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

Finally its all come together and the first draft is done ๐Ÿ™‚
Girls, Boys and wild things of all ages I proudly present….

The Blood of the Dragon

โ€œUnder a land shrouded in volcanic ash punctuated by rocky spires that tear at the sky they say the Great Dragon sleeps.ย  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.โ€

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 โ€“ The fearsome Battle Apes.
  • Drunken Debauchery! โ€“ 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 ๐Ÿ™‚

Finally here’s the cover

5th Edition? Roll yer own!

I must admit to being distinctly uninterested about the whole D&D 5th ed “D&D Next” affair.ย  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.ย ย  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),ย  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 ๐Ÿ˜‰