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 "Strange locations. Things humanity was not meant to know. Desperate people struggling against an unknown horror. Old crumbling buildings, with their own sinister character. Police and government will not, or are not, permitted to listen. Quantum Dark is a lightweight but complete horror ruleset pitting heroes against the horrors of the universe. It is suitable to modern gaming, from the 1920's Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 Using the retroclone superhero rules in FASERIPopedia, expand your game and run a whole fantasy roleplaying game using this sourcebook! OR -"Embrace the world of King Arthur, one hundred of his Knights of the Round Table, their enemies, their Castles and Keeps, Abbeys, monsters, Magical Items and so much more!""Full rules for Knights, their Squires, Princesses, Sorceresses, Wizards, Witches, Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

I really enjoy Old School Essentials and the adventures they release. Even if I don't run them directly under OSE, they convert easily enough to the OSR system of your choice.

Holy Mountain Shaker for OSE is today's Deal of the Day at DTRPG. Normally 7.50 in PDF, but until tomorrow morning Holy Mountain Shaker is on sale for $3.

Thunder and quake have come to the old town. Towers crumble, homes tumble, the quick become the dead. What omen could be more obvious? The Pharaoh Fish under the mountain is displeased. This God must be propitiated. Brave heroes must venture to buy the city's salvation. At the very least, the Town Council needs to appear in control and send some 'expert adventurers' into the depths.

• A fantasy pointcrawl adventure for characters of 5th to 6th level.
• Local town, 17 pointcrawl regions, dungeon inside the Pharaoh Fish.
• Pointcrawl mechanics for Old-School Essentials.
• Keyed in a quick-reference, bullet point format.
• Statted for Old-School Essentials (B/X), usable with any vintage adventure game.
• Unlabelled map included for VTT use.

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 " Ed Straker: Imagine a dying planet in some distant corner of the universe. Its natural resources exhausted. Its inhabitants sterile. Doomed to extinction. A situation we may one day find ourselves in, gentlemen. So they discover Earth. Abundant, fertile. Able to satisfy their needs. They look upon us not with animosity, but callousness. As we look upon our animals that we depend on for food. Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Caves of RespiteCaves of Respite (2023)

by Jeff Heinen

Published by Hrafn Forge

Level 1 (Shadowdark)

Games which make a large splash tend to be inundated with ill-conceived crap from incompetents and shovelware artists. Mrög Brög, OSE, Troika, and now Shadowdark are just continuing a trend proudly set by OSRIC (Phil Reed showing up is a telltale sign). After a while, when the game’s reputation has been soundly thrashed by the talentless and opportunistic, the horde moves on to drag down the next hot thing. It is thus not easy to find the good stuff for these systems among the rubbish. This adventure is not rubbish: a sense of wonder, good presentation, and decent encounter design show signs of emerging competence.

The first thing that stands out is the sense of wonder. The caves are an old refuge of nobility; a place of beauty and history. The module is willing to be fantastic by digging into the foundations of D&D fantasy: places like a gallery, a magnificent feasting hall with a grand chandelier, and subterranean cave realms combine strong imagery with functional gameplay. The text helps establish a place with a good appeal to multiple senses. Let’s consider the setup for the first area: “Stench of stale sweat and damp earth. The light of your torches flickers off damp, roughly hewn cave walls. Four individuals, clearly not of noble birth, clad in mismatched leather armor, have set up a crude watchpost here. They bear the marks of hard lives, their faces hidden under layers of grime and rough stubble. A sense of alertness emanates from them, their hands never straying too far from their belted weapons. A pair of smoking braziers gives off an acrid smoke that burns the eyes and lungs, providing a meager light source.” It has a few remnants of boxed text – some entries imply player action a bit too much – but you can see good descriptions taking shape. It is not overlong, and it concentrates on visceral detail. Stale sweet and damp earth. Mismatched leather armour. Grime and rough stubble. Acrid smoke. You get a solid mental image out of them.

Loopy!
(My annotations)
Beginner modules are not an easy genre to write for: balancing limited character power with the need to design something that does not feel nerfed and limited is a challenge many fail at. Caves of Respite does a decent job at giving you a first-level dungeon in 24 keyed areas. That’s sort of the threshold of viability; under 20 is usually too small, although around 30-40 would be better. This cave system is large enough to accommodate player choices and offer alternate paths – the structure follows a larger loop crossed by two strings of rooms; not elaborate, but again, it does its job. If you added about 50% empty space to extend it a little, and introduced a few dead ends and side-branches, it would be spot on. What works particularly well, though, is the sense of progression. The entrance section is a bandit lair, barricaded off from the deeper caves. This is followed by natural caverns ranging from a mushroom garden to a chasm spanned by a rickety rope bridge. You eventually get to the lost noble sanctum with its set-piece rooms, and that’s a great sense of discovery, even in such a small dungeon. It transcends simple “cabinet contents” room design by exploring slightly out-of-place elements with a sense of the odd and fantastic, like an underground music room or a grand library. A definite high water mark.

The encounters run the gamut from combat to hazards and navigation challenges. Monster encounters include basic tactics – ettercaps try to ensnare the party, while kobolds and goblins are a cowardly lot who might be more likely to bargain for a surrender. Monster numbers could be increased a little; meeting 16 kobolds is just more exciting than a combined group of five kobolds and three goblins. Two ghouls in a room is just sad, balance be damned. There are opportunities for parlaying and making deals with the denizens.

There is decent signposting – three skeletons impaled by fallen stalactites followed by, well, falling stalactites. It is perhaps on the simple side, but this is a beginner affair. Occasional bad practices are still present: for example, the bandits’ belongings can potentially yield healing potions, lockpicks, and small amounts of gold. Well, do they yield them or not? Do they only yield them if it is convenient for the GM? This is a point where an adventure designer should put down his feet, at least by establishing some odds. There are a few “hidden niche contains some  loot” secrets too many – more variety here would be to the adventure’s benefit. The loot amounts are based on Shadowdark standards, so it is more “I am happy with this 50 gp” and less “you find 1000 gp, a meagre haul so far”.

The module follows a fairly effective presentation: keyworded player-side descriptions are followed by GM info in bullet points. The absence of monster stats is puzzling. Is this a Shadowdark thing or a module-specific thing? In either case, stats should be included, no ifs and no buts. The Achilles heel of the presentation is the map. Features noted in the text are often missing from the map – not on the level of furniture, but things like a grand stairway, a secret door, or a chasm and a rope bridge are the most notable cases. Sure, you can draw them in based on a read-through of the text, but then the author could have done the same. I wonder if this was originally a repurposed map or some sort of template.

All things considered, this is not bad at all, sort of like a good Basic D&D adventure. It is not yet at the point where decent becomes very good, but perhaps where good things starts to emerge – a good start. The author is someone who clearly has talent, and is getting more skilful. It would be good to see more.

No playtesters are credited in this module.

Rating: *** / *****

4 hexes northwest, 7 north of Alakran.

 

In the cleft of the cracked hill known as Gabarakhu, a band of adventurers have dug a cave retreat. They do not often congregate there, roving widely in the varied lands east of Eryptos, and in the city itself where they are neck-deep in the intrigues of palace and street. Practically, they work as a foil for the protagonist party, rivals who seek the same prizes they do. The Gabarakhu group are not heroes, nor yet bandits, but mirror your players at their most venal and gold-grubbing.

Annunitum "The Prevailing Seducer" (Bard 5/Warlock 4): An extremely good-looking man, always wearing green, with oddly violet eyes and long hair braided into polished bronze rings. He was born into the Sillashu family of aristocrats in Mu-Asharru, the capital, but disowned by his father as illegitimate. Then, he was raised, rejected, and grudingly welcomed back by a cadet branch of the family in Eryptos -- though they draw the line at hosting his scruffy friends. He considers himself a poet and lyrist in the classical traditions, but knows a surprising number of vulgar tavern songs. It is hard to spot the difference between his song magic and the gifts he received from his lover (though really, supernatural procuress), rumored to be a Peri of the Fey Plane. Their relationship is, however, notoriously open, and he makes few distinctions between men and women in his advances.

Shushunta "Adamant Stone of Greed" (Wizard 8). A stranger to the wizardly schools of Eryptos, she was rejected as an apprentice by all three notorious wizards of Eryptos a decade ago, for her crass interest in wealth. Thus she learned her craft paying unrefuseable fees to the wizards who dwell in the far and lonely places of the realms. She is short and stocky, of Pungatani origin, and wears a headband with an adamantium stone in it, which she uses as an arcane focus. In any dealings she brings a scale and weights along and will memorize spells to ensure she is not cheated.

Ku-baba (Barbarian 6). The muscle of the group, literally, Ku-Baba has the "Blood of the Nephilim" or legendary giants - in short, she is a goliath, and towers over seven feet tall, head shaven and arms tattooed in bands of ancient prayers to the god Hurru. She wields twin hammers in battle. If Annunitum is hard to ignore in a crowd, Ku-Baba is impossible. She has worked for many as a guard or mercenary and is well-connected among the lowlife, with a lust for life that demands the acquisition and immediate spending of considerable funds.

As well, any given mission of the Band will be accompanied by 1d4 temporary hires -- fighters and rogues of level 1-3. They pay well, but nobody has located their stash, and only fools seek in the cleft of the hill that gives them their name. Shushunta is known to place powerful and hostile spells there in defense, and the few who have survived or bypassed these report that only creature comforts are stowed there..

 

By Stuart Watkinson Kirilot Generic/Universal Level ?

Something doesn’t smell right… Civilisations rise and fall and the bones of heroes turn to dust. In a time before written words, when power was the only currency,  something wretched was killed on the banks of the river. It sank into the mud and festered. Even the most cautious of travellers seek to rest their weary heads from time to time. Their sore, tired feet enter the cold, quiet riverside village expecting to find rustic hospitality but are left wanting. There is rot under Winterbrook.

This 32 page digest adventure is another sandboxy village thing. Less obvious than the last one, it’s 32 pages for what should be a one page adventure, given the content presented. It’s not overly bad, but it also doesn’t need more than page. At least it’s not the fucking well that’s poisoned this time …

Yes, I now judge things based on page count. Or, rather. How well you can bring an idea to life beyond a simple synopsis. Putrid necromancer corpse under village mutates worms in tunnels that drives villagers in to mad cannibals. Situation made worse by the local well meaning zealot cleric and her followers, who have a real “drink and eat the burnt dead” thing going on.

Ok, make your own adventure from that. I’ll wait … la la la, la la la. Done? Ok. The blacksmith has a daughter that makes swords. The local militia leader has one eye and some history books. There are “sacks” of worms in the tunnels that can burst open in to worm swarms, as well as larger, 2HD worms. The final room in the tunnels is kind of alive and can squeeze the party, blood gushing out, worm sacks breaking and so on. Ok. That’s the extra detail that this adventure provides that is kind of meaningful. Everything else is trivia.

And I am seriously NOT going out of my way to cherry pick here. Night one the villagers eat a stew with the ashes of dead people in it and on night two they breathe in the smoke from a funeral pyre. Night three they kill a crazed cannibal in a basement ritual. That’s it. That’s all the extra you are getting. Cannibals? Fun with them? Nope. They are all locked away. Fun villagers? A good mob situation? Nope. Just a table with six randos on it. 

AT first I thought we were getting a good Black Mass thing going on. A crazed priest. A zealot layperson. A village that wants to believe. But, nope, you’re brining all of that yourself. There are hints of it, but nothing more than that. And a lot of “This person will believe any side that makes a good case …” Is there anything ON that good case? Anything to help the priest run as an opposing faction? No.

I’m not even sure how this adventure gets going. You’re in the village. Sure. You stay a night? Sure. The villagers eat the communal stew that night. It’s not until night two that they burn a body and breathe in the smoke, and someone asks for help. Why the fuck is the party still in the village pas night one? Look, I am be handwavey with a lot of stuff, but you’re clearly trying to do a build up thing here, but you’ve got to find a way to keep the party actually in the village past a single night of rest if you want to actually have a build up. And there’s no reason for them to in this one.

There is an off-hand comment that, if the party just go on their way or don’t do anything, then things go bad in the village and it influences what people say about the region in the future, and for the DM to introduce that in their game. That’s good DM advice, regardless. Make he world real by tossing in exploits, or lack thereof, tha the party has been around. 

So, it’s an adventure, I guess, because it says its one. It takes 32 pages to cover what I put in a couple of sentences. Maybe a paragraph. That sounds like a one-pager, at best. The rest of the information provided doesn’t really add to the adventure at all, not in any way that is meaningful. To quote, again, the Kitch Example, you have to tell us why this kitchen is different. Why is it meaningful that it is different from any other kitchen in the world? 

Oh, and there’s no real treasure. And the magic book you find, the Book of a Thousand Deaths, gets no real description. Not physically, or not what it might contain. LAME! LAME! Lame! Lame! LAME! Ten fucking dollars my ass …

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is seven rando pages. Good idea for variety. But, art and map heavy, which limits the utility of he preview. That Temple of he All Seeing is ok,  doesn’t overstay, but also says nothing of meaning since this is the SECOND time we get all of this information, after the NPC entries tell us the same thing. WHich is par for this adventure.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/429509/The-Rot-Beneath-Winterbrook–A-system-agnostic-adventure-module?1892600

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! Today, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of September 9, 1982. 

Batman #353: Batman has been declared a public menace by Mayor Hill and Commissioner Pauling, but despite a heightened police presence, the Dark Knight still manages to break into their office, and put them on notice that Deadshot spilled what he knows about them (which he hasn't). When Batman leaves the building, Pauling activates an alarm that alerts the officers about his presence and the police start shooting at Batman and hitting him. Still, Batman escapes.
Meanwhile, Dr. Thirteen shows Rupert Thorne the Hugo Strange haunting is a fake, done with holograms. Thorne jumps to the conclusion the responsible parties for this charade are his own pawns, Pauling and Hill.
Later, Alfred has to juggle an annoying Deadshot, who is being held prisoner and blindfolded in the Batcave, and tending Batman's wounds. Vicki Vale gets a phone call from a mysterious (cat) woman, who warns her to stay away from Bruce Wayne.
Thorne is drinking at his home and planning his revenge against his subordinates, when Batman appears and stands there is silence as Thorne rants. Unnerved, Thorne accidentally sets his house on fire. While Batman fights the blaze, Rupert Thorne gets away. Thorne goes to City Hall with a gun, ready to kill his lackeys. Batman arrives just in time to witness Thorne's murder of Pauling and the shooting of Thorne by one of Pauling's loyal cops. Batman disarms the cop and a fearful Mayor Hill promises he will reinstate Batman's special deputy status, but he won't be able to prove that he was ever involved with Thorne.
This Batman is, of course, Dick Grayson, as Bruce is still recovering. After a successful mission, Dick returns home, but someone else is watching Thorne get taken away to the hospital. The person is none other than Hugo Strange, who is very much alive!
This was a satisfying end to this arc by Conway and Newton.

Flash #316: Bates and Infantino continue the Goldface story with the Eradicator lurking in the background. The Flash tangles with Goldface twice and gets defeated. Goldface demands Flash leave town or he'll continue murdering people in Central City.. The Flash isn't about to leave, but he recruits the reformed Heatwave to help him try to take down the villain. They get closer, but again Goldface escapes, and Flash is left in peril of drowning. Meanwhile, the Eradicator makes short work of Goldface's goons that come after him, and Creed Philips discovers that the Eradicator killed his physician (he doesn't appear to know that he's the Eradicator).

G.I. Combat #248: No Mercenaries this month, but hey, more Haunted Tank! Joy. The first Tank story has an interesting high concept, if utterly predictable development in Kanigher style. The crew is leading 3 condemned soldiers to their execution. The three learn something of heroism from Jeb and his men, and then show it themselves by dying in battle giving our heroes a chance to escape the Germans. In the second story, the Haunted Tank manages to capture General Kuntz, "Rommel's right-hand man" and have to transport the injured general across the dangerous desert to command. 
The O.S.S. story is better than average. There is a traitor among four agents sent on a mission, and the still loyal agents have to discover who the turncoat is and complete the mission before the he takes them out. Drake and Trinidad round out the issue with a story about the lives of three individuals in different places and on different sides who wind up intersecting with the attack on Pearl Harbor. 

Masters of the Universe #1: I reviewed this issue here back in 2015. One of the mysteries here is why Tuska is doing the art with Alcala only inking when Alcala did much cooler work in the mini-comics? Maybe a question of speed? 
Saga of the Swamp Thing #8: Swamp Thing, Dennis and Liz are stranded on an island where they encounter dream-like scenes out of movies. They have to deal with dinosaurs, hostile tribesmen, and King Kong and wander through Rick's Cafe American.
Abruptly we get an interlude. In New Jersey Karen "Casey" Clancy" looks much older and is more sure of her powers. Paul Feldner tells her he won't be a part of her plan. He slaps her and tries to run away before Karen uses her mind power to make him burst into flames. 
Back on the island, Dennis and Liz are finally able to confront dreamers and it is discovered they are Vietnam vets that came into contact with the defoliant, Agent Blue. Traumatized and unable to reintegrate into society, they re-enlisted. They were transferred on the USS New Hampshire, which exploded and sank, leaving them as the only survivors. It was then that the soldiers realized they could "create stuff outta thin air" just by thinking about it and decided to live out the fantasies of their imagination instead of returning to reality. Liz then scolds one of the vets for hiding from reality, essentially calling them all cowards unworthy of sympathy. The vets have a falling out over this, and their fantasies begins to fall apart along with the entire island dissolving. One of the soldiers creates a helicopter and he, Swamp Thing, Liz and Dennis escape while the other dreamers drown.
In the Barr/Carrillo Phantom Stranger backup, the Stranger takes Amanda Dove (the woman from last issue) to see the latest incarnation of her lover, a general, and tries to stop the war he is currently involved in.

New Teen Titans #26: Wolfman and Perez prove social relevance in comics wasn't just a 70s fad. The New Teen Titans return to Earth from Vega, and Robin, having revealed his true feelings during the battle, begins a tentative, romantic relationship with Starfire, and the other Titans get back to their civilian lives. Several weeks pass in a couple of captions. Then, Raven meets a young girl who has been the victim of domesticate abuse, presumably by a pimp. Dick and Kory, on a movie date, witness the accidental death of a drug-crazed youth who attacks D.A. Adrian Chase (who seems a bit to the right of Bronson's character in the Deathwish movies) and his wife before running into the path of a car. Cyborg and the others visit a home for runaways and basically get a PSA on the problem. The other The next day, at the site of the Statue of Liberty, Changeling battles a young costumed girl, who calls herself Terra. 
It's easy to view this kind message comic as sort of heavy-handed. I feel like it would have seemed hard-hitting and gritty had I read it as a young teen. In a way, I feel like this is better than the Vega arc before, though probably a little of it is going to go a long way.

Superman #378: Kupperberg and Swan introduce a character I only know from the Who's Who: Colonel Future. NASA scientist Edmond Hamilton (a name borrowed from the sci-fi writer) accidentally gains prophetic powers that warn him of a doom the Earth faces in the near future. He adopts the secret identity of Colonel Future and begins stealing devices to help him build a defense against it, but runs afoul of Superman. It turns out, interpreting visions is a tricky thing and Future actually causes a problem Superman has to prevent.

It was announced near the end of August that many of Gary Gygax's works that were released (and later pulled from distribution) well over a decade ago were returning to distribution.

Castles & Crusades Castle Zagyg Yggsburgh is the first of those releases. It can be grabbed in Print plus PDF at the Troll Lords Store ($65), and in PDF from DTRPG (19.99 - 5 bucks cheaper than the TLG store).

Beneath the shadows of the ancient, dreaded Castle Zagyg stands the fortified town of Yggsburgh. Its stout walls and cobbled ways give ample refuge to those bold and worthy adventurers who come to the Four Tors to plunder the dungeon deeps of the Mad Mage. Beyond the protective covering of the town’s walls and the deep waters of the Urt and Nemo Rivers, lie a vast rolling countryside from the Glittering Knobs,the Uplands to the Lonely Valley.

Enter the environs of that most dread of magi, test your mettle and make ready for the heroes forge that is Castle Zagyg!

The book you hold in your hands is the Setting for the famed Castle Zagyg, the monstrous dungeons of legend.

More than a Campaign Setting!

This book consists of the town of Yggsburgh and its Environs, which include the town of Garham and 60 different geographic locales, each with their own peculiarities and adventures. The map charts over 1500 square miles of adventuring terrain, allowing the inclusion of Yggsburgh and Environs into almost any fantasy campaign setting. Each geographic locale has one or more adventures associated with it, offering hundreds of different plots, themes and escapades, players can take their characters on.

What to Expect!

• 1 Full Color, fold-out, 24" x 30" Map of the Environs of Yggsburgh
• 1 Full Color, fold-out, 24" x 30" Map of the Town of Yggsburgh
• Nine Interior Maps of Points of Interest
• 600+ Non‑Players Characters
• 30+ Random Encounter and Event Tables
• 50+ Random Encounters, offering hundreds of adventure venues
• Orders of Battle for everything from Goblins to Knights
• New, Monsters, Magic Items & Spells for the Castles & Crusades® Role Playing Game
• Crime and Punishment for Yggsburgh

Over 1000 Adventures and Adventure ideas!

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar    

 This post follows up quickly on the heels of this post here on the blogIn the category of killing two birds with one stone I've sent my crew of operators after  Tegel Manor. The manor itself is taking the player's PC's over to a post apocalytic world. And this is where last night's encounter begins. Where the player's operators ended up is a whole other  story. The party observed a city across Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 

Friday, Sept. 1 (Redmond, WA). With a multi-product line event coming in 2024, Paizo is preparing for the new rulebook release with a playtest of two new classes: the animist and the exemplar.

A war is brewing and all of existence will be drawn into the conflict! As gods die, new gods arise, and Golarion itself bucks and twists under the pressure of immortal powers vying for dominance, Pathfinder introduces two new classes with their own particular roles to play in these colossal battles.

The animist is a Wisdom-based divine spellcasting class that bonds with apparitions, ephemeral spirits who share their power and knowledge with the animist in exchange for the animist acting as their agent with the physical world. Bond with a Steward of Stone and Fire to add primal power to your spellcasting, make a pact with an Impostor in Hidden Places to gain access to sneaky and deceptive magics, or allow a Witness to Ancient Battles to possess you and lend its martial talents to your repertoire! Players interested in playing a wise spellcaster who can change their abilities each day, or even moment to moment, based on the spiritual entities they align themselves with, be sure to playtest the animist!

The exemplar is Pathfinder Second Edition’s first rare class, a Charisma-based divine warrior possessing their own spark of divinity. Using the power of receptacles called ikons, the exemplar can move their divine spark between each of their ikons to unlock potent effects and abilities. As your power grows, you create your own epithet that defines your immortal legacy; whether you become a Cunning exemplar, Restless as the Tides and known to be a Thief of Moonlight, or a Brave exemplar, Peerless Under Heaven and destined to be The Last Ruler of an ancient kingdom is up to you! Players interested in playing a demigod destined for greatness and inspired by mythological figures like Maui, Cú Chulainn, and Hercules, be sure to playtest the exemplar!

The playtest will run for one month, from September 1st 2023 through October 2nd 2023. Players can participate in the playtest in home games as well as in Paizo’s Organized Play Program. Players interested in playtesting in Pathfinder society should follow the rules in the Guide to Organized Play.

Friday, Sept. 1 (Redmond, WA). With a multi-product line event coming in 2024, Paizo is preparing for the new rulebook release with a playtest of two new classes: the animist and the exemplar.

A war is brewing and all of existence will be drawn into the conflict! As gods die, new gods arise, and Golarion itself bucks and twists under the pressure of immortal powers vying for dominance, Pathfinder introduces two new classes with their own particular roles to play in these colossal battles.

The animist is a Wisdom-based divine spellcasting class that bonds with apparitions, ephemeral spirits who share their power and knowledge with the animist in exchange for the animist acting as their agent with the physical world. Bond with a Steward of Stone and Fire to add primal power to your spellcasting, make a pact with an Impostor in Hidden Places to gain access to sneaky and deceptive magics, or allow a Witness to Ancient Battles to possess you and lend its martial talents to your repertoire! Players interested in playing a wise spellcaster who can change their abilities each day, or even moment to moment, based on the spiritual entities they align themselves with, be sure to playtest the animist!

The exemplar is Pathfinder Second Edition’s first rare class, a Charisma-based divine warrior possessing their own spark of divinity. Using the power of receptacles called ikons, the exemplar can move their divine spark between each of their ikons to unlock potent effects and abilities. As your power grows, you create your own epithet that defines your immortal legacy; whether you become a Cunning exemplar, Restless as the Tides and known to be a Thief of Moonlight, or a Brave exemplar, Peerless Under Heaven and destined to be The Last Ruler of an ancient kingdom is up to you! Players interested in playing a demigod destined for greatness and inspired by mythological figures like Maui, Cú Chulainn, and Hercules, be sure to playtest the exemplar!

The playtest will run for one month, from September 1st 2023 through October 2nd 2023. Players can participate in the playtest in home games as well as in Paizo’s Organized Play Program. Players interested in playtesting in Pathfinder society should follow the rules in the Guide to Organized Play.

Demiplane, producers of licensed character builder Pathfinder NEXUS, are hosting a free character builder for the animist and exemplar classes. Foundry VTT has added a module that includes fully automated support for the classes. Pathfinder Second Edition Foundry users will receive access to this module on Friday, September 1st.

Feedback for the classes should be submitted via one of two online forms: the Class Survey and the Open Response Survey. Paizo will also maintain dedicated playtest forums on paizo.com to discuss the new classes.

Paizo will follow up with further announcements after the playtest has completed.

About Paizo

Paizo Inc. is one of the world’s leading hobby game publishers. Since 2002, millions of players have joined the goblin army by playing the Pathfinder® and Starfinder® Roleplaying Games in homes, at conventions, at their favorite local game stores, and digitally on virtual tabletops. Paizo.com is an online retail hobby destination for gamers that carries the latest products from top hobby game publishers. Players can also find the newest releases, as well as accessories like dice and maps, miniatures, T-shirts, goblin plush toys, to quickly replenish their adventuring supplies for the next dungeon run.

The post  Paizo Unveils Two New Classes for Pathfinder War of Immortals Playtest first appeared on Through Gamer Goggles.

3 hexes northwest, 8 north of Alakran.

 

In this barren place, may we present a d6 table of strange stones? These will only be found if a "lair" roll is made in an empty desert hex (1 on the d20) and even then there is only a 1/6 chance of finding it unless someone is specifically watching the ground. Stones in hill terrain or with any kind of ground cover do not stand out enough to be noticed. All of them have magical uses but none radiate magic.

1. Toe of a petrified lion. Ingredient of a flesh to stone potion; alchenists will pay 50 or, if hard bargaining, 100 gp for it.

2. Round flat stone with a red mark resembling a magical sigil. Can be substituted as a spell component for up to 1000 gp worth of gems.

3. Stone that is thin and standing up but casts no shadow (only noticeable within 3 hours of sunrise or sunset. A minor marvel that can be sold to collectors or mountebanks for up to 100 gp.

4. Black stone with mica in it, like stars inteh night sky. If crushed and used for sand as a spell component in sleep, doubles its effectiveness (both number of hit dice/creatures affected, and duration).

5. Sandstone looking oddly like a treasure chest. Can be sold as a curio for 5 gp, or cracked open to reveal the 500 gp ruby inside.

6. White stone with one end resembling a skull. Does double damage if used as a sling stone, but crumbles into dust if it kills a being.

 "They designed the Starship Warden to house, feed and clothe over a million people. To do this the designers outfitted this massive ship, miles long and miles wide, to serve as a home for people offering up quarters and cafeterias, restaurants, and malls all intermingled with a host of features to mimic earth-like conditions, from artificial lakes to fields of crops. Her maiden voyage began withNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

I remember coming across Delta Green shortly after it was released in 1997 (actually, I think I first saw it earlier in the zine Unspeakable Oath) as a supplement for the Call of Cthulhu RPG. Now, it is a stand-alone RPG. I've yet to run it or play in a session, but the rules read really well and I long for the day I can do so.

With the Delta Green Mega Bundle at Bundle of Holding, you get the Delta Green Agent's Handbook, The Complex, and Agent Dossiers for 7.95.

For about 38 bucks, you get the above and add the following: the Delta Green Handler's Guide and the recent major supplements The Conspiracy and The Labyrinth (plus its Evidence Kit), the full-length campaigns Iconoclasts and Impossible Landscapes (plus its STATIC Protocol expansion), the item collection ARCHINT, and the DG Handler's Screen. Phew!

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Yeah, I know, it's been a while. Other than having a new family member (which will have you quite busy, of course), I've also spent the free time I could get with ... writing another game: Rebellion - The Card Game! Crazy, right? It is a (fun!) card game, but still relates to one of the role-playing games I'm working on here at Disoriented Ranger Publishing: Brawlers! Lets talk about that, shall we?

Get it at a discount here!

Introducing: Rebellion - The Card Game

It is a card fishing game loosely inspired by games like Pasur or Scoba, but it comes with the additional layer of adding abilities to the cards that opens it all up to something more akin to games like Dominion, while staying with the classic, standard card decks (I might add customized decks later, but for now, the standards work perfectly well).

So, two sets of 52 standard card decks with two Jokers each (something every household should have, I assume) together with the rules will set you up nicely.

All else you'll need is at least one friend and a table to play on. Even digitally works very well: the card feature on roll20 works like a charm with this. Set up two standard card decks, one for the player of the King, the other for the Rebel Players, snatch the template from the pdf, the product page on drivethruRPG or here, put that as a map background, and you are good to go. Worked like a charm for us.

For the map layer in your roll20 game ...
Anyway, so how does it play? Well, as you can see on the mat above, it's about two sides fighting about cards in the middle, the so-called Realm. They do so by playing hand cards to reduce the Realm cards to zero and win them. Additional effects will alter that by adding fun little mechanics that give each side special boons and the Realm itself come with some interesting features that may offer opportunities for special moves and awards.

It's all well balanced and comes with a high re-playability, if I may say so. If you like card games with a quick set up that also carry a little depth once you dug into it, you should give Rebellion a chance. We have loads of fun playing it.

If you end up getting AND playing it, we'd be happy to hear about it. Naturally. And leaving some love on the product page is always appreciated.

Tie-in for a RPG that doesn't exist?

You remember Brawlers - A DungeonPunk RPG (formerly known as Bastards!, er, the Grind)? I'm still working on it. Rebellion is part of that process. The world of Brawlers was pretty dark: a sort of apocalypse took a dark spin on a vanilla fantasy setting. Now the monster menagerie is in charge and sitting on the ruins of the lost world. Characters go on "brawls" in that world to help petty gods back to power and kick some demon butt ... Rebellion is a card game from that long gone era. A reminder of better times, maybe, or just a card trick game played for coins. Illegal under the monster empire, of course That's the idea, anyway.

Maybe not the final cover ...
 I was looking for a nice way to connect what the players are doing with that card based mission generator I wrote for it years back. I was thinking poker variant, but that never really clicked somehow. Roughly two months ago I had an epiphany of sorts: what if players get a chance during mission to challenge the BrawlMeister (the DM, so to say) to a game of cards, and if they win, it'll alter the mission parameters by creating some better conditions ... but if they lose, shit gets worse. 

A no-brainer, since the cards already connect with the mission generator. All it needs is the specific ... And I already have some ideas for "wild" cards that could be played, as well as alternative decks and how it all connects to character levels. Lots of possibilities!

But for now, the game itself is done. I think it might make a good "setting game" for most fantasy settings. Something with its own lingo, something non-player characters might play or talk about. At least it will be that for Brawlers ... And it is fun to play by itself, so there is that.

What else is cooking?

I'll keep it short, but lots is happening. I decided to finally publish a pdf for ORWELL, that dystopian role-playing game I wrote and sold as dead tree copy only until now. Will make a little errata before that, make it all pretty and clean, with hyperlinks and bookmarks ... the whole ten yards. And then it'll go live. This month or next, I think.

I also got a bit of fiction published! A cyberpunk short story of mine appeared in a great anthology: Ipseities (by As If publishing). I liked all the stories, with three really exceptional favorites. Really a great anthology of weird and creative stories. Good company to be in! Really recommended, if nuweird is something you like.

I'm also working on all other fronts, and hope to get  couple of things done before years end. Looks good right now. I feel it's happening. Look forward to see some more about be67 in the near future ...

What I imagine a be67 GM looks like ...
And the blog ... well, I need to do some more there, too. It takes a bit of a back seat, but I have that review series with my friend Eric going, so something like that will happen next. If I can do it on the sly.

So that's it. A lot is happening behind the scenes, but you guys will see results soon. Some proper rpg material will hit digital shelves in the very near future! Stay tuned. And check out Rebellion. It really is tons of fun.

The King disapproves of your attempts to resist ...

By Thomas Scott Ingle Self Published LotFP Level ?

Level range? Why do you believe that you, as a consumer, deserve a level range? Tell me about your childhood trauma that led to that belief?

The morning after a pair of young, orphan boys (Harry, and Measel) pretend to be wizards casting a pretend spell, their odd words come to fruition, and the superstitious adults of South Chapel accuse them of practicing black magic! But all is not as it seems… Are the boys really responsible for the ills suddenly befalling South Chapel? Could it be dark spirits from the Old Sminkle place? …Or is it something else…? The only way for the Pcs to find out is to explore South Chapel and investigate the strange goings on…!

This 34 page digest adventure describes a village with people in it going mad. It has a bunch of descriptions that are not needed and A LOT of text that obfuscates what is really going on. In the end, it’s a go nowhere adventure. You’ll find no joy today me buckos. 

You arrive at the village and there’s various mobs hunting two little kids, to hang them for witchcraft. Gallows and all. Seems there are now worms flying around with wings. You wander around the village while the DM rolls on the “weird shit” table until everyone mutates and/or all of the villagers go crazy in a riot. Seems that there is a meteorite in the pond in the center of the village, causing it all. THis is, of course, two massive tropes: that there’s an outer space meteorite causing shit to happen in a Lamentations adventure and that the town water source is poisoned. The usual for a Lamentations adventure, or, any crazed villagers adventure it seems. 

The individual buildings and farms, in particular, are too well documented. The names, ages of everyone and some little blurb about thor backstory that almost never bears any significance to the adventure. Wasted space and wasted cognition for the DM trying to run this. The VAST majority of shit could just be described by a villager table. After all, their import is in the fact that they are mobbing, not that they grow cabbages. “[they all] work the farm, shearing sheep, milking goats, spinning wool, churning butter, and making cheese” Wonderful. My game is enriched. 

A couple of locations are different though. You get a full accounting of the church and of a three story haunted house. A FULL accounting. In WAY too much detail. Paragraph after paragraph for rooms. A bunch of words that mean nothing for the adventure at hand. And, you literally just wander around the village. While the DM rolls on the mutations table to see what weird shit the villagers do. That provide no clues to the adventure. I guess you just stumble on the water source, if you do at all. This all comes after a disaster of an intro, full of text, that, I guess is meant to be run as the intro to the village but is so long, at multiple pages f first this and then this, that I don’t see any sane person could use it. For that matter, the wandering around the village part is not really supported at all either. No good mob tables or anything. And, when we get to the items in the adventure? “Roll to determine one or two forgotten magic items.” Jesus people, this is not how randomness works in an adventure. Just place the fucking items. Don’t waste the creativity on things that won’t be placed. 

It does allow you to bring villagers out of their crazed state by splashing cold water on them. That’s a nice touch.

Otherwise, this is just a MASS of text that doesn’t really support the main adventure at all. Just mountains of it, that you get to dig through, while trying to run a village hunt without any support for the hunt proper. Another wasted PDF that makes little baby Jesus cry.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages. That’s not enough to really see what’s going on, but you can get a sense of the tedious writing style from it. Imagine that throughout.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/439884/Earthworms-Have-Wings?1892600

Two hexes northwest, nine north of Alakran.

 

The Scarp, that central wall of mountainous stone formations that divides the higher east from the lower west, gives rise to odd phenomena when winds blow directly in its face, whether from the east or from the west.

Standing here, a strong wind from the west will blow up against the face of the Scarp. Scattered dust will "clothe" the Scarp in a thick and eerie haze, and the blowback circulation leaves a "silt fog" of yellow dust in the air for six hours and to a distance of 3-5 miles. The effect is most promounced in places like this, where no intervening badlands or foothills break the hammering of the wind against the Scarp's full height.

A strong wind from the east, though, will end up whistling high overhead, while below you watch in eerie calm. Birds are buffeted, dust trails stream through the air, and the wind is only felt at 7-10 miles distance to the west.

 Let's pick up from our sessions where we left off here with the player's PC's getting into the groove of Phaseworld. The PC's picked the warrior Yub Gorkin a rather excentric Thrax warrior that they literally bought from the Slavers along with his equipment.Acroyear by Pat Broderick The crew of Lakota were able to get Yub under contract as hired muscle & 'problem solving' after awakening him Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

The other day I was reviewing some....interesting demographic data about the rural community I grew up in. This data was from just before the American Civil War, right about the time that the state was created from the territory (keeping it vague deliberately). The house I kind of grew up in was built by the 1st Doctor in the county and at one time my little town was the biggest in the area because it had an early rail-line stop in it.

Anyway, that roughly two-decade time period always fascinated me a bit because, like many of us, I'm at least a little bit of a history nerd, and in some ways I can mentally equate that time period to the typical OSR campaign setting.

Hear me out here.......clearly there isn't a direct connection, but I'm thinking the edge of civilization with plenty of open/wild lands around. You don't have to go too far to find danger. There is an increased level of technology and industrialization, but it isn't ever-present. In a land where there is one Doctor for the county, no paved roads, but there is a single narrow gauge railroad. There are still plenty of predators/wild animals about and mankind basically has small carved-out enclaves throughout the area (I think the county had 9 tiny townships).....this isn't too far off from the typical medieval fantasy world. Just replace the "technology" with "magic". 

This rural county would be akin to a borderland state. There's a number of small churches, but only one Priest of middling level that can Cure or Heal. People live in small towns that are pretty much a half-day's ride away across minor trails. You can get some wonderous magic from the trader that comes into town once or twice a week, but there really isn't much more than a hedge-wizard around. People largely work the land, keep an eye out for danger from the woods, and are pretty insular when it comes to "others".

Now I'm not advocating for trying to game in an Age of Expansion America, but I am saying that there might be some value in seeing how people lived back then and using that info to influence the game world of your own campaign. I think for a lot of us that history might be a lot more approachable than say, picking up a book like Life in a Medieval Village. Of course that book might help to understand feudalism, but in a world of magic (both divine and arcane) I'm not sure how feudal we can go....of course, you do you.

I just think when you add in murderhobos, the magic, and the fantasy elements, this more American-history model makes a bit more sense than a strictly feudal setting.....

...anyway, this has been a long, rambling segue from my initial findings to something I think would add a lot to a typical campaign: "secret" societies. I was pretty much astonished by the numbers of these "secret" (it seemed like more than a few weren't actually secret, just pretended to be) organizations. Many were just fraternal organizations and if the numbers were to believed, most men belonged to at least two organizations, if not three.

It seemed like these organizations were anything from simple drinking clubs and mutual-aid societies to bonafide charities. There were some that overlap of members and others that by design had no overlap. Basically these were communities within-communities and served to connect people that might otherwise be separated (like Catholics and Protestants in highly religious communities). These groups would have regular meetings, special events, and would definitely form bonds between outwardly appearing disparate groups.

I like to think there could be a ton of role-play potential by using secret societies to connect the NPCs of your game world. The PCs could tick off one merchant and find out that a week later the fishmonger will no longer sell the party Mage that Giant Octopus Ink he needs for his scrolls. Why? Well those two are in the Fraternal Order of the Owlbear and that group decided "Eff those murderhoboes". There normally isn't too much of a goblin problem in the area, but lately there have been a periodic rash of break-ins and thefts attributed to the creature...

....Well there is this secret society that holds ritualistic goblin hunts and they have had to import goblins, set them loose, and then track them down for the hunt. The goblins are trying to do resource grabs so they can flee. It's a bit of a mess, but those guys throw one mean party every other month or so....

Those are just two quick ideas, but when I start up a new campaign or introduce a new town I like to think that the world doesn't revolve around the PCs and adding bits of lore that clearly exists without PC input makes that work better. This is why I like to have an established game calendar. I can set certain events, like normal society meetings or special events and if the party is in the right place at the right time, good for them. If not, well maybe that fishmonger and merchant have something cool from last night's event to be talking about...

Two hexes northwest, seven north of Alakran.

Mittellus draws from all earthly biomes, so within a day's walk of "Old World" leopards 25 miles to the north (probably outside the scope of thsi hexcrawl), the Scarp's extended convolutions give refuge to a population of five roving "Now World" mountain lions. A useful comparison can be found here.

Two of these are pumapards,  the product of interfertility with said leopards -- they are short-legged, smaller than the others, despite the leopard's greater strength, and have patches of spots on their coat. A few animal collectors in Eryptos may be interested in captured specimens of these rare beasts.