Search Results for: old school renaissance

The 1001 Treasures of Black Blade Publishing and Goodman Games: Gary Con 2018 Report, Part II

New releases at the Goodman Games table, including the magnificent Tales From the Magician’s Skull In Part I of my Gary Con 2018 report, posted here yesterday, I talked about one of the great pleasures of walking the Exhibit Hall: meeting the creative masterminds behind the most dynamic companies in old-school RPGs, like Goodman Games, North Wind Adventures, Troll Lord Games, Black Blade Publishing, Frog God, Kobold Games, and many others. Today I want to talk about the other great…

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What Lies Beyond The Yawning Portal? Some of the Best Adventures in Gaming

Now here’s a splendid idea, long overdue. Next month Wizards of the Coast is releasing an anthology of some of the finest D&D adventures ever created — including Gygax’s masterpiece Against the Giants, and the insidious and infamous Tomb of Horrors — under one cover, all updated for use with the Fifth Edition of the rules. There’s a lot of excitement building for this book, and rightly so… it’s a great way for modern players to experience some of the classic…

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Modular: Yggdrasill, the Roleplaying Game of “Viking Age” Adventure

Routine visitors to this site might remember my survey of Poul Anderson’s works, a regular column that has been on indefinite hiatus for about two years now. Causes for this suspension have been 1. Anderson’s two-book Operation Chaos was an absolute drudge of a read, requiring a recovery period that only now might be over, 2. New responsibilities at home decreased available time for my recreational pursuits, 3. The time share for these recreational pursuits was almost wholly dominated by…

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Fantasia 2016, Day 17: Forging Dreams (Battledream Chronicle, the International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, and The Dwarvenaut)

Saturday, July 30, I had hopes of seeing four shows at Fantasia. In the event, I saw three — and ended up with an interesting chat after the last one. First came an animated teen dystopia from Martinique, Battledream Chronicle, in which a young woman fights to free her homeland from digital colonialism. After that came a collection of short films, the International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase 2016 (one of the shorts being an adaptation of Ken Liu’s short…

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Modular: Castles & Crusades Expands

To my shame, the first time I ever caught sight of the Castles & Crusades game I simply walked right past its GenCon booth, wondering why anyone needed another version of Dungeons & Dragons. Pathfinder had launched recently, and D&D 3.5 was still going strong, and I just didn’t see the point. As a matter of fact, not knowing about the mechanical innovations of the system or its connection to Gary Gygax, I assumed C&C was a blatant rip-off. Man,…

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Modular: Swords & Wizardry Complete Kickstarter Explodes

Last month I wrote a post on why I chose to use the Swords and Wizardry (S&W) Complete Rules, instead of Pathfinder, for my latest campaign. S&W is a redesign of Original Dungeons and Dragons (pre-1st Edition), written by Matt Finch and put out by Frog God Games. Due to a stretch goal achieved in the Sword of Air Kickstarter, the S&W rules are permanently free in PDF format from Frog God. You can also buy a hardcopy with a…

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Packed Full of Fantasy Goodness: The Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls RPG

Back in 1980, on my last day of my first year at secondary school in the UK, an 11-year old me saw a kid with a copy of the paperback Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook. I’d discovered Tolkien a year or two earlier, and, leafing through the book, the pictures of dragons and swords and — most particularly — the dungeon map and diagram of the Planes of Existence at the back both enchanted and fascinated me. But as…

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Support the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game Kickstarter

The Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG is one of the most successful OSR (“Old School Renaissance”) games on the market, with a well-designed, modern rules system grounded in the origins of sword & sorcery. Now publisher Goodman Games is going back to press with a fourth printing, and to fund it they’ve announced a Kickstarter. Here’s the basic spiel. Return to the glory days of fantasy with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. Adventure as 1974 intended you to, with…

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The Dungeon Dozen

The first roleplaying game I owned was the 1977 Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set edited by J. Eric Holmes, as you’re all probably tired of hearing by now. Among the many memorable features of that boxed set was that some of its printings (including my own) did not include dice. Instead, these sets included a sheet of laminated paper chits printed in groups that mimicked the ranges of polyhedral dice (1–4, 1–6, 1–8, 1–10, 1–12, and 1–20).  The purchaser of the game…

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Neoclassical Adventure

If you’ve been following the online discussion of tabletop roleplaying games (especially fantasy roleplaying games) over the last few years, odds are good you’ve heard of the “Old School Renaissance.” For that matter, if you’ve been following the RPG coverage here at Black Gate, you’ve probably already noticed this term being used in numerous blog entries before this one. As folks online are wont to do, some will quibble and kvetch about the precise meaning of the OSR (as it’s…

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