Category Archives: Dungeons And Dragons

Crypts and Things Masters series

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Ladies, Gentlemen and Wild Things of all ages, I am proud to announce the Crypts and Things UK Masters Series of adventure modules, coming from D101 Games starting in late 2012 with modules coming every month or so throughout 2013.

The Masters series will highlight the work of some of the best adventure writers in the UK today. Here’s the current line up of eight Masters.

  • Simon Bray, one half of Unspoken Word team who brought out numerous Gloranthan adventures/settings in the 90s/00s and co-author of the upcoming Here be Dragons setting/adventure pack for OpenQuest.
  • Scott Dorward, infamous convention gamesmaster and horror aficionado.
  • Neil Gow, author of the Napoleonic storytelling game Duty and Honour and its nautical sequel Beat to Quarters, which goes out via his small press imprint Omnihedron Games.
  • Paul Mitchener, author of Blood of the Gods for Wild Talents published by Arc Dream publishing, co-author of the upcoming Here be Dragons setting/adventure pack for OpenQuest and Age of Arthur an upcoming FATE game to be published by Wordplay Games.
  • Phil Harris, convention games master of numerous years and organiser of Conpulsion convention held annually in Edinburgh.
  • Rik Kerhsaw-Moore, was a long standing member of the Kult of Keepers Call of Cthulhu demo team, author of The Company (d101 games D100 Modern Military role-playing game)
  • Mike Mason, part of the team that put Dark Heresy together, and co-author of the upcoming Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition, ex leader of the Kult of Keepers.
  • John Ossoway, author of Cthulhu Rising, co-author of The Savage North for OpenQuest and the upcoming Hard Sci-fi game River of Heaven.

Each Master will produce one 20-40 page adventure module for Crypts and Things, drawing on their intimate knowledge of the games’ Sword and Sorcery heritage, both literary and gaming, to produce a gaming experience full of surprises, thrills and chills for a variety of settings and level ranges.

More details as they emerge from the creative forges…

From the crypts of DOOMMMM!!!!

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Update from the Old School arm of D101.

OpenQuest 2 is about to go into IndieGoGo preorder mode by the end of this month. You the gaming public will decide if I release OpenQuest 2 proper, and what form it takes, or if I simply do OpenQuest Deluxe( tidy up of the last mistooks, replace the clip art with new pieces by Simon Bray, available in Soft and HARD COVER). If we surpass the goal there’s a hole load of stretch goals to see how content filled OQ 2, along with promises of an OQ 2 online SRD, a low art compact version of the rules called OQ Basic which will be available free as a pdf. Either way a new version of OQ will be with us by my birthday on October 26th of this year 🙂

Here Be Dragons – Simon Bray’s & Paul Mitchener’s OpenQuest adventure/setting. Think Ray Harryhausen meets Clark Ashton Smith on an island where the main city is ruled by a great Golden Dragon. Going for Nov/Dec 2012.

Moar OQ. I seriously want to ramp up the amount of OQ out there, so as well as upping my own output, I’ll be opening the hallowed doors of d101 submissions. Watch this space (or email me at newt@d101games.com if you can’t contain yourself ).

Crypts and Things
Starting tomorrow every Friday is “Fiendish Friday”. New magic items, new spells, creatures and other mini-articles for Crypts and Things. Submissions welcome (newt@d101games.com).

Blood of the Dragon goes into layout tonight and should be available in a couple of weeks 🙂

The next module “Fort Boneguard” goes into play test next week at Continuum as part of Our line up of games,more about that soon. All in all I reckon I’ve got three or so modules on the go, which should be out before the end of the year 🙂

Like OQ I’ll be throwing open the doors for sumissions soon ( again contact me at newt@d101games.com if you can’t contain yourself 😉 )

Finally the I’ve got a new C&T book in mind that should blow minds in the pipeline. I’m going to keep it under wraps for the time being but just I’d tease you with that 🙂

12 Days of UK OSR: Day 5 Woodland Warriors

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Hootin’ Heck is it June already? Then I better press on with the 12 Days of the UK OSR, with day 5.

Based off Swords and Wizardry, WoodLand Warriors is a nice little book by Simon Washbourne published by his Beyond Belief Games. It’s introductory D&D for Kids and big Kids of all ages. Substituting Orcs n Elves for Stoats and Mice and dungeons for wild woods and meadows.  Six is the magic number in Woodland Warriors, as in 6 being the max level and D6 replacing D20s and the other standard polyhedrals.

It  packs alot into its 96 pages*.  A complete system, GM guidance, Bestiary a small setting “The Alder Vale” and an introductory adventure.  If you are familiar with the Swords and Wizardry rules alot of the text will be immediately familiar, seeing as the game like Crypts and Things is built on those rules, but copious modifications to model the genre its emulating and be much more accessible version of D&D.  In my view it achieves both these goals admirably.

Why this book is important to the UK OSR?

It carries on the fine UK traditions of innovation and approachability.  Coming after the grandmasters of the Hobby, Gygax et al, early UK writers built on what had gone before taking the Fantasy milieu in new directions away from a pure dungeon bashing.  Also there was a strong introductory stream of rpgs, mainly based of Fighting Fantasy, but even in  Warhammer 1st Ed and other Games Workshop RPGs there was a strong ethos of keeping systems and straightforward, taking time to explain fully at every stage of the book what was going on to the newcomers.

Its an OSR product we can point people to who don’t want a pure Dungeon Bashing game based off typical fantasy troupes.  This the game I can play with my missus (a non gamer who likes animal stories ) and my children when they grow up in four-three years (currently they are nearly 3 and 5 respectively).

Overall can’t recommend this one highly enough:)

Also worth noting Simon is highly prolific and the following games from his ever growing portfolio are of direct interest to the Old School Gamer:

 

*I’m reviewing the standard edition here. There is a Complete version which includes all the  supplements that Simon has put out since the game’s initial release.

Playin’ Pathfinder

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Ok so instead of carrying on manically playing Crypts and Things or even driving OpenQuest into the ground earlier in the year me and my group invested in Pathfinder and since late year as time allows have been running a mini-campaign.

1. The adventure style is very AD&D 1st ed Dungeon crawl with a setting that is a love letter to a certain “grim and perilous” setting 😉  If I do get round to writing it up I’m highly likely to be doing a Labyrinth Lord write up as well as a PFRG version.

2. The players, all jaded 3.5ers, are loving it as I’m I. Every rules tweak seems to have been made in the name of FUN and COOL 🙂

3. Even though I’m a very low crunch GM I’m not feeling too out of my depth. The books are very clearly written reference books, and during play I’ve been using my Netbook to access the Pathfinder PRD.  Overall it feels like I’ve got a big friendly beardy DM called Bob on hand at all times, who patiently explains without being judgemental how to do stuff.

4. Even though I’m not using miniatures the game is running just fine.

5. I ran the first couple of sessions completely feat-less for the monsters, which you can get away with at low levels, but I’m now into the swing of it.  In away this makes the game a little bit predictable, or push button gaming as my players call it, as both sides of a combat run through their feats to get an advantage.

Overall its a fun departure from our usual style of gaming, short focused story driven, where we’ve been kicking back and just Dungeon Crawling the heck out of the adventures.

Finally….The Blood of the Dragon, 1st Draft complete

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Finally its all come together and the first draft is done 🙂
Girls, Boys and wild things of all ages I proudly present….

The Blood of the Dragon

“Under a land shrouded in volcanic ash punctuated by rocky spires that tear at the sky they say the Great Dragon sleeps.  Tyanos the Black, Trickster god of the long dead Hu-Pi people stole their blood and bottled it for his insane delight. As drink of the gods it confers immortality to mortal man, but at what terrible price?

The very quest for this elixir is insane. A trip into a harsh and unforgiving land of the Spires, a poor and bandit ridden weird land, inhabited by the likes of Black Joop, Nigus the Headless and the Mother of Hydra. Names that should send a shiver down your spine. So pick up your sword, down the last of your ale to steady any nerves and stride off towards a great adventure amongst the rocks that defy the sky.”

What this Module contains

Blood of the Dragon is a short introductory adventure set in the ancient and ruined lands of The Spires.

  • A Rough Guide to the Spires
  • Adventure: The Lair of the Battle Apes
  • New Monsters – The fearsome Battle Apes.
  • Drunken Debauchery! – Optional rules for getting the characters into trouble and losing their hard gotten gains in-between adventures, from the poison pen of Colin Chapman (author of Atomic Highway)

Off to proof and a small amount of art commission, tentacles xed for a May/June release 🙂

Finally here’s the cover

5th Edition? Roll yer own!

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I must admit to being distinctly uninterested about the whole D&D 5th ed “D&D Next” affair.  Wizards of the Coast lost my gaming dollar once I realised they wanted me on a new edition tread mill after 3.5, which I never got the same gaming mileage from than say 1st Ed, Basic/Expert or even 2ed.   Even without the fiasco of Monte Cook leaving the project, its very unlikely that I’d invest.

You see I’d much rather ‘roll my own’* 5th Edition from various bits of Open Gaming Content and my own common sense additional rulings. This is pretty much what I did for Crypts and Things, but only more so to make my own version of the Class Based Worlds Favourite RPG.

  • It would be heavily Old School in tone and most rules
  • The four core classes (Fighter, Thief, Cleric, Magic-User) with additional classes I like (Ranger, Druid, Paladin, Bard).
  • Races (Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-ling, perhaps Half-Orc BUT no fecking Half-Elves)
  • Ascending AC from 3.0.
  • From Araskia’s Sword and Sorcery rules, I would take the Skills system (but tie it to a separate Skill number rather than Saving Throw),  the Sanity System and possibly weapon damage by class.
  • Keep the Vancian magic system – which for me is one of the big selling points of D&D.
  • Have a more class based XP system, like 2ed , or even NO XP AT ALL!

And as much fun spells, monsters and magic items that I could cram in a 6″x 9″ US trade paper back of say 200-300 pages 😉