tonight, April 30th, on the Vlog of Many Things I will be releasing the guidebook and maps for public purchase.

Vlog of Many Things Live Stream

Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: Northern Marches

• Premium Color Hardback ($59.99)
• Standard Color Hardback ($49.99)
• Standard Color Softback ($39.99)

Maps of the Northern Marches and selected towns

• 18 printed 12" by 18"  Maps ($19.99)

Preview and Table of Contents

Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: The Northern Marches.

What if your players could shape a world that remembers them? From the frostbitten ruins of the Wild North to the magical storms of the Ring Islands, the Northern Marches await.

The Northern Marches expands my Blackmarsh setting into new lands: the cold taiga and icy rivers of the Wild North, the wilderness frontier of the Southlands, the conquered Viking realm of Vasa, and the westernmost duchy of the Grand Kingdom, Northport.

Each region of the Northern Marches brims with ancient ruins, forgotten magic, and factions fighting to shape the future. The Ring Islands, the Forsaken Desert, the forest of Les Gigantov, the Great Glacier, the Black Marshes, and the underwater realms of the Grey Sea all await adventurers willing to brave their dangers and plunge into their mysteries.

Together, the Northern Marches span over 100,000 square miles, divided across four 12" by 18" maps overlaid with a numbered hex grid for easy reference. Its factions, characters, histories, ruins, lairs, and cultures form a rich tapestry, creating a living world that players can visit as their characters while seeking adventure.

It is a world that remembers those who stood, fought, and changed destiny.

The Northern Marches contains the following items.

• Guidebook to the Northern Marches
• An editable markdown document of the Guidebook to the Northern Marches licensed for reuse under the CC-BY 4.0 license.
• 6 reference PDFs summarizing Encounters, Travel, Merchant Adventures, and a blank map outline for notes.
• 4 12" by 18" referee maps of the Northern Marches
• 4 12" by 18" player maps of the Northern Marches
• 2 combined player and referee maps of the Northern Marches
• A layered PDF of the map of the Northern Marches
• A layered SVG file of the map of the Northern Marches
• 5 Town and City Maps for referees.
• 5 Town and City Maps for the players.

I’ve been a fan of Columbia Games and the Harn setting since the early 1980s. It’s not just a strong medieval fantasy world in its own right. What has always set Harn apart is its modular design. Each product consists of self-contained articles, which makes it easy to incorporate material into other campaigns. I’ve used it extensively in my own Majestic Wilderlands and Majestic Fantasy Realms.

   Evael, Kingdom of the Elves Kickstarter

For decades, Harn products came as three-hole punch, loose-leaf articles. That format was ideal for organization. You could build your own binders exactly how you wanted.

That said, I’m aware I’m in the minority there in liking that format.

In recent years, Columbia Games shifted to hardcover releases, and they’ve just launched the Kickstarter for Kingdom of Evael, the final book in their nine-kingdom series.

Evael, Kingdom of the Elves Kickstarter

While a hardback, the format is still a series of articles covering the kingdom and various locations. So even if you don't ever plan to use Harn itself, it will be useful in giving you a capital for an elven realm (Elshavel*),  an elven port (Ulfshaften*), a strange, enigmatic ruin to explore (Pesino), or a cultural article on the Harnic Dark Elves (Morsindarin**)

While a lot of settings are good at lore, Harn is good at providing usable material for your campaign. And the Evael, Kingdom of the Elves, will do just that for the elves in your setting.

*I guess I am a superfan of Harn because I was able to type those names from memory correctly spelled.

** This would be useful to those of you who are fans of my Blackmarsh setting and want to flesh out the Brotherhood of the Raven.

Long-time readers of my blog know I have a long-standing abiding interest in space exploration. One of my hobbies is flying space simulators and writing realistic add-ons for them.  Artemis II launched a few days ago and is now heading to the moon for a fly-by. The flight's purpose is to check out the Orion capsule on a multi-day mission. Rather than just orbit the Earth the whole time like Apollo 7, NASA decided to use the time to perform a flyby of the Moon. The mission's various orbits have been cleverly designed so that, even if the capsule's propulsion system failed, the crew could return to Earth, including the lunar fly-by.

Because of the mission profile, the only time of the month Artemis II can be launched during this part of the year is during the full moon, as that is when the moon's orbit places it closest to Earth. Because of the the astronaut had a first-of-its-kind opportunity to take a picture of the entire Earth.

What you are seeing is a photograph of the entire Earth. It is not lit by the sun, which is behind our planet. But lit by moonlight. The camera settings were set to longer shutter times and other settings to allow more detail to be visible in the photo.

Some unique features you can see in the picture include the stars surrounding Earth. And you can see city lights as well. In the lower right, you can see the zodiacal light. At the bottom and top, you can see the green auroras hovering above the poles. And looking carefully at the edge of the Earth, you can see the edge of the atmosphere outlined by the sodium line caused by meteors burning up in thin air.

Enjoy, and Godspeed, the crew of Artemis II

Link to the Photo

 This past January, I had the privilege of attending the Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo and participating in a discussion panel on the State of the OSR. The panel was hosted by Luke Stratton, author of Pirate Borg and host of the Ship of the Dead podcast. My fellow panelists were Kelsey Dion (Shadowdark), Tiger Wizard of Exalted Funeral, and Levi Combs of Planet X Games.

We had a lively and positive discussion about the OSR and its various aspects, which you can view here. 

One of the first questions asked was “What is the OSR?” I’d like to share the answer I gave. Once again, thanks to Luke for hosting, and to Kelsey, Tiger, and Levi for a great discussion.

I’m going to offer a slightly different take on the question. What is the OSR? It’s about the logistics.
In 2009, I wrote that the OSR wasn’t about a specific rulebook or about running a dungeon crawl. It was about going back to the roots of our hobby and seeing what avenues were left unexplored because of the personal or commercial interests of the time. In fact, the OSR is an alternate history of what game design could be.
It started with the hack that Matt Finch, Stuart Marshall, and Chris Gonnerman discovered. They found that they could take the d20 SRD and, if they omitted the newer stuff, what they had left was only a hop and a skip away from the classic edition of your choice. From that, we are now living in that alternate history.
The reason we’re living in that alternate history is that we built the infrastructure to pursue those unexplored avenues: open licenses, digital distribution, and crowdfunding.
So my answer to the question “What is the OSR?” is simple: it’s all of the above. The classic editions form a gravitational point source around which systems, play styles, and projects orbit. Some of them achieve escape velocity, but most remain either further out or closer in.
Those classic, out-of-print books form the center of the OSR, but what you do matters more. It is the logistics that drove the explosion of creativity and enabled it to move from the gaming table to global audiences.
It’s why we have Shadowdark, Pirate Borg, OSRIC, my stuff, and all the other offerings, both commercial and non-commercial, available today.
So that’s what I think the OSR is.