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Thanks Skywalker Skywalker for the mention of the Facebook group for B/X D&D. Found some nice potential covers on there and a nice project that someone undertook to meld both books together.

Book is printed and bound (I rushed it though so it's not my best effort) just deciding on the cover.

Thought I'd print the cover (on A3+ paper) and figure out what to do with the titles later. I'll stick those on.

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Still playing about with it. Someone has done a nice job of merging the two Erol Otus covers, seems a shame to clutter it with titles and such. The print is good but... I may play about with the settings and print at a higher setting. This is 'standard' and I believe it can go better than this. Will have to fill yellow and magenta inks first though. Bit of an ink hog this one ...
 
They are and I thought that was a cool idea until I read more detail and they literally have things that have Roman names. Military units, social classes, etc. I felt that was quite lazy; wish they'd have used the Roman Empire as the basis but been a little more creative in the execution, alas.
But if Palladium had not used the Roman names, can you imagine the "why invent names for things that are already named" grumbling that would have followed:shade:?
 
You guys keep doing that, and sooner or later the WotC are going to offer official combo-books like that instead of making you print them yourselves...:grin:

If you're lucky, they'd think of the "reversed covers" trick:shade:.
 
I'm sure I'm not on my own in saying that I'm like a moth to a flame where boxed set RPGs are concerned...

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... right?!?! There's two of 'em here as well. What chance did I have, m'lord!

EDIT: Good video review here too:

 
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I'm sure I'm not on my own in saying that I'm like a moth to a flame where boxed set RPGs are concerned...

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... right?!?! There's two of 'em here as well. What chance did I have, m'lord!

EDIT: Good video review here too:


I am sorely tempted to buy these. Mausritter took some of the best elements from the OSR and distilled them into a charming (and free!) 24 page pamphlet. I especially like the inventory system, warbands, and how experience points work.

Edit: The main rules box set is currently sold out on Exalted Funeral.

You might want to tale a look at Tails of Iron on Steam it's 50% off right now and does a great job presenting a world of mouse adventure that is both brutal and charming.

 
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I am sorely tempted to buy these. Mausritter took some of the best elements from the OSR and distilled them into a charming (and free!) 24 page pamphlet. I especially like the inventory system, warbands, and how experience points work.

You might want to tale a look at Tails of Iron on Steam it's 50% off right now and does a great job presenting a world of mouse adventure that is both brutal and charming.



Thanks! Really appreciate the heads up - will give it a look.

I really want to run a face-to-face game of Mausritter. It's easy to play, charming (like you say) in its concept, and all the little tactile elements of how equipment and inventory work will make it so much fun to play. I also painted the miniatures from the Mice and Mystics boardgame and its expansions so they'd really add to the magic too!
 
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Done.

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Just need a slipcase and these can go on the shelf. I still use my old 'dogpoo' battered cover book but the Combat & Magic book will get some use I would think with the others referenced from time to time.

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Printed with the trusty laser printer which isn't much good for photo or pictures as the colours are miles off. Re-covered.

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This was re-covered as the clear contact misbehaved and crinkled. Damn stuff. Done now with that, all books are sprayed from now on.

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Getting better. I printed the cover from the new printer with this first and quite pleased how it turned out.

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Went a bit overboard with the lacquer. The cover shines like a mirror, feels like glass.


What is it?

Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls (from 2015 Kickstarter) was released as a bit of a bulletstopper with 386 pages. This is somewhat counter to previous editions of Tunnels and Trolls which have been digest size generally and small easy to handle books.

Is it any good?

Ummm yeah. Some of the writing needs to be clearer in places. The combat system is a plus and a minus in my book. Roll buckets of D6s to resolve combat. It sometimes resembles a cloud of fists and feet and swords jutting out in a 'throw everything count up the dice compare to your mountain of dice'. The missile combat rules are a bit iffy to me but sort of work and the spell names (renamed for the times) are light hearted with a decent range to pick from. As the second oldest Fantasy RPG it's a bit of survivor but this version is 7 years old now and the new owners of the game haven't made much progress with advancing things on as yet, having owned it for about a year.

What is this?

Split the book up into four smaller tomes. Book 2 (Combat and Magic) will get the most use I expect. Book four will get the least (adventures and a few other bits and bobs, designers notes etc). Hard back with thick (probably too thick) sturdy covers that can take a battering. When I started the project a couple of weeks ago I had only a laser printer and had to glue several sheets of A4 together to make a large enough picture to cover the book. Last week I had a 'sod it' moment and bought a Canon Pixma IX6850. That babble just means 'A3+ inkjet printer'. It prints borderless and I made sure that inks were cheap to replace.
I learned a few things along the way, made some mistakes, changed the way I make books and hopefully going forward the end result will be better. First off, no more clear contact to cover the books. They are covered with gloss photo paper which is clear lacquer sprayed to provide durability to the ink/cover. Second, A3+ means it just about covers the A4 book. I ordered thinner card (2k microns instead of 3k) and that should provide a bit more breathing room for the cover to fit around the book.

Anything left to do?

Maybe give the books a squishing (the printing process generally swells pages and 120gsm paper is already pretty thick) and look at making a slip cover. Not because it needs them but because I thought it would look ok keeping the books together. It's on the list o stuff to do. Some of the paper cover may need a trim, stray bits of paper on corners may need gluing down again.

Why?

I didn't need to do this, but I like learning new things and this is still very much a learning process. I gave myself a 5/10 for the first book, 6 for book two then recovered 1+2 with the new printer A3/A3+ cover and three and four were printed that way from the off. Four got a lavish coating of lacquer and is really quite glossy but sticks out a bit from the others which have a slightly rough matte finish from the light dusting of lacquer. I give book 3 a 6.5/10 and book 4 gets a 7/10. Can do better but not bad.

Am I done with physical books, going PDF and home print from now on?

Not yet. Some books (like Mork Borg) are full colour every page and ink hogs, soaking pages. To do it justice I'd need to use much of a pack of photo inkjet paper and it gets pricey. The buy in for doing this has been two printers, supplies and time, so quite a bit already. Probably cheaper to buy the books in all honesty but I like learning so teaching myself as I go from various online tutorials.

What's next?

Dungeons and Dragons Basic/Expert Combined
, Fleaux! gets redone and probably Warbirds then I'll look at splitting up Against the Darkmaster. As these are for private/not for sale use only I'll probably raid the gallery of Angus McBride for the covers.
 
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Not RPG related, but... Blower Box bass distortion pedal from Idiotbox Effects. It's a small company in Central TX. OK, it's a guy in his garage in central TX. This thing sounds ansolutely filthy, and I mean that in the best possible way.
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Picked up Blades in the Dark yesterday while I as at Guardian Games. I've got a copy of Vaesen on the way, which I got because Free League had a 50% off sale going. Also got High Valor in print (had the pdf already) when Bret mentioned it was discounted on Amazon. Pre-ordered Planets of Peril. I also got this game called NOVA, which is a mecha game using a system called Lumen. Looks interesting
 
Picked up Blades in the Dark yesterday while I as at Guardian Games. I've got a copy of Vaesen on the way, which I got because Free League had a 50% off sale going. Also got High Valor in print (had the pdf already) when Bret mentioned it was discounted on Amazon. Pre-ordered Planets of Peril. I also got this game called NOVA, which is a mecha game using a system called Lumen. Looks interesting
I have a copy of Nova, Lumen is a very light resource driven system. I'm considering using it for something. There are a lot of games based on it forthcoming, all of them pretty short compared to other RPG's, but that's not a bad thing. Nova itself sits closer to Warframe/Destiny/Anthem than giant robots smashing one another in my perspective, and has fixed mecha, but because of the lightness of the system would be pretty easy to expand on those.
 
I have a copy of Nova, Lumen is a very light resource driven system. I'm considering using it for something. There are a lot of games based on it forthcoming, all of them pretty short compared to other RPG's, but that's not a bad thing. Nova itself sits closer to Warframe/Destiny/Anthem than giant robots smashing one another in my perspective, and has fixed mecha, but because of the lightness of the system would be pretty easy to expand on those.
I picked up NOVA specifically for the art. I'm actually looking at Lumen myself for a cosmic scale superhero rpg I want to write. But the SRD leaves a little to be desired. I was considered LIGHT, but there is a revision coming, so I went with NOVA instead. I'm still reading through the different types of mechs right now.

on a non-rpg note, the "renewed" laptop I ordered on Amazon arrived a day early. Given I couldn't install Affinity Publisher on my other one, and it installed properly on this one, I'm already happy with my purchase.
 
Nice. Are there minis?
There are but I haven’t collected them. I’m sticking to just the rule books and boxed games as I’m not set up or steady enough to paint anymore. I have a pile of other minis, like the entire Geezers “Shut It” line, that I need to sell actually :cry:

The cool thing about the minis are that unlike many games from a famous IP the Leading Edge ones look like the actors, well within reason. Here is a link where they have a lot of pictures of the lines
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tpope/sol/leading-edge/index.html
 
@ Klibbix! Klibbix! I need more details,

I’ll have to delve a bit more into it, but here’s the blurb!

“Treat with strange entities, battle against weird magics, and explore the world of mystery and wonder of AZAG! This psychedelic roleplaying game and world, developed by Dank Dungeons and inspired by games such as Fighting Fantasy, features a plethora of imaginative text, striking illustrations, and evocative table generators to help bring this unique world into existence in front of your eyes.”

After I’ve a better look I’ll post more!
 
Brock Savage Brock Savage

Ok, it's relatively short so I've had a look at it.

It's essentially a hack of the old Fighting Fantasy system from Dungeoneer! with, "a bit of math from Daniel Sell's Toika!" While I know of these games, I'm not as familiar with their systems as I'd like, but Azag appears to be a 2d6 roll under system; players roll under a Threshhold, a number modified by their Skill, for example.

A social encounter mechanic is added, as well as random magical items and a interesting set of spells (complete with a Magical Calamity table). The world is influenced by Weird Fiction writers, and the author specifically mentions Conan, Lankmar, The Dying Earth and Hyperborea. What we see of the setting, peppered with tidbits of fiction, is evocative and looks pretty interesting.

But the art! The art is great and there's a picture of, I assume, Tsathogga, that's amazing and how I found the game in the first place.

In all, I think it's good fodder for inspiration and the system seems solid, but it's not as fleshed out as you might want to play in. It seems more Dreamlands than Conan's world, which is great.

I'm not as jazzed about the physical copy, the book is pretty stiff and I'm afraid to open it too hard and damage it.

Will I use it at the table? Maybe not, but it's a beautiful book. It's a game, if you get me, that I'd love to have the author run for me.B59313FA-7284-4434-8193-62F6E42CC90A.jpeg
 
As mentioned upthread the 'bootleg' combined Basic/Expert Moldvay book is done.

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What is it?

A guy off the internet combined Basic and Expert Moldvay D&D books into one. Technically it's a bootleg and not legal but nicely done and I'm sure with some work (like, a total re-write) it could be OGL compliant, hence no links here. As it is this is a forty+ year old book no longer in print (but available from Drive thru as POD and PDF) and I printed it off on nice thick paper with a bullet stopping hardback cover.

Why?

I liked the look/idea of the combined B/X books into one and originally had intended to print the Basic book one way up, the Expert book 'upside down' and combine the two with a 'turn it over when you need the other book' but it sounds kinda weird and maybe is weird. Might do it one day just for the hell of it. As for the why? Nostalgia really. I started with the red book as a 10 year old in 81 or whenever this came out (so might have been 9 I suppose) and it's nice to read to see where I started.

Manufacturing process - what have you screwed up this time dummy?

Yeah, I made a mess of the sewing of the binding with too small holes. Rush job. It did, however spur me to get off my lazy ass to tackle the 'bookbinding press for people with no money mk2'. See below. The red cover didn't print borderless and I put it on slightly wonky. One coat of stick glue on the glossy inkjet stuff barely sticks. An extra coat and it's practically magnetised to anything it comes close to.

Moving on...

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Well? What is it?

Kobayashi Kobayashi 's Fleaux, a nice little 'grimpunk' (or whatever the term is for 'low fantasy gritty high mortality rate die from plague, a sword in the gut after hours of agony or too much damn rain') Warhammer style 'you're all putting off the inevitable, the world is going to end and you will all die horribly' type setting. Updated PDF (please no more updates! :hehe: ). I think the original is a digest size softcover? I backed the kickstarter as pdf only so no idea what other options were available. This one is A4, hardcover so thick it could stop bullets and, well...

Here we go. What did you screw up this time?

Not me! Honest! The new printer decided to shit itself 3/4 of the way through printing. Now the dilemma is to leave as is or cover with a stick on top proper red cover. The compatible cartridges all had a wobble at the same time - Magenta then yellow and cyan swiftly after. Black oem cartridges kept printing away wondering why I was jumping about watching the cover come out weird. A3+ cover chops off the credits at the bottom too. Oops.

Huh. Poor workman blaming his tools etc.

Yeah yeah, except it really wasn't my fault this time. Anyway, waste not want not. Stuck the cover on anyway. I also (during the creation process) started knocking about a couple of bits of wood left over from boarding the loft out (which has been my task for the last week or so in between work/sleep etc). Cutting with a hand saw was never going to be precise but it's like, 2mm out so not a deal breaker. Faster, easier to use (the cut out slot allows me to unclamp the pages grab the book, slide it out, clamp the pages and sew/bind the cover whilst it's being held). Also trying newer faster glue.

Mk3 is already in the planning stages. Absolute precision cut to perfectly match A4. That said the newest project (already in the drying stages) is really tightly bound and even, probably the 'best yet'.

There's always room for improvement and learning though.

What's next?

Needed to try the new press so printed off 'Warlock' a Fighting Fantasy/Warhammer clone. Whenever I print one of these there are no wraparound covers to put on so I use the opportunity to nick a picture off the internet. The books aren't for sale, are made durable and tough enough to last forever and there's always some niggle or aesthetic issue so they are for my eyes only, hence I don't feel too bad about using this cover with that game or whatever.

Also next up. Against the Darkmaster. You can't buy it in print (I tried). Second best option is whacking out a copy. Probably split this into several books.

One of these days I'm going to be set up and ready to go to print/bind/finish a one hour book. Start to finish, done. Not sure it's possible but I'd need to be ready to apply the cover and lacquer within the hour so it will be tight. Yes, I'm an idiot.

if anyone has some nice pictures to suggest or a cover design to consider with titles and such I'm open to ideas. Most of the time I knock covers up in ten minutes over a cup of tea, squint at it, shrug, and go with it.

Edit: So far the in progress wraparound cover for Warlock looks like this:

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I realized I'd not been posting when I've got new mad lewt for the past few months. Also since I'm just now starting to get back into re-organizing my game room things are spread about still. The hernias and the colon surgery slowed me down on that. Since I just got in my Coriolis rpg bundle I figured I'd post everything I've snagged in the past few months. :smile:

First up the Coriolis rpg bundle, since Free League has everything on sale currently or almost everything I couldn't resist since I'm definitely a Free League fan boy. I'll note that I did the order on the 27th and received the bundle today. Really fast shipping from their stateside warehouse.
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Furthering my DCC material are the following books, Empire of East and MCC core book and GM screen. (I always try to snag those when I can). Also the megadungeon by Greg Gillespie. It gets great reviews as a megadungeon so I couldn't resist getting a copy. DCC is a lot of fun and it's what I play on Sundays, so it made sense for me to snag the MCC and Empire of the East. (Plus I like Fred Saberhagen's books)

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Next up Robert Schwabs Shadow of the Demon Lord material. Before my surgery I started playing in a SofDL game locally and was having a blast. The system is a solid mechanics system. It's lightweight and the books are well laid out. Its easy to walk new players through it and basically hold their hands until they get it. Anyhow I'd intially snagged the just the Player's Guide which is the first seven chapters of the core book. (I included the Player's Guide in the picture because I was being lazy. Oh the last thing in the background is the pdf GM Screen slid into one of those Pinnacle GM screens and only semi opened.

Since I'm having so much fun I figured getting the full core book, a couple companions and sundry other books were a must plus a really nice equipment book put out by a third party. Though that book needs a PoD like the other books have because it's a ballbuster of a print job on the ink jet printer. lol.

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And finally the last bits. (I think, though I might have missed a couple things I snagged on eBay and can't figure out where they are. Matter of fact I'm positive that I'm missing about three or four items that I snagged on eBay since there is one item in this picture as it. I realized I was missing the 4e DM screen for DnD 4e so I snagged it... because you should always snag GM/DM screens in my opinion when you can, which was an error I was correcting in this case.

Also I've been snagging the StarFinder terrain sets and pawns. I figure they'd be useful in more hightech settings so why not. And keeping with my desire to keep up with DnD 5e even if i'm not playing it, I snagged three of their recent books to get caught up. Yeah, the DnD 5e stuff is the only material that I'm dubious as to why I collect it. (Shrugs) Maybe some good material in there to mine for other games.

Last are the Girl Genius GURPS 4e and SPANC game material from the Steve Jackson Games Kickstarter. I've really soured on SJG and a lot of their mindsets on how they handle GURPS but I couldn't resist supporting this one because I'm a fan of Phil and Kaja Foglio and wanted to support them. Crap that does remind me there are a couple things from other Kickstarters I missed that came in. Need to figure out where they're at in the room around the tool boxes, ladders, lambs, boxes, bookshelves etc. <mutter>
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Furthering my DCC material are the following books, Empire of East and MCC core book and GM screen. (I always try to snag those when I can). Also the megadungeon by Greg Gillespie. It gets great reviews as a megadungeon so I couldn't resist getting a copy. DCC is a lot of fun and it's what I play on Sundays, so it made sense for me to snag the MCC and Empire of the East. (Plus I like Fred Saberhagen's books)

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a good enough place to ask… has anyone read Goodman Game’s The Dying Earth pdf yet? I think an early pdf is out to backers. I was excited about that for a while but it fell off my radar.
 
Found one of the Kickstarter's, haven't found the other items yet. I put these items right on the shelf next to the other Dungeon Fantasy Rpg stuff after they came in. Douglas Cole runs great Kickstarters, as an aside. He's informative, communicating throughout the Kickstarter. His Kickstarter's tend to be on time and ship rather quickly usually and he does great after operations breakdowns of he learned, how much things cost, what snags he ran into etc.

He's done this on every Kickstarter and it's quite refreshing compared to the silence and lack of good communication from some Kickstarters. Also I think he is the best ambassador for GURPS (Dungeon Fantasy rpg) and The Fantasy Trip rpgs. He does more in my opinion to promote, produce more products etc then SJG's does itself. Which in my blunt opinion sucks, I feel that SJG and Sean Punch (the GURPS Line editor for too long) really need to do something besides sit on their asses for so long tightly controlling what GURPS is or isn't. They need to come out with some sort of licensing so folks can produce GURPS material. (end of rant)

Anyhow Douglas is a great guy, passionate and wants feedback so if you do end up getting into DFRPG or TFT feel free to look him up on Discord he's got his own channel under Gaming Ballistic and he interacts with people all the time. Versus Sean Punch who I have yet to see post under the GURPS DIscord or the Gaming Ballistic which he is listed on. Anyhow this is a Bestiary for DFRPG, and set to his game world of Nordlondr (Norse inspired setting). Also really useful game information cards to go along with it along with a box for them. The cards have the art on one side and game stats on the other.



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a good enough place to ask… has anyone read Goodman Game’s The Dying Earth pdf yet? I think an early pdf is out to backers. I was excited about that for a while but it fell off my radar.
There is talk on the Goodman Games Discord but I've not seen it myself yet. :sad:
 
a good enough place to ask… has anyone read Goodman Game’s The Dying Earth pdf yet? I think an early pdf is out to backers. I was excited about that for a while but it fell off my radar.
I am in on the Kickstarter, but I don't have anything yet. I'll report back if I get it.
 
It was my birthday this week so I've been spending a bit... Today I received a bunch of trade paperback collections (Usagi Yojimbo Saga vol. 4, Robotech The Sentinels archives vols. 1 & 2, and The Terminator: Sector War), some Star Wars novels (the original Thrawn Trilogy), and a good condition copy of ICE's Cyberspace!
 
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