Attronarch's Athenaeum

OSR

Wonderful news:

After years of turmoil, the Estate of Gary Gygax was taken over by a court assigned estate manager. As part of the agreement to raise money to secure the debts of the estate, Troll Lord Games was granted the right and privilege to reprint several of Gary Gygax’s works. To wit, The Gygaxian Fantasy World Series, Castle Zagyg: Yggsburgh, and The Hermit are each coming back into print.

We hope to bring each of these to you table as soon as possible. Our current plan is to release a Castle Zagyg: Yggsburgh retro print immediately. This is a reprint of the book as it was released in 2005. Following this, we will release The Hermit as a Kickstarter campaign. The Hermit will be updated for Castles and Crusades; the Fantasy Roleplaying Game, laid out in full color with new maps and illustrations, contain notes on its development and all original material as well. The Gygaxian Fantasy World Series will be launched on Kickstarter in the first quarter of 2024. The eight plus volume series of works is one of Gary’s prides and joys as well as a treasure trove of information for anyone wanting to create a comprehensive fantasy world setting.

Read the full statement from Troll Lord Games here.

#News #TLG #OSR

Subscribe to get the latest post in your inbox. No spam.

Comments

By This Axe: The Cyclopedia of Dwarven Civilization

The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg

The Black Monastery

Quests of Doom

Cults of the Sundered Kingdoms

#Postbox #OSR #SW #ACKS #FGG #Oe

Subscribe to get the latest post in your inbox. No spam.

Comments

The creators of Castles & Crusaders are discounting their whole catalogue until end of this week. Although I don't run their system, I use some of the adventures as well as system neutral aids.

Adventures

Supplements

#Sale #TLG #CC #OSR

Subscribe to get the latest post in your inbox. No spam.

Comments

25% on many titles. Here are few I'm happy to recommend to all OSR Judges, sorted by publisher. Most of the books bellow are settings and procedures, which makes it easy to take out elements you find interesting and use them in your game.

Arduin

Dave Hargrave was a mad man. A very creative mad man. You might never play Arduin as written, which just like Palladium Fantasy was a bunch of AD&D 1E house rules, but you will walk away inspired like never before.

  • Arduin Trilogy. Compiles Arduin Grimoire Vol 1, 2, and 3. I still use special ability charts presented herein.
  • Arduin II. A first attempt to make a functional, stand-alone game after TSR and Gary turned on anyone who dared hack it.

Palladium Books

Palladium Books is a troubled publisher, but I still have a soft spot for their early fantasy work. Black and white illustrations galore!

Palladium Fantasy RPG 1E

Weapons, Armours and Castles

These are illustrated guides to various weapons, armours, and yes, castles, one might use in their fantasy game. I love thumbing through them for inspiration.

Chaosium

A well known publisher of Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, and Pendragon. Although I'm not interested in their rules, I've always been fascinated by Glorantha.

Glorantha

These are all modules from the first edition era. Just how I like them.

Goodman Games

Goodman Games might be best know for their Dungeon Crawl Classic system, but I love their system neutral supplements, as well as opulent re-releases of cherished classics. I like most of the stuff written by Michael Curtis, whom also authored the amazing Stonehell megadungeon.

Modules & Settings

Supplements

Hack & Slash Publishing

Columbia Games

Columbia Games publications don't go on sale so often.

Harn has beautiful, well thought out materials that are usable with many fantasy systems. The maps are gorgeous and personalities are fleshed out just enough to drop them into any world without too much fuss.

Below are select brief supplements I found useful:

Two crunchier, but amazing resources are:

Campion & Clitherow

Weather? Weather! Never worry again. Never.

True Mask Games

Factions? Factions! Never worry again. Never.

Geoffrey McKinney

Seriously, for less than $10 you can get material that will last you a lifetime whenever your players decide to go somewhere you haven't prepared for. As a bonus, below supercharges B1 and B2.

Simon Forster

What, you want more variety than in Mike's dungeon. “Production qualities?” Well then you are in luck, because Simon Forster has written splendid digest-sized books of lairs:

Autarch

Autarch is the publisher of Adventurer Conqueror King System, marvellous system built on B/X chassis. It offers superior take on domain management, race-as-class, functional and tightly integrated economy, and plethora of play-tested options for ambitious Judges and adventurous Players.

Rules

Adventures

All adventures, except Dwimmermount, are set in Auran Empire, which is an ACKS setting. I've found all the adventures superb and easy to adjust (and steal from). AX3 has some great tables for urban dwellings.

Expeditious Retreat Press

The first publisher of OSRIC material. A lot of good stuff, but I picked few of more generic offerings I often use.

#Sale #OSR #Arduin #OSRIC #XRP #Chaosium #RQ #PFRPG #ACKS #GG #DCC #Harn

Subscribe to get the latest post in your inbox. No spam.

Comments

Will Mistreta continues collating OSRIC errata.

You can download the latest A4 and letter versions here.

#Resource #OSRIC #ADnD #OSR

Subscribe to get the latest post in your inbox. No spam.

Comments

Lamentations of the Flame Princess books are on sale until Tuesday May 16th. Some of my recommendations are:

  • Veins of the Earth
  • Carcosa
  • Isle of the Unknown and Dungeon of the Unknown
  • Broodmother Skyfortress
  • Adventure Anthology
  • The God that Crawls
  • The Monolith beyond Space and Time
  • Random Esoteric Creature Generator for Classic Fantasy Role-Playing Games and Their Modern
  • Staffortonshire Trading Company
  • Rulebooks (pick the free ones as well)

#Sale #OSR #LofTP

Subscribe to get the latest post in your inbox. No spam.

Comments

This was a good week for open gaming and TTRPGs.

First Matt Finch released the MGL, then Azora Law finally made ORC public as well.

Notice: comments in this post do not construe legal advice.

Mythmere Games Open License

Mythmere Games has released Mythmere Games Open License.

Quick commentary:

  • Very similar to OGL.
  • Clearer than OGL.
  • Easier to distinguish Open Content.
  • Explicit that one doesn't need to contribute any Open Content even if using other's Open Content. That was already possible under OGL, and in fact was relatively common during d20 days when mostly statblocks were designated as Open Content. I think that is good since it allows more freedom.
  • We finally don't need to do bullshit like “First Edition Compatible” but can flat out say “Compatible with Dungeons & Dragons®” and similar.
  • Cleared instruction regarding notices.

Matt did a point-by-point livestream. Watch the recording here. You can provide feedback to Mythmere via their contact page or email.

Open RPG Creative License

Azora Law, the entity created to steward the Open RPG Creative (ORC) license, released the first public license draft and FAQ:

Quick commentary:

  • Much denser than OGL. Plenty of legalese.
  • Quite comprehensive in its definitions, although still some ambiguity that has to be resolved.
  • Seems to assume all content is Open Content unless stated otherwise.
  • Does not require full license replication in the publication.
  • Attributions are structured similar to the Creative Commons attributions, which I find double edged sword. On one hand it is easy, on the other we are likely to see upstream contributors simply not attributed. For example, let's say we have ten people releasing a monster on their blog and designate it as ORC Content. I gather them into a Bestiary and attribute all of them. Then someone write an adventure and decides to use some of those monsters in their work. They attribute my Bestiary but not necessarily the people who created the monsters (unless I specifically wrote in my attribution how each specific monster should be attributed).
  • I expect a number of people to misattribute works until a good practice forms.

You can provide feedback on ORC License at their Discord.

Current thoughts

Both are better than OGL.

Both seem promising.

At the moment I like MGL slightly more than ORCL.

#News #OGL #MGL #ORC #OSR

Subscribe to get the latest post in your inbox. No spam.

Comments

The Sorcerers' Enclave:

#Postbox #OSR

Subscribe to get the latest post in your inbox. No spam.

Comments

Soon coming to Kickstarter:

From the Mythmere Games newsletter:

Swords & Wizardry was originally written in 2008 by Matt Finch, author of the Tome of Adventure Design. It’s an ENNIE award-winning retro-clone of the original 1974-1978 rules for Dungeons & Dragons*, an edition usually called Original D&D or OD&D. As with most early role-playing games, it is very rules-light by today’s standards, which makes it easy to learn and fast-moving to play.

All the rules for the game are contained in one book, 144 pages long, which includes everything needed to play. This new version is backward compatible with the earlier versions, containing several small changes, but nothing that changes fundamental rules.

For those who are familiar with the recent developments with the Open Game License, this new version of the rules is non-OGL. It uses the Creative Commons License, and will have an independent license allowing third-party publishers to use the Swords & Wizardry rules for creating adventures and even new games.

There will be both an offset-print version (the blue cover shown, which will have a high-quality sewn binding) and a print-on-demand version (the Erol Otus cover shown). These will have roughly the same final price to the backer before shipping – neither one is a “premium” or “deluxe” cover, although the blue offset print books will be of a higher quality than a print-on-demand press generates.

In addition to having a print-on-demand option, we will again use our fulfillment partners in the UK to lower shipping costs for UK, EU, Norway, and Switzerland customers. We will be using a new warehouse in the USA, because we have found a fulfillment company that’s very close to our house.

#News #OSR #SW

Subscribe to get the latest post in your inbox. No spam.

Comments

Hârn kingdoms of Kaldor, Melderyn, Rethem, and Orbaal:

HârnWorld 40th anniversary hardback is being crowdfunded at the moment.

Tome of Adventure Design:

Riddle Register: The Ultimate Book of Riddles:

#Postbox #Harn #DnD #OSR

Subscribe to get the latest post in your inbox. No spam.

Comments