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New haul of stuff came in during the past seven days. A few Conan physical books I was still missing and now have. Now I'm just missing the physical Conan Waves Stained Crimson campaign book because it sold out in the Modiphius US store.

A few DnD books to keep up on their material for shits and giggles and a GM screen because I'm always curious on how they change the layouts on those.

I backed the original Midgard Kickstarter and had the pdf of the Zobeck Gazetteer so I had to get the physical book. Also I'm slowly working my way through snagging Goodman Games classic homage series, so Isle of Dread next up since I had the first one that they did Keep on the Borderlands.

Barbarians of Lemuria is pretty cool, seems rules light. Currently reading through it. Unfortunately my Mythras rpg based books I ordered only one came in, Elevation. I'm still waiting on three others that were delayed at the printer. :/

The OSRIC book I had as a pdf and decided to try out Lulu finally by purchasing a physical copy. I had no idea the book would be small, I had hoped it would be a full sized book. :/ It's readable but I'd have liked the option to have Lulu print it the same size as The Isle of Dread or other DnD books for example.
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I have The Isle of Dread ans I'm quite happy with it.

Let us know what you think of the new 5e books, most of the 'discourse' about it online are by people who haven't even read them.
 
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Voros Voros After I finish reading through "Barbarians of Lemuria" and CyberPunk Red, I plan on reading through "Keep on the Borderlands" and "The Isle of Dread" that Goodman Games did. I'd only did a glance through while sharing my memories of playing through them nigh on 40 years now. lol

I did actually end up using "Keep on the Borderlands" back in the early 80's at least the foundation of it for my ongoing Thieves World campaign. I played it northeast of the city of Sanctuary through the pass in an mountainous area with tree and shrub growth as I recall. The last bit of frontier civilization before you would head eastward into the desert.

Speaking of the desert, that's where I placed Judges Guild's Fortress Badabaskor and Tower of Fire. Though like Keep on the Borderland the interiors on both had changed a lot and had been further developed. It was rough area with the desert Raggah making things even harder for player characters.


Edit: Was telling my wife about this post as I walked upstairs with "The Keep on the Borderlands" in hand and realized I'd referred to "Citadel of Fire" by Judges Guild as "Tower of Fire".

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Voros Voros After I finish reading through "Barbarians of Lemuria" and CyberPunk Red, I plan on reading through "Keep on the Borderlands" and "The Isle of Dread" that Goodman Games did. I'd only did a glance through while sharing my memories of playing through them nigh on 40 years now. lol

I did actually end up using "Keep on the Borderlands" back in the early 80's at least the foundation of it for my ongoing Thieves World campaign. I played it northeast of the city of Sanctuary through the pass in an mountainous area with tree and shrub growth as I recall. The last bit of frontier civilization before you would head eastward into the desert.

Speaking of the desert, that's where I placed Judges Guild's Fortress Badabaskor and Tower of Fire. Though like Keep on the Borderland the interiors on both had changed a lot and had been further developed. It was rough area with the desert Raggah making things even harder for player characters.

I played and ran Isle of Dread and Keep on the Borderland several times as a kid/teen as well. I think I'd give Isle the edge as a module and sandbox although there's a lot I liked about Keep as well (one of which is not the Caves of Chaos, which I find bland).
 
Edit: As an aside unless some major Kickstarters rear their heads next month, I'll probably snag the DCC stuff, specifically the Lankhmar material. I think I've resisted due to the odd die types long enough. lol
The DCC Lankhmar stuff is fantastic. It's well worth the effort of getting past your fear of 24-sided dice.
I played and ran Isle of Dread and Keep on the Borderland several times as a kid/teen as well. I think I'd give Isle the edge as a module and sandbox although there's a lot I liked about Keep as well (one of which is not the Caves of Chaos, which I find bland).
The biggest flaw in Keep is presenting having the one NPC that offers to help the party be a traitor. "Never work with NPCs" is a poor lesson for an introduction to RPGs.
 
I played and ran Isle of Dread and Keep on the Borderland several times as a kid/teen as well. I think I'd give Isle the edge as a module and sandbox although there's a lot I liked about Keep as well (one of which is not the Caves of Chaos, which I find bland).

I gutted the caves after I ran it the first time. Even the first time I ran it I added a lot to it and removed somethings. Often back in those days I took a game module and more or less just used it as an outline form to build my own things with. Basically the foundation and then off I went.
 
I finally got my proofs of the POD books of a couple of products I'm putting up on DriveThru.

Betrayal at Shadewood Keep is an adventure for Mythras and Classic Fantasy. It's been out for almost two years, but now it's got a POD version. And Rooms with A View is a book of interesting locations and NPCs (not combat-focused at all) for both Mythras and D&D 5E. That one will go live later this week.

I had started working on the POD versions last fall, but then the whole thing with DriveThru saying they were re-evaluating Lightning Source and maybe moving to a different printer got me to hold off for a while - no point in setting everything up and then having to do it all over again with a new printer. But since they decided to stay with Lightning Source, I've gone ahead and gotten these done.

Book-proofs1.jpgBook-proofs2.jpg
 
What is it with Mythras and itty bitty teeny weeny tiny fonts? Some of us aren't getting any younger, and our eyes sure as hell aren't getting better. They should do an 'old farts' version of books in 12 or 14pt. I'd pay extra for that instead of having books turn up that I need a microscope to read :sad:

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J Jenx Right?!!! I tried once again a couple days ago to try to read Mythras Classic Fantasy but after around 16 pages I gave up. Tiny, faded fonts that don't pop are so hard on the eyes. Truly a fuckin shame because it does appear to be an awesome improvement over RQ/BRP. (Deep sigh)

Edit: Off an on I give serious consideration to having the pdf re-sized font type and layout. Maybe paying someone to do it.
 
J Jenx Right?!!! I tried once again a couple days ago to try to read Mythras Classic Fantasy but after around 16 pages I gave up. Tiny, faded fonts that don't pop are so hard on the eyes. Truly a fuckin shame because it does appear to be an awesome improvement over RQ/BRP. (Deep sigh)

Edit: Off an on I give serious consideration to having the pdf re-sized font type and layout. Maybe paying someone to do it.
If you want to give Mythras a try, Lyonesse is a complete, standalone RPG using the system. It is a much easier read. As another option, Runequest 6 is the same system. I don't know what that secondary market is on it, but it is an almost identical book with much larger type.
 
I have The Isle of Dread ans I'm quite happy with it.

Let us know what you think of the new 5e books, most of the 'discourse' about it online are by people who haven't even read them.
I
I have The Isle of Dread ans I'm quite happy with it.

Let us know what you think of the new 5e books, most of the 'discourse' about it online are by people who haven't even read them.
So I got a bug after this post and dug into Goodman Games "Into The Borderlands", B-1/B-2. A lot of fun stuff to read with the thoughts and memories. The 5e stuff is hit and miss, easier to read font type and some good information but overall I feel it was a missed opportunity on the part of Goodman Games.

The stat blocks in the 5e section miss key useful information for example in some places. Like level, hit points and hit bonus etc, Yet give you a bunch of unneeded information that eats up a lot of each page. So it's wasted space and the pages are dense with information presented in a way that's not always useful. Here is an random example of stat information presented in the body of the text.

sample.jpg

No level, no to hit bonus, no hit points and yet all that information presented. I'll note it's also not presented where you'd think it might be in Appendix B or C, the logical place you'll find stat blocks etc. Hell they spend a couple paragraphs listing the Castellan including his numerous magic items and yet don't give you his level, class, hit points or most of his stats. I only know he's 6th level from the "old" B-2 listed in the first half of the book which does a write up.

Also there is a bunch of stuff that feels Basic DnD instead of 5e DnD in the Goodman revamp. I'd not recommend anyone buy this to use it honestly. Buy it if you feel nostalgic and want to read the information in the beginning of the book which is enjoyable. Otherwise buy the old pdf's on DriveThruRpg instead which are much cheaper and allow you to print them up and use them in a way that's more useful gameplay wise.

I could do a lot with the old B1-B2 with this revamp not so much. This got me so curious I snagged the 4e version to see how WotC went about revamping it for a newer DnD. Should be an interesting read, hopefully they did better than Goodman Games.
 
If you want to give Mythras a try, Lyonesse is a complete, standalone RPG using the system. It is a much easier read. As another option, Runequest 6 is the same system. I don't know what that secondary market is on it, but it is an almost identical book with much larger type.
Own it, snagged it when it came out and the supplement as well and yeah it's much easier to read. Here's the thing, I want a tool kit that I can then use for my own game world, not Jack Vance's Lyonesse.
 
Bought a dynamic lighting map on Roll20 that I'm using for an adventure this Friday. If everything goes well I plan to use more of them.

I'm just glad that someone else goes through the trouble of putting them together!
 
Fizban's Treasury of Dragons came in today and I was excited to give it a skim. The very first thing I looked for were Draconians, as in the Dragonlance Draconians.

The Draconians are in the book, but they've been given generic names like Dreadnought Draconian and Draconian Footsoldier. The original names are still mentioned in the description text. The descriptions have also been expanded so that each type is not specifically a corrupted metallic dragon egg. It seems now that all dragon eggs can get in on the hot corrupting action to form Draconians.

Draconian signature death tricks have changed as well. The Dreadnought/Sivak now explodes into flames. This wasn't something they used to do at the moment of death. They used to turn into the shape of their killer on their death and then explode into flames 3 days later. The shapechange is still there, but now it's only when the Sivak kills someone The Footsoldier/Baaz has also changed. Now they not only turn into stone on death, but they also expel a cloud of paralyzing gas. The saving throws for this are so low that it's kind of confusing why the bother?

I can see changing the names of the Draconians and their "parentage" to make them more generic for use in other settings. But some of the changes just seem to miss the point of the monsters. An example is the turning to stone of the Footsoldier/Baaz. The old version of the ability encouraged use of blunt weapons against them, or incapacitating traps. The new version discourages close contact, because a fluke die roll can leave a character paralyzed for 6 rounds. The new ability would encourage missile fire against them instead. The Dreadnought/Sivak change turns them from a shock trooper with some nasty mind-game utility, into a bigger and meaner doppleganger with a nasty death animation.

I guess it was time for a bit of a change. The changes aren't major at all. But I do have some mixed feelings about these modifications.

There are very few player options in the book. On first pass, the options for Dragonborn seemed to be doing nothing more than reiterating their abilities from the PHB. Monks probably get the most material and they only get a couple of pages total. There are a handful of spells. There are magic items, including the Dragonlance which has been dramatically nerfed. No more adding your character's current HP to damage against a dragon. Now it's just +3d6 to the normal damage of a lance or pike. Might as well just use harsh language for all the good that would do against the modern HP totals of dragons.

Then there's stuff about chromatic dragons, metallic dragons, crystal dragons, their hoards, and their lairs. A lot of this consists of short charts meant to generate random flavor. On the one hand, it definitely can be good for inspiration, especially on the spur of the moment. On the other hand all the charts feel like filler/padding.

Overall, I'm not sure what I think yet. In some ways I feel disappointed. Of all the WotC "Dragonomicon" style books, I'd say this one is probably the weakest one they've ever done. Yet, of the 5e hardcovers, this is the one that kept me flipping through it the most consistently through the evening. It kept my attention as I was browsing it, even if all I was doing was randomly flipping around from one random paragraph or chart to the next.

It has the 5e stats for Draconians, and that was my only real goal for it, so I guess I'm happy in that aspect. I think I'm going to have some Draconians from Krynn come through that hidden portal in the forest in my game of Goodman Games's Into the Borderlands.

I have a bunch of other stuff I've glommed hold of over the past few months. I may need to do a few big picture posts soon.
 
Fizban's Treasury of Dragons came in today and I was excited to give it a skim. The very first thing I looked for were Draconians, as in the Dragonlance Draconians.

The Draconians are in the book, but they've been given generic names like Dreadnought Draconian and Draconian Footsoldier. The original names are still mentioned in the description text. The descriptions have also been expanded so that each type is not specifically a corrupted metallic dragon egg. It seems now that all dragon eggs can get in on the hot corrupting action to form Draconians.

Draconian signature death tricks have changed as well. The Dreadnought/Sivak now explodes into flames. This wasn't something they used to do at the moment of death. They used to turn into the shape of their killer on their death and then explode into flames 3 days later. The shapechange is still there, but now it's only when the Sivak kills someone The Footsoldier/Baaz has also changed. Now they not only turn into stone on death, but they also expel a cloud of paralyzing gas. The saving throws for this are so low that it's kind of confusing why the bother?

I can see changing the names of the Draconians and their "parentage" to make them more generic for use in other settings. But some of the changes just seem to miss the point of the monsters. An example is the turning to stone of the Footsoldier/Baaz. The old version of the ability encouraged use of blunt weapons against them, or incapacitating traps. The new version discourages close contact, because a fluke die roll can leave a character paralyzed for 6 rounds. The new ability would encourage missile fire against them instead. The Dreadnought/Sivak change turns them from a shock trooper with some nasty mind-game utility, into a bigger and meaner doppleganger with a nasty death animation.

I guess it was time for a bit of a change. The changes aren't major at all. But I do have some mixed feelings about these modifications.

There are very few player options in the book. On first pass, the options for Dragonborn seemed to be doing nothing more than reiterating their abilities from the PHB. Monks probably get the most material and they only get a couple of pages total. There are a handful of spells. There are magic items, including the Dragonlance which has been dramatically nerfed. No more adding your character's current HP to damage against a dragon. Now it's just +3d6 to the normal damage of a lance or pike. Might as well just use harsh language for all the good that would do against the modern HP totals of dragons.

Then there's stuff about chromatic dragons, metallic dragons, crystal dragons, their hoards, and their lairs. A lot of this consists of short charts meant to generate random flavor. On the one hand, it definitely can be good for inspiration, especially on the spur of the moment. On the other hand all the charts feel like filler/padding.

Overall, I'm not sure what I think yet. In some ways I feel disappointed. Of all the WotC "Dragonomicon" style books, I'd say this one is probably the weakest one they've ever done. Yet, of the 5e hardcovers, this is the one that kept me flipping through it the most consistently through the evening. It kept my attention as I was browsing it, even if all I was doing was randomly flipping around from one random paragraph or chart to the next.

It has the 5e stats for Draconians, and that was my only real goal for it, so I guess I'm happy in that aspect. I think I'm going to have some Draconians from Krynn come through that hidden portal in the forest in my game of Goodman Games's Into the Borderlands.

I have a bunch of other stuff I've glommed hold of over the past few months. I may need to do a few big picture posts soon.

Didn't realize this was out. I want to pick up the retail alternate cover version. Hopefully I can find time tomorrow.
 
I bought the PDF of the Lyonesse RPG when it was on sale recently, and now I regret not going for the print + PDF combo... What a beautiful book. Even though I'll probably never run Mythras, it's great to see Vance's wonderful setting get such quality treatment.
 
A couple of books on magic. Kieckhefer I got in paper, but the Oxford Illustrated History as a Kindle book:
I'm very fond of the Kieckhefer book. I had the 1E, probably need to grab the newer edition somewhere. I got the PDF proto-release Irownsworn Starforged material, and the material looks awesome! Keep an eye out for it gents if you like SF and Ironsworn!
 
I finally got my proofs of the POD books of a couple of products I'm putting up on DriveThru.

Betrayal at Shadewood Keep is an adventure for Mythras and Classic Fantasy. It's been out for almost two years, but now it's got a POD version. And Rooms with A View is a book of interesting locations and NPCs (not combat-focused at all) for both Mythras and D&D 5E. That one will go live later this week.

I had started working on the POD versions last fall, but then the whole thing with DriveThru saying they were re-evaluating Lightning Source and maybe moving to a different printer got me to hold off for a while - no point in setting everything up and then having to do it all over again with a new printer. But since they decided to stay with Lightning Source, I've gone ahead and gotten these done.

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Last bit of shameless self-promotion in this thread, I promise. But the print versions of these have all gone on sale at DriveThruRPG. Print includes PDF at no extra cost.

And if anyone here bought the PDF of Betrayal at Shadewood Keep (Mythras version) in the past, you'll receive an at-cost discount code to order the print version (so you don't have to pay for the content twice). I need to figure out how to do that still, so it make take a week or so to get the coupon out.
 
The DCC Lankhmar stuff is fantastic. It's well worth the effort of getting past your fear of 24-sided dice.

The biggest flaw in Keep is presenting having the one NPC that offers to help the party be a traitor. "Never work with NPCs" is a poor lesson for an introduction to RPGs.
Lankhmar is fantastic. REALLY want to run DCC with it.
 
I'm madly envious and looking at the price wincing too.
I just had a birthday, and no one knows what to get me, so I received some money in a card from both my ageing parents and my wife
So yeah, I knew I had to send that money towards some kind of limited edition rpg or classic fiction book
The trick is make it hard for people to work out what gifts to give you, that has worked well for me! :thumbsup:
 
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I just had a birthday, and no one knows what to get me, so I received some money in a card from both my ageing parents and my wife

So yeah, I knew I had to send that money towards some kind of limited edition rpg or classic fiction book

The trick is make it hard for people to work out what gifts to give you, that has worked well for me! :thumbsup:
Yeah, sadly my peeps know nothing to get me, but they're sadly in the "gift cards are too impersonal." No! It shows you know me well enough to know I've got lists of things miles long I want in places you don't go! My eldest nephew though does well enough though with a gift card. My aging aunt and uncle just sent me a check in September in the same dollar amount as my age...which was nice too. (Sadly it all went to bills. I hate bills.) This month is--more bills. (Car reg, inspection, oil. AAARGH.)
 
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I just had a birthday, and no one knows what to get me, so I received some money in a card from both my ageing parents and my wife

So yeah, I knew I had to send that money towards some kind of limited edition rpg or classic fiction book

The trick is make it hard for people to work out what gifts to give you, that has worked well for me! :thumbsup:
My wife and I long gave up on any romantic notion that I would pick the correct color, fit or style of what she likes or that she has any clue what RPG or board game I need.


That said I have trained her to understand what are decent game companies so I get pictures when she goes to thrift stores.
 
I splurged on a trio of cheap rpg books via Amazon that I got in the mail yesterday. A copy of Fate Accelerated, Cthulhu Abides and a Savage world supplement called $layers: Dead of Night. The third one was actually written by me, but I never got a comp copy by the publisher. it was less than 4 bucks, so I figured why not.
 
Got another book from Zinequest III in the mail today. All Must Bow is a system agnostic setting of cosmic horror. It's designed from the point of view of the cultists, not those who oppose them. What's really cool is it comes with a set of cards that feature sample entities you can use. They're all original, and not any from Lovecraft's work. I haven't dived into it yet, but it's a beautiful looking little book.
 
I got the World's Without Number offset print release. I like what I'm seeing so far and looking forward to the offset print of Stars Without Number when it gets here.
 
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
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