by trevlix

Related Item: Daggerheart (Core Rulebook)

I am curious - but need to hold off for a few days to make sure the stuff I have to enter in (if i am chosen) is still around

by Sweety_liesje

Related Item: 2027 Language and Culture Challenge

1 Play a game that has a title in your chosen language. (The game itself doesn't have to be in that language.)
2 Play a game that takes place in a country or region that speaks your chosen language.
3 Play a game that depicts people who speak your chosen language (it doesn't have to take place in their home country).
4 Play a game in which a person who speaks your chosen language plays a prominent role. (It can be either a real or a fictional person.)
5 Play a game designed by someone who speaks your chosen language.
6 Learn a phrase or two in your chosen language and add it to your post. (If it's a language you already know, try to find a phrase or saying that's new to you.)

1 (optional) Play a game, either in person or online, with somebody who speaks your chosen language. (If you yourself speak the language, a solo play can count.)

When a participant plays the 5 required games (and learns a phrase or two in the language), they advance a level in the challenge. There are 6 levels which are as follows:

Microbadge: Keep my challenges easy peasy Easy: Meet all of the required categories in 1 language.
Microbadge: Normal challenges are the way to go Normal: Meet all of the required categories in 2 languages.
Microbadge: I like my challenges hard! Hard: Meet all of the required categories in 3 languages.
Microbadge: I laugh in the face of extreme challenges! Extreme: Meet all of the required categories in 4 languages.
Microbadge: Obsessed? Who says I'm obsessed? I'm not obsessed. Obsessed: Meet all of the required categories in 5 languages.
Microbadge: I speak six languages Polyglot: Meet all of the required categories in 6+ languages.

[microbadge=21088][microbadge=21088][microbadge=21088][microbadge=2544][microbadge=21088][microbadge=21088][microbadge=21088][microbadge=2544][microbadge=21088][microbadge=21088][microbadge=21088][microbadge=2544][microbadge=21088][microbadge=21088][microbadge=21088][microbadge=2544][microbadge=21088][microbadge=21088][microbadge=21088][microbadge=2544][microbadge=21088][microbadge=21088][microbadge=21088][microbadge=2544][microbadge=21088][microbadge=21088][microbadge=21088][microbadge=2544]
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by Inkwan

An item RPG Item: Daggerheart (Core Rulebook) has been added to the geeklist [US] RPGG Pay It Forward: Traditional List

by Inkwan

Related Item: Galaxy Guide 03: The Empire Strikes Back (WEG Original Edition)

Ugavine wrote:

Had a sit down with the players last night and they have actually opted for the alternate universe campaign we toyed with a while back based off the events from a game of Star Wars: Rebellion

The premise is that the events of A New Hope go differently. When Leia is captured Vader realises who she is and turns her to the Dark Side, revealing the location of the Rebel Base, which is on Nal Hutta, the Hutt homeworld. The Death Star promptly arrives and blows up Nal Hutta. Alliance High Command are wiped out, but the remaining Hutts are furious and call for all out war against the Empire.

So C-3P0 and R2-D2 never contacted Luke & Obi-Wan, Han never joined the Rebellion.
Alderaan was not destroyed, Bail Organa is still alive, but are primary targets.
The Emperor has always controlled the Underworld via Black Sun, but that grip is gone meaning Imperial occupation forces are extremely stretched.
Grand Moff Tarkin is still alive, though the Emperor may not be happy with him triggering a war with the Hutts.
The Empire have also finished construction of a second Death Star.

And amongst all this the PCs are free traders trying to make a living.
Though I am going to put it to them to see if one of them wants to play Luke Skywalker.

That's a very interesting premise!

by SeaofStars

If the players are cool with it, then cool. But it is tough to manage without player acceptance and buy in which usually requires forknowledge of the shift. But many CH want the shift in genre to a Big Surprise and assume that the players will be cool with it. That is rarely so.

Once my friend set up a WoD mortal game where we were investigating a weird murder on a moving train and it was great, all the characters clicked, the mystery was interesting. And then the train crashed and we were all killed and thrown into Wraith. The problem was notne of use were interested in Wraith, we liked playing mystery-solving mortals... So, naturally (like the train) the game crashed and burned.

by latindog

I've played some games where there was a "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore." Kids on Bikes almost presumes an adventure of that sort but I think of that more as a feature of the genre than a departure from one genre to another. I don't recall ever starting in one genre and ending in another per se. Of course there are some games like D&D where you might encounter horror monsters in a fantasy setting but I don't really recall the tone of an adventure shifting when our fantasy characters needed to fight a vampire or other undead (except perhaps Ravenloft where the traditional trappings of the horror genre pervade throughout the atmosphere).

by Pyronik2003

Related Item: Crimson Tide

That looks like fun. I like the book idea.

by oshfarms

Related Item: The Broken Empires RPG Core Rulebook

I own the PDF...and I can't wait to get my physical copy. This is brilliant.

by Basti aus Hamburg

An item RPG Item: Crimson Tide has been added to the geeklist Solitaire Games On Your Table -- November 2026

by bryce0lynch

By Nikoline
Self Published
B/X
Levels 1-4

Kurhan is wounded at its heart. The Akros, tower of its long-gone kings, stands crippled, torn in two by tyrant-mages; its ruler, Ataxes, is prisoner and warden both, disfigured, unmanned, and cursed. He has locked himself within, attended by the embittered and dissolute, deaf to his people’s cries. Tithes to the wizards pile high in lightless vaults, one-time heroes entertain themselves with stale recollections, and those who long for change wait, plot, and weave their skeins . . .

This 41 page setting describes the governors palace for a wretched city, with plots and secrets to uncover. As that, it don’t think I’ve seen another setting which accomplishes as much in terms of “place of government intrigue for your campaign.” It is quite complex with A LOT going on, in terms of guard rotations, alert levels, NPC’s, and everything needed to have a complex environment. Too complex? Not if we consider most of it optional?

I have a certain heresy. I can grok the 1e rules set much more easily if I just allow myself to consider all of the rules optional. Do I care to use the potion miscibility table? Or the weapon vs armor table? This was a watershed moment in my life, when I realized it was MY game and I could use, or not use, whatever I wanted from the “rules.” With that in mind …

I’m going to call this a setting, rather than an adventure. There are a number of “hooks” included in the appendix, ways to get the party interacting with the palace, but at its core it’s a description of a government building in a city with a focus on LOTS of ways to get involved and get in to trouble. This is its strength, so much so that I am adding it as a permanent part of my campaign, the default Palace for the main city the party adventures out of. It’s a part of my standard setting now, much in the way I crib businesses and dungeons to populate my Dungeonworld setting that I run my game in. When you have to deal with the government, or get sucked in to its intrigues, what do you use for inspiration? This. This is what you use. It’s perfect for those backwater empire decrepit cities full of corruption. Sanctuary anyone?

It describes about 35 locations in the government palace, a multi-tiered building with a decent map that includes a side view. It’s a decent map, with, perhaps, a little more attention that could be paid to to the ups and downs and windows and rooftops, but there’s enough complexity in it that your mind races with possibilities.

Its primary strength is in what’s going on, or could be going on and the support materials to make that happen. We’ve got rumors to toss in to the game. There a decent wanderers table with giard rotations, dignitaries, assassins, multiple groups happening at the the same time (I love chaos!), NPC’s, and illicit meetings. Guard patrols have a table on where they start, by level of the palace, and how they move, there are threat level tables that help the DM respond based how on alert the palace is and what has happened, complete with loyalty of the guards to bribes and looking the other way and intrigues. There’s three pages of NPC’s, dignitaries and officials that know things, want things, and have capabilities to offer, and full of intrigues and motivations. And I’m just covering the major points, there are extensive notes for each table that add potential complexity to the encounters with people.

And then we get to the rooms, proper. These are almost all quite extensive. Room one is the public hall, full of the usual riff-raff. “Stale beer and sour milk, oil and rust and mould, all

poorly concealed by incense-smoke. “ We’ve got nomads and traders talking in small groups, sometimes being ushered off for an audience, lazy guards patrolling, door guards on alert who raise the alarm if you are too nosey and acting out of place, There are event tables, with guards dragging people through the room, murders, and so on. “A young man stands bound, wild black hair thrown back. A woman pleads with him to rescind his curse on their unborn child. He stays mute; the child is not his, and he knows it.” The cells of the prison are awash with those meant to be deservedly, and others with their own plots. “hree filthy figures crouch in the dark. They shrink back from the light. Each is emaciated, with papery skin and peeled-back gums, lantern eyes. They wear scraps of finery; one has a brass arm-ring ( 30c ). The floor of the cell is strewn with cracked bones, animal and otherwise, and 1d4x100c in silver jewellery .” Imprisoned for cannibalism. Now, those three are ghouls. Great! And even more from them, with one of them being someone importance brother who, turns out, saw too much and was cast in there. The rooms are just THICK with things going on. There are things going on during the day that don’t happen at night and an EXTENSIVE NPC location table to tell what and where the important are in the palace art certain hours. And, note, I have not even touched upon the major intrigues and minor ones that are going on in the palace, or the brief timeline that can help run it, or the various small hooks to get people moving around and in the palace. A simple treasure raid would be the least interesting thing to do!

Back to those 1e comments I made. There’s a lot going on in this, just like in the 1e rules. As a point-in-time adventure I don’t see it being possible to use this as written. However, as an ongoing location in your game, with various people showing up, intrigues going down, visits to the palace and so on then it is perfect. It’s a toolkit for the local government building. Not in the negative sense of a bunch of tables and anything can happen, but strong plots and subplots and a variety of events that can take place to make the place feel alive through various visits. It’s wonderfully deep and complex and full of possibilities to spice up the game and act as an adventure or four as your campaign plays out in the home base of the party.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2.50. The preview is seventeen pages. REVEL IN THE POSSABILITIES PRESENTED IN THE PREVIEW!!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/539107/ataxes-must-d...

by bryce0lynch

By Mountainland Games
Self Published
Shadowdark
Level 1

The old northern road was once safe. Now travelers are disappearing—and the bodies that are found are missing their hearts. The trail leads to Blackstone Watchtower, an abandoned fortress that has stood empty for generations. Now strange lights flicker in its windows, goblins haunt the surrounding countryside, and something ancient has begun to stir beneath the stones. The characters are hired to investigate. What begins as a hunt for goblin raiders soon leads into the forgotten ruins of the watchtower, where the characters will uncover an ancient guardian, a powerful artifact, and the first signs of a threat that could shake the kingdoms.

This fifteen page adventure presents a little tower with a few levels and about fifteen rooms. A basic little adventure that is generally inoffensive and trying to set up things for the next to in the series.

This reminds me of a basic “home game” adventure. You come up with a little arc and it takes place over a small number of sessions. I’m sure I’ve done something like this a multitude of times over the years. This is the first of a three part series, I assume. This is the teaser adventure, investigating a merchant wagon that gets raided, with the nearby village reporting raids and killings recently. You end up at a tower in which you learn about IMPENDING DOOM!!! The Evil One is returning! So, look at the wagon, question people in town, and then off to the tower ruin on the hill to eventually figure out the larger issue.

The opening scene of this, the hook, with the raided merchant wagon, is doing a couple of good things. It’s the usual goblin arrows/tracks in the mud thing with a survivor, but it also builds a little tension. Or, perhaps, foreshadows a few things. More than just a raided wagon, the bodies are missing their hearts. This adds a little to the adventure, raising the stakes to more than just a raided wagon. And then there’s the boot prints. The survivor tells you of a tall man in black armor standing on a hill nearby that oversaw the battle. And then perhaps a captured goblin says they were led by him and he was faceless. (With a note to the DM saying that he means that literally. Nice added confusion there, with the party perhaps misinterpreting it.) Thus our main antagonist, not showing up in this adventure, is previewed a bit. A mighty blow against Lareth! But, seriously, both the heart thing and the man in black add tension and give a hint of larger things afoot in the world around the party. It doesn’t take much, but the hints here will play on the party members minds as they proceed through the adventure.

Otherwise the adventure is not exactly breaking new ground. The town is terse described with the focus on the people and who can tell the party interesting things. Again, appropriate to the adventure, not telling us what an inn looks like and all of its prices, but what the innkeep can tell us relevant to the raids and the tower on the hill. The focus is kept on what is relevant to the adventure, as it should be.

Formatting is clean, with bolding in place, and bullets for information related to the party. Most of the entries are short and easy to scan. Maybe too short; the evocative text here is few and far between. An entry for The Crypts reads “Six stone coffins are arrayed in this small complex of tunnels. If any of the coffins are disturbed, a Restless Dead emerges from each of the six coffins and attacks.” That could be worked a lot harder to provide a more evocative environment for the encounter, and is fairly typical for the type of encounter description the adventure provides. Workmanlike? In a negative sense? It’s the bare basics and one step above very minimal “Crypts. 6 Restless Dead”.”

The interactivity has a few goblins, who you can cower by defeating/capturing their leader, which is a nice touch of realism, along with a handful of undead. Reactions to noise are noted in the rooms where the noise takes place, which is appropriate as well. You can find the old commanders sword, which will also make the undead hesitate and perhaps allow the party to bluff their way out of things with them. Another nice touch akin to the “bless is a utility spell for solving a variety of problems” approach to DMing.

It does rely a bit on “roll on the treasure table” mechanic, which I’m not a fan of. Put in the treasure man! Theme it to the environment the party is in! The map generally ok, with some confusing bits around a sealed tomb that took me several readings to figure out. The map and text descriptions do NOT work together well for that one room.

The encounter at the end of the dungeon is the bulk of the adventures purpose. There you meet an undead dude, the commander of the tower. He has A LOT of information to dump on you about what is actually going on and the charge for the party to take the DooHickey and deliver it to the PLACE in order to stop The Evil One. Not exactly a monologue, it does fulfill the expo dump of setting up the next adventures. This is not ideal. Theres a little lead in, but its just a big dump of info in the end. There’s no real slow play out of information and a burgeoning discovery. Utilizing the rest of the space, and room, more to provide info for the party to put together, to trickle out a puzzle/discovery, would have been a much better way to handle this.

This is a quite basic and inoffensive adventure. Working on the room descriptions would make a more evocative environment, as would better utilizing the tower, and its environs, to more slowly reveal information about The Evil One and the task at hand. There’s not much to recommend.

This is $2 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. A good preview shows the buyer what to expect before they purchase and should contain a few encounters in order to do so.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/587110/the-black-for...

by bryce0lynch

By John Keefe and Laurel Nicholson
Self Published
OSR
Levels 7-9

The Isle of Argilla has been beset by plague and quarantined, stranding fortune hunters for so long that there are no longer opportunities for profitable exploration. Adventurers spend their days in taverns rehashing and embellishing stories of past glories hoping for a whispered tip about an unexplored dungeon but, until now, upon the arrival of an elderly gnome, nothing has even been rumored. The gnome is the envoy of unknown entrepreneurs hoping to lure anyone courageous enough to teleport to the Duchy of Death. The mission…to kill a sanguinivorous dragon. Will you accept the gnome’s proposal and go to the Duchy to negotiate with the vampire Dragan Amsilowicz? Will your party defy Dragan and defect to Orcus? Or, being heroic adventurers, will you turn to treachery and set out on your own flouting certain death and pursue untold riches in The Duchy of Death!

This 313 page adventure is Bat. Shit. Crazy. Formatting is a mess. Layout is a mess. Read-aloud is a mess. Following the adventure is a mess. A glorious glorious mess. What’s the fantasy version of gonzo? This is that. Not a hint of the standard setting nonsense or Tolkien in it at all. I’m in LUV. Just once in your life you need to take a month to digest this and run it.

It’s a mess. The read-alouds are long, multi-paragraph. The players attention turn away from the game. There is extensive color coding that demands your attention and distracts you, a not uncommon attempt to make things more runnable that instead works against that. The thing is full of long sections governed by if/then statements. If Bob is with the party then x, y, z and if he’s not then this and this and this. There is no summary, so you’re going in to each section blind. There’s no way you can figure out what is happening, or supposed to happen, in order to run the game without taking copious notes on multiple read-throughs. Information is introduced, off hand, that you have no idea how it plays out in the adventure. “The Wobbling men will follow you in.” Who the fuck are they? One of the men has the golden doorknob. What the fuck is that? Things are out of order. I can see no efforts made to help the DM understand what is going on. At All. Who’s alive, when, what’s the importance of an object, who is trying to accomplish what. It’s almost stream of consciousness writing. Yo’re going to have to study this. Multiple times. Taking notes. Referring back to them.

And it may be worth it.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an adventure like this. The setting. It’s insane. Like a fourteen year old raised on 70’s trash fantasy made an adventure. It’s fucking awesome. This is not something for your campaign. This is a let’s use premades and run the things for a few months, in isolation adventure. It’s an experience.

I’m not going to be able to convey to you what it is like.

A gnome takes you from the staid town to the Duchy of Death, just across the sea. Every guard in town, all of the bar bouncers, are level seven or eight fighters. The people in the inn, three pages of them, have subplots going on. One of the innkeepers wears a lot of pearls. If you steal one she turns into a raincloud that rains over the thief’s head until you give it back. The gnome takes you to the duchy on a carousel. A carousel. It teleports you. You meet with vampires. Vampires. They want you to kill a dragon vampire. This makes sense because they all live in Vampire City. That’s the name. “Most of the vampires in the city are proud of their undead state and will not hide the fact that they are vampires. Dressing in stereotypical clothing and intentionally showing their fangs.” A whole city of Bela Lugosi’s!! How about this as a room title? “Opera House Star’s Dressing Rooms,” What?!?!?!

“Because of the mysterious disappearance of one of the co-Grog Emperors along with Goatalicious, an artifact that held the fragile alliances of the Empire together, the current Emperor is unable to confront Gag-lak. His hope is that, between the pixies and the inhabitants of Vampire City on the western edge of the Duchy, Gag-lak can be held at bay until the fractured Empire can be once again unified and a mighty army can be assembled to reclaim the territory.” That’s a bat shit crazy summary, from the adventure.

Oh, did I not mention orcus? “SURPRISE ARRIVAL OF ORCUS. Happens Once the Treasure Chest is Opened” Yes, Orcus shows up. He’s working against the vampires and would like you to do, essentially, the opposite of what they want.

One of the first encounters in the Duchy is with Primal Zombies. A whole page for a stat block. Turn as spectres. ONLY APPEAR AS PRIME NUMBERS. If there are thirteen and you kill one then a number of them fall down until the next lowest prime number is reached. Eleven. And so on. Who the fuck thinks of things like that?

You want rumors? How about : “Thumper Hopsquench is not trustworthy. Just look at him and you can tell he’s up to something. Be very careful at the Tell Me Why You Did It.” That’s the name of a bar. Tell me Why You Did It. They only serve beer. They have a stage. If you get up on stage and explain a crime you did and the bartender likes it then you drink for free all night. Also the city guard hang out there to arrest people who confess to local crimes. They don’t give a shit if it’s not local. That fuckingplace rivals the orc bar in those City books supplements.

It’s all like this. Every subplot. Every person. It just REEKS of awesome.

You’ve gonna start off in town, have a running battle in the teleports carousel tower, hit a hex crawl with 24 locations, vampire city, pixie island, dragons lair. Weird magic abounds. Railroad scenes abound. Orcus screams in delight as he smashes potion bottles against his horns. Vampire lords are staked. Level nine my ass. Come loaded for bear cause there ain’t NOTHING in this that is gonna do anything but sneeze at your level sevens.

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is 34 pages and more than adequate to understand what you are getting in to.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/568704/treachery-in-...