Tales of the Northern Marklands the Story-Playing Game!

 Do you have a bunch of OSR games and retroclones like Swords & Wizardry, Old School Essentials, or Greg Gillespie’s new (and pretty awesome) Dragonslayer, but they’re just not enough?  Or maybe you supported Daggerheart and were sorely, sorely disappointed.  Well, you can safely throw all that junk in the trash because there’s a new game in town to throw your hard-earned, inflation-reduced dollars at: Tales of the Northern Marklands the Story-Playing Game (SPG)

 

Yes!  This brand new and totally not a rehash of the game rules you love to keep buying over and over has everything you need for a fast-paced, exciting afternoon of Basements & Neckbeards, but this time…oh Sweet Lord yes!  This time it’s different, with all-new concepts and material such as:

• Armor Class!
• Hit Points!
• Vancian magic!
• Elves, dwarves, halflings, plus new, and unique races from somebody’s old high school campaign that absolutely have nothing to do with their weird fetish fantasies (eat your heart out, Arduin!)
  
• Fighters, Wizards, Clerics, and new, Mega-Powered (MP) classes like the Thief-Vagabond
• And much, much more (if by "more" you mean more of the same!)
  

Not since F.A.T.A.L. have you seen cool sh*t like this!

These innovative rules are coupled with our unique Story-Playing System (patent pending,) which employs psychological techniques from the brilliant minds behind the Stanford Prison Experiment to dominate your players into following the epic, narrative campaign you’ve always wanted to have!  Who needs adventure paths when YOU are in control?!

You will have fun OR ELSE!  (Additional pinky finger sold separately.)

 

Oh and the art!  Lemme tell you about the art!  Here at the Savage Lair we spared no expense (as in $0.00 USD) to provide you with only the best pieces by your favorite artists that you’ve never heard of…mostly because they’re robots.

The Savage Lair's digital art team

That’s great, Weregrog!  But will there be a license?  I want to write my ripoff of love letter to Keep on the Borderlands and support your awesome rules!  Well, we got you covered with the Weregrog Game License (WGGL.)

The WGGL doesn’t bother with a lot of legal gobbledygook and fine print (I can’t read it at my age, anyway.)  You just sign your name (blood optional,) hold your hand to your heart, pinky promise, or use any other internationally-recognized oath method, and the entirety of classic material is opened to you!  Need some flayers of the mind in your module?  No problem!  Beasts that displace?  No sweat!   The putrid Hand and Eye of some old, dead magic-user as your McGuffin?  We got your back!  Our legal team will protect you from any reprisals by witches, sorcerers, activists, or angry wizards, whether they live on the coast or anywhere else.

 

The Savage Lair's legal team is here for you!

I know you’re absolutely salivating for this game by now and just itching to click on that Kicksarter link, just so I'll shut up and take your money, but I don’t bother with any of that newfangled, crowdfunding crap.  Just call 1-800-555-GROG and give them your credit card number, or send a blank check made out to “CASH” to the following address:

Savage Lair of the Weregrognard
1234 Grog St.
P.O. Box 42
American Samoa, 12345

Our customer service representatives are standing by.

 

Disclaimer: The Savage Lair of the Weregrognard is not responsible for any triggered feelings caused by the Tales of the Northern Marklands SPG. It is a fake game that only exists in your sick imagination; about as real as Blackleaf the Thief (talkin' to you, Debbie.)  Side effects may include: nausea, itching, loss of appetite (for food or sexual activity,) fever dreams, demonic possession, and conversion to the worship of an inscrutable Snake God.  Talk to your opinionated and unfriendly local game store clerk to find out which OSR game is right for you.

Happy April Fools y’all!  If you’re wondering where my regular content went for the past couple of weeks, well it’s because the Savage Lair has been invaded (by the in-laws!)  We’ll be back soon with the conclusion of the Royal Barrows and the return of the OSR Lessons series.  Stay tuned!

Happy Halloween!

 

AI image courtesy of Bing Image Creator

In the eldritch tapestry of All Hallow's Eve, there exists a being of dread beyond mortal ken. Each year, the Great Pumpkin ascends from the accursed patch that it deems the most imbued with a grotesque sincerity. It must choose this blighted realm, compelled by forces unfathomable. There is no conceivable sanctity in any other gourd-strewn acreage, for here, only abominable earnestness reigns. A dismal sincerity extends as far as the eye can bear to peer, a sincerity that beckons shadows and loathsome truths.

When the night of Samhain arrives, the Great Pumpkin, that loathsome entity, awakens from its aeons-old slumber within the cursed patch. It emerges with its abhorrent sack of playthings, and soars through the night sky, casting a malediction upon all children. The vile air is tainted with the eerie rustling of its supernatural descent, a harbinger of eldritch horrors that shall befall those it encounters. The Great Pumpkin, a dread specter of cosmic malevolence, visits not with gifts, but with calamities beyond mortal comprehension.

Beware, for in the forlorn pumpkin patches, the Great Pumpkin waits, a nightmarish being whose motives and origins remain shrouded in the unfathomable darkness of the cosmos, where sanity crumbles, and terror reigns.

 

(This is what happens when you plug some quotes from It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown into ChatGPT and ask it to spit them back out in the style of H.P. Lovecraft "for the lulz."  Happy Halloween!)

The D&D Movie I Want to See

 

Being that a week+ case of the 'rona (three-year survivor, baby!) precludes me from hate-watching (or like-watching, if reviews are to be believed) the new D&D movie,  I'm going to give your the dubious pleasure of telling you about the D&D movie I wanted to see if I was God Emperor of Mankind.

• It should take advantage of the current 80-90s (swiftly becoming aughts) nostalgia.  (See Stranger Things and Ghostbusters: Afterlife)
• It should a) acknowledge D&D is a game in some way, or b) be set in on of the myriad D&D worlds of the last 20 years (I think the new movie sort of does this.)  Also, Dragonlance.  I want my Peter Jackson, year-long pre-production caliber Dragonlance dammit!

"This, I Command!" (I'm getting my 80s references confused.  It's the meds, you see.)

 True confessions: I have not listened to the D&D cartoon radio play, Requiem, So I haven't the foggiest if this is at all canonical.  It's my fever-dream, so deal. 

The film begins with a classic scene of a bunch of similar-looking, but not quite, the characters from the D&D cartoon, played by the adult actors in the film.  The acting is really hammed up, over-the-top (read: terri-bad) as the heroes face off with a dragon in front of its hoard.  This is because the whole thing is a game!

 

Cue the now grown-up Thief or Acrobat calling the kids up from their D&D product placement...err...game for dinner.  The crew from the cartoon still gets together every once in a while because of their shared experience.  That shared experience, however, is not what you think.  The hallway has a framed newspaper that reads: "Kids Lost in Tunnels Under Amusement Park Ride Found!" (a bit of a dark Easter egg, from the game's 80s controversies)

Other pictures do the exposition of who married who and what they did: Acrobat + Cavalier (Olympic medalist and real estate developer respectively) and Ranger + Thief (they're your more typical middle class family)

As far as the kids remember, they just got lost in a malfunctioning amusement park ride for a week.  All except this guy...

 

He remembers EVERYTHING

 Played by this guy:

Good old Uncle Bobby didn't grow up as well-adjusted as his peers because of the loss of Uni the Unicron and you know, massive PTSD from living in a D&D world of Satantic nightmare.

I hate to say it, but my sweet, and devout 'abuela' was on to something.

...

 Things get a little foggier from here but I'll give your the highlights:

• Uncle Bobby has an alcohol abuse problem(,but a sweet van.) He storms off from dinner (because nobody believes him) and goes to go drink by the old amusement park (currently being torn down by Cavalier's company.)  This is causing a rift between our world and the D&D world.  The natives could have told you this, if anyone bothered to ask them.  Maybe one of the kids is indigenous and has a grandparent that knows the old stories.
  
• There's a Ghostbusters-like sequence with D&D monsters invading our world: bullywugs at the school, a mail person delivering Netflix (remember those?) to find the mailbox is a mimic.  Hunters and/or park rangers witness an owlbear (lost opportunity for a Gygax/Arneson cameo if they were still around.)

 

"What the heck is that, Gary?!" "I dunno Dave, looks like some sort of owl-bear...Crap!  It saw us!"

• The action continues with the kids trying to escape the monsters, but the parents don't believe them.  Thankfully, Uncle Bobby does and he rolls up in the aforementioned, sweet van to save them.  Unfortunately, they can't leave in it because of rust monsters.
• All right you old Gen Xers!  Get ready for some middle aged tears as a none other than Uni (now a full grown Unicorn straight out of the local Pride Parade) saves the day! Bobby and Uni are tearfully reunited.
• But that's not all!  The kids get their own artifacts and character classes: Bard (for the musician kid), Druid (for the nature-lover), maybe others like Sorcerer or Monk. Once they rescue a curious old man who goes by the name of Dungeon Master, that is.
  
• Once the original crew are reunited with Dungeon Master and their old artifacts, the finally remember everything (via flashbacks: "Look! a Dungeons & Dragons ride!").  The kids and adults team up to close the rift in old caves/mines under the amusement park.
• Don't put a way the Kleenex yet, Xoomer! Barbarian Bobby (looking ridiculous) now gets to ride Uni at the vanguard of a Good Monster army to buy the others time to herd the Evil monsters and close the rift.
• Of course, you can't do anything these days without an after credits scene to set up the next movie! How about this?  Half the kids and half the adults are now stuck in D&D world and our world respectively.  They wake up to see the familiar back of Dungeon Master, who calls them by their class names: "Welcome, Ranger, Thief, Druid..."

 

Now, go and enjoy the real movie!  I'll catch up to you next week *sniffle, cough, gag*. 

This is a 4E Blog Now (O4R)

 

 

Let's face it, with 5e looking venerable and 6e/One D&D on the way, I think we can all consider 4e Old School now.  Let go of your hate, you know it to be true.

 

But seriously, if you consider that the time believed to be roughly the Old School era (circa 1974-1982) only accounts for about 16-17% (or 1 in 1d6) of D&D's near 50-year lifespan.  It's time to embrace more editions into the Old School fold.

Someone with more talent than yours truly needs to depict the Tavern of Old Editions (with apologies to Tenkar's Tavern)

Therefore, all my future installments of Dungeon23 will be in the 4E dungeon style, with carefully balanced encounters and skill challenges....

...aww who am I kidding?  Happy April Fools!