Contact Information:

jay@vanishingtowerpress.com

Tuesday, July 19

Maze of the Blue Medusa Shipped Just Fine

There was some concern about corner damage occurring while shipping, but my copy arrived in perfect shape. The book was packed well. It was obvious even the intern who packed my book was infected with the high quality vibe which oozes out of the book. A gorgeous book by any standards.

But how well does it play? I don't know. I'm not old enough yet to play this. But it is just a game book, after all. I will want to have it at the table in some physical form. I have two, three choices? Well, purchasing another book doesn't feel like much of a solution. At fifty dollars I want to have everything I need for the experience, you know what I mean?

There is the PDF which comes with full purchase, there is even just the PDF you can buy which makes the content accessible to most people. Sure there is the cost of printing out your own pages, but you can print what you want and in no way should you feel conflicted.


A marriage , healthy and vibrant, takes time. This book is a deep, luxurious bed for Dungeon Masters to roll in. How many hours have I sweated crappy adventure modules after throwing away five bucks, rebuilding the wretched content into something which would hold my players attention for more than five minutes? Like all of them. Maze of the Blue Medusa does not require this of me. I must study to deliver the content correctly. You would be a fool to think you can just "wing" this megadungeon. Organized in a manner to think you could by unseen hands, unknown hours of quiet talk, maybe there is tape? but the work will foil you. It takes the supposition which TSR threw in every DM's face "You will need to read this adventure module completely before you run it for your players" and actually makes good on the promise. Lets face it, the only reason you had to read a module thoroughly before play was because it sucked and was organized so poorly  the only way you could use it was a total parsing of contents, shred, then appropriate.

Maze of the Blue Medusa rewards the patience of the serious Dungeon Master. It is so dense and digestible and worthy of long drives in the desert with an old cassette playing in a choked out car stereo, angry at the end of life, it is stupid good on the most bald face appraisal.  Patrick Suart  is amazing for holding it all together. All the way. Zack filled in the gaps brilliantly. I'm guessing this collaboration was completed online. That such luminaries, working talent, is being conducted remotely and coherently is staggering. The brick and mortar crowd holding Monday morning meetings contemplating units moved must be shitting their pants seeing productivity dollars go up in so much smoke stacks. The OSR is such the Velvet Underground. Independent, and unprofessional. Which doesn't mean unaccountable. Everyone's work gets criticism, help, guidance, support. It happens because most OSR participants trust if all good effort is put forth a MAze of the BLue Medusa will arrive and all will game immaculate.

Tuesday, July 12

Fear & Loathing USR is now available on RPGNow

With the edition of Fear & Loathing USR up on RPGNow Vanishing Tower Press has four publications, one adventure and three genre specific rule books, available cheaply for download.

One more rules hack of Scott Malthouse's excellent rules lite system Unbelievably Simple Roleplaying game, Anthropomorphic USR, will be done shortly then the adventures for each of these game systems will start to appear.

WU01 Broke Down in Bug Town and GZ01 Fear & Loathing in Fat City will be first in line for release. One for Western USR, the other for this here Fear & Loathing USR.

The one adventure out so far is for USR Sword & Sorcery and it includes Crypt Keeper ref sheets as well as a character sheet.

Thanks Scott for letting me release my own game products utilizing your great game mechanics!


Friday, July 8

Shrine of the Keepers includes Crypt Keeper Ref Sheets

as well as a simple character sheet. It is a straight forward site based adventure and if you are familiar with the tales of Conan the Barbarian you will find familiar tropes. You will enjoy Shrine of the Keepers if you want to play a sword and sorcery adventure fast and the players need to create characters too. Scott Malthouse's free Unbelievably Simple Roleplaying rules are a breeze to pick up and character creation can be finished in three to five minutes.

The included ref sheets and character sheet give you enough information to customize a sword and sorcery adventure of your own out of the box. For more detailed options you can see my USR Sword & Sorcery rules I wrote using Scott's great game rules.


Monday, July 4

Western USR is now available on RPGNow

My latest rule book, Western USR,  based on Unbelievably Simple Roleplaying by Scott Malthouse is now available for fifty cents on line as a downloadable PDF. Includes a custom USR character sheet as well. Enjoy!


Wednesday, June 29

USR Sword & Sorcery 3.01 on RPGNow

The USR Sword & Sorcery rule book is now only available at RPGNow All my future game stuff which includes any art will be posted there. I'm trying to respect the Fair Use laws and am repackaging my USR PDF's with non copyrighted art.


Western, Cyberpunk, Fear & Loathing, these will all get a make over and will be coming out shortly. The Western USR rules actually should be available by tomorrow, so stay tuned!




Thursday, June 23

Western USR preview

For those requesting a look at my hack of Scott Malthouse's USR for playing western themed rpg's here you go.




Sunday, June 5

USR NPC Sheet

I just posted a useful NPC character sheet for your USR game to the Summonings page of the blog.




It has two sheets per page and should be printed longways (landscape).