I have a special offer for you...

As you probably noticed, I released the third volume of the Underworld Kingdom. It was the last volume before the ones containing setting. And all of them are now available on Lulu in both printed and PDF format. And now we'll talk about the PDFs.

I have a special offer for y'all. Or rather, three special offers.

If you want to grab Underworld Kingdom Volumes I-III, send me $5 via PayPal (preferably as family gift) and I'll send you the zipped PDF bundle to your PayPal email.

If you want to grab Underworld Kingdom Volumes I-III plus Towers of Krshal, send me $7,50 via PayPal (preferably as family gift) and I'll send you the zipped PDF bundle to your PayPal email.

If you want to receive Underworld Kingdom Volumes I-III plus Towers of Krshal plus Bandits and Battlecruisers, send me ten bucks via PayPal (preferably as family gift) and I'll send you the zipped PDF bundle to your PayPal email.

My PayPal email is necro_cyber[at]o2[dot]pl

Melanda - first impression

According to the amount of information available in the internet, it's one of the most obscure and hard to get role-playing games, from the past. I bought it over one year ago and yeah, had no time to even read it. Now I finally managed to sit down and skim through the rulebook. Here are the very first impressions about it:

• Character creation rules are really simple and pretty intuitive. Direct inspiration for Fudge is obvious;
• Playable races are divided into two sub-groups - old races and new breeds. Older ones are: Baladel (virtually dwarves), Lyradel (wood elves), Gisadel (umm, jungle elves? they say that they are similar to Lyradel so I guess so) and Wandel (amphibian race). New breeds are humans (Omenwedur) and halflings (Uridos). In fact, it's written that old races are more related to each other than to the younger races;
• Booklet has 64 pages. Bestiary consists of 30 pages. Many generic mythical creatures, many animals and many unique thingies. Had no time to read though the list. No generic "fantasy" races such as orcs, goblins and shit;
• There is a player guide, added to the rulebook. In fact, it's just a sheet of crappy cardboard-ish paper, printed on both sides. Or maybe not that crappy, considering the fact that rulebook, along with the guide, survived 35 years...
• Combat system looks atrocious. It seems that is really easy to die or be horribly mutilated. Probably nearly unplayable without major tweaks.

And some pictures of definitely crappy quality:

Player's guide. Pink cardboard. Fuck yeah!

Hit location chart. Looks like shit.

Runes. I have no idea how to use them...

Tits.

Kefitzah Haderech is out now!

As I mentioned before, I am one of the co-authors of the small, 32-paged booklet about magical portals, teleports and gates. You should check it out, mostly because it contains d666 random destination table and it's really cheap - cheaper than my Towers of Krshal :-)

Buy the print+PDF+source

Buy the PDF+source

400th post - changes in the OSR and BIG lulu discount

Clicky!

Four hundred posts - it was fast! Luckily, there will be much more :-) To celebrate it, for limited time all my prints on Lulu are 25% cheaper - now you can buy Towers of Krshal and Terminal Space at big discount. Hurry up because it won't last forever! :D

Second thing - yesterday two interesting posts appeared, both about the nature of OSR. In first one, Beedo presented interesting view of the old school games in general (and I agree with him). Most interesting thing about it is fact ignored by many OSR people - it's not about the D&D and its clones (and nothing more) - it's more about the way we play it.

But why I'm mentioning it? The reason is the second OSR-related post. It was published by the mighty Catacomb Librarian on his Mesmerized by Sirens blog. He noticed the very interesting thing - the republishing of old and almost forgotten games that almost disappeared in the shadow cast by TSR's flagship. Heroes, Starships & Spacemen, Wizard's World and now maybe Vikings & Valkyrs - the games that were almost dead and now are returning. Cool, but it's not enough for me!

We need that "OSR 2.0", but we need something more. We need more retro-clones and simulacra trying to emulate that kind of games - sometimes crude, sometimes overcomplicated but not based on D&D. It already started with a Runebearer but still we need more. Probably many of you will not agree with me ("it's pointless to create unplayable games or incompatible with most of OSR stuff") but let me to explain my point of view.

Reason One: stagnation and reduced creativity. We have FUCKLOADS of D&D retroclones. Even I am very close to release my clone (to close Terminal Space chapter of my life). It's cool and I like them alot. In most cases, they are a very good games and each of them adds something more. But you must admit if the process for d6+2 more years it may become a little weird. But still, it's not the point! As I mentioned, it's cool. But repeating the same methods over and over may result with significant quality drop. Games may simply stop to provide anything new and may become just boring and repetitive. But of course I may be wrong and honestly I hope that it will not become a truth

Reason Two: DIY gene pool. It's not my thought but it's 100% true. Lee Reynoldson wrote it in a comment for this post of mine: "I also think all these different simulacra, clones, and rules add to the DIY DNA. Even the most obscure and uplayed of DIY games will leave some sort of impact, or inspiration that spins off into another project and adds to the community's Rules gene pool." I think that there's no need to say anything more about it.

By the way, there's one more game (beside of abovementioned Runebearer) not directly based on D&D but definitely "Old School enough". It's Tsojcanth's Adventure Fantasy Game. Buy it now or your genitals will rot and fall off.

What I'd like to see in OSR products

Most awesome feature of the whole OSR community is fact that it's constantly releasing tons of stuff - games, modules, supplements, both paid and free. However, I noticed that almost all these products are written in very "modern" style - 100% content, no fluff and - most importantly - absolute lack of author's commentary.

I want more games and supplements with tons of author's comments. Products containing stuff like "that's why I used this rule", "you can use it this way or that way", "I was inspired by this or that". I don't encourage anyone to use Gygaxian twisted style but that's something pretty easy to do.

Sci Fi OSR on Geeplus!

Wow, new G+ feature - communities. I believe it was added today and already there are dozens of awesome RPG-related groups. So, I added my own as well.

Instead of creating a Terminal Space or Bandits & Battlecruisers -related group, I decided to create something dedicated to all Sci Fi-related Old School Games. There are many really great games there, both new and old and all of them deserves some attention.

JOIN NOW!