#RPG – Grimdark: Deadly, Nasty Rules for the World’s Most Ubiquitous RPG RELEASED!

BUY IT HERE!

(Hardcopy will be available soon, technically you can buy it now at Lulu, but I’m waiting on a quality check).

Many fantasy games, if not all of them, follow the lead given by Dungeons & Dragons, and rapidly become superheroic parodies of themselves. This has been especially true of the newer editions, since AD&D Second Edition. It’s great, but it’s not for everyone.

At least not all of the time.

There are many kinds of fantasy, and Dungeons & Dragons’ increasingly sanitised, fluffy, generic, high-escapist fantasy – dripping in magical weapons and character invulnerability, isn’t necessarily what people want.

A Grimdark game is in part made from difficulty. In this context, that has to come from encouraging the players to play tactically and carefully. To do everything they can to swing advantage in their favour. 

It’s also as much about encouraging players to deal with difficult and horrifying role-playing and decisionmaking consequences, all with less resources and power than they might be used to. It also encourages them, when necessary, to run away. 

We need to take that, lustrous, heroic, ‘fantasy-Portland’ edge off 5th Edition’s default rules-set, to amp up the difficulty and make people play more carefully. At the same time, we don’t want to just turn it into an unfair meatgrinder. 

So why not a game designer, literally known as ‘Grim’, to do it?

BUY IT HERE!

#RPG – Pinup Dungeons 1

A bevvy of bestial beauties to beset and bedevil your brave below-ground burglars.

Pinup Dungeon presents five feminine creatures in paper-miniature form. A dark elf archer, a grick, a mimic, a goblin and a mephit.

Enjoy!

Art by Kukuryo

Sales Mean Citizenship! (and more products like this).

PDF HERE

 

#RPG – Halloween Titles on Sale!

There’s a bunch of stuff on sale, in addition to the stock art sale we’re currently running.

Horror games and scenarios? We’ve got you covered.

Spooky stock art for Halloween themed hand-outs or products of your own? Yep.

Naughty tentacles making bad Cthulhu themed puns? That too.

Go forth, buy stuff!

#RPG #Art – Art of Gor RELEASED!

The art pieces by artist Michael Manning that were created for Tales of Gor and World of Gor.

Accomplished and talented fetish Artist, Michael Manning, brings the Counter-Earth to life in these illustrations for the RPG and world guide to John Norman’s Gor. Here you can see the illustrations in their full-size glory and appreciate their detail and style.

Buy it HERE in PDF.

The hardcopy version is a Lulu EXCLUSIVE and will not be available on Amazon or other outlets.

#RPG World of Gor PDF has shipped to backers

If you backed our World of Gor/Tales of Gor Indiegogo campaign you should now be getting the download link for it in your email.

Some people’s email links appear to be out of date though, as I’ve had a few bounced emails. So please a) check your spam folders and b) check your contact information is correct. The download link expires in a week.

You can contact me at grim@postmort.demon.co.uk if there’s any problems that need fixing.

The RPG book that goes with this one – Tales of Gor – is in final layout and should be available in a few days to backers, a little longer for non backers.

The print version will take longer as proofs need to be received and cleared.

Still, let’s raise a cup of paga in celebration!

Ta Sardar Gor!

#RPG – The Cathedral of Misogyny RELEASED!

Buy it HERE

There’s a long history of ‘silly’ adventures in tabletop gaming. Even professional modules were often replete with puns, nonsense and other silliness. Some of the most iconic monsters and strange things in Dungeons and Dragons started out as jokes, in-jokes, or silly improvisations and this is something that has become a little lost in more modern times.

This adventure was prepared as an introductory adventure for a new player, hosted in an online session over Google Hangouts (isn’t modern technology wonderful?) As such, it’s full of bad jokes, puns and nonsense relating to online culture and the culture of computer gaming – which they were more familiar with. Still, you may enjoy it and if nothing else it may inspire you to include a little silliness – and some more pop culture references – in your own games.

The Cathedral of Misogyny
The Cathedral of Misogyny is a reference to 4chan. It was intended as a hyperbolic insult to that imageboard but – of course – everyone just thought it was hilarious and embraced it. As a reference to 4chan, it’s a perfect vehicle for re-purposing memes (in many ways the modern equivalent of puns) and using fantasy to make fun of our modern lives and situations. There are, of course, many people who will have no sense of humour about this sort of thing. That’s fine, they can be miserable. I, however, think that there is a great deal of value in laughing both at ourselves and at others – and that’s what this is for. With an irreverent group that can get into the right mood, this should present a great evening or two of fun.

Rough as Toast
‘Rough as Toast’ in this instance indicates a new line of low budget products that are kind of designed to be throwaway ideas, disposable content, silly experiments and so on. They’re not made to such a high standard as normal, but should still be fun. Also cheap.

#RPG Some old, free games you might want.

Just a reminder of these old games that exist.

The third – and probably final – edition of the Neverwhere RPG, produced with permission and available for PDF only. This is the final, comprehensive edition of the game with an improved system, more detail an expanded A-Z and advice for running the game in tabletop, online or as a LARP.

Neverwhere has been a massively influential book on my life since it first came out and a touchstone novel I return to again and again. Especially the section on Blackfriars.

Free to download

 

A personal game about depression and its effects intended to help people with invisible illnesses broach the subject and explore it in a way they can have power over it.

ImagiNation is set after the fall of mainland Britain to a strange reality breakdown. The barriers between imagination and reality, dreams and nightmares have shattered and strange things dreamed up by people caught in the event teem across the land.

Only those who are already ‘broken’ can hope to cope with exploring, understanding and combatting this strangeness for the sake of the huddled refugees that sit and wait and watch from the smaller islands around the coast.

A game of mental illness and art using The Description System (Neverwhere).

This game is available FREE so please promote, download, host and spread as far and wide as you can.

Epublisher Recommendations – VATMOSS

Hello there fellow small publishers,

If you’re not aware – and you should be – tax-related DOOM is about to descend upon microbusinesses that sell to Europe from the UK and, it seems, between other EU countries. Microbusinesses used to be VAT exempt so as a sole trader or small business earning under around £80k a year. Not having to deal with VAT saves a great deal of time and while you can’t reclaim VAT on equipment if you skip registering, you also don’t have to wrangle with the whole mess.

From January 2015 however, if you sell to Europe, that is all going to change in relation to electronic goods (software, ebooks etc). Now you’ll have to pay VAT at the rate of the country the purchaser is in. That varies from country to country and in order to deal with this you’re obligated to register for VAT in the UK.

Suddenly you’re liable for keeping all these records, complying with Data Protection, holding those records for ten years and dealing with the whole complex issue.

For very small/micro businesses this isn’t really worth it. Its a lot of time, effort and risk for relatively small returns.

Your options are:

• Stop selling e-products to Europe (physical products are unaffected).
• Register and deal with all the hassle.
• Sell via a third party site that will deal with all the mess for you.

My recommendations and the ones I intend to do with regard to Postmortem are:

• No more direct e-sales, period.
• Channel all sales via 3rd party sites (Amazon, RPGNOW, Drivethrufiction etc).
• Maximise/offset costs of using 3rd party sites with affiliate links etc.

This should be hassle free with the advantage of not losing too much money.

I may have some things wrong, so seek professional advice and consider your own situation, this is just my present understanding of the situation.

Machinations of the Space Princess, RELEASED!

Machinations of the Space Princess is a Science-Fantasy role-playing game. That means it’s very much about style over substance, mixing science-fiction, magic and
psionics in a game world that owes much more to Metal Hurlant and Star Wars than it does to 2001 or Bova’s Grand Tour. This is a game of strangeness and fun, of space
pirates and beautiful alien princesses, of living planets and robot hordes, of blasters at noon.

This is…

Sexy, sleazy, swords and sci-fi!

A full game combining old and new school thinking, packed with GM and player advice and with simple tools for creating your own monsters, adversaries, weapons, armour, ships and alien races.

NOT REALLY FOR ADULTS PER SE, BUT CONTAINS RUDE WORDS LIKE ‘BUM’, ‘POO’ AND ‘WILLY’.

This is the PDF only, the hardcopy will not be available until after the IndieGoGo sponsors have been sent their copies.

GET IT HERE

Free Dust Tactics Reference/Playbook

I got sick of looking through every bloody booklet trying to find the rules references.

Obviously this is incomplete, I don’t have all the stuff released in the US yet as European releases lag behind (Boooo!)

Should make a nice little reference book and the aspect should be suitable for tablets (made with Nexus 7 in mind).

DUSTplaybook