OSR News from the Underdark Gazette - Sunday, April 10, 2011

Let's Kick-it Off with Something From Mythmere

Surge of the Wine-Dark Sea ed. by Matthew Finch. Mythmere Games. Art by your Favorite Old School Artists! 92 pages. Available in HC for $38.50, PB for $28.99 and in PDF for $6.00. The PDF is also available at RPGNOW. Let's hear from Mythmere:

Announcing the release of the long-awaited book of old-school art, from artists such as Paul Jaquays, Jason Braun, Rowena Aitken, Stefan Poag, Christopher Burdett, Paul Fini, and many others! The book presents a broad picture of the artworks that have built much of the visual side of the "Old School Renaissance." It contains many full-color paintings and illustrations (which is why the price is somewhat higher than a book with a b/w interior - each format is simply marked up by approximately $4 from the lulu cost, with artists receiving royalties from the profits).

Here is the full Table of Contents:
Mark Ahmed 2
Rowena Aitken 4
Robert Altbauer 7
Zhu Baije 11
John Bingham 14
Christopher Burdett 17
Robert S. Conley 20
Michael Cotè 21
Emilio Dominguez 24
Matt Finch 25
Paul Fini 27
Peter Fitzpatrick 28
Paul Jaquays 30
JD Jarvis 35
James M. Keegan 36
Aaron Keesher 37
James D. Kramer 38
John Larrey 40
Brian LeBlanc 44
Kevin Mayle 45
MKultra Studio 46
Mike Moran 49
Peter Mullen 50
Nathan Nada 54
Stefan Poag 57
Jeff Preston 60
Dirk Remmecke 62
Jason Sholtis 63
Peter Szmer 66
Andy “atom” Taylor 69
Chad Thorson 70
Kevin Vito 72
Hugh Vogt 75
David White 77

Hot on the Heels of Lesserton and Mor, Faster Monkey Strikes While the Iron's Hot!

Realm of the Technomancer by Jeff Sparks. Art by Mark Allen and Steve Zieser. Faster Monkey Games. Available in Print for $11.99 and in PDF for $6.00. 24 pages.

“It’s Mutant Future™ mayhem!” “No, it’s a Labyrinth Lord™ dungeon crawl!”

Relax, guys, you’re both right! REALM OF THE TECHNOMANCER challenges players of both campaign types with an unusual dimensional crossover adventure, presented in a unique back-to-back format. Just open the side you want to use tonight!

Something new has invaded an important underground complex… Will you be wizards and warriors gearing up to save the gnomes from strange humanoids, or mighty freaks of post-apocalyptic nature hired to drive out the alien troops of the mysterious Technomancer? REALM OF THE TECHNOMANCER offers dangers, rewards, new gear, and new monsters for post-apoc games like Mutant Future™ and old-school fantasy like Labyrinth Lord™ alike. Plus, the TECHNOMANCY appendix gives simple, vivid rules for what happens when technology and magic try to mix, and the results are often not pretty…

Whichever world you hail from, the Technomancer doesn’t belong there, and it’s up to you to drive him out.

Encounter # 4 Has Arrived!

Encounter Issue 4. Edited by Jesse Walker. Art by Greg Taylor, Jesse Walker, Christine Long, Clipart, Etc. 28 pages. Available as a Free Download.

From the Editor    4 
The year that was and the year to be  

Review: Hammers of the God   5
Review by Jonothan Evans
Some secrets should remain forgotten

Treasure Chest   6
Take a peek at some recent Old School releases

A Darkened World   8
By Jesse Walker
The World of the Dark Crystal™ for Classic D&D® Part I

Lon’s Splendid Arbor   15
By Michael Chesher
A versatile spell for the Labyrinth Lord™ RPG

Knights & Wizards   16
By Jimm Johnson
Classic Dungeons & Dragons® for kids!

Quest for the Enchanted Sword   19
By Jimm Johnson
A short adventure for young players of D&D®

Dragons of Lore   22
By Thomas Daly
Put some Norse myth into your Classic D&D® dragons

DM’s Toolkit: Random Curiosities   25
By Howard Olsen
20 dungeon oddities for your Labyrinth Lord™ game

Truesight   27
Views from the Old School blogosphere

More OSRIC Goodness, from Black Blade Publishing

Monsters of Myth edited by Matt "Mythmere" Finch and Stuart "PapersAndPaychecks" Marshall.

Contributing Authors: M. Ahmed, James Carl Boney, Matt "Mythmere" Finch, Chris "Bones McCoy" Hopkins, Sean "Stonegiant" Stone, Trent Foster, Stuart "Papers & Paychecks" Marshall, B.J. "Stranger" Poirot, S. Ahmed, Tony "Wheggi" Rosten, Bill "The Dungeon Delver" Silvey and Steve Marsh.


Illustrations by Matt Finch, D. Poirot, Matt Steward, Tony Rosten, Mark Ahmed, Doug "Black Prince of Muncie" Sanders, Wes Blair and Peter Mullen. Cover by Mark Ahmed.

Available in Hardcover for $29.00. 128 pages.

Monsters of Myth - the primier collection of OSRICTM monsters and creatures for use with First Edition-compatible fantasy role-playing games.

The Monsters of Myth hardback features more than 150 new monsters and creatures and over 75 evocative illustrations by such old school artists as Matt Finch, Tony Rosten, Mark Ahmed, Doug Sanders and Peter Mullen.

Originally published by the First Edition Society in 2006-2007 and made available through Lulu.com, the Monsters of Myth hardback is now also available through Black Blade Publishing.

Monsters of Myth Rocks! Just ask James Maliszewski!

Roll Tide! (I Live in Alabama...)

Red Tide: Campaign Sourcebook and Sandbox Toolkit. By Kevin Crawford. Art by Cerberus Illustration, Eky Chan, Jeremy Mohler, Joseph Wigfield, Justin Hernandez, Katana, Kimagu, Louis Porter, Jr. Design, Maciej Zagorski, Michael Syrigos, Pawel Dobosz, Rick Hershey, Shaman’s Stockart, Tamas Baranya, The Forge Studios, V Shane, William.

Sine Nomine Publishing. Available in HC/PDF combo for $24.99, in SC/PDF combo for $19.99 and in PDF alone for $7.99. 171 pages.

A Red Tide is Rising

For three hundred years, the last remnants of humanity have clung to the wild green jungles of the Sunset Isles. They have watched the red mist that consumed their world roil a hundred miles off the coast, waiting, a beast at bay. But now the crimson dreams are becoming stronger, and the wild Shou tribes of the west howl their hate at the human invaders. Who shall rise to save a world quenched in blood?

In this book a Labyrinth Lord will find all that is required to run a sandbox game of adventure in the Sunset Isles. In addition to the races, classes, and sorcery of this savage land, a referee will find special tools and resources for creating shadowed courts of quarreling nobility, cities rife with struggle, wild border settlements that cry out for the help of heroes, and dark places in the earth known only to the dead and the damned. These tools will aid not only campaigns in the Sunset Isles, but also those games set in other lands of savage mystery and bloodstained blades.

Expanding on the tag system found in the free Stars Without Number sci-fi role-playing game, Red Tide includes more than fifty new tags for fantasy cities and borderland settlements, along with more than 25 pages of GM resources including culture-specific name and place lists, unkeyed blank maps for quick sandbox use, four pages of room dressing and treasure possibilities, and a new "diagram dungeon" method of quick dungeon generation with a worked example.

Retro-gaming, Indeed!

Retro Phaze by John Higgins. Relative Entropy Games. Available in Print for $6.99 and in PDF for Free. 32 pages.

RETRO PHAZE is a fantasy RPG based on the tropes and mechanics of eight-bit console RPGs.

John, I need more blurbage than that! Otherwise, it plays hell with my formatting! :)

You're Hearing Things...

Voices, a free pdf from Telecanter's Receding Rules. 

Il Male Gives Us a Campaign Setting

The Yaqqothl Notebook. A 3 page (+1 for the OGL) Setting Supplement. Nice Map, Il Male! And Nicely Done!

Lamentations of the Flame Princess to Release a New Edition of Stefan Poag's Exquisite Corpses!

A word from Mr. Raggi: 

Conspicuous by his absence from LotFP projects until now, weird fantasy artist Stefan Poag is about to become quite conspicuous indeed as LotFP prepares to re-release hisExquisite Corpses project into distribution.

Exquisite Corpses is Poag's unique monster book for classic fantasy RPGs, in which tens of thousands of different monsters can be generated with the turn of a page, and hundreds of thousands of more variations made with a few additional die rolls.
To achieve this end, Exquisite Corpses uses space-age flip-book technology, like so:

 The LotFP release will feature:

• New cover art
• 32 full color base monster templates on thick pre-perforated stock
• New interior art (the extent of which is still to be determined)
• Hardcover/Wire Binding: On the outside, it's a hardcover, including a spine. On the inside, a thick wire coil to allow the monster segments to be flipped while the book lays flat.

More News as We Make It, and Further Details as We Invent Them!

The above is a recently posted pick of the new work, in progress! 

-C of Hack & Slash, recently did a review of the Lulu edition of Exquisite Corpses. I'm looking forward to seeing the LotFP release! It looks to be Awesome as all Hell!

More LotFP News

Fangoria's new Fangorotica section, recently did a profile of Luz de Luna Duran, the cover model for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Role Playing Game. Amongst the pictures of the lovely Luz, viewers were treated to the cover-piece she modeled for LotFP. (The pictures are pretty tame, but still probably NSFW.)

Dammit it, Grenelwulf! Stop Making Me Want to Run Greyhawk!!!

Grendelwulf of Axe & Hammer has been doing a series on the deities of Greyhawk. If you like Greyhawk, you'll like Axe & Hammer. Grendelwulf posts all sorts of Greyhawk and Gary Gygax related goodies!

A Place for your Stuff!

Brad of Skull Crushing for Great Justice has opened up a free file hosting site: http://www.rpgfiles.org/

What Has Dyson Logos Been Up-to?

Reposted from goblinoidgames.com:

So, I managed to forget to post this last week. So I'll just skip that week's posts and tell you all that if you aren't checking out the blog regularly you are missing some cool shit, like my post-apocalyptic rad ruins, new potions, a collection of free LL downloadables, and my one page dungeon entry - Into the Worm's Gullet.

So let's get on to this week!

• Rad's Ashes! - my second post-apocalyptic map posted to the blog - the rad ruins!
• Baboons - recently Rock Baboons (Higher Baboons in Labyrinth Lord) have taken over as my favourite gang-up critter, replacing goblins as my go-to-gangs. Here's why.
• Carnage & Criticals - bringing the concept of Warhammer FRP style critical hits to basic D&D, and keeping it simple.
• Ember Crag - another one of my maps, this time a volcano dungeon that turned up twice in one campaign, and exists to appear another time in a different (evil) campaign.
• Flowing Fountains - random tables to add detail (and a twist) to dungeon fountains.
• Inifinite Caves of the Shroom-Goblins - first of three posts detailing this dungeon drawn by JDJarvis.

Yo, Man!

Arcadian of Hammer, Book & Blade has his Yeoman OD&D class for your free pdf downloading pleasure.

This is Such a Cool Name for a Blog...

iamtim, formerly of Absolutely Mental has moved his RPG stuff to a new blog: Gibbering Mouther! He's created a compilation of S&W Whitebox stuff from his old blog, which you can download from this post. An aside, to Trey: Gibbering Mouther would make a great Title, for Level 10.

And Speaking of Cool Blogs...

sirlarkins of The RPG Corner has begun his Gray Box Project, which might interest the Forgotten Realms fans, out there.

Yeah, I like Rolling My Own Dice, but Wouldn't it Be Freakin' Cool, If...

If someone made a program, that would generate from 15 to 100 entries for each LL/AEC Hoard Class? And then, then, said program would collect all those results into a free bookmarked pdf, which you could then download? I think that would be cool! The guy could call his site Mithril and Mages and make other generators too!

Campaigns, A-Z

The Old School Blogosphere has gotten even busier, as several folks took up the A to Z Blogging Challenge. In particular Chicagowiz and James Maliszewski have been putting up Alphabet posts on their respective Campaign Worlds. That's Cool! Also, here's the link to Chicagowiz's The Dark Ages campaign wiki.

Some Things for Publishers

Oublieditor of Oubliette Magazine, posted a link to a site called corkboard.me, which he says is perfect for planning and layout.

And Dan of Sword and Board, posted a Sales Report.

"Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas..."

An Age Undreamed of - - Xoth.net forums. Recently opened, in response to Mongoose closing their Conan RPG forums. There's folders for other game systems, Classic D&D, system neutral and more. General  Hyborian Age and misc. Conan talk, as well.

"Are you gonna pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?"

Vault Keeper posted a link to an old RPG, that's been put online for free. Wild West. On a related note, Mr. Palmer of Old School Gaming Accouterments posted some weird west stuff, yesterday. 

And Another Find by the Vault Keeper

Who posted about an old RPG called Legendary Lives, which has also been put online for free. In PDF. 

Now, I'm Gonna Have to Load Powerpoint

Roger of Roles, Rules and Rolls put up his Dungeon.ppt app. Free Download. 

It's Gonna Cost How Much?!!!

Telecanter made a Spell Research Costs fillable PDF. 

A Swords & Wizardry Setting Supplement

Free and in a Forum Thread: Wounded Gaia by Golan2072. Nice Map!

The Digital Orc Keeps Pumping em' Out!

One Page Module 5: Calderone's Demise.

So Does Forever Free Games

FFG 7 Quick Adventure: Revenge is Bitter Sweet.

Those PC's! Always Trying to Avoid Death!

-C of Hack & Slash posted a PDF of his On A Table For Avoiding Death. 

...and the sky full of dust Gets into the Blog-post Adventure Game

H is for Haunted House.

Good News from Goblinoid Games

A quote from Uhluht'c Awakens:

The first print run for MF that went to distribution has sold out of the warehouse...more on the way soon!

Convention News

Visit The Old School Renaissance Group for info on scheduled Old School Gen-con Games. (Several posts. The link is to the Label.)

One Grognard's Opinion: Reviews 

Carter Soles of The Lands of Ara reviews The Grinding Gear and Hammers of the God! He also has some things to say about Fight On! And, because I'm on his page now and like it a lot, the Eyepecker!

Haque in Black reviews Vornheim: The Complete City Kit.

The Alexandrian has some Fun With Vornheim! And Fun With Vornheim 2: A Noble Drama. Then, Fun With Vornheim 3: Ca-Tar-Strophe. Justin, That Looks Like Fun!

Taketoshi of Zero XP Adventures posted a Stonehell Play Report. 

Aplus of People them with monsters... has a DCC Playtest-report. 

Ryan of Save Vs. Poison plays some Stars Without Number. 

-C of Hack & Slash reviews The Miscellaneum of Cinder. 

Alexander Macri of The Escapist posted his Check for Traps: Learning from the Masters, Again column, which focuses on Vornheim and Carcosa.

Tenkar reviews Surge of the Wine-Dark Sea. And A Sworded Adventure (I just got that.) Also, Vengeance of the Long Serpent.

Zak of Playing D&D With Porn Stars posted a fun Promo Video for Vornheim and list of links to reviews and forum discussions about Vornheim. 

More Hammers of the God dming reportage from Beedo of Dreams in the Lich House. His son continues blogging from the other side of the table, at the Chronicles of Nogal.

Maptime, Baby!

Pat of Henchman Abuse posted his Level 2, higher res map. Also, his LL DM Screen.

More geomorphs from John Laviollete of The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms. (I'm not really a geomorph kind of guy, but Damn! John's doing some great stuff!)

Zak of Playing D&D With Porn Stars posted a Dungeon map, with keyed entries.

Staples of Grognardling posted a Dungeon Map.

... And the Sky Full of Dust has a Dinosaur Island, complete with Encounter Tables. 

What I'm Pimping This Week

VORNHEIM: THE COMPLETE CITY KIT (PRINT + PDF) (PRE-ORDER) by Zak S. Lamentations of the Flame Princess. 12.50€. Hardcover. 64 pages. 

Vast is Vornheim, The Grey Maze…

…but I'm not here to bore you with that. This book is not about Vornheim, it’s about running Vornheim – or any other city – in a fantastic Medieval setting. And about running it with a minimum of hassle – so you and your players can get to the good stuff…That’s why we called it a ‘Kit’ – you can use it to build your own city, even in the middle of a game. Give somebody a floorplan and they’ll GM for a day – show them how to make 30 floorplans in 30 seconds and they’ll GM forever.

That said, anyone hoping they bought a book containing The Real Vornheim That The D&D With Pornstars Girls Play In has got it. These are our rules and tables and monsters and places. I wouldn't want to spend all this time writing a book I could't use...

– from the introduction

We asked Zak S., the game master of I Hit With My Axe, to make a little book full of the notes he had when running city adventures – and everything he wished he had. He gave us not only a sourcebook detailing key rules, tables, monsters and places in Vornheim – the city at the center of the Axe campaign – but also a treasure chest of resources for running adventures in any city.
Need to know how to get from here to there even if neither here nor there are listed on a map? Even if there is no map? Need a random encounter? Need instant stats for that random encounter? Need to know why there was a random encounter? This book was designed to help you make a city happen now.

In addition to details on Vornheim, adventure locations, and player commentary from the I Hit It With My Axe girls, every single surface below this jacket – including the back of the jacket, the book covers underneath, and the inside covers – has been crammed full of tools to help you build and run a city in a First, Second, Third, or Fourth Edition game.

I figure that my clearing off my "virutal desk" will probably coincide with the arrival of my physical copy of Vornheim. So, I plan to review it at that point in time. For now, Wow! It's Fantastic!

About the News

Unless otherwise noted, all links to products and files are to the individual authors sites, pertinent posts, or sales pages. I don’t link directly to files, unless that is the only link available. The OSR News is produced as a service to the community and is entirely a non-commercial endeavor on my part. I have received no remuneration for advertising or reporting on any of the items appearing herein. Occasionally, the News might feature an item, which the author has sent me a complimentary copy of, for purposes of writing a review.

As always, the What I’m Pimping This Week section of the OSR News and its accompanying blog widget, feature products which I have purchased (or items which are available for free download) and wish to support. At times, the item I'm pimping may be one which I received a complimentary review copy of, from the author or publisher. No one has asked me to spotlight their material in this section and I have received no payment of any kind for doing so.

Please feel free to send me information on any new releases, events, or other items of interest, which you would like to see mentioned.