A repository of pop-cultural detritus
Having spent the last few days down a research rabbit hole, I ended up compiling a chart of AD&D weapon characteristics, adding some "missing" entries and modifying (and in some cases combining) all of the canonical weapons. Having done the work, I figured I might as well share it. I'm reasonably confident I've captured pretty much every common (or even not-so-common) military weapon used in…
The players in my D&D campaign will soon be headed into the Yatil Mountains in search of the lost treasure hoard of the Archmage Iggwilv (see module S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth ). An adventure set among high mountain passes really calls out for guidelines for handling weather and temperature, which the published module doesn't speak to at all (except for the perfunctory inclusion of…
German AD&D superfan and podcast host Settembrini (who already had me on his show a couple-three years back) recently completed a two-year-long run through the famous/infamous Temple of Elemental Evil module and in celebration of that invited me back onto the show for a long (too long?) discursive conversation about all things TOEE - its history, its merits and flaws, and both of of experienced…
Hi all, Quick note to let everybody know that Brink of Calamity is going to be the DriveThruRPG “Deal of the Day” on Thursday June 12th. PDF will be priced at $6 (60% off the regular price of $14.99) and I’ll also manually reprice the print edition to have the same margin (I can’t reduce the fixed printing costs but it should be around $16). If you haven’t bought it yet, or know somebody you think…
Not big Kickstarter-type numbers or anything but still pretty personally gratifying to me, because 1) it'a more copies than the first book sold on its first day, 2) it was enough to get me at least briefly into the Top 20 at DriveThruRPG, and 3) this earned me enough to clear my production costs. So even if I never sell another unit of this at least I won’t have lost any money on it. And that…
As of about 15 minutes ago Brink of Calamity is finally live for sale at DriveThruRPG in both (softcover) print and pdf versions. Note that DriveThruRPG is increasingly their print costs substantially on April 1st and the price of the print version of this book will go up by $3 to compensate (from $22 to $25), so if you're planning to buy the print version and want to save $3 you should place your…
Hello, blog family. It’s been a minute. I’m happy to inform you all that I’ve just ordered a proof copy of Brink of Calamity from DriveThruRPG. When I receive it, assuming it doesn’t look like total ass, it will go live for sale. About 18 months later than originally intended but, hey, we all do our best. It’s 180 pages (about 30 of which are a revised/expanded version of Melonath Falls, the rest…
Firstly, I wanted to let everybody know that Adventure Sites I by Coldlight Press is now available as a free download on DriveThruRPG. It includes my own "St. Durham's Home for Wayward Youths" which is set in the same area as Melonath Falls and Brink of Calamity (but will not be included in the latter work, only by reference to this compilation) along with seven other old-school D&D-compatible…
I stopped posting session summaries for my games a few months ago because it seemed like nobody was reading them, but I recently heard from a couple of people who mentioned that they had been following them, and although scheduling conflicts since the holidays have caused the frequency of play to slow down, we are still playing, so here's a quick catch-up of everything since my last update.…
Hi everybody. I wrote two page mini-adventure for the Coldlight Press Adventure Site Contest and it got a nice positive review: https://coldlightrpgpress.weebly.com/home/adventure-site-contest-st-durhams-home-for-wayward-youths Once all the contest entries have been reviewed (there were 18 of them) the top ones will be compiled into a free pdf, as was done with the NoArtpunk contest. If mine makes…
Although the players from the main group were all busy with Thanksgiving festivities, I had visitors from out of town who wanted to play, so we had a game on Saturday. Cast of Characters: Thorgrim (Dwarf Cleric 4) Rebecca (Elf Fighter 4) Baron (war dog, who Thorgrim can speak with due to a Knack) These two had done some exploration in the Perlammo Salt Mines (at Thanksgiving last year), but having…
Another action-heavy session as the party continued the Gopine Holocaust. Regular cast: Kronk - Gnome Cleric 3 (Boreon) Grain Tobblefoot - Gnome Thief 3 Thron Hammersmash - Half-orc Fighter 3 Tares - Elf Cleric 3 (Boreon) Eldin - Human Magic-user 2 Thorn - Half-elf Ranger 2 While most of the group was training they acquired some more rumors about various outdoor locations and feel like they’re…
The party was short-handed again today (as Elden the magic-user wasn’t able to make it), but with almost everybody at 2nd level (and Kronk the cleric at 3rd) they were feeling confident enough to carry on, and had a dramatic but successful expedition: Cast of characters; Kronk - Gnome Cleric 3 (Boreon) Grain Tobblefoot - Gnome Thief 2 Thron Hammersmash - Half-orc Fighter 2 Tares - Elf Cleric 2…
Action-packed session today, which was nice after two kind of flat ones in a row. Back at full strength, the group ventured back into the Perlammo Salt Mines first to get done well-deserved revenge upon the best of stink bugs who had almost wiped them out the week before, and then to take on the encampment of goblins who were the only significant encounter area remaining on the first level. Cast…
The group was down two players this session compared to last one so they decided to proceed cautiously. To start with they paid a visit to the Grand Casino of Boreon hoping to gather some intel about the mysterious fox-people who they’ve heard about but not yet actually encountered. Coming up mostly empty and failing to win big at the slots (and realizing they’re not nearly well enough equipped to…
Playtest session #3 was held today, very eventful and fun but not too rewarding. All four of the players from the previous session returned (including the guy who thought he wasn’t going to be able to make it) and they were joined by two new players - another cleric and a half-elf ranger. Venturing back to the Perlammo Salt Mines after a week in town they found the main entrance barricaded and…
Keeping it short and sweet: Session #1 (8/13/23): Two brave novice adventurers - a half-elf magic-user/cleric of the Far Wanderer and a gnome fighter/cleric of Boreon - came to the town of Warnell seeking fame and fortune. Following up on some rumors they headed for the abandoned Perlammo Salt Mines and explored about a dozen rooms in which they encountered some goblin squatters, located a central…
Hey y’all, The Heroic Legendarium is the “deal of the day” today (Monday August 7th) at DriveThruRPG.com - heavily discounted (effectively $10 off both the pdf and hardcopy versions) and featured on their front page for 24 hours (of which there are about 20 remaining). I’m assuming most everybody reading this already has a copy, but if you don’t (no judgment) or want to gift someone a copy or pick…
A couple years ago when I converted my bootleg "AD&D Companion" compilation into the legitimate/OGL-licensed Heroic Legendarium , one section I was sorry to have to remove was the summary of the World of Greyhawk deities and the characteristics of their clerics, collecting the information that was previously spread across the World of Greyhawk boxed set and various issues of Dragon magazine into…
Yesterday, a bit over two years after work-in-earnest began (though the original outline was actually done back in 2017), I finally finished writing up the last encounter area for my D&D adventure/campaign book (working title Brink of Calamity ), officially completing the first draft. It ended up being even more massive that I had originally intended, with the current draft clocking in at about…
Today, almost exactly two years to the day after its release, The Heroic Legendarium has officially become an Electrum bestseller at DriveThruRPG, which puts it among the top 13% of all paid products on the site. This has no practical meaning, but is still pretty neat for me, proving that the book found an audience and is continuing to sell at a pretty steady clip of a couple-three copies a week…
Received this thing in the mail a couple days ago, purchased as part of the recent Kickstarter . It was originally only offered as a deluxe hardcover "collector's item" edition at $100 per copy, but late in the campaign the organizers bowed to public demand and added an option for a "mass-market" softcover version at $30, which is what I bought. It's POD quality, black & white interior (I believe…
[This was originally posted as a comment on a Reddit post but, knowing that will disappear down the memory within a few hours, figured it was worth preserving here as well] In Original D&D (1974) the advice and procedures for creating dungeons were very strange: dungeons were supposed to be infinitely large and ever-changing, filled with a mostly-random assortment of monsters, treasures, tricks…
As mentioned in my last post , I decided to compile the various little house rule and addition tidbits that have accumulated over the last two years since The Heroic Legendarium manuscript was completed into a 20 page pdf which is now officially available at DriveThruRPG as PWYW, under the title Foster's Miscellany, Volume I. No print option because it's only 20 pages (and only 16 of them are…
As a way of procrastinating from doing more work on the adventure-campaign book I've been working on seemingly forever I decided to collect my miscellaneous "OSRIC" house rules and additions that weren't included in The Heroic Legendarium , either because I only came up with them after the contents of that book had been finalized or because for whatever reason I forgot to include them there. A lot…