Contact Information:

jay@vanishingtowerpress.com

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, December 6

Gaming & Garbage

 I'm hitting the road in a few days and it will involve some gaming projects. It is time off for me so I will get a chance to isolate and write. I will also be visiting friends and family. So chance to game face-to-face with old acquaintances. Who have also been active in the game industry. One has been an artist for some of the coolest independent creators out there, come to find out. Had him do the new maps in Shrine of the Keepers! The other friend published a board game with Ultra Pro which went on to a second printing. Which is good in the board game business. 

What I cherish most about these two friendships is I got the two of them back into TTRPG's. I wrote about getting a face to face game going like 11 years ago when I started this blog. It was this 7 hour long session which got my illustrating friend to active in engaging the industry to sell his illustrations. And he has been doing well. The other friend dragged me to Gencon 2017 to help him with his board game. He couldn't believe I was still playing rpg's. I hadn't been. Just rediscovered them. I got him into my online Basic DnD game which renewed his interest. He went on to run a Gamma World 1E campaign which, while short lived at 20 or so sessions, it was epic Gamma World. A setting guide has come of it and I will be working on getting it closer to publication with him this coming week. 

Oh yes, I will be able to deliver another slip case to an AMC Hut with Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game and adventures inside. A gift for the Croo of volunteers which run the huts each summer. This will be the second one (the first being delivered to Madison Springs Hut) and I will be delivering it to the Zealand Falls Hut. This hut is open year round so will be accessible this time of the year instead of being closed up. Hopefully I won't have to do much post-holing along the trail. Not sure what the snow conditions are like in New Hampshire right now. 

And I am going to finish the week off with getting my parents in a game of DnD. It is about time I got my parents involved in a game which I vexed them to no end with as a child. I would not get my nose out from game books when I found rpg's for the first time. My singleness of focus at times would freak them out. Time to stop being so selfish with my passions. I will get Mom, Dad, my brother and his wife and they will have fun damn it! I probably should live stream it....

Saturday, November 25

SPI's Kharkov Wargame Live Play

 I just finished playing (solo) the first 5 turns of Kharkov The Soviet Spring Offensive from SPI. It is a game out of the magazine Strategy & Tactics May-June 1978 issue. After playing out the first two turn I fired up the YouTube channel and started a live stream. Played turns 3, 4, and 5 online. 

The Russian 28th army broke out easily in the north, and 6th army began enveloping the German units south-southeast of Kharkov. The high mark of the Spring Offensive includes taking (but not keeping) one of the Kharkov city hexes, scoring 2 victory points each turn for breaking the German front line, cutting supply to those German units in the pocket formed by the surrounding 6th, and running several units far out west threatening to take Poltava!

As the look of turn 6 shapes up it is apparent it is a race against time to take Poltava before these Russian units are cut off and out of supply. Operation Fredricus was unleashed on turn 5 and the Russian southern front line evaporated and Panzer spearheads cut straight to the Donets River. The German's historical result of bagging the whole Russian offensive and annihilating it is clearly evident on the game board!

You can see the video here. The live stream scheduled for tomorrow morning where I finish the rest of the game (turns 6-10) is found here.



Tuesday, November 7

Wellington's Victory House Rules

 I love almost everything about the TSR monster wargame Wellington's Victory. Except the ability to stack 9 skirmish units together and bulldoze through formed infantry. I, for some time, did not believe this issue actually existed and were just so much grognard grumblings. But then I found it, the rule in the book which allows this. I had missed this rule all these years. Probably because it isn't how I envision skirmish units being used in a Napoleon-era battle. 

The discussions and variants are legion on solving this niggling stone in the shoe of an otherwise great game. Last I had the game on the table was this time last year. Well, Vassal actually (it is a 'monster' game) because it is the only reasonable way for me to keep a game set up over a long period of time. And I couldn't move very far into the game with this issue weighing on my mind. 

Another year, as I have pointed out, has passed by as fast as summer in the Rockies, and I have a set of "house" rules I am going to try out and see how it modifies the game. The rules are as such:

Still playing the game right now RAW. I have some morale check questions for skirmish units I need to parse out answers for. Until then I cannot try variants because there as yet not be a "problem" needing fixing.

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.

Monday, October 23

Even Heroes Bleed is Back!


 The “Even Heroes Bleed” (EHB for those legions of fans) campaign has been revived, with the possibility of new heroes! 

Continuing my road trip through old school games, EHB uses the BoHSE (Blood of Heroes Special Edition) rules, which is a 2000 retroclone of DC Heroes 3rd Edition from the now defunct Mayfair Games.

It has come to be my super hero game of choice. It does so much which modern claim to offer as new, such as narrative control, meta-currency, rules for social interaction and simple resolution mechanics. I have used it for over 2 years in regular play. Until schedules changed, and it stopped.... May, June I think. 

But now it has resumed with a lead-off solo session with the indomitable Olympian. This adventure falls right after the conclusion of “The Sinister Secrets of Starhold”, and featured Olympian turning his attention to the continued attacks by magically -embued EE’s running riot in Capitol City. Not being magically inclined, the Kordarian Paragon of Power stopped at the last scene of a serious magical attack; the Hunniford Library. There is a librarian knowledgeable in the occult at the library. He hopes to get answers which will help him track down these threats. 

But first he checks in on Donna Hannah, the late Dr Avery’s granddaughter, and now a living elemental of air. She is no longer staying at the mansion, preferring to lead a “normal” life back at CCSU. Everything being all good on the home front, the librarian and super hero concoct a means to track the “Lance of Unending Pain”, the artifact stolen by Black Paladin. But it is going to take a bag of cats....



I love the fully realized campaign games I have been playing since returning to ttrpgs. Without one the blog and podcast seem relatively pointless. Because the general purpose of this blog is to chronicle my journeys into fully realized campaign games I never managed as a kid. Counting them off they are pulp sword & sorcery, age of sail, black powder Cthulhu, B/X D&D, Traveller/Space Opera, and now supers. 

The line up appears to be the Olympian, Mettle, and Pirlvag. Mr. Zoozoo and Bug have scheduling conflicts, and a new player in Vietnam is hungry to join in. The dooms which stalk the peace of Capitol City is about to go to 11!  

Wednesday, October 4

Delta Green First Time

 It happens ever so often, I throw out a willingness to run something specific for a one-shot and a few people respond and it gets off the ground for one, two, or three sessions as the particular plot is played out. Most of the times nothing happens. Time doesn't work or no interest in the game proposed. This time I tried something a wincey different, I offered to run whatever a small group of players wanted to to try out. This got three to four people wanting to play Delta Green. Perfect! 


Delta Green is modern conspiracy horror. Federal Agents leading a double life as secret commandos on the front lines of supernatural conflict. Built on the venerable BRP game system from Chaosium, the game puts a focus on sanity damage and damage to relationship "Bonds". Otherwise it is straight-up monster hunting in the Cthulhu Mythos. 

The group consisted of some gents from Kansas and one from the UK. I used the scenario from the quick-start rules "Last Things Last" for the evenings  action. I opened the adventure at Baughman's apartment. The DG agents (two of them) were sweeping the late Claud Baughman's apartment for any Cthulhu contraband the former "Friendly" may have hidden or retained in his domicile. The conspiracy must be concealed! The other two players, as regular uninitiated civilians, show up at Baughman's for their own reasons and an awkward conversation begins. 

This is a big part of the game, and really any session of Delta Green, coming up with valid, palatable reasons disparate individuals would work together on strange, deadly shit, let alone trust each other. We spent some time going around on this until we were all satisfied the opening made "sense". After that the game went pretty straight forward, they followed the breadcrumbs, uncovered contraband, confronted by new adversaries looking for something at the second site location, and uncovered the true horror that waited for them. 


With bodies being burned and contraband secured the session wrapped up with enough material still open to play another session. Or at least we agreed to play another session. Talk about a possible continuation of a campaign was floated but none of us saw the time nor availability, so talk of a campaign was tabled, for now.

The second session opened right where we last left off. We discussed whether players should get a skill check roll for chance of improvement to skills used last session. We decided not enough time had passed to warrant experience checks. The PCs also discussed their next move, which was nothing more than returning to Capitol City to their Handler and turning over the goods. The trip was immediately interrupted by more villains trying to ram them off the road. They failed Drive rolls so their 1995 Crown Victoria  fishtailed into the guard rail coming to the stop. Their attackers demanded some of the contraband from the footlocker they took from Baughman's cabin. The PCs declined. This prompted the villains, one of them at least, to open up with a military-grade assault rifle and try and kill the lot of them. After much ammo was expended the thug with the machine gun was cut down and the Crown Vic was noticeably shot up. The women in the SUV, the last remaining villain, sped off in her suburban while the PCs debated whether to scope up the body in the road and speed after her, or just speed after her.  They chose the latter. They decided there was nothing to tie them to the dead guy in the road (they are rural West Virginia at this point) so running down the last living mystery assailant was the best play.

This second car chase goes better for the PCs, They come out on top and the woman is critically wounded (they blew her foot off with a shotgun). She just would not come quietly and tried to shoot her way out of her predicament. And cast magic! She had spoken some strange words, spells it appears. Had made one of the agents see nightmarish hallucinations and one of the civilians to shoot their handgun at an agent. As the session wound down we roleplayed the aftermath. The cops, their Federal Handler, the actual SAIC of the FBI offices in Capitol City, was brought in and we had a chance to go over consequences and next actions. I truly enjoyed playing their handler as they hashed out the events at a roadside stop under cover around some wet picnic tables in a morning drizzle. Smokes were smoked, and things supernatural hashed out. We roleplayed the civilians being introduced to the conspiracy and joining the "cause". At least long enough to find out what their prisoner/detainee wanted out of Baughman's stuff and what she intended to do with it. 

All heady stuff, and a successful short-run adventure arc. What did I think? Well, I am well versed in the BRP game system and its many custom games using it, so as the Game Master I didn't have to fuss over rules much. I could spend time on maintaining fidelity with genre being played. Which is good because their is a lot to consider and hand-waving all these plot complications away is very unsatisfying way to play Delta Green. But once the PCs have settled into a good (enough) reason to get in a car with each other, armed with guns, and go out to a cabin in the woods.... well, the session can go for another couple of hours at least without bringing up another set of complications which has to be dealt with in the same manner. I had the usual tension of making sure I shut up often and force the PCs to talk to each other, not me. The more I could keep the conversation on their side of the table with me out of it was an intentional action. Really in a game set in "real-life" settings their is less as a Game Master you have to describe, feed into the Theater of the Mind engine environmentally-wise. Sights, sounds, smells, we all no what a wet highway and damp woods smell like. Which is a plus, because the action is not so much set-piece, site location exploration. It is interacting with people and getting away with what you are trying to do without getting arrested and trashing the character's life.

So I find all modern games, set in contemporary earth must have strong, interesting NPCs to interact with. Feats and gunfights are cool. But when the players start talking in character with each other, arguing really, the game is playing well. As the GM I found my job was to be mindful of when I should interject and prod some forward action and when best to stay out of it and let the players talk their way into their next actions. Horror is tough. The intro adventure provided in the quick-start rules offers a good set up for players to get right into the complications the game sets up for the PCs. The end horror element is good. It's reveal was built up well and came at the right time in the action. I would have no problem recommending Delta Green for those wanting to play contemporary horror roleplaying!

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 6

Western USR 3rd Edition Full Color PDF Available for Review!

 Here is a link to the new 3rd edition of USR. This is the second of my publications to utilize AI-generated art. What I like about AI-generated art is it allows me to move forward with full-color publications without costing me my monthly mortgage. 

I would love to pay real people to make real things for my books but my stuff has limited appeal and limited revenue potential so throwing serious cash at artwork is not feasible for the VTP. Not that I haven't done it. I truly enjoy satisfaction from paying other DIY'ers cash  money for their contributions to my game books. Feeling connected to a greater hobby world through cash transactions is intention made manifest. But I still want to get books out and I want them to look as good as I can with the time available to me. 

So please download for FREE my finished PDF copy of Western USR. This is the same copy which will be available on Drivethrurpg.com, so yeah, a back door to free product. But please try and play it. Please shoot someone in the face utilizing the RAW, and tell me how it plays. Better yet, write a full on review of actual gameplay and I will send you a free softcover copy of the book with the actual full-color cover!

Shrine of the Keepers Now Available Full Color Hardback

Yes, I have created my first full color publication. Shrine of the Keepers is now available as its own stand alone adventure module. I took the plunge and played around with AI to generate the full color illustrations for the adventure module. Here are some photos of the final product. 

It is 33 pages and by this time the adventure has been vetted for all typos, it is a clean manuscript. Hey, it is even complete with a 5e conversion guide so you can play the adventure with the world's most popular roleplaying game. 





This 33 page adventure is available as a POD publication from Drivethrurpg.com. Get your blood-soaked copy today!

Wednesday, May 10

First Professional Writing Gig Now Available: Treasure Island!

Night Owl Workshop has just released the PDF version of Treasure Island Adventure for your old-school roleplaying game. Ostensibly written for their game Freebooters!, the adventure is compatible with all the usual suspects.

What do you get? The Admiral Benbow, breakdowns on all the principle characters found in the novel, city crawling rules and tables for the busy shipping port of Bristol, England, and the complete environs of the island itself. Best of all, you get a solid structure in which to work the novel as a true ttrpg adventure opportunity!  

This is my first "professional" writing gig and I acquired the contract from Thomas Denmark because I responded to his open call for a writer for this project. That's how it rolls in the ttrpg industry. Just force yourself in the room and say you want at it! I'm glad he took a chance on an unknown person because the subject matter is one I hold a great fondness for. I have read Treasure Island numerous times since a kid, so the material I was to write about was very familiar. I have also held up the novel as a master class in pace. The story moves with such a heart-pounding pace I find it a true marvel of excellent adventure writing. I chuckled the first time I learned Robert Louis Stevenson was fond of cocaine. I wonder how much this influenced the "pace" of his writing?

Any-who, I think I nailed it. If you are looking for an old-school adventure on the Spanish Main you may not do better than this obscure output from the Vanishing Tower Press! 

Full disclosure; I tried to complete a second writing assignment for Night Owl and failed miserably. So, first important freelance writing tip I can offer is don't take an assignment that you can't immediately see a "great" idea forming up worthy of a published adventure. I tried to force myself just to "produce" and I don't have it in me. I need to write on something I am passionate about achieving, or I won't get very far. Fortunately, the public is only going to see this output,  buy a great adventure book, and when compared to my other adventure and gaming products find I can consistently put out fun, and useable stuff.

And not all I wrote for Night Owl Workshop made it into this book. I wrote up two cool-ass adventures based on my Renaissance campaign I ran in the Clockwork & Chivalry  setting from Cakebread & Walton. The cartography needed for these two adventures was holding up release of the book so it will be released as a separate adventure package. I'm okay with that. It actually creates two more products I can list to the accomplishments of the Vanishing Tower Press.