The main rulebook was funded in seventy two minutes! So in the remaining time we’ve been busy funding stretch goals that are going in a separate book/pdf called, Swords Against the Shadows. So this means backers get two for the price of one books!
Here’s the work in progress cover by Dan Barker, who will be colouring the final piece.
So far we’ve funded nine stretch goals, which cover things like rules for Companions, an adventure generator, a Age of Sail settting and two adventures.
Now in the final days of the Kickstarter, we see the end of the world approach. The human world that is, as the Serpent Folk who have long scemed in the Shadows come out of it to reclaim thier world in the Snake Bite setting. The final set of stretch goals detail the Serpent Noble character class, if you and your players fancy playing “evil” and being in the driving seat of the Serpent Take over, part of which plays out in the adventure The Fall of Domios. Once we fund those, the campaign rounds out with more character classes (conversions of the remaining exotic character classes from Crypts and Things, and the Necromancer) before making the OGL portions of the game available as a Text Systems Resource Document.
Funded in 72 minutes of launching, we’ve smashed through one set of stretch goals, and I posted another set two days ago, of which we’ve already funded one.
As well as the main rulebook, backers will get another book, The Swords Against the Shadows Companion in PDF/POD which contains the following funded stretch goals.
Fiendish Folio. Another 25 monsters for the game.
Gazetteer of the Jewelled Coast. More details about the example setting.
The Tower of Shadows, an introductory adventure.
Adventure Generator. A series of random tables to quickly generate Swords and Sorcery adventures.
Companions. Party is a bit low on player characters, or one or two players in need of NPC help? This article will not only give tables to create companions randomly, but also some guidance on how to run games for one to two players.
Sails and Sorcery. A second example world, of Golden Age pirates versus a sorcerous secret society that seeks to drown the current Empire of Sail and start the world anew.
Here’s the cover of the Companion, which is in the process of being fully coloured by its artist Dan Barker.
Swords Against the Shadows is a tabletop roleplaying game of epic Swords and Sorcery heroes and anti-heroes pitted against the evils lurking in their world’s shadows. Fight demons from the Outer Dark, and oppose the schemes of malignant Sorcerers, to protect the small pockets of civilisation that survive surrounded by hostile wilderness. Use the game to recreate thrilling fantasy adventure tales, as told by authors such as Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock, and Clark Ashton Smith.
The game is based on the popular pick-up-and-play Black Hack 2nd Edition, modified to meet genre expectations. If you are familiar with the World’s Favourite Roleplaying game, you’ll be right at home here and find much to like in this wonderful rules-light, fast-playing rules set.
The book is 80 pages long, in an A5 softcover format, with black and white illustrations throughout. It features this marvellous front cover by Jon Hodgson.
At the time of writing, the Kickstarter funded in just over an hour on the first day, and the first three stretch goals have been funded.
Here’s a preview from the Characters chapter of the upcoming Swords Against the Shadows game, coming to Kickstarter on July 1st for two weeks.
Decide on Character Class
First, choose a class (see page 7 onwards). The class determines what sort of adventurer they are and what innate abilities they have. The four choices are Barbarian, Fighter, Thief, and Sorcerer. Each class has a section entitled Essentials which details the following.
Starting hit points at 1st level.
Hit Dice. The dice they roll for additional hit points after first level.
What sort of sanity loss the character is particularly resilient against.
What arms and armour they can use.
The damage they inflict in physical combat.
Each class has a selection of Styles, which tell you roughly what the character looks like and their starting equipment.
Importantly, each class has a set of Class Abilities that differentiate them from the other classes and tell you where they excel.
Finally, there is a section that tells you what happens when they gain a New Level and through having enough experiences (see page 31) levelling up.
Here’s a quick list of things to consider when setting up a setting for Swords against the Shadows.
Style. What’s the tone and feel of your setting?
People. What are the major human nations and cultures?
Nations. What important lands exist in the setting?
Patrons, Lovers and Nemeses. These are larger than life non-player characters whose schemes frequently involve the characters.
Level of Technology/Magic. Most S&S settings are low on magic, being the preserve of Sorcerers and generally considered a bad thing. Likewise, technology can vary from the Stone Age to the Renaissance and all points in between in a setting.
Monsters and Mysteries. What enigmas and attendant threats will the characters uncover during their adventures?
The State of the World. Overall, considering all of the above, at the beginning of play, what big events are rumbling under the surface, ready to erupt?
Style
This is shorthand for the general theme and tone of your setting. Here’s a quick list of themes that you can either pick from or roll randomly on a d6 to choose.
1 Swords against Evil. Demons prey on everyday folk, only the swords can protect the innocent. 2 Swords Against the Skullduggery. The world is dominated by powerful factions run by patrons or hidden nemesis whose criminal enterprises are enacted by agents. It is up to the Swords to bring their schemes into the light of day and foil them. 3 Swords for Discovery. Much of the world is unexplored wilderness. Swords are explorers who open up the world, find treasure, and reveal ancient world-changing secrets. 4 The Swords who would be King. Either by design or more likely the characters are thrust into the leadership roles of their local city/kingdom. 5 Swords Against Sorcery. The characters are pitted against the schemes of either a solo Sorcerer or a Cabal who, for some reason, has it in for them. 6 Swords Against the Apocalypse. A great set of events is set in motion that will destroy the Swords’ world unless they get involved and drive the course of destiny.
This is only part of World Building chapter. In it the Jewelled Coast is presented as an example setting, which has been generated using the questions and answers method.
After years of development, playtesting and passing drafts between myself and author Paul Mitchener, my favourite version of not-Dnd with its fantastic world-hopping setting is out!
You can now get Beyond Dread Portals, a standalone post-OSR game complete with rules, setting and adventure from the D101 Games web store and Drivethrurpg.com.
Scattered across social media posts, mainly BlueSky these days, comes news of what members of what I call the Brit Pack, fellow UK TTRPG designers that I know personally mainly through the Sheffield series of Garricons.
Paul Baldowski’s Dee Sanction Monad Edition is on Kickstarter. A new expanded version of his TTRPG exploring the Elizabethan World of supernatural investigation. Streamlined rules, more setting information.
A Kickstarter collecting the articles in zine format is coming soon.
John Ossoway, author of Cthulhu Rising and River of Heaven, has gone all Ronin and has written and illustrated a supplement for this Mork Borg based game,
Gaz Bowerbank, better known as Evil Gaz to us UK convention attendees, and one half of the Smart Party Podcast and Unconventional GMs, has collected his Piratical Savage World convention scenarios that have been previously run at UK Conventions such as Furnace/7 Hills, as the Golden Isle.
Talking of the Unconventional GMs, they continue to periodically release short no-nonsense two hour long actual play videos. Check out Gaz and co-host Guy Milner’s (of Burn After Running fame), output on YouTube.
Paul Mitchener has recently issued two supplements for his Out of the Ashes fantasy TTRPG of heroes rebuilding their community after the Evil Dark Lord has fallen.
These are my copies as a backer, but I’m sure both will be available soon via the usual outlets.
Various posts and reviews posted via BlueSky tell me that Black Armarda’s Lovecrafques Second edition is available in print now and getting into the wild.
Finally, Handiwork Games’ Cold City/Hot War Kickstarter may have ended last month, but late pledges are still open for this duo of monumentally influential Historical TTRPGs, whose first editions came out in the 2000s.
[This post was originally made back in September of last year, after a family Summer holiday in North Norfolk, see part 1.]
This is a sort of “soft launch” of something I’ve hinted I’ve been working on for BRP previously.
So I took my laptop with me, mainly to game/stream in the evening, but also to do some writing if the family allowed it – which they did, now that everyone is hooked to their phones/devices! I made a deal with myself that I was only going to do fun RPG writing, rather than stuff that is “get it damn well finished!” :
Previously, when I last had a holiday during Easter break, I had a good tinker with the BRP-ORC SRD (aka the entire text of Basic Roleplaying Universal Game Engine). The aim was to get a straightforward Fantasy-BRP game out it. Well, I’ve been fiddling with the embryonic game that emerged from those writing sessions on and off. Despite my reservations, it started shipping up to something I enjoy writing. So this became a light, fun project over my recent family holiday in North Norfolk. I got up early and got set for the day (ie. did my dad duties around the cottage), and then while the family had a sleep in I would work on the document. Go out for the day, and once everyone had settled for the evening, write up whatever my brain had come up with in the background during the day.
My design process has been roughly the following for the game, which has the working title Legacy.
Legacy Logo by Dan Barker
1. Take the base of RuneQuest 3 – which, minus the three Gloranthan magic systems is in BRUGE – much to my delight, and bash it into the same length and scope as the old Games Workshop core RQ3 book, which was my first serious entry point into BRP back in the late 80s. In fact here its.
Note that Legacy is not an RQ clone, despite the SRD it developed from having much of the text. It’s more of a what-if project: “What if we take core RQ3 and develop it so it’s easier to play and supports sandbox-style play out of the box?”
2. Make character generation fun. It’s now a seven-step process, with a final eighth step that gets the players to consider how their characters met and formed their adventuring company. Skills remain the focus, and players gain them through from the following sources.
Personality Type. Expanded to include two new ones, so all the characteristics except SIZ, have one associated with them
Profession of which there are five groupings: Magician, Rogue, Rural, Urban, Warrior each with five professions, so a total of 30 FUN fantasy professions, like Knight, Oracle, Occultist etc
A free choice of a hundred Free skill points.
Equipment is picked up from that listed under the profession, and everyone gets a Family Heirloom, a minor magical item with its own Wyrd.
3. Every character is a champion with a Wyrd (or destiny). This sets the character out from the stay-at-home folks, and in-game terms allows rerolls and bonuses to various rolls upon spending Wyrd Points. It’s a modernising touch, and one that should make the characters more epic than their Old School BRP ancestors.
4. Only Magicians have magic. The Magic chapter is but one, alongside Combat, and there is one magic system (BRUGE’s Magic, more or less as is, with enough extra spells to support the game’s five Magician Professions)
5. Streamline systems while still keeping it BRP. So gone is the Resistance table, and resistance rolls are now a subset of characteristic rolls modified by difficulty. So for example a POT 20 poison vs a character with CON 15 would be a Difficult Stamina roll to resist. I’ve also standardised the criticals and specials chance table into a much shorter table where they are listed by competency.
6. Fun Combat. Yes, hit locations are back because I miss them from my 90s RQ3 days (and remember, BRUGE is a lot of RQ3). As is the DEX initiative model of BRP inherited from early editions of Call of Cthulhu is one I know works for me. Not that hated strike ranks are available via BRUGE – because that would allow people to make RQ clones. All the fumble tables have been condensed into one and all those wacky roll again once/twice/three times results that get oh so boring in play have new results. Also the “you hit nearest friend” results. Because no one really wants that :). Overall aim is to make BRP combat as quick and smooth as I’ve done with OpenQuest but without gutting what people see as BRP (so specials are still there)
7, Sandbox adventure creation. Don’t get me wrong, I love the guided scene-by-scene or location-based adventures I write for OpenQuest, but there’s time when I wish I could just turn up for game night with a page of bullet points, all the important monsters statted up, and a couple of random tables to support improvised play. So, this is the route I’m taking here.
8. There is an implied setting, The Realm. This is the character’s civilisation surrounded on all sides by hostile borderlands, beyond which are hostile nations and even wilderness ravaged by the Warp, an chaotic mutating power that occasionally intrudes into reality, leaving destruction in its wake. The players and the GM discover and fill out details during play. Guidance on how is currently earmarked to go in the unwritten GM’s Guidance chapter and peppered throughout the rules.
Lastly, I kept the following two questions and answers in mind while hacking away at the rules.
Does this mean I’m throwing OpenQuest or Sky Pirates under the bus? Heck no, I love OQ and have fun playing it regularly on OpenQuest Thursday game nights, during my regular Empire of Gatan campaign. Sky Pirates is still happening. Most of it is written but may be pipped to the post by Legacy, simply because I’ve already happily got the art for it.
Ultimately, why am I doing this? This scratches a different itch of D100 gaming. The need as a longtime BRP fan to have a quick plug-and-play version of Fantasy BRP, based on my nostalgia for my very early experiences with RQ3 before it got cluttered and frankly very confused with all the options in the Advanced RQ3 book that Games Workshop brought out a couple of months after the core book. Where I just drew a map, made up a few monsters, called some mates round who quickly generated characters, and boom had a series of happy afternoons of carefree adventuring with no grand meta-plot lurking in the background. BRP unleashed and supported the players’ creativity, used to the restraints of D&D.
Update: the above was a snapshot of where I was with Legacy in September 2024. I put it to one side once my holidays ended and didn’t pick it up again until Christmas. Since then I have steadily been working on it on and off since then. It’s now at the point where it’s being internally playtested, has a logo courtesy of Dan Barker, and is being polished up for a public playtest, possibly leading into a Kickstarter in early summer. However, my internal playtest has thrown up many changes. The biggest one is a complete rewrite of the game’s magic system, making it more flexible and, dare I say it, free-form, yet still familiar to old hands. I know that’s a big aim, but that’s where I’m going with it. Overall, the game is rapidly evolving into its own thing, without ceasing to be BRP. I’m playing OpenQuest online in the same week-cycle as my Legacy playtest, and while they both share the same roll under D100 skill mechanic, they are very different games, which is very satisfying. I’ll post a more formal announcement when the game goes into public playtest.
(originally posted last year back in September on the now defunct Fantastic Odysseys Patreon)
I’ve just returned from my summer family holiday—or Jolliday, as I call it—on the North Norfolk coast. I stayed not far from the seaside town of Hunstanton and the old port of King’s Lynn (formerly Bishops Lynn until Henry VIII renamed it ). The whole area drips history, both as a region and in a personal sense, since my Father’s side comes from there, and I’ve been visiting since I was a child.
A clear example of this is when we went to Burnham Market, famous for being Admiral Lord Nelson’s (hero of the Battle of Trafalgar) birthplace. As we walked from the car park, a “history path” noted various historical events throughout English History, right back to the Stone Age.
First up for a visit was the open day held at the former RAF Bircham and Newton airbase. This was one of the first airbases during WWI and was part of a plan to bomb Berlin that was shelved because the war ended. It was Fleet Air Command’s HQ during WW2 and became a training centre after the war. The base briefly saw testing of the new Harrier jump jets towards its end of life in the 1960s on its grass runways.
The Fleet Air Arm stuff during WW2 was particularly interesting. Norfolk had many RAF bases during the war. It’s why my Grandfather, originally from the South of England, came to the region to fix Lancaster Bombers. This is another personal connection since I now live down the road from where they built them in Avro’s factory in Chadderton. There, he met my Grandma at some dance or another. Last Norfolk holiday, two years ago, we visited the Langham Dome, where they trained anti-aircraft gunners on one of the first simulators projected on the inside. The farm next door still has the runways and some of the hangers of RAF Langham (which was a base for the Fleet Air Arm). And further north, near the coast, Muckleburgh Barracks ,where the same trainees would get to practice on actual guns with live ammunition firing out over the sea.
Castle Rising, one of my favourite castles, was up next. It has been a royal hunting lodge, an open prison for Edward II’s treacherous wife, Queen Isabella, a police station, and, at one point, an insane asylum for one inmate!
Castle Acre Priory down the road was also visited. The ruins are truly epic, and you get a good sense of how big the place was. When the majority of the Priory was destroyed during Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries, they kept the “priory house” intact so that the new landowners could use it as a residence. The whole site is part of Norman planned town, which also includes a motte and bailey castle, which unfortunately, we didn’t have time to visit, and whole grid street design is still visible in the layout of the modern town. I could easily write a medieval adventure set in it since it shows clearly how the three classes, “them that work” (peasants), “them that pray” (the monks at the priory) and “them that fight and rule” (knights and nobility) lived.
I’ve had this sense of history growing up and going around places on my holidays. As well as Norfolk, the Cotswolds is particularly huge in this regard. In my roleplaying career, it is probably why I’ve gravitated to games that have settings with a well-defined sense of history, like RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu, and been less than impressed with some of the loosely defined but otherwise fanciful D&D settings. But I’ve never been brave enough to do any directly Historic games. Publishing Paul Mitchener’s Hunters of Alexandria was as close as I’ve got – and that is but the briefest of touch. I guess my main reason why is the balancing act between providing genuinely exciting game material that is deep enough to engage the interest of the audience without being overly challenged by self-acknowledged experts. I guess I’m a bit lazy and cowardly in that regard. Although, as a one-man publishing outfit I defend my right to do so. Instead, I use my historical imaginings to inform my fantasy games. So don’t be surprised if you see a planned town like Castle Acre in a future OpenQuest Gatan adventure. Castle Rising has already been featured as the fictional Castle Uprising in my ongoing OQ campaign.
So it was Grogmeet 2025 last Saturday, and I spent eight hours in the Whitworth Locke side of the convention, running games and catching up with folk.
This is the Grognard Files podcast’s annual convention, attended by Grognards of all ages. It is not specifically an OSR or OSR-inspired convention, but games tended to hark back to the 80s and early 90s, when many attendees took a break for careers and raising families (aka going into deep freeze) before returning to gaming recently.
OMG its all full of Grogs!
It was the convention of the Ziggurat! If you followed the madness that was the Raise the Ziggurat sale at the end of last year, I brought it, and a couple of tubs of old 80s Citadel figures and some aquarium scenery to act as props for my two games.
Game 1 Saturday Morning: Ziggurat of Gloom
System: Grim and Dangerous (an Oldhammer RPG)
Beddington’s Brewery has hired your battalion of adventurers to escort a wagon train carrying barrels of its finest brew from Dwarfchester across the Painine Way to the thirsty students at the Royal College of Magic in the town of Uddersfield.
The problem is that Night Goblins are following you and have been forced to take defensive positions off-road at the strange rain-soaked stone structure locals call The Ziggurat of Gloom!
Grim and Dangerous is a reimagined roleplaying game inspired by the early editions of Warhammer, aka Oldhammer. It has a simple roll under D20 mechanic, with characters having career focuses and special abilities to distinguish themselves from one another. This adventure draws heavily on the White Box of Warhammer, Warhammer 1st Edition. Please note that this game is in development at playtest stage.
I’ll be posting more about Grim and Dangerous in its own future post when it gets revealed. This is game in development looks hard at the Oldhammer games (Warhammer 1st, its second edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle, up to first edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay) and inspired by the feel of those games and does its own rules light roll under skill on a D20 thing. This was its inaugural game, and overall, the prototype rules held up and did what I wanted them to, aided and abetted by players who grasped its concepts and ran like heck with them.
Happy players after their characters had defeated waves of screaming Night Goblins and cracked open the Ziggurat.
Special thanks to Andy Hemming (pictured on the far right in the above photo), who provided the entire force of Night Goblins (from the 80s!), some female adventurers and dignified elven followers to compliment my scruffy 80s Citadel lead. To say Andy was like a child in a sweet shop would be an understatement.
Initial troop deployments at the Ziggurat of GloomMyself in my element GMing
Intermission: Newt Socialises!
A three-hour break(?) due to unexpected scheduling adjustments gave me ample opportunity to catch up with folks I’ve not spoken to in a couple of years. This was one of my aims of the day, because I unexpectedly had to drop out of my regular convention attendance a couple of years ago due to family commitments. This really was nice because the space and time around the games to chat and catch up really makes a con for me.
Then all of a sudden, the gaming room filled up, and it was time for Game 2.
Game 2 Saturday Afternoon: The Pyramids of Marn
System: Beyond Dread Portals
Three pyramids have been discovered in the jungles of the world of Marn. Three factions are bidding for a license to explore them in the Hall of Departure in the Explorers Guild of Ys. Ys ruler, the Autarch, to prevent in-fighting, is only allowing one group at a time to walk through a portal in the Guild Hall to the ancient ruins. Since your explorers will be risking life and limb in this strange world, they get to choose who will be their patron for this expedition. Choose wisely. Not only will it determine how profitable the visit to Marn will be, but who you potentially make enemies of.
Beyond Dread Portals is a world-hopping D20 Fantasy game by Paul “The Tweed Meister” Mitchener. Loosely based on early D&D, modified to meet the needs of the setting. A baroque decaying renaissance-era world of the city of Ys and the worlds connected to it by a system of magic portals. As members of the Explorer’s Guild, there are expeditions to join, loot and secrets to be found, and a web of powerful patrons to navigate carefully. All under the deathly gaze of the undead ruler, the Autarch!
Regular readers of this blog will know Beyond Dread Portals by now. It’s within a hairs breath of being released (just waiting for a proof). This adventure was quickly conjured up, as an excuse to use the Ziggurat again on the table. Combined with the aquarium scenery, that worked very well, and a list of bullet points was fleshed out to become a weird and wonderful game of exploration. Despite the characters being capable 5th level, they managed to weasel their way away from getting involved in any combat, with some very clever problem-solving. I’ll be writing this one up for future release in some format.
And then it was all over and home to an evening back in the loving embrace of my family.
Big thanks to all my players and co-organisers Chris “Dirk the Dice” Hart and Blythy.
Here’s to 2026.
BTW, if you are wondering where I got the Ziggurat from, it is made by Ian from Fenris Games and is available via his website.
