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There aren't any OSR or Old School RPGs in the deep discount Christmas in July Doorbusters this year, but there certainly IS a title that I find intriguing - Kids on Bikes.

Kids on Bikes is essentially Stranger Things RPG (remember the first season and how big their bikes played a role). 

I'm not saying that the Kids on Bikes: Second Edition Core Rulebook will be fully, or even partially, within my wheelhouse, but with it priced at $2.50 (instead of $9.99), I'll take the plunge, and I suggest many of you do so also.

The Adventures of Kids on Bikes take place in small towns at any point in history before: 

• everyone had a camera phone that could catch video of a ghost
• use GPS to track a homicidal maniac roaming around town
• research an old creaky house in seconds using the internet

Kids on Bikes takes place in a more mysterious time, where anything and everything could happen.

Kids on Bikes is a 138-page, rules-light, fast-paced storytelling game in the spirit of games like Dread, Perseverant, Monsterhearts, and other great indie titles. Kids on Bikes is perfect for game nights in which you want to get a game in RIGHT NOW. 

Using stats like GRIT, CHARM, FIGHT, FLIGHT, BRAINS and BRAWN, you’ll jump into the action. Each skill is represented by a polyhedral die based on your character’s competence. More sides = better chance of success.

That being said, even low stats always have a chance of success, as any max result EXPLODES leading to an additional re-roll contributing to the results. Lower sided dice mean bigger chances of explosions!

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" Created by Eric Bloat & Josh Palmer, SURVIVE THIS!! What Shadows Hide is a standalone roleplaying game and does not require any additional gaming material to play. However, as part of the SURVIVE THIS!! game line, What Shadows Hide is 100% fully compatible with SURVIVE THIS!! ZOMBIES!, DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS, VIGILANTE CITY, and SURVIVE THIS!! FANTASY, We Die Young, and can be Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 Chase and Gun cards are here! Released Today! Get it while it's hot!

What is this? Just some nice looking cards to help you play Sinless. A small selection is below!

https://sinlessrpg.com

Hack & Slash 

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 I decided if I knew so much about games, I made one.

You couldn't ask for better feeling feedback.

I've been making games since I was little. If you're interested in something that will make your players say something like this, you should just go read Sinless on https://sinlessrpg.com.

https://sinlessrpg.com

Hack & Slash 

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By Gavin Norman, Yves Geens
Necrotic Gnome
OSE
Levels 4-6

The once-proud Abbey of St Clewyd the Refulgent has stood in ruins for a century, wracked with weird energies and haunted by wicked spirits. Several missions have sought to reclaim the abbey and quell the tides of Chaos. All have failed. What treasures lie untouched within, ripe for the picking? Can the mystery of the abbey’s ruination be unravelled and the forces of Chaos be vanquished?

This sixty page adventure describes a ruined abbey with about twenty locations above ground and thirty below ground in two major zones. It’s got a creepy vibe, with real consequences and rewards for a campaign while not apocalyptic. Creepy happenings create an interesting environment with just enough interactivity beyond undead killing to bring some extra life to it. While I’m generally a fan of the OSE style, it does show some weakness here, but, overall, this is a real adventuring locale and solid piece.

I reviewed the upper level of this awhile back, from Wormskin, but never hit the follow up issue so didn’t review the dungeon proper. It’s now out as a standalone product. Originally thought the upper ruins were a bit sparse, as a standalone adventure, but was a big fan of the spooky vibe. The vibe remains strong and the upper ruins serve as a good intro to the lower ruins below.

I am a fan of most of the hooks here. The first is essentially a treasure map “PCs come into possession of ancient Liturgic documents detailing the fate of the fabled crown of Prince Gaspar of Brackenwold, believed lost for 900 years..” That’s a great localization of a treasure map, with the notes providing a little more specificity. The second has the church getting the party to retrieve relics from the ruins and “ Successful PCs are appointed as leaders of a sect responsible for warding any retrieved artefacts. They are granted four followers (Level 1 clerics) and funds to construct a shrine in a settlement of their choosing.” At level four to six we can see how this plays in to the stronghold elements that should be popping up about then. This is a great appeal to the players egos, parades from the locals always go over well, and feeds, again, in to the power levels that the players characters should be approaching. (Similarly, the consequences section in the end of the adventure provides some nice impacts to play that are meaningful to a real world feel but are not necessarily apocalyptic in nature. A refreshing change from the usual “world is at risk” nonsense that infects many adventures.) Thins run a bit long for my taste, but as preamble and post-script that’s not a huge deal. I will note that there is also a section noting the adventures inclusion in the larger world which states “As such, the Referee could use this adventure as part of a wider campaign arc involving one or both factions.” This is something that should have been mentioned in the marketing, greatly increasing the appeal for those playing in that way but there’s essentially no way to know that until you have the product in hand.

We’ve got an abbey devoted to a saint. A few hundred years ago Something Bad happened and it became a no go zone, weird and strange effects abound. Recently things have settled down a bit, leaving you open to exploration. In actuality, an abbot got uppity, did some magic that fused the saint and nemesis. This has resulted in about half of the crypts underneath being a kind of chaos zone and the other half somewhat settled with the remaining monks devoted to caring for their new hybrid/crazy/resurrected saint. Oh, and they get resurrected when they die and are locked in to the complex. And sometimes the resurrection doesn’t take right and they go insane. Thus we have the upper ruins, a kind of undead/chaos zone with a rift, and a somewhat settled zone in the dungeon with the monks. Who have a couple of factions, one devoted to maintaining their watch and another sect who wants out. These three zones provide a decent amount of variety to play and I’m happy to see it, especially in something with,say, fifty room keys. 

The situations here contribute to a spooky vibe, from a couple of different angles. Fans of the Stalker movie will get that kind of unearthly weird vibe from several of the effects. Then there is the outright creepiness that the ruins above provide, that is then augmented by the theming of the religious ruins that hits in several places to build that feeling.

There are children in the upper ruins. In ragged clothes, filthy dirty. Children playing and laughing in such a dangerous place should immediately put the party on edge. Further, you might encounter them digging, with their hands, in the graveyard. Digging up bones. Especially teeth. Mr Rag-and-Bone is their friend! Later we see taxidermy, with them having prominent human teeth in them. This all leads up to The Gloom, something I mentioned in my initial review as a strong point. It remains strong, a collection of decaying crows in humanoid form, charming children, but caring for and nurturing its ‘foster children.’ This is clearly undead and evil, a thing from nightmares. But not done in a ham-fisted way and thus providing some complexity to play. I mean, I’m probably gonna stab the fuck out of it, but, also, hey, maybe it can do something for us? In other parts of the adventure there ARE things/people who can do things for you, (including a fair number of dead monk ghosts who want to be laid to rest and can provide from parting boons) but the adventure misses a little here by not including that data for Mr Rag-and-bones. 

Theming in the adventure is good. Consistent details across several locations leads to a build up and set expectations well. Murals provide some context, and interactivity, but are handled better than murals in most adventures, with specific detail without going overboard. The chapel to a random saint has the saints themes in several of areas without really hitting you in the head with it. 

There’s a big problem to solve in this adventure, should the party undertake it, in closing a rift. Related to that at the faction play elements with the ‘surviving monks’, which could lead to religious conflict, literally, and the head monk perhaps, in duplicity, sending the party on a fatal quest. “If you all jump in to the rift with this magic sceptre then all problems will be solved!” … says the leader of faction that wants to maintain the status quo. As they say, trust but verify. Other places have crypts to open, chains to pull, and obstacles (literally) to overcome. There IS a decent amount of stabbing, but even that is just a little bit more, like opening a tomb first and its coming out of it. Dummy, what did you think was going to happen when you open a tomb in a complex full of undead? 

On to the OSE style … which is hit or miss here. The maps are clear and evocative, but I do wish there was a little more information on sound/light/reacting creatures on them. The style itself, well, it’s OSE and I generally like it for the amount of information it provides in a very scannable way at the table. There are, though, I think, a couple of issues with it, at least as presented here.

First, I’m not sure it’s the best for presenting the sort of creepy environment here. I think most of that vibe comes from the situations rather than the evocative nature of the writing. I don’t think it starts strong with a lead in of creep vibe. Descriptions might starts with something like Limestone walls, charred beams and the like. I might say this is a violation of my general thinking that The Most Important Thing Comes First. A dragon, maybe, if its obviously there, but also the vibe you want to convey. It’s clearly supposed to be creepy but the lead-in is mundanity. That evocative nature to the rooms isn’t lead strongly. 

Related to this is the dragon issue. Generally the creature in the room isn’t in the initial description. It follows later in its own section. I’m not a fan of this at all. We now need to hunt the entire room description to find the things we should be telling the party about, which is the entire point of the OSE style: to not have to do that. “Wait, there are gargoyles in this room? Oh, yeah, there’s statues in here.” you can eventually tell the players when you finally reach that section of the room description. 

But, also, this is a pretty strong adventure. It is a real site-based adventure, and those tend to be few and far between. There is more than enough going on to provide a lot of complex play for your players and their characters. I’d run this.

This is $10 at DriveThru. Hey man, no preview?! Pfffft!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/527291/the-ruined-abbey-of-st-clewyd?1892600

Inm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at comics that were published on July 19, 1984.

Justice League of America Annual #2: Well, here's the big change editorial has been teasing. In the wake of the Earth-Mars War and the destruction of the satellite, Aquaman officially disbands the JLA (his right as chair and the only founding member present, apparently) saying that the world deserves a more dedicated, full-time group of heroes. Having just had his wife leave him, he's willing to make that commitment, as are Elongated Man and Zatanna. Martian Manhunter also steps up and rejoins. Soon, new heroes Vixen and Steel volunteer. Steel even offers them a new base and training center--in Detroit. Shortly after the move they meet the empowered neighborhood youths, Vibe and Gypsy, and they are recruited for the team. The issue ends with the neighborhood throwing a street party in honor of their new neighbors.
This era of the League isn't well thought of, but I was there at the ground floor in 1984, having bought this issue off the stands. I wouldn't say I liked these characters better than the sort of Superfriends roster, but I did like getting to see a new team forming, and the fact that they would do this meant the title was actually going somewhere. Conway's obvious inspiration here seems to be the "Cap's Kooky Quartet" era of Avengers, but I don't think it works quite as well because some of the characters are a bit too "kooky" (Vibe and Gypsy). Beyond that though, I think was clearly an attempt to grab some of the energy of DC's successful Teen Titans and Legion of Super-Heroes franchises (and X-Men): a close-knit group of often younger characters whose adventures involved a lot of character drama. In fact, the new character's here kind of fill similar niches to the new Titans in NTT: Cyborg (Steel) as the cybernetic hero with parental figure conflict, Starfire (Vixen) as the vivacious warrior woman, Gypsy (Raven) the mystery woman, and Changeling (Vibe) for comedy relief.

Batman and the Outsiders #14: The 1984 Summer Olympics will get under way in Los Angeles on July 28, so Barr and Willingham/Anderson give us a topical story. Maxie Zeus breaks out of Arkham with the goal of trying to make Olympic athlete Lacinia Nitocris his queen. He calls up the Monitor (that guy again!) to outfit his New Olympians. When Maxie and his crew interrupt the Olympic games, Batman and the Outsiders are on hand undercover to challenge them.
In the first part of the issue, we get a peak at the Outsiders in their private lives, which includes a brief bit of romcom where Halo and Geo-Force first interview with each other's dating lives before acting on their feelings for each other.

Blue Devil #5: This is another (and the last to be published) of the stories in Best of DC #61 "Years Best Comics Stories" that I have mentioned several times. And this is a good one! Not an "Anatomy Lesson," perhaps, but Mishkin/Cohn and Cullins/Martin craft story that is both well-done and fun. After the events of last issue, Nebiros is rampaging in Mexico, and Blue Devil and Zatanna have to stop him. The Mexican army takes their shot, but Nebiros is too powerful. They are helpful with the army of lesser demons he calls up. The two magical heroes have to engage him. Blue Devil manages to regain control of his tridents and the two push Nebiros back through a portal to Hell.
For those keeping score, the Monitor and Lyla make a brief cameo this issue, uh--monitoring events in Mexico.

Green Lantern #181: This arc by Wein and Gibbons/DeCarlo might feel more noteworthy if it hadn't come closely on the heels of a long arc where Hal was at points at odds or on the outs with the Guardians. It's one of the inherent problems with serialized media, I suppose, but particularly comics: every new team wants to make sure classic stories are told their way, so you get repeated elements. Here, Jordan flies off to deliver his resignation to the Guardians on Oa so he can be with Carol. A group of his colleagues in the Corps try to get him to reconsider--and Katma Tui is angry because he convinced her to stay in the past, giving up her love to do so, but he won't be dissuaded. So, he goes through with it and returns to Earth a civilian, still wondering if he made the right decision.
While all this is going on, Jason Bloch is killed in his office by someone in shadow who looks suspiciously like the Predator and admonishes him for not listening to Smith from Con-Trol. Bloch manages to stumble out and try to out Jordan as Green Lantern before dying, but unfortunately for him the only person who hears his final words is Diana Prince, and she protects Green Lantern's secret.
In the Tales of the Green Lantern Corps backup by Kupperberg and Newton a robbed figure walks into a Star Wars cantina-esque bar. It's the Green Lantern Ch'p, and he teaches a group of space pirates not to take any member of the Corps lightly.

Infinity, Inc. #7: The Thomas' and Ordway/Machlan have us still in midstream of this Koehaha River arc. Power Girl is unable to stop Superman in Metropolis and has to escape or be killed. Fury, Northwind, and Silver Scarab try to stop Hawkman and Wonder Woman from stealing an ancient statue of Horus. Wonder Woman snaps out of the magically induced ruthlessness, but only after accidentally injuring her husband, Steve Trevor, ironically in an effort to win the secret of immortality for him.

Legion of Super-Heroes #3: The Legion of Super-Villains have 3 Legionnaires captive on Orando. They draw the other Legionnaires into a trap, attacking them in space as they are rushing to the rescue. A few more Legionnaires arrive, though, and the villains are defeated. Their ultimate goal is revealed: to somehow escape to a universe without heroes. Under good issue from Levitz/Giffen and Lightle/Mahlstedt.

New Talent Showcase #10: There's little to like in this issue, unfortunately. Jenesis is still the leader of the pack, with a story that has her attempting to use empathy and communication, not superhero brawn to win the day when a distraught man takes hostages at a medical facility. The police sort of spoil it though. There there's Astro-Busters by Stradley and Saltares about a group of miners in the Belt who have to put their interpersonal differences aside to deal with pirates.
Besides Nick O'Tyme, the other two stories are amateurish almost supers rpg-level superhero stories. Part 2 of the Progency story does have art by Jeff Dee, though, but he's not done any favors it looks like by Joyce's inks.

Saga of Swamp Thing #29: Moore and Bissette/Totleben have Abigail make the horrific discovery that her husband Matt who appeared to have gotten himself together, bought a house for them and got a job, has been taken over by her evil uncle Anton Arcane. A horror filled issue, but we are definitely in decompression here. The Pasko years would have probably handled all this in a page. I'm not complaining at all, just noting the shift to a more cinematic storytelling style that eventually all comics will embrace. 

Sgt. Rock #393: In the main story, Bulldozer's kid brother joins Easy. With flowers under his helmet netting, he seems to be coded with an anachronistic hippie vibe. Anyway, he proves his worth despite his unusual ways by getting Easy out of a tough spot with a disguise as an old Italian lady selling vegetables, so he can get close enough to lob grenades at a German installation.
The other two stories seem like leftovers from Weird War Tales and are by writers other than Kanigher. In the first, by Andy Kubert and Ron Wagner, a German grenadier discovers that he can't escape war even in death. The second, written by Alan Baker with somewhat amateurish but evocative art from Jim Balent's DC debut, takes the pessimistic that war crimes and attacks on civilians will still be a feature of warfare in the remote future.

Warlord #86: Cool Jurgens cover, though it oversells the "Forever Man" as a thing. I reviewed the main story here. In the Barren Earth backup by Cohn and Randall, Jinal and friend capture their Qlov after an extended struggle. A minor mystery is uncovered as the Qlov proves susceptible to a sedative that works on humans.

Thriller #11: DuBay/Niño limp Thriller toward its conclusion in a way that makes an already complicated title more so. It's an odd approach to use everything that your predecessors did on a title but completely alter the relationships between all the characters and their status quo. I suppose "everything you know is wrong" has a strong pedigree in comics, but usually that entails just dropping some stuff. Not here. Still dealing with the fallout of an aborted Golden Age last issue, we learn that Angie Thriller is apparently thrown in with Lusk as is apparently having an affair with him. And is sort of his daughter, in the sense that he (I guess, it's unclear) created her in a lab. Anyway, one issue to go, per the editorial here.

I like short and light OSR rulesets. Remember, I'm the guy behind Swords & Wizardry Light & Continual Light. ROGUELAND looks awesome, and even if I don't ever run it, I may steal, er - borrow from it liberally.

ROGUELAND is available for free in PDF. Simply add it to your DTRPG cart and add it to your digital collection.

ROGUELAND is a 36 page rules-light, tabletop role-playing game. It is based on Ben Milton's Knave with modifications that focus on:

• - defining characters by the items they carry rather than specific abilities or class features
• - interpreting and casting free-form magic
• - monster, trap, and treasure generation
• - exploration procedures
• - and more

This game uses player-facing, roll-high, d20 mechanics, and is broadly compatible with other OSR games and source materials.

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My parents collected games.

There were walls of board games in my house. I was an early reader, but being able to read, doesn't necessarily mean understanding. I had a friend in college who talked about misunderstanding 'save versus poison'. Do you take the poison and keep it for later? 

There were so many games in my house, but for the first half-decade I was just looking at the pieces and the cards and played my own games. Then, when I was older, I got to play the games as they actually were meant to be played.

Three Games of Sinless

Stop Thief!

Stop Thief was an early favorite. It had a colorful board, covered with various shops, little plastic detective men, and, a 9-Volt, electronic device that tracked the location of the invisible thief.

You moved around the board, the device would tell you if you heard footsteps, an alarm or broken glass.

This is. . . extremely similar to dungeon play, even more so then the contemporary board game Dungeon! and HeroQuest.

Dungeon did have a bit of active monster behavior, they would 'take over' their

room if attacked by the player. The interesting thing in Stop Thief! is of course, that both the player and the opponent are on the board and searching for you. There was an even earlier game, Venture! on the colecovision, and it was a pretty weird-you were a little dot. And when you entered a shape, it was a 'room' filled with treasure and monsters.

But there's a timer, take too long to kill the monsters and grab the treasure, and the most terrifying noise known to man happened, and a *giant* version of the little sweeps you had to avoid when you were a little dot instead of a smiley face with a bow, turned into giant tentacle monsters that kept you on a timer. 

This-I mean, a megadungeon zone or floor is a board. It is the dungeon game. You can move 6"12" inches (spaces) on your turn, and the unseen monsters move, and every monster roll added another to the board. (engagement distance is 3"-18" away, and most dungeon rooms are somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-8" big). 

In an operation, you infiltrate hiding from the defensive forces, until they become alert and engage with you. The main game-the operation.

Thunder Road!

This is the second game. It's a game with two boards with wasteland style street decals. The boards lay sequentially. You start on board one, and move down the wide open street to board two. You roll dice to move your team of vehicles. You can attack the other vehicle teams (Three vehicles and a helicopter). The first vehicle to reach the other side of the second board causes you to lift up the back board, getting rid of all the pieces and placing the first board in front, making the second board the rear one, and the remaining vehicles racing to the end of the board. The game ends when all players but one are eliminated. 

There are-I mean you roll your dice to move. Do you move? do you focus on

gunning? Do you run one piece ahead and hope it doesn't get blown up? So many good choices.

It was this model we developed our travel (overland) game. It is a staple, and frankly shameful that modern/crime/sci-fi games don't model car chases. It is critical to the genera. 

It is the section where you travel-via caravan, underground, from place to place, while under threat. It is this game that gives distance and weight to choices. It is what keeps it from being a static labyrinth. Here is not there.

Chaos Overlords

Finally, the city adventure. In D&D the city adventure is just a place to rest, recuperate, train, and shop.

Take some guesses what you can do during a sector turn in Sinless.

But unlike just having downtime activities, there are various resources players can own and control. 

Chaos Overlords was a computer game in the early 90's that involved colorful gangs fighting for control over territory in a megacity. Once taken over, they could be developed, improved, and provide benefits to your gang of thugs. 

Early D&D was no different, it in fact suggested you use a board for a completely different game for wilderness survival!

https://sinlessrpg.com

Hack & Slash 

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 "Somewhere, sometime in the future, catastrophe has come to earth'"Leap from your bunker with what supplies you can carry strapped to your back, stuffed in your pockets, or carried in your bare hands, because the world's end has come to your door. One resounding explosion has cut the water to your little world and catastrophe looms. The walls you built no longer matter, the food you've Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

I remember seeing the ads for Dragon Warriors in Dragon Magazine back in the 80s. Damn, but the game looked so damn cool. Now, Dragon Warriors is priced at PWYW - both PDF and Print versions. And The Curse on God's Acre – A Dragon Warriors Solo Adventure clocks in at over 250 pages and is ALSO PWYW! Ah, to be young again!

What do you get with The Curse on God's Acre?

Deep in the fertile countryside of Chaubrette, you find yourself in God's Acre, an isolated valley containing the villages of Pernay, Lancome, and Monques. Here the sturdy locals grow wine and keep sheep — but all is not as it seems. A pernicious evil haunts the lanes and narrow fields of God's Acre.

Revealed at first in scraps of children's songs, in the blank stares of straw dolls, in the animals masks lurking in the shadows, in the tangled entrails of a murdered woman ... a witch cult has the valley in its grasp and is squeezing tighter.

Can you break The Curse on God's Acre?

A Dragon Warriors adventure for any profession, 3rd or 4th Rank. 508 entries.

Dragon Warriors'  40th anniversary won't pass unnoticed as long as Red Ruin Publishing have anything to say about it. They've just released the seventeenth book in their series of DW adventures, and it's one of the best. "The Curse on God's Acre is a memorable solo scenario that deserves a place in every Dragon Warriors player's collection." Dave Morris, Creator of Dragon Warriors

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 Table Top RPG's are always three games.

When I was a youth, there was an early Nintendo Entertainment System game, called Bayou Billy. The Nintendo at this time was only available with Robbie the Robot, who used centrifugal discs to play a pillar puzzle game with you. Robbie isn't important. He was not a complicated Robot.

The innovation that Bayou Billy had was *Three* games. You see you had a driving game where you drove somewhere in the swamp while you killed homeless swamp people on bikes tried to kill you, and then, sometimes, you would stop your car after beating up bike people, and walk into the swamp, and beat up the swamp people who had houses.

Don't feel too bad, the swamp people had trusty alligators and dogs and eagles.  Finally, there were two sections that contained a first person style shooting gallery.

Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons is dead, long live Dungeons & Dragons. In spite of running a toy company, corporate malfeasance and the lust for gold have killed the official game of D&D. Do not fear, for this is not the first time the dragon has fallen from his throne. 

We all grew up hearing the tale of the golden goose, but they've always got to kill it themselves. We literally have a saying that's almost too old to source about how this turns out. Every time. 

It isn't the dragon that's important anyway. I hear the replacement this time is a combination of Shadows, Daggers, Hearts, and Darkness. 

Dungeons and Dragons is three games.

You know what they are! I'm not going to say them!

They are called out in most of the versions in print, and each has separate and distinct procedures of play

This is important to the contextualization of the play experience. 

Sorry. You see, what you do in one layer, affects another layer, and this gives meaning to the similar play loop beyond the moment. 

You are making progress. You are pushing back the fog of war. You are uncovering the doom of civilization in your pursuit of power. 

Three games.

https://sinlessrpg.com

Hack & Slash 

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By Stephen Smith
Mister Smith Design
OSE
Levels 1-3

SIPPING ON SHADOWS FROM A BOTTLE OF BETRAYAL! Ardin Winery, once a flourishing estate, is now on the brink of collapse. The Baroness promises a generous reward to anyone who can save her farm from distress. A sobering reality—her recently deceased husband secretly attempted to formulate an eldritch wine and cheat death—but the dark recipe twisted his body and mind instead. It’s time to uncork the truth!

This 26 page adventure uses three pages to describe thirteen rooms in the basement of a vineyard mansion. It feels like 5e conversion crap, though I can find no of another version. It’s nice to see someone making all of the classic mistakes and producing classic shovelware.

Isn’t it fun, the many myriad ways in which adventures can suck ass? Today we have a classic shovelware adventure. All of the trappings of a decent adventure with none of the content to make it so. Dude made 28 pages of content, art, all of those words, and only three pages are the actual fucking adventure. Which is gonna suck ass, but, imagine what the thirteen adventure rooms could look like if the designer had actually put effort in to them? I mean, all of that effort that went in to the other 25 pages. What if THAT effort was sent on the fucking room keys? You know, the art piece of two wizards (one barefoot. No wizard goes barefoot man.) The brothers, a wizard and an illusionist, that have crafted the bespoke security measures for the winery in which the adventure takes place. That art piece. The backstory for them. WHo don’t appear int eha adventure at all and are never referenced by anyone in any way. That effort. What if instead you had spent that fucking effort on actuall doing your fucking job as a fucking designer and made just one sentence in one room key actuall decent? Think about how you could be proud of that one sentence. How you could have contributed to a better world, producing something worthwhile. Instead of spending your time on AI art prompts for an art piece to accompany the sidebar description of the two magical brothers (one of who doesn’t wear shoes. Yes, that bothers me a lot.) who run a bespoke security company. That has no impact on the adventure at all. But, no, you made a different decision. Put your fucking effort in to the part of the adventure that matters. This is almost always the fucking encounter keys, by a lopsided degree. Yes, content and supplemental material like a wanderer table help with adventure. But the fucking keys ARE the adventure. That’s where most of the designers effort should be. It’s not an afterthought.

Hey, have you ever wondered what a farm field looks like? “Rows of wheat, barley, corn, and root vegetables stretch across the gently rolling hills. The land is tilled in organized sections. Rutted paths allow carts to pass through for harvesting.” Yeah, that’s a farm field. Good thing you put that description in there telling me what a farm field looks like. Otherwise I might not know what a farm field looks like. Over and over again, hammering in mundane and worthless descriptions. We know what a kitchen looks like. Tell us why this kitchen is different. 

Line after line of text description background information. Line after line of text explaining why something is the way it is. “During happier times, the fairgrounds would be hosting lively gatherings and celebrations, with several bungalos offering convenient lodging with stunning views. But today … all is uncommonly quiet.” I don’t fucking care. I DONT FUCKING CARE. It is the way it is NOW. I care about that. You know, something that happens during the actual game of D&D. In the graveyard there’s a fresh grave. Part of the tedium says “Before heading down, he pilfered Chuco’s staff (Vintner’s Vine) for protection. Unfortunately he dropped it in the Fermentation Hall.” I’m knocking one point off of this things final score because the designer didn’t tell us what the dead guy had for breakfast. 

Let’s see, level one and two. The ladies maid, to the baroness who hires you? She’s a level five bard. A level five bard is scrubbing the shit out of a womans chamberpot every morning. Yes, I know, but there are only a couple of servants left. The four or five NPC’s all get long paragraphs describing them that is absolutely useless in running them at the table. As one would expect from a high quality adventure like this.

Oh, right, level one and two adventure. The wanderer table has a hill giant on it. And a decent amount of other monsters. For an upscale vineyard, like, Napa Valley long established estate kind of shit. The fucking fairgrounds have a god damned Press Area on them.  (I chose to believe that this is for reporters and not for pressing grapes.) Did I mention that the entire thing ends with finding … a journal! Ah yes, the classic Find A Journal shitty backstory exposition. How have I have missed thee! Too long have I waded through the shit of Ai crap, not understanding the simple joys of ranting about an exposition dump through a journal that doesn’t mean anything to the adventure. It’s like a pair of comfortable slippers.

A Level five ladies maid. Telling us what a farm field looks like and what it is. Meaningless and long NPC descriptions. A journal describing all of the backstory. Backstory for everything and everyone. No real interactivity beyond fighting. Oh, shitty adventures, how I missed you. It’s nice to see people still churning out the same shit piles that were being turned out twenty years ago. I love you always forever

Near or far, closer together
Everywhere I will be with you
Everything I will do for you
Say it, say it again
I love you always forever
Near or far, closer together
Everywhere I will be with you
Everything I will do for you

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is thirteen pages.  You get to see everything worthwhile, the backstory, the farm field description, the level five ladies maid description. The first eleven of the thirteen rooms. Great preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/525635/sour-grapes?1892600

 

A couple of weeks ago, my 5e gaming group agreed to give Beyond the Wall a try as a bit of a change of pace. While the setting is only defined in the broadest of strokes to give room to decide some things in play, it's the same setting as in the triads I presented here.

There was a bit of a learning curve. A couple of the players had either only ever played 5e or either hadn't played older D&D in a long time, and both rely on a virtual tabletop for running their characters, so had to discover or rediscover some terminology and how things fit together. That's a wrinkle that's worth considering when introducing players to a new game coming from 5e/Pathfinder: The new game may be less complicated in an absolute sense, but if they can't lean on a VTT, that might not help in getting the game up and running.

Anyway, once we got into the group character creation and associated village (and environs) creation everybody got into the spirit and enjoyed it. One player remarked it was the most fun that she had had in character creation. I gave them their pick of the playbacks in the original book and several supplements. In retrospect, I might have limited them a bit more or modified them slightly if I had thought to do so, but it will work out, I'm sure.

I did not follow BTW's advice and rush to complete chargen and play an adventure in one setting. I know that's meant to be one of the primary points of the game, but it's an advantage not really needed with our group, and we had a player out, so no reason to leave him behind.

I own the Sandbox Generator in print, and I love it. I should use it on the YouTube channel so folks can see it in action. Very well done and approachable.

Until tomorrow morning, the Sandbox Generator is on sale for $6 in PDF - usually 12 bucks.

The Sandbox Generator is a simple but powerful tool for DMs. It allows you to easily create a world from scratch when you prepare your next campaign. It will provide you with all the necessary information about your world: from the biomes map, to a lord’s coat of arms and the menu of the local tavern! It is also convenient for solo players and DMs who want to generate their world during the game session.

This book aims to create a pseudo-feudal fantasy world and is meant to be used with your favorite OSR ruleset and bestiary.

New worlds await: they are only a few rolls away…

• This product includes procedures, generators, tables and examples for:
• Hex maps (biomes, features, content, factions, encounters),
• Landmarks (natural, artificial and magical),
• Settlements (names, hamlets, villages, cities, castles, towers and abbeys),
• Monsters lairs,
• Dungeons and megadungeons,
• Coats of arms,
• Criminal organizations,
• Dragons,
• Guilds,
• Houses,
• NPCs,
• Taverns (including menus and signs),
• Wizards,
• Sea adventures.

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 "Espionage is the practice of secretly gathering information about governments, military operations, industries or individuals for strategic advantage. This practice is as old as civilization itself, shaping the course of wars, diplomacy, and economic competition. The fundamental goal of espionage is to obtain knowledge that others wish to conceal and allow those who possess this knowledge Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

I know very little about the iconic 80s/90s comics artist Donna Barr. I know she is famous for The Desert Peach comics, which is a series about the youngest brother of the German WWII general Rommel. But don't be discouraged... Barr creates a gay character charged with commanding misfits and, as far as I can tell, does his best to undermine the evils of the Holocaust.

I have not read it, so I can't comment further. But according to Wiki, she simply took the name of Rommel's brother who died in infancy and imagined The Desert Peach into existence. A sort of "what if" kind of treatment. Very unique and original idea, if you ask me.

Oh, she also illustrated Pauli Kidd's Lace & Steel roleplaying game. And she created Stinz, a comic about a centaur society.

Barr is a creator I need to look into a lot more.

 

 We picking right up from two weeks ago's last session available right here.  In this game campaign we're using a combination of Stars Without Number revised Trey Causey's Strange Stars and Terra Arisen. I kept Trey Causey's Strange Stars. And his OSR Strange Stars rulebook handy. We were escorting Terran Alliance local authorities into the Reticulan space Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

By B. Wraven Wright
2Die10 Games
OSE
Levels 1-2

An Audrune hires the adventurers to deal with “what lies below” a particular dolmen and to “leave nothing moving”. He says the party can keep anything of value they find and to burn the place out when done. He provides a map to the location of dolmen and sets off on his way. He is of little words and refuses to entertain further questioning. The dolmen is easy enough to find with a fairly sturdy stairway leading down below

This six page adventure uses three pages to describe seven rooms in an underground dolmen. It’s error-prone, makes simple logic mistakes, and is little more than an excuse to kill things. 

Yes, I know. I say that a alot. But a lot of adventures deserve to have that said about them. I still believe in magic. And, this thing starts with a passing wizzo hiring you to “deal with what lies below” and to “burn the place out when you’re done.” Well howdy! Always a big fan of fire and salting the earth in an adventure. There’s a dude with something going on who, for some reason, doesn’t want to deal with it himself. 

The adventure explains nothing. Just a dour passing dude hires you to, as I noted. There is nothing more. He is of little words, recall, and refuses to entertain further questions. Always a good way to get your job done. Go fuck yourself man. How much extra you paying for the privilege of being an asshole who needs something done? Oh, no notes on what hes paying you or what you’re reward is. Nothing more than what I posted in that intro. At the end of an adventure you, perhaps, find a secret door to the last room. Inside is an invisible old woman. Sobbing. She laments all of her dead children (the six previous rooms being littered with little clay fetish dudes, all broken to pieces. So, she’s hiding out in this secret room, crying and invisible. Until you open the door. Then she “Stops at nothing to leave the dungeon until killed.” Okaaaaay. I guess we’re killing her for some reason? No? She escaped? Then when you exit you find the dude that hired you standing over her, having killed her. Uh. And he wants all of the gold and magic from the dungeon, which he originally said you could keep. Also, he has no stats. This is all a confusing mess, as is the adventure. Except … I wonder if this was supposed to be a domestic violence situation? I’m filling in some shit here, but they start a quarrel for some reason, he breaks the dudes or she has them attack him? He leaves, gets the party to kill his wife and burn down his life. She’s inside, either the victim of abuse or dealing with him having gotten rid of her clay friends (rightfully or wrongly) and she comes out of her sobbing when interrupted by the party, only to flee, meeting him outside. We don’t see the outside so she attacks him or he attacks her? So, he called the cops on his wife and it ended in violence. As presented the adventure is a mess. Me filling in the gaps turns it in to something I don’t think I want to play. 

The wandering monster table, and many room keys, have “soldiers” in them. Actual soldiers? People who we are using soldier stats for? What are they doing there? It’s not clear they talk. Who are they? Absolutely no fucking idea at all. There is nothing here to guide using any way. They are just stat blocks to stab. AND, the killings? They explode for 2d6 damage, save vs half. And there are A LOT of then. I’m not sure thats survivable for levels 1-2? Playtested? Probably not. And there’s a 50% chance, in every hallway, of encountering a fight. This is not a old school thing.

Each room starts with read-aloud. Room one tells us: “ Opening the double doors, soot and ash swirl about the air. A large kiln fashioned from crude, clay bricks is built into the wall at the opposite of the room. Broken kilnlings litter the floor in front its numbered of it. Tables littered with jars and kilnling parts face the walls.” Note that the kilnlings are new monsters. How do you know what they are? This is pretty classic telling instead of showing. Another room has a state of a god in the middle of a pond. We never hear anything more about the statue. The party will OBVIOUSLY be investigating it. To no end, since there’s no information on it. 

And I’m pretty sure there are obvious map and keying errors. Rooms five and six appear to be swapped. This is pretty basic shit. It’s as it the entire thing was written in one sit down and then no effort was made to read through it or edit it or anything. Not that it matter. 6 SOLDIERS and 6 PIKES attack immediately after the cottager dies. They able to narrowly squeeze through the prison bars.” So you’re just gonna be stabbing shit. Regardless of what the designer places in front of the players, the monsters will get to do whatever the designer wants them to do, but fiat. Also, that cottager wants you to kill his bitch wife, so, maybe his wife and not the dude who hired you? 

Anyway, just a complete mess of an adventure with nothing more than stabbing and some domestic violence. What a fun night of gaming ahead of you!

This is $1 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Sucker.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/527686/under-the-dolmens-delve-a-one-shot-dungeon-for-level-1-adventurers-in-the-dolmenwood-setting?1892600

Drew this silly comic this past week. Made a little mini of it. I have a bunch of little minis so maybe I'll eventually put a batch up for sale if you wanna have copies. Zines!

Now enjoy the intense cartooning. Or go read it on my website.

 

I was a fan of the early print version of Pyramid and later subscribed to the digital version for several years. It was more than just a Steve Jackson Games house organ, but was an excellent resource for other RPGs with its systemless articles.

Bundle of Holding has Two Bundles of Pyramid, both priced at $49.95 each.

Adventurer! This Pyramid Bundle 1 is the first of two offers (the second is the new companion offer, Pyramid Bundle 2) featuring Volume 3 (Nov 2008 - Dec 2018) of Pyramid, the Steve Jackson Games magazine for tabletop roleplaying gamers. Each issue of Pyramid magazine focuses on a specific theme, like fantasy world-building or epic magic – the whole range of prehistory, historical and modern exploration, steampunk, cyberpunk, aliens and spaceships – martial arts, action adventures, and gunplay – weird science, urban fantasy, psionics and thaumatology – and it wouldn't be a Steve Jackson Games magazine (fnord) without a roster of conspiracies. Each issue is about 39-40 pages, so the 60 issues in this offer bring you nearly 2,400 pages of varied gaming articles for a bargain price. Most of Pyramid's articles are either generic, suitable for your game system of choice, or designed for GURPS, SJG's Generic Universal Roleplaying System. (New to GURPS? Check our revived June 2022 GURPS 4E Essentials offer in progress.)

Pyramid magazine Volume Three Issue 59 ConspiraciesFor just US$49.95 you get all sixty-two titles in our Pyramid V3 - First Collection (retail value $556) as DRM-free ebooks. The complete list of Pyramid issues in this offer – the first 60 issues of Volume 3 (Nov 2008 - Oct 2013), with links to their sales pages on DriveThruRPG – appears in the book entry below. (On DriveThruRPG, Steve Jackson Games has posted a free 282-page compilation previewing the covers and contents of all 60 Pyramid issues in this offer.) We also include SJG's two collections of star designer Kenneth Hite's acclaimed Pyramid column of history, alt-history, occult conspiracy, fringe pseudoscience, and High Weirdness, Suppressed Transmission (both previously in our November 2020 Worldbuilder's Toolkit 7).

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