Incline OSR Games - Official thread

[Bara]

So spparently Rob Kuntz is finally licensing his privarte works including bits and piecies from the inside of Castle Greyhawk.

Announcing a partnership deal with the Robert J. Kuntz Estate and a new line of products from both TLB GAMES and LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYING(TM): www.legendsofroleplaying.com/pages/robert-j-kuntz-estate-license

TLB GAMES


TLB GAMES produces a series of RPG products with an eye toward the history of the game. Our first new TLB GAMES(TM) releases, The Game That Changed Everything, a monograph by Robert J. Kuntz on the event that led to the creation of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS®, and a line of Old School Cool Posters for your game room or home office, will be available January 31st, 12 Noon (GMT-6) on the TLB GAMES(TM) website (www.TLBgames.com).


LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYING(TM)


LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYING(TM) grew out of the incredibly successful, LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYING(TM) TOURNAMENT featured at GARY CON each year. These highly popular adventures are now being published through LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYING(TM). Our first LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYING(TM) release, adventure LR1 Beyond the Living Room by Robert J. Kuntz, will be available January 31st, 12 Noon (GMT-6) when the LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYING(TM) website goes live (www.legendsofroleplaying.com).

In addition to these, more old school adventures are being planned. But these aren't just "old school" adventures in name and appearance, they are old school adventures, heart and soul. They are written, edited, illustrated, mapped, and play-tested by the LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYING(TM) themselves. That's right, the band is getting back together!

At one point in time TSR, the company that brought us DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® and ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS®, had the magic. It had a gathering of the most talented creative people in the gaming industry. Now those former TSR creatives have recaptured their magic with adventure designs by Rob Kuntz, Jim Ward, Mike Carr, Allen Hammack, and Kevin Hendryx, cartography by Steve Sullivan, and artwork by Jeff Dee, Erol Otus, Darlene, Dave "Diesel" LaForce, Harry Quinn, and Jeff Easley.

Join us! The adventures you seek are at hand!

 

[Bara]

So the top mod of the "OSR discord" has been removed. Apparently they were a actual abuser.

Why is it when some one really pushes hard that they are one of the good guys they have some of the most fucked up shit in their closet?

 

[TheDiceMustRoll]

So the top mod of the "OSR discord" has been removed. Apparently they were a actual abuser.

Why is it when some one really pushes hard that they are one of the good guys they have some of the most fucked up shit in their closet?

How on-topic and worth discussing.

 

[Bara]

No different from talking about Zak or the other drama from a page or two back.

But for actual worthwhile OSR stuff The High Moors for 5e got converted to OSE. Prince of nothing reviewed it favorably when it was only a 5e module seems pretty cool.

Melan thanks for linking his blog by the way found some great stuff!

 

[Melan]

Yiff in hell, motherfuckers!

 

[TheDiceMustRoll]

No different from talking about Zak or the other drama from a page or two back.

But for actual worthwhile OSR stuff The High Moors for 5e got converted to OSE. Prince of nothing reviewed it favorably when it was only a 5e module seems pretty cool.

Melan thanks for linking his blog by the way found some great stuff!

Yeah but the "auratwilight drama" is a really small subset. Most people were aware he was a complete retard, when he was literally making up nonsense about me, another mod in the discord said, "Well, we could talk to him about it, but, you know, it's aura." Which implies that those mods knew what kind of schizophrenic nonsense he was capable of. Really a lot of hairy eyeballs should be pointed directly at Chris McDowall, who couldn't be bothered to police his community ever again after he banned Zak the one time and handed it off to an *alleged* furry pedophile.

It's a shocking lack of judgement.

 

[Morblot]

No Discord, no drama, my dudes.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

when he was literally making up nonsense about me

you use discord?
gay.

 

[Sacibengala]

So the top mod of the "OSR discord" has been removed. Apparently they were a actual abuser.

Why is it when some one really pushes hard that they are one of the good guys they have some of the most fucked up shit in their closet?

McDowall and his absolutely out of touch judgment of character and posture, no surprise there.

 

[Bara]

Barrowmaze guy kickstarting a dwarven delve adventure.

 

[Sacibengala]

Barrowmaze guy kickstarting a dwarven delve adventure.

This one in special got my attention, I’m a dwarf guy. But 40$ for a pdf is very rough. The hardcopy being POD don’t give me hopes as well. About the content, he always delivers, so, I’ll wait and see what happens.

 

[nikolokolus]

DTRPG's POD quality has substantially improved in recent years (Lulu.com is even better), so it's not as big of deal as it used to be. The $40 price tag is indeed a bit steep, but Gillespie usually produces very evocative, usable stuff, so you'll probably get your money's worth.

 

[Whimper]

I guess it is for a kickstarter so maybe a higher price is okay since you're backing the idea or something along those lines, but, the Complete Barrowmaze is being sold for $35 in pdf form and while it has 200 pages and lots of artwork this seems excessive to me when the last trpg book (actual physical book) that I bought (Symbaroum CR) cost just over $60 and has much better artwork, debatable I suppose, and 260 pages (also not a print on demand book, it is high quality paper and binding &c). Seems like profiteering to me. Looked at the Complete Barrowmaze on Trove and it seems pretty good, though it was just a quick glimpse. Assume the kickstarter would be equal in quality.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

What is this "pay" you people speak of?

 

[Whimper]

What is this "pay" you people speak of?

I did sneakily mention Trove... Overpriced pdfs are a pretty strong argument for even the most straight-laced to become pirates.

 

[Bara]

The ones that really grind on my gears are the folks that dont include the pdf for free when you buy physical.

I've seen that more with 5e than osr products though that might just be bias talking.

 

[Whimper]

I wouldn't buy from such a company, there are so many amazing games both new and old that it's not like there's any reason to support such behaviour.

 

[Bara]

Welp worlds without number is oficially out and avaliable for puchase.

 

[pakoito]

Welp worlds without number is oficially out and avaliable for puchase expensive as fuck

 

[Bara]

Well there is the free version too but its also missing some content not just a lack of art.

 

[Bara]

Also dolemwood news this week. No dates announced still.

Dolmenwood: Progress Report and Cover Art!

March 17, 2021 • Gavin Norman • dolmenwood

As those who support the Dolmenwood Patreon are aware, work on the fabled Dolmenwood hardcover books is moving along at a good pace. I thought it'd be fun to give a little update on how things are progressing and share a few screenshots of the work in progress.

Overview
As a reminder of what the Dolmenwood project involves:

• Dolmenwood is a fairy-tale campaign setting for Old-School Essentials.
• Three hardcover books will be published as a set.
• The Dolmenwood Player's Book: new classes, equipment, and player's background.
• The Dolmenwood Campaign Book: referee's background, details on the 7 major factions, 12 most important settlements, and 180+ hexes.
• The Dolmenwood Monster Book: a bestiary of fairy-tale monsters for the setting.
• Much of the content from the old Wormskin zine will be included in the three books (in a revised form), along with a much larger amount of new content. See this blog post for more details.
• The plan is to run a Kickstarter for the books when they're finished, including lots of fancy extras. (I won't say exactly what fancy extras are planned, as plans are not yet finalised.)

What's Being Worked On Now?
With a big project like this, there are a lot of things going on in parallel. Here are the main things that are happening currently:

• Writing (of course). The majority of the writing in the books is new, but there's also a lot of work on editing and revising older text (including lots of material from the old Wormskin zine) to bring everything into a consistent whole.
• Layout and visual design. I'm very fortunate to have the aid of Vasili Kaliman (Singing Flame) on the typography and visual design side of the books. His input is really taking things to the next level. The design is still in progress, so the screenshots below aren't to be regarded as final at this stage, but I'm really excited by the direction we're going.
• Art direction and illustration. These books will require hundreds of illustrations. I'm steadily commissioning art in parallel with working on the writing, layout, etc.

The writing and layout of the Dolmenwood Player's Book are around 95% complete, so my main focus now is on the Dolmenwood Campaign Book (which is by far the largest of the three books—see below for more details on the projected page counts).

When Will the Kickstarter Launch?
The answer to this is still "when the books are ready". I've announced estimated dates in the past and they've all proven to be wrong, so I'm not going to do so again. Work on the project is now progressing very steadily, but there's still a long way to go.

If you want a monthly dose of Dolmenwood in the meantime, I'd recommend joining the Patreon. We have a really nice community of Dolmenwood fans building up there and people are raving about the monthly content packages that have been released so far.

Table of Contents Previews
One of the best ways to show what each book is going to contain is to show the tables of contents. Here we go! Each is shown alongside the cover art for that book (by Ulla Thynell).

The Dolmenwood Player's Book

Writing on the Dolmenwood Player's Book is very nearly finished and the book comes in at 112 pages. A few notes to elaborate on what you can see in the table of contents above:

• There's a section on each playable race, including reams of tables for generating fun and quirky details of PCs or NPCs.
• There are 8 new character classes, 4 of which are demihumans.
• Rules for separate race and class are also provided, for those who prefer Advanced-style character creation.
• Three new systems of magic are included.
• 16 pages of new equipment, including meaty lists of fun stuff like pipeweed and spirituous beverages!
• Supplemental material in the appendices delves deeper into the setting background, with information on the calendar, noble houses, and saints.

The Dolmenwood Campaign Book

The Dolmenwood Campaign Book is the really big one. The structure of the book is pretty much nailed now, but much of the content still needs to be written up from the notes that I have. It currently comes in at 348 pages but will probably expand somewhat by the time it's finished (see? a real beast of a book!). A few notes to elaborate on what you can see in the table of contents above:

• Each of the 7 major factions gets a 4+ page description, including detailed write-ups and portraits of the most important NPCs in each faction.
• 12 settlements get detailed write-ups (4+ pages each) and a beautiful map by Arlin Ortiz. The Castle Brackenwold write-up, for example, covers 21 numbered locations in the city, comes in at 8 pages, and includes descriptions of 7 additional NPCs.
• 180+ hexes (final number not yet known) get full descriptions—a page per hex.
• Additional rules and tables flesh out the procedures for exploring the forest, weather, hunting, camping in the wilds, etc.

The Dolmenwood Monster Book

As the Dolmenwood Campaign Book is so huge, I decided to to split out the monsters into their own book. I'm not a fan doorstep gaming books. I feel anything over 400-odd pages gets unwieldy and difficult to use at the table. It's also kind of nice to have a three book set following the traditional PHB, DMG, MM split.

Anyway, the Dolmenwood Monster Book is the smallest of the three, coming in at 88 pages currently. I have write-ups for most of the monsters in the book, though they need editing to get them into a uniform format.

A few notes to elaborate on what you can see in the table of contents above:

• The book includes guidelines for which standard Old-School Essentials monsters fit the flavour of Dolmenwood.
• There will also be a bit more detail on adventuring parties in Dolmenwood and the different types of normal humans that can be encountered.
• Each monster has an accompanying illustration.
• Other than that, there's not much to say. It's a big book of monsters!

 

[catfood]

Great artwork.

 

[Bara]

Okay so has anyone heard of The Halls of Arden Vul before and is the content good enough to justify $109 for a pdf of the mega dungeon?

 

[pakoito]

It's on the trove, check for yourself.

 

[Sacibengala]

Okay so has anyone heard of The Halls of Arden Vul before and is the content good enough to justify $109 for a pdf of the mega dungeon?

Tenfootpole made a review about it. Not good enough in his opinion. And, personally, I’ll never run something like that.