D101 Games at Conpulsion

Hi all

I’m attending Conpulsion at Edinburgh University’s Teivot Student Union over the Easter Weekend.

I’ll be running some Crypts and Things/OpenQuest and if the organisers can fit into their scedule doing a talk about Crypts & Things.

If you are going hope to see you there. Also if you fancy running either a game of C&T or OQ for me, I can supply scenarios + characters, drop me a line on newt@d101games.com.

More about the con here.

D&D scenario recommends

In answer to Mick Red’s question ( Adventures for the OSR ) over at UKroleplayers.com.

From the current OSR releases I can heartily recommend

The Cursed Chateau(Rogue Games )by James Maliszewski. A big old haunted house scenario, oozing with atmosphere, marvellously presented and explained.

The Grinding Gear (Lamentations of the Flame Princess) by James Raggi. Yes it’s a Death Trap dungeon, but its small and logical and very very well designed and written.

The Nameless City( Mythmere Games ). Inspired by an HP Lovecraft short story of the same name, a small city of the Serpent People dripping with S&S goodness.

Weird New World( Lamentations of the Flame Princess ) by James Raggi. Imagine the American North East as a vast unexplored fantasy wilderness. Put your characters in a boat and hit go.

From the good old days…..

The Gauntlet & The Sentinel (TSR ). The first part is truly creepy and full of nice twists. The principal of which carries through to the second part that really ramps up the Epic in a believable way.

All that Glitters.(TSR ) One of my all time favourite adventure modules. The characters are going up the river following an old partial treasure map. At the end of their journey which takes them through an old magical tunnel that goes through the impassable mountains, through a post-apocalyptic desert leads them to a conclusion they will not be expecting.

Worth noting that the authors of the above would go on to be part of the team that did the WHFRP 1st Ed Enemy within Campaign.

Irillian from Best of White Dwarf Scenarios III . A city adventure in which the characters take part in an epic crusade against evil. There’s a great twist in the underlying premise that stops it being cliché and predictable. While the party is hunting down the source of the ills that inflict the city they get a guided tour of the city itself, which has seen much better days (think Italian Renaissance city, much down on its luck and gone to seed).

And as an out of the box setting, that would work with all the above scenarios, I can not recommend enough ‘Pelinore’ which was Imagine magazine’s D&D campaign setting, which carried on into Games Master Magazine.

Would you go to a UK Old School Con?

[poll id=”4″]

Ok seriously considering this one for 2013.  D101 Games has a bit of a split personality, in that we have our OSR games ( OpenQuest  and Crypts & Things ) and then our Storytelling/indie games ( Monkey, WordPress and our HeroQuest supplements ).  This means that its always abit fun and games when I go to conventions. Which side of D101 should I show off the most? Well the answer depends on the focus of the con.  While most UK cons are a good mix of old and new, with indie games probably scoring a little bit higher because everyone wants to try new stuff out, unlike the storytelling/indie stuff there’s no dedicated con like Indie-con and Old School games while happening are sort of this novelty game in the corner type affair. In short I always feel a bit odd, that on one hand I meet some cracking players who I have a great game with but come away from the gaming table to the bar and wandering around and Old School gaming is a bit unloved.

So I’d like to have a dedicated residential con for Old School Gaming.

Game policy would be pretty draconian: Nothing after 1989 OR that doesn’t demonstrates a strong influence direct in its rules or game play, ie. a modern edition or a tribute game.  I would also want to encourage a wide selection of games, so its not just an OSR D&D con.

So talking three groups

Published before 1990: OD&D, D&D basic/expert/companion, AD&D 1st & 2nd ed, Traveller, RuneQuest II & III, Judge Dredd (GW), Warhammer Fantasy 1st Ed, DragonWarriors, Golden Heroes and of course Call of Cthulhu!

Retro-clones/Tribute Games: Labyrinth Lord, OSRIC, Swords and Wizardry, OpenQuest, Crypts and Things.

Modern Editions: MRQ2/Legend, Warhammer 2nd Ed (but not 3rd)

I do have a time and venue in mind, but I want to see if this one has legs before I risk the wrath of the short wee wifey.  D101 would be doing the organising (so it would have “D101 Games presents”), but I would hope to have other Old School publishers involved.

Drop me a line if you would be into helping with this at newt@d101games.com.

Leave comments below if you have any ideas.

2012 D101 and the old skool

OK here’s that beginning of year statement that frankly I should have put out at the beginning of the year…but hey this is the man who is doing the not so synchronized 12 Days of the UK OSR (which I’ve not forgotten about) 😉

So here’s how D101 stands with the Old School Renaissance (which ever form you are following);

Pretty fuckin’ Tall

OpenQuest is still my biggest seller, despite being something you can download for free, and Crypts and Things completely blew me out of the water when I ran the pre-order. From recent discussions where various folk have basically poked me repeatedly about the General Release date, I kinda get the feeling I’m sitting on a volcano here. Nice feeling that 🙂

In fact the Old school stuff is definitely half my income, the other half being Glorantha + my more indie games ( Monkey + Wordplay ). Part of me thinks it would be fun to go OSR all the way, but practicality + the fact I still like my Glorantha and story telling games so this ain’t going to happen. But saying that from coming in as a curious outsider, attracted because a couple of folk like Akrasia ( Akratic Wizardry ) and Shange Magnus ( Swords against the Outer Dark ) from the OSR blog sphere said nice things about OpenQuest, I’m now fully a champion of this style of play.

OpenQuest
OpenQuest 2nd Edition
This is going to be a 2nd edition in the same way that Chaosium does new editions for Call of Cthulhu. i.e. the underlying rules stay the same, with some clarifications and fixes, but with some additional content. So far we’ve made good progress towards achiving milestone number 1: Clean up, which is where I can put out a nice version in 8″ x 11″ ( which means hardcovers ) with tidied up rules and all the clip art replaced. Simon Bray has done a Stirling job on the art, touching up the existing art (his choice not mine) & illustrating the monsters that currently are presented by clip art. John Holmes is applying his laser eye to the rule book.

Milestone 2 “Additional Content” requires a bit more work. There’s going to be additional advice from me, because it became clear that I wrote a lot of OQ from the point of view that people would already be familiar with over 30 years of Game development history. The Otherworlds in the game are a good example. If you have been following Glorantha’s chequered history you’ll know exactly what I mean by Spirit World. If not you’ll need it explaining, which is what I aim to do. Other articles already lined up are “The Life Cycle of a Character” which explains the levels of play that an OpenQuest character goes through, so that players and Games Masters can create appropriately exciting adventures. There’s also some additional Optional rules by Simon Bray for “Relationships”. The big draw for additional content is a selection of new spells. I’ve got about 30 to add from the newly OGLed Legend, which will ensure compatibilty for GMS running adventures from that line and hopefully RQ6 to, + another 30+ of my own devising. Once we’ve reached Milestone 2 2nd Ed will be most accurately described as “OpenQuest Deluxe Edition” 🙂

Depending on the amount of work I generate aiming for a Summer release by the very latest 🙂

Here Be Dragons
Simon Bray’s and Paul Mitcheners weird and wonderful Swords and Sorcery island is currently in Editorial, so you’ll be getting a brand new Sandbox to play in. Release to coincide with OQ2 (so Summer/Autumn).

Crypts & Things
Main rule book
I’m fulfilling this as I type, so pre-orders should start landing in people’s post end of this or next week. General release very soon…watch this blog.

Blood of the Dragon and other adventures
The first module, is nearly finished writing wise, so that should be with pre-order people in March, with a general release a week after pre-orders have had theirs sent out. Look at ref number “UKS-01”, what could that mean? Well it means that its the start of a three module series set in “The Spires” (that’s where the S comes from ) 🙂 Next module “UKS-02 Fort Boneguard” is kinda my take on Keep of the Boarderlands with scads of undead. Finally things end with a bang with “UKS-03 Tower of the Hydra” a Sorcerer’s tower for you and your chums to take control of , or not if you don’t understand its twists and turns.

I’ve also got a couple of half-finished pieces, such as the 5th Level adventure I ran at Furnace 2010 here by known as “The Sky is Falling”, that will get written up at some point hopefully this year.

More stuff in the pipeline as well, but since its more nebulous I won’t mention it yet.