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Showing posts with label OSR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OSR. Show all posts

Monday, December 18

OSR Wilderness Fundraiser Delivers, again (cont.)

Continued from this initial announcement, that is. 
Mission OSR II can be reported a success. This "ascent" is happening much later in the hiking season than should be attempted for the seriousness of the mission so I do not feel bad about just getting to the Highlands Center at the Zealand Trailhead. This time of the year the actual trailhead is gated. This has the effect of turning a 5-1/2 mile hike into an 11 mile hike. In icy snow with higher than usual river crossings. The weather on Wednesday was for shit too. Whiteout conditions closed in on I93 just as I hit my old hometown and punched through Franconia Notch. My brother took the right onto Route 302 towards Bretton Woods and pointed the way to the AMC Center's dusted lot. The wind was fierce and icy blasts bit hard into my face as I hustled across the snow-drifted entry into the massive conference center. My triple layer of base layer, fleece, and down sweater were pathetically inadequate for any real hiking on a day like today.

Luck was with the Irish though. The caretakers for Zealand Hut Croo were scheduled to attend high-level meetings the very next day. The front desk receptionist was sure to make sure the game kit got into their hands and into the cabin. I was too tired to take any photos on site, but here are the photos of the finished product which was delivered. 





Wednesday, October 25

Super Simple Death Save for Dungeons & Dragons

 This is an old-school take and most likely not relevant to 5e of the worlds most popular board game. But for your OSR game it fits the tropes of early play. Also, someone has probably already thought of this and has put it out there. I just haven't seen it yet. 


When the PC reaches zero Hit Points, instead of death they may choose to reduce their Hit Die to the next smaller die size. Only have a d4 Hit Die? To bad, no death save for you.

This means Magic-User and Thief class do not get a death save, they follow the standard zero Hit Points and you are dead. Outside of the Fighter, all other classes have a d6 Hit Die, so these classes get to cheat death once. With the Fighter having a d8 Hit Die they get to save from death twice. 

It should be noted the save is automatic, there is no roll to make. And just to be clear, this does mean, moving forward, the PC rolls this new lower die for all additional levels reached.

Wednesday, September 13

Treasure Island Reviews

 There are two now posted on Drivethru.rpg. Ringing endorsements for the product all-in-all. Which is great because I don’t do this for the money. It is out there as a living thing. 

Review link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/437116






Wednesday, September 14

Madison Hut Received BFRPG



 It was wet, it was steep, it was a typical hike in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I started out like this, 


under some sun and 80% humidity on the valley floor. And then you end up here,


After the slog I collapsed in my bunk at Madison Springs Hut and surveyed the map for on the morrow we would assault the summit of Mount Washington.


But till then there was coffee to drink and spaghetti to eat and an evening cigarette to smoke. When the Croo finished the dishes and the thru-hikers fought over the left overs before they had to camp on the sodden ground I presented the Hut Master Trevor with the hand made slip case containing BFRPG, Castle by the Sea adventure anthology, the Field Guide to Monsters, and of course Purging Woth N’Rld Oakwyn’s Muddy Hole.



Trevor was taken aback but quickly grasped the nature of the gift. When I showed him the Dice bag tucked into the slip case he thought the whole package was an amazing gift for the cabin and its revolving Croo.

 Thanks to all the donors who helped fund this dream of mine. Only seven more remote mountain huts to go!

Saturday, August 6

New Big Dragon Games Released CC2 Creature Cache

CC 2 Creature Cache comes a full 7 years after CC1 (PDF is PWYW),  the bestiary I used to stock my OSR adventure AA01 Purging Woth N'rld Oakwyn's Muddy Hole. If it is half as intriguing as CC1, the list of 200 monsters boasted between the pages of this new release will be well worth the price of admission. Look, Richard LeBlanc is successful enough he can drive traffic to Lulu. You know he puts out quality stuff if he has that kind of power!

Besides new monsters which every DM needs in spades, LeBlanc is always kind enough, and industrious enough, to include a drawing of each of the creatures. Mandatory, I know, in any monster book,  but you don't always get. I like he doesn't shy away from depicting adventures being slaughtered by his monsters. I love that throwback to old school printed materials which usually had one or more pics of some nameless adventurer taking it in the shorts. LeBlanc captures this feel in his drawings and adds to the appeal of the overall package. Black and white, 2-column as god intended. 

Thursday, July 28

I Made My First Gaming GIF

Cheesy, I know. I couldn't resist. I am sooo behind the curve utilizing Premier. Need to spend a whole afternoon doing tutorials if I'm going to get the hang of the software.

 

via GIPHY

Friday, June 10

OSR Compatible 2nd-4th lvl dungeon AA01 Purging Woth N'rld Okwy's Muddy Hole Now a Reliable POD

 AA01 Purging Woth N'rld Okwy's Muddy Hole, my first and only dnd module has finally seen the light of day on DriveThru as a physical book!

Not only a physical book, but all the art is "fixed", new art introduced, and the Appendix is better organized. It is still the twisted little weird dungeon Bryce Lynch loved, so if you are looking for another decent adventure for your OSE sandbox you can't go wrong with PWNOMH!

40 pages, A5 (digest?) size, black and white illustrations and text. Several of the pages in the back are just VTP ads, but I think the book looks cooler with them in than out. 

The book is organized with a simple adventure "hook" and a dungeon "ecology" page. Dungeon Ecology is a bird's eye view of how the denizens of the place go about their business. How the different factions interact, and conflicts between the facts of the fables, and the dungeon itself... 

Every one of the creatures described in the key come with complete statistics in the Monster Gallery. I think it is important for an old school adventure module to include all the stat's for the Monsters and NPCs which will be encountered in the course of events.  So my first old school module includes those.


One critique leveled at the module is the treasure is not substantial for the levels indicated. Fair enough, each to their own. But I did look at the treasure horde in the module and have increased it here and there from the original edition.

All in all, like many rpg products, this second edition is an improvement over the first. While the content and quirky ideas remain, the organization is better, and therefore should be a more enjoyable product for the DM to run at the table. 

Successful delving!





Saturday, February 5

B/X Mars Wilderness Encounter Table

 [EDIT/UPDATE] A slightly more polished PDF is available for download now, formatted to make the table useful at the table.

Michael Gibbons goes by the name Aos online and hosts the Metal Earth blog which is filled with gamma-radiated world building. His illustrations are uniquely his own, I commissioned two pieces for DUSRS&S so I like his thick black and white illos. He also released his own comic book, so yeah, another middle-aged ttrpg enthusiast like myself who creates cool shit for their games and also posts them online! If you like Lyn Carter’s spin on the science-fantasy genre you are going to love Metal Earth’s maps and site locations. 

He recently released a collection of these creations in a hardback book dubbed B/X Mars. The title immediately clues you in this is another entry in the thick DIY file which is the OSR. And that it is a setting book. Called Mars. So you are in the world of John Carter here, red sands, swords and laser beams, aliens, etc. This is Appendix N stuff. There are 95 pages of content and loaded with Michael’s great drawings. There is a brief, coherent introduction to the Mars of the past and the all-important present followed by character creation. They are Princess, Warrior, Terran, Thark! (always spelled this way), and Menton. Solid John Carter of Mars stuff. Mind Warp is your “magic” system and is the province of Mentons and fields of “mastery” replace skills. Saving throws have their own titles so one is left to assign them as they see fit if you want to compare them to standard OSR saving throw titles. This is how I broke them down; Death Ray/Poison, Warp/Spells, Entangle/Breath Weapon, Fear/Petrify, Rods and Crown is Wands obviously. Desert gear, weapons of the wasteland, airships, weather, these are the first 22 pages.

Layout is simple two-column with a 12/14 size font and bolded section titles, making it an easy read. There is a generous amount of white space (the book is 11 x 8.5) and I, for one, like this in my game books because I write on them. The way POD page count falls you end up with 5 blank page faces at the back. I could run a campaign with all my notes and prep written in the book with this kind of writing space. I think this is the only setting book I’ve picked up which has offered up this amount of white space. I don’t think this is overly intentional. I think Gibbons is like myself, an ametaur layout guy so each book looks loose

Part three and part four of the book is your gazetteer. Like McKinney’s Carcosa setting book, B/X Mars is content to give a detailed description of only a small section of the world. In this case it is a land on Mars referred to as “Zerzura”. The map of Zerzura is a good example of an “evocative” map. The hand-drawn cartography and unique place names do what the best ttrpg maps do, spark adventure ideas! Gibbons has several area maps on his blog you could use for whole campaign maps, all of them he draws spark adventure ideas just looking at them. A bestiary of unique monsters to the setting and a couple of detailed site locations finishes the book up, and like I said earlier, plenty of content you could run your 1st edition Gamma World campaign for years just building off the stuff in B/X Mars.

What it doesn’t have is charts. Specifically random encounter charts. Look, I know, creating tables with your publishing software can be a whole hell of a pain in the ass. Being able to type away endlessly and shape that up into readable content is easy. You will get your book done a whole lot faster if you skip tables, I get it. But OSR begs for random encounter tables. This harkens back to the game’s roots where the next exciting adventure is unknown till encountered by a chance roll of the dice. And is a big omission for an old-school setting book. I am going to correct this by creating random encounter tables for the game and post them below, free, for the world to use. Now, grab hold fast the line and swing from your armed airship into fantasy last-planet adventure with B/X Mars!


Roll 1d100

Wastelands

Desert

Ruins, Subterranean

Mountains

Forest

Swamp

NPC Character

1

1

1 - 5

1

1 - 2

1

Desert Gear

2

2 - 3

6


3


Weather Event

3 - 5

4 - 6


2 - 12

5

2 - 5

Random Faction

6

7 - 8

7 - 10

13

9

6

Thoat

7 - 10

9 - 15

11 - 12

14 - 16

18

10

Banth

11 - 12

16 - 18

13 - 18

17 - 24

24

16

Albino Ape

13

19 - 20

19 - 22

25 - 30

28

20

Crimson Ape

14

21 - 22

23 - 24

31 - 38

32

26

Sllarg

15 - 18

23

25

39 - 40

33


Skraayth

19 - 23

24 - 26

26

41 - 43

35

30

Sand Creep

24 - 25

27


44

36


Kraux

26 - 28

28 - 30

27 - 30

45 - 50

40

34

Nuerowolf

29

31 - 35

31 - 36

51 - 52

46


Siren Spider

30 - 32

36 - 38

37- 40

53 - 55

50

40

Grune

33 - 35

39 - 40

41- 42




Slaves

36

41

43

56 - 58

55

41

Grakkon

37 - 40

42 - 45

44 - 48

59 - 60

57


Tripod

41

46

49 - 52

61

58

42

Martian Dragon

42

47

53

62

60

43

Giant Roc*

43 - 45

48 - 50


63 - 65


48

Near Cat

46 - 49

51 - 53

54

66 - 67

65

52

Leviathan

50 - 52

54 - 56


68 - 70

68

55

Shoum

53 - 55

57 - 60

55 - 60

71 - 72

69


Archeoptron

56

61 - 62


73 - 75

72

58

Jade Wasp

57 - 59

63

61

76 - 77

75

63

Reptoid

60 - 62

64 - 65

62 - 65

78

78

70

Azure Martian

63

66

66 - 68



71

Bone Angel



69 - 73

79 - 80

79

75

Ghost Fish

64 - 66

67 - 72

74 - 75




Dragonoid

67

73

76 - 77

81 - 83

82

80

Dust Devil

68 - 70

74 - 75





Monnx

71 - 72

76


84 - 85



Giant Mummy

73 - 75

77 - 80

78 - 80

86

85

81








Deathspore

76 - 77

81 - 82

81 - 83


87

86

Spore Zombie

78 - 79

83 - 84

84 - 86


89

89

Sky Devil

80 - 85

85 - 92

88

87 - 90

93

90

Stichling

86 - 88

93

90


95

94

Moon Apes

89 - 90

94

94

91 - 94

96

95

Airship

91

95

95

95 - 96

97

96








Vat Goon

92 - 95

96 - 98

98




Kryss

96 - 98

99

99

97 - 98

99

98

Kryss Drone

100

100

100

99 - 100

100

99 - 100