Heart Attacks and Other Fun

So... I had a series of small heart attacks (I didn't know that's what they were) culminating in a massive heart attack back in September (on 09/11, weirdly), which has resulted in me re-thinking a lot of my life.

With regard to hobbyist pursuits, I'm dedicating real time and effort to running some RPGs again, before I'm shuffled off the mortal coil. First up: 

Faerûn Through a Glass Darkly

You all know Faerûn, but not this Faerûn. This Faerûn is different. Darker. Stranger. This is the Twilight Zone. The Outer Limits. Tales From the Darkside. Step into another realm. A realm of the strange and surreal. The weird. The dark and the dangerous. This is Faerûn Through a Glass Darkly. A truly forgotten realm. 

Built on a chassis of the original Forgotten Realms first edition box set, Faerûn Through a Glass Darkly is an episodic “acid fantasy” campaign of high weirdness. Revisit an old favorite through a new lens!

Faerûn Through a Glass Darkly will be run using Advanced Labyrinth Lord (a D&D Basic/Expert clone) with additional content from James Spahn’s Class Compendium and Petty Gods (by numerous authors). 

Ideally, I’ll be running this at The Yellow King in Colorado Springs, but due to health issues compounded by the current national health crisis, I may have to run the game on Discord (I have my own server set up for such, complete with dice bot and a free VTT solution). 

Expect to see more information on this here, soon-ish.  

Glory Road Roleplay

I'd like to take a moment to sing the praises of a small-press game currently available on DriveThruRPG. Glory Road Roleplay. While I haven't run it and the presentation does leave something to be desired, the mechanical bits are really neat in that they provide a good degree of verisimilitude* without complicating things too terribly much.

C.J. Carella (yes, that C.J. Carella) provides a foreword calling out what he liked about the game (and what he stole from it for what would eventually become Unisystem). Read the foreword via the full-size preview on DriveThruRPG (I've provided a link to the product listing below). 

It certainly isn't a game for everybody, but if you like things such as different weapons being treated differently in combat and a good, original, magic system (which I personally find the lack of to be THE biggest weak point in modern fantasy RPGs), then you might want to give Glory Road Roleplay a look. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/218159/Glory-Road-Roleplay-Core-Rules

*I'm aware that it's cool to hate on verisimilitude now in certain circles, but I still like game design in pursuit of the appearance of realism every now and again. 

Reality Knights: A Free RPG

So, somehow I ended up with some supplements for Torg, but not the core rules. And I didn't have the money to buy the core rules so, instead, I wrote some. With extra murder. you can download them, here, for free: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T8leHqKQH42T3NvsbGG4xSERpbsHZxF3/view?usp=sharing

The Fixer: A New Class for D&D 5e

So, if you're into techno thriller fantasy (or want to get into it), this will probably be right up your alley. The Fixer is a new class for 5e authored by my friend and sometime business associate, Jim Pinto (who you may recognize from his days at AEG and, specifically, for his work on The World's Largest Dungeon, 7th Sea, and other games during his time there). And it'll set you back less than $3 (US)! 

The Fixer at DriveThruRPG

Praise for Exalted Funeral

Many of you already know what Exalted Funeral is (and if you don't, I've dropped a link below), but what you might not have known is that Cristin of Exalted Funeral is a customer service dynamo! 

TLDR: Due to an error with a shipping label (notably, the program used to generate the label didn't encode my name or street address in the bar code, which is what the USPS uses to sort mail), a package with my copy of Death Robot Jungle was almost irretrievably lost. 

Enter Cristin!

With literally two hours on the clock before the post offices closed, she managed to suss out the error, track down my package, and make arrangements for the USPS to let me pick it up after hours. Disaster averted! 

So, if you've been thinking about ordering from Exalted Funeral, do it. You won't be disappointed with their products or their customer service. 

https://www.exaltedfuneral.com/

Wonderful, Weird, Stock Art Resource

If you're a small-press publisher creating RPG content and need some wonderful, weird, stock art with a no fuss commercial license, check out these great offerings from Yuri Perkowski Domingos at DriveThruRPG: 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/16014/Yuri-Perkowski-Domingos

Front Range Warlock Rules (Free D&D Hack)

As some of you know, I've commercially published a couple volumes of house rules for OD&D (1974) and some free content for other editions of D&D. Well, some of that stuff is no longer available due to behind the scenes moving and shaking, but here are the bare minimum house rules I use when running older editions of D&D.

Some of these "rules" are just good common sense rulings that can be used with pretty much any RPG, while others are specific to earlier editions of D&D (but, with some work, can be used with newer editions of the game by enterprising DMs). 

Anyway, get 'em here: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mBeK9mgI1SMeIQdyRSAXPKWTTPEOCwvr/view?usp=sharing