#DND – Total Party Kill for OSR and Similar RPGs RELEASED!

PURCHASE IT HERE

Rules for creating properly challenging encounters and things to do in dungeons when you’re dead.

Players are dicks.

You go to all the trouble of crafting a fantastic adventure with deep and meaningful NPCs and memorable encounters, and they head off in the opposite direction with a comedy goblin you made up to populate a coaching inn. The bastards. Sometimes you just want a little payback.

It is often said that the only limit in the world of tabletop RPGs is your imagination. However, we frequently limit those imaginations and find it very hard to stray from the sacred cows of the hobby.

In traditional role-playing games, and increasingly since the shift toward narrative play in the 1990s, the players and Games Master work together to overcome challenges
and tell an engaging story. However, what if you want to switch things up and try a different approach? To do something radically different, even heretical? What if, instead of working together, the players are pitted against a common foe: the Games Master?

This booklet introduces a new style of tabletop RPG gameplay, where the players must navigate a world filled with danger and treachery, where the Games Master is playing
the role of the ultimate adversary and is explicitly out to get them. The stakes are higher than ever, and the players must work together to outsmart and outmanoeuvre the Games Master’s cunning traps and devious plans while he does his best to anticipate and overcome their usual shenanigans. This adversarial gameplay mode offers a fresh and exciting challenge for experienced and novice players alike. It encourages creative problem-solving, strategic thinking, and cooperative play in ways different from traditional RPGs.

By turning the usual mode of collaborative storytelling on its head, this game offers a unique experience that will keep players coming back for more of a challenge and encourage the Games Master to think about encounters and hazards in a new light.

So, are you ready to take on the challenge? Gather your group, choose your characters, and prepare to face the ultimate test of skill, cunning and emotional continence in Total Party Kill.

#TTRPG – Erotech Gazetteer 5 and Another Chunk of Red Room Products at Post-Mort.com

The fifth Erotech Gazetteer, devoted to the adventures of the Tabletopless.org crew in the southern reaches of the world of Kanotag, plus some rules for ‘instant’ NPCs, Dwarves in the world of Erotech and a good few monsters.

GET IT HERE

More The Red Room books have been added to the store.

#TTRPG – The Red Room being added to Post-Mort.com

Given the removal of The Red Room from Drivethru, every little helps, so I am in the process of adding their products to my personal sales site Post-Mort.com

The best place to support them is still to get it from Big Geek Emporium, but whichever way you choose to support them in these difficult times is appreciated.

I helped The Red Room get their start, which I’m proud of. I like helping new people get into publishing and helping them get to market, so given our history this move only makes sense – even though it’s more paperwork for me.

You can find their products HERE

#TTPRG – The Red Room has been censored off DrivethruRPG

My letter of protest…

Dear Sir,

With great distress, I note the removal of The Red Room from your online store (DrivethruRPG). While I certainly acknowledge that there has been a degree of deliberate ‘nipple tweaking’ by The Red Room in their marketing and positioning, this outcome is precisely what I was concerned would happen when you changed your policies regarding controversial content and ‘hostile marketing’.

Put as succinctly as possible. I was concerned that your policy changes would result in the following:

1. Malicious reporting of products (even by people who had never bought or read the product in question).
2. The inability of publishers to protest poor decisions or to mobilise their fanbase to counter those decisions.
3. Increased censorship, whether self-censorship or otherwise.

Every one of those concerns has now been borne out.

We have a product maliciously reported by someone who didn’t even purchase or read it, subject to the censor’s eye – despite adult labelling – resulting in the loss of a publisher from a site that is a near monopoly in the space.

Your policy of taking products down to be cleared impacts release profit, doing damage whether or not a product is deemed ‘safe’ or not. This policy is wide open for malicious and abusive reporting.

Your refusal to allow publishers to protest publicly, or to face their accuser, undermines confidence, increases self-censorship and removes certainty from what is already a very precarious profession. It further exacerbates the malicious reporting issue.

We work in a field that has known the ire of more than one moral panic. We should know better than to indulge the moral entrepreneurs of such hysterias, even if they come from inside the industry.

Your job is that of a middleman, to sell products by publishers to customers. Your job is not that of a censor or moral busybody. Provided that a product is not illegal, I see no reason why you should not sell it. To censor such a product is an abuse of your monopolistic position and, more broadly, a betrayal of the values of the hobby and the arts.

It is especially disappointing following the industry-wide rejection of Wizard’s new OGL and its morality clause, which you are de facto enforcing on everyone’s games unbidden.

For those disturbed by such material (adult material, horror material, or anything else), the best option remains not to buy something if they don’t like it.

It is as though we invited Pat Pulling into the industry to act as a watchdog rather than mocking, deriding and countering her ridiculous claims.

Unfortunately, given your degree of monopolistic power in the industry, my protest is limited to this letter. As a disabled creator with an uncertain income, I am forced to prioritise that income over my principles, at least in this case. Still, as a producer of somewhat ‘edgy’ content, I’d like to know if you’re going to pull the rug out from under my feet on the arbitrary say-so of some crank with more time than sense.

Still, I appeal to you to return to the free expression values we were all assured of when we originally signed up for the sake of art and concerning your powerful position in the hobby.

There is one other matter that needs addressing. Before Miguel and Silvia set up on their own, 

The Red Room was published through me on the site. Given that their earlier work has not been subjected to such a witch hunt, I trust those older projects released via Postmortem Studios will not be affected. Would you regard the future release of (compliant) products by them via me as ‘ban evasion’ or some such?

I will be releasing this letter publicly in support of Miguel and Silvia but unattached to any marketing. My anti-censorship and pro-free expression stance is already a matter of public record since before I even started working in the industry (even for people I violently disagree with), so it cannot realistically be called ‘hostile marketing’.

Sincerely,

James ‘Grim’ Desborough

Postmortem Studios

#TTRPG – Second Free Adventure for Mork Borg, OSR and Grimdark 5e

What do you know, I finished this early.

An introductory adventure for use with Wightchester, and it’s free.

With that, my obligations to my backers are discharged.

See you in the new year 🙂

Get it HERE.

#TTPRG – Free Adventure for Mork Borg, OSR and Grimdark 5e

An introduction to the themes and style of Wightchester, and it’s free.

A second free adventure will be coming in the new year.

LINKY-POOH

#TTRPG – Wightchester: Prison City of the Damned RELEASED!

Wightchester is a ‘city crawl’ adventure book for 5e D&D, Grimdark 5e, Mork Borg and OSR roleplaying games. Set in an alternative 17th century England where the dead have risen from the grave and one city, completely overrun, has been turned into a hellish prison for the dregs of the Kingdom’s society. Dark, bleak, challenging horror fantasy in a setting of almost unrivalled detail.

500 pages of an Early Modern walled city, packed with intrigue, mystery, horror and death.

DIGITAL DOWNLOAD

HARDCOPY

#TTRPG – A Bestiary of Sundry Creatures for OSR and Mörk Borg RELEASED!

PRINT VERSION HERE

PDF VERSION HERE

Bees emerge as blind worms from the flesh of rotting cows. The cockatrice is hatched from the eggs of black hens that have been corrupted by sorcerers. Kittens born in the month of May should be killed immediately since they will surely bring misfortune to the household. The caladarius bird dwells in the palaces of the great and by its gaze reveals whether an invalid will live or die. The Bestiary of Sundry Creatures sets out pre-modern people’s beliefs about many of the creatures that populated their world and their imagination. In addition to providing OSR (and Mork Borg) compatible statistics for these animals, it includes scholarly opinions and rustic folklore about the temperament, behaviour and medicinal and magical qualities of these creatures. GMs can use this material to make their medieval and early modern fantasy worlds richer, weirder and more immersive.

#OSR – A Lapidary of Wond’rous Stones RELEASED!

PRINT

PDF

People of older times believed that gemstones and minerals had power, without even having to be enchanted. These properties were laid out in a ‘Lapidary’. This booklet collates these ideas and makes suggestions for their use in OSR or D&D style games.

#RPG – MotSP, Satana Station, Pod 101: Wobot World

[Don’t judge me man. If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. When life takes a shit in your punchbowl, use it as fertiliser for your imagination].

A beaded curtain – made of bolts, tied onto fishing line – grants you access to a pod that has been converted into a robot repair shop. There are pieces, everywhere, organised by body configuration and location. Part of the workshop is closed off, off limits, behind an armoured secondary door, much tougher than the airlock hiding the pod.

A boxy robot, with tentacle arms and a viewscreen for a head is constantly indexing the parts and re-sorting them, as well as carrying tools to and fro to the man you take to be the proprietor.

Another droid, some sort of patchwork creation from bits and pieces of other, industrial robots, perches on the edge of the work table, sucking on a cigarette holder that occasionally issues sparkling smoke. Her hard angles tear through the lace and silk of her clothing here and there, giving her a strangely sexual, mechanical look. Like someone dressed a muscle car in a teddy and stockings.

He is a rangy-looking fellow, with a long, well-oiled beard, groomed into a point, a handlebar moustache and his dirty-blonde hair is pulled up into a tight man-bun. He turns from the sparking soldering he’s performing on a robot chassis and regards you with bulky, obvious, cybernetic eyes. A pair of cybernetic clamps, attached to extra arms, protrude from his sides, looking disconcertingly like yellow-and-black striped lobster claws.

“Hey! Welcome to Robot World. Can I help you?”

Lord Adama Kobol

Dispossessed from his migratory family of space-lords, Adama settled on Satana to indulge the very thing that got him exiled – klanking. Adama puts a great deal of effort into organising klanker pride events, fighting for robot rights and even making himself more and more robotic, but it all feeds his twisted perversion. He’s not just a klanker, but an auto-robophile and he particularly likes to have sex with helpless, deactivated, non-sexual robots when they come in for repair. Despite the whispering campaign, his specialist knowledge on running mods and conversions on klankers to allow them to enjoy sex with humans keeps him wealthy, and stops his perversion coming to light.

Unless R2-Me2 spills the beans.

Level: 4
Close Defence: 12
Ranged Defence: 12
Armour: 1d4 Coveralls and brown suede combat jacket.
Hit Dice: 4 (30hp)
Initiative: +0
Movement: 10m
Attacks: 2/+0 (One attack must be with the cyber clamps)
Damage: 1d4 fists, 1d8 cyber-clamps.
Saves: (Charm 7, Looks 5, Tough 4, Reflexes 4, Logic 7, Power 6, Will 4)
Traits: 3 – Adaptable x3
Skills: Security 2, Tinker 3, Hacker 5
Gear: Cyberspine, Quad Arm Option, two additional cyberarms with cyber-clamps, twin cyber-eyes with EM-Field vision.
Weapon: ECUX69 personal shocker, D4 electrical damage, shocking, point-blank range, Ammo Save 18.

Werner the Wobot

Werner is a small robot, about four feet tall, with tentacle claw-arms and a monitor screen for a head, which displays semi-random, appropriate images or punctuation while he’s talking. He has a thick, breathless, German accent and suffers from rhotacism, the speech impediment where you pronounce ‘r’ as ‘w’. The Germanic accent also means he pronounces normal ‘w’s as ‘v’s. It’s all rather confusing. Blend Jonathan Ross with Herzog and you’re just about there.

Level: 3
Close Defence: 12
Ranged Defence: 12
Armour: 1d6
Hit Dice: 3 (27hp)
Initiative: +0
Movement: 10m
Attacks: 1/+0
Damage: 1d4 h2h
Saves: 5 (Logic 7)
Traits: Dead Flesh, Interface, Carapace.
Skills: Tinker 2, Security 2, Search 3.

FAER-XX Femme Fatal Error

A sort of ‘frankenstein’ creation from old and recovered parts, Faer is ‘frankenhooker’ for klankers. She’s Adama’s personal creation, programmed to have the same kinks and tastes as him, but somehow it doesn’t thrill him the same way it does with other droids. She’s frequently neglected and bored and she deals with this by outrageously flirting with anyone who comes into the pod, and trying to distract Adama. She also doubles as his bodyguard.

Level: 3
Close Defence: 14
Ranged Defence: 10
Armour: 1d6
Hit Dice: 3 (27 hp)
Initiative: +0
Movement: 10m
Attacks: 1/+1
Damage: 1d6 h2h
Saves: (Charm 7, Looks 7, Tough 5, Reflexes 5, Logic 3, Power 5, Will 3
Traits: Dead Flesh, Interface, Carapace
Skills: Tinker 2, Security 2
Gear: 10 hp force-field, palm blaster (1d8, point blank, ammo save 18).