#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 #Cy_Borg – Cyb.ORG.URL.IG RELEASED! Corporate Characters and Missions

GET IT HERE

Cyber: Involving, using, or relating to computers, especially the internet.
Cyborg: In science fiction stories, a creature that is part human and part machine.
URL: Uniform Resource Locators, a website address.
Borgerlig: The Swedish term for the bourgeois, the middle class.
Bourgeois: Belonging to or characteristic of the middle class, typically concerning its perceived materialistic values or conventional moral attitudes.

This book is a cluster of ideas and inspirations for playing a (forbidden) corporate focussed game or campaign of Cy_Borg by Stockholm Kartel. Here you will find corporate character classes, character generation alternatives, a modified mission generator, and other odds and sods.

The Blodrak Corporation knows that reality is a simulation and has injected operatives into the simulation. They’re trying to find a way to save the world (the world is where they keep all their money, after all) by running a repeat simulation at many times normal speed. The trouble is that the simulated populace, government, corporations and cyberpunk keep fucking it up.

You’re there to try new things, troubleshoot and guide the simulation to an eventual positive outcome.

And no, you only get paid per hour that takes place in reality.

If reality is even reality…

This is a RAPID PROTOTYPE made using AI input and art, albeit with human oversight and touch-up. If it proves popular enough, it will be expanded, and more human art and creativity will go into a larger edition.

GET IT HERE

#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 – #GrimGame Project starts with Poison’d

Before all the OGL nonsense hit, I was going to take things a bit easier this year and also start a project of actually PLAYING games from my vast library of #TTRPG books.

Belatedly, let’s try and get that #GrimGame project started.

We’ll start with the game Poisn’d, a notorious light RPG about pirates doing horrible things to people and each other.

• Pregenerated characters.
• Streamed game.
• Open to all.
• 4 slots.
• 8pm-Midnight UK, Friday the 20th.

Takers?

#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 – Running More Games Online?

The idea is to run short sessions 1-4 games, once a week, of every game that I own. This will showcase the sheer variety of games and systems out there and create a repository of practical game knowledge and hard play-testing. So if you’re up for a smorgasbord of gaming goodness, answer the questions.

#TTRPG – On Satine Phoenix and Jamison Stone

There’s yet another kerfuffle in the RPG Twitterverse, but when isn’t there? This time it’s around various alleged behaviour and unprofessionalism from Satine Phoenix and Jamison Stone. Now, I don’t know Jamison from Adam, but Satine I do know – at least a bit – and these allegations do not sound like her.

Of course, finding professionalism in the RPG industry is like finding stripes on a leopard. It’s a hobby industry and runs on goodwill and handshakes, for the most part. It’s low pay, low appreciation and – increasingly – a very hostile place to work. You do it for the love and, like many creative industries, you’re lucky to be paid at all, let alone on time.

The initial issue seems to have been over tattoos, and the intellectual property involved, along with the related contract. Having been boned by contracts in the past (Munchkin) and having seen how people freak out over the wording of Facebook’s terms of service: “THEY’RE GOING TO STEAL YOUR CONTENT!” it’s hard to get worked up about this one.

A lot of the rest seems to be down to mismatched expectations between the RPG industry and the rest of the entertainment industry. Someone involved seems to have higher expectations of the hobby in terms of celebrity treatment and someone else seems to have lowered expectations.

Some of the behaviour seems to be truly assholish, but a lot of these claims are coming from people who I know to be proven arseholes. The kinds of people purity-spiralling the RPG industry into oblivion and finding any excuse to ‘cancel’, berate and be horrible to anyone – yours truly included. None of them have ever cared about what’s true in the past, so I find that I ‘haz a suspicious’ whenever they turn on anyone.

Like I said, I don’t really know Jamison at all, but Satine I do.

Back during the ‘I Hit it With My Axe’ days, Satine – and the others involved – were frequently attacked by both social conservative types and so-called progressives due to their involvement in adult/sex work. This always struck me as obviously wrong and regressive and I felt that the whole group were doing a lot of positive things for the image of RPGs and the creativity involved.

Later, in 2013, I offered Satine work on Machinations of the Space Princess, doing the cover and much of the interior art. I couldn’t pay very much (being an indie creator) but Satine was nothing but professional, grateful and accommodating throughout the process of doing the work. Her celebrity and brand took off after that and we didn’t really get the opportunity to work together again, but I would have had no hesitation in doing so and would do so again.

Some years later we had the opportunity to meet up when Satine travelled to London on a whistle-stop your while working for Wizards of the Coast as their community liaison. I felt a little like a tag-along through the whole thing, but people weren’t coming to the meet-ups to see me and during the whole visit, Satine was nothing but gracious, thankful and compassionate with me and her many fans who turned up to meet her. Satine and her companions covered my lunch, seemed glad of the company and I was made to feel welcome and wanted – even if it was just to hang out.

The only fly in the ointment of our friendship was following the UK Games Expo controversy a couple of years back when I stood up for someone else being spuriously accused of various terrible things. For the awful crime of giving an accused man a platform to defend himself I was – again – subjected to attack, and amongst those attacks was a concerted effort to get various friends to disown me. Satine was amongst those targeted by the mob and she, sadly, gave in to the pressure.

I can understand why. It is a lot of pressure to be put under, but the people doing that were many of the same people going after her now. It doesn’t seem like they can ever be appeased, and trying to do so seems like a fool’s errand. Little wonder then, that I’m suspicious of these accusations now, though they do seem to be undeniably consistent and profligate, so I’m beginning to wonder.

Whatever the case, in this feeding frenzy that’s going on it’s worth noting that Satine was never anything but professional, grateful and compassionate with me – or anyone else I saw her interact with. If anything has changed, it’s recent. Everyone deserves a chance, and I’d rather be trusting and forgiving than the alternative.

Whatever anyone has done or hasn’t done, it’s not acceptable to drag them for their past or their tattoos. Be better.

Zang.

#TTRPG – Postcards from Avalidad – As Above So Below

As Above, So Below is now available at the Postmortem Studios store and at Lulu.com if you’re looking for hardcopy.

In Avalidad there are urban legends about Agartha, an underground town inhabited by mutants and other outcasts.

It is not a myth.

As Above so Below is an adventure for the psipunk, Burroughsian Postcards from Avalidad game setting. 

Includes statistics for AFM and *Punk, but usable with any system.