Eldritch Tales 3rd-Party Products!

Greetings Investigators!

I'm happy to inform everyone that there are some fine, third-party products for Eldritch Tales: Lovecraftian White Box Role-Playing! Some of these have been out for a while now and have gone completely under my radar, so I'll apologize for the lateness of this!

Parts Per Million has released a handful of quick scenarios, available singly or in a nice Eldritch Tales Investigation Bundle, as well as OSR Cosmic Horror Solo Role-playing, a guide for running Eldritch Tales without a referee! PPM has a ton of products available on DTRPG, many of them solo-play-oriented.

Azukail Games has released a short scenario called Spawn of the Temple and an assortment of magic items gathered in A Baker's Dozen of Sorcerous Items. Azukail also publishes 3rd party products for a number of different games systems, as well as stock art and other publisher resources.

Be sure to slither over to DriveThruRPG and support these great creators!

Reaver Quickstart Coming Soon!

**Note: Reaver has greatly evolved since this post.**

Hello everyone!

It's been quite a while since I posted an update and wanted to fill everyone in on the progress of Reaver Sword & Sorcery RPG. To say the least it's been quite a year. I attended Origins Game Fair in October of 2021 and ran several sessions of Reaver; at that time the original version of the Quickstart was complete and ready to be released. I was blessed with some excellent players who offered some very important feedback on the game mechanics and I took this to heart. Keeping their feedback in mind, I returned home and proceeded running my home play test group and it was then that I realized that the players in my group (who were familiar with the game) were having the same issues that the players at Origins were having—basically that having a non-unified system of rules was confusing. So, at about the end of October or maybe early November of 2021 I decided that I would rewrite the core mechanics and try to streamline the system.

This amounted to me eschewing one of my original goals—to make a familiar game—and also pushing the project way out of my initial release window. I was fine with that, I'm a one-person-show for the most part and didn't feel beholden to a schedule, and do believe that this was the correct decision. However, I also realize that many of you were hoping to see it sooner and all I can say is that I apologize for the lateness, but rest assured that you are getting a better game!

I spoke a bit about the Quickstart (and other projects) on Nerd's RPG Variety Cast, check it out!
Episode 444


 

What Has Changed?
Well, I went through several iterations of rules, testing constantly, but in the end most of the D&D-style combat mechanics have been stripped out (no more d20 attack rolls against a target AC) and everything operates off of a die chain system. Most rolls are made by the players—you roll Defense to avoid attacks and Adversary abilities modify your rolls. If you've played The Black Hack or the original Symbaroum, you'll have the idea. Otherwise, there've been any number of minor tweaks to the rules and text, things like renaming to Attributes to better reflect the genre, making conditions easier to use, and so on.

Where Does it Stand?
The 90-page Quickstart is being proofed now and I'll have to do some clean-up resulting from that and finalize the page numbers and hyperlinks in the PDF. Once those are completed, I'll be posting the PDF as PWYW, i.e. free, and getting a print option up soon afterwards (this will be softcover for a small price).

In the Quickstart, you'll be getting a hefty amount of the core rule system, spells, a sandbox-style adventure with two adventure hooks and months-worth of gaming possible (I personally ran the material for 4-5 months playing every other week). Of course, you can pick one of the hooks and run it as a one-shot without issue.

Setting?
The implied setting of Reaver is called The Sagas of Cennor and is more grit than gonzo, more dark fantasy than weird—its much more akin to a Bran Mak Morn-style world than an Elric world. It's the kind of Sword & Sorcery that is a simple side-step from historical adventure fiction, where protagonists can be big heroes, so long as their luck holds, but the Raven God always withdraws his favor eventually.

Watch this space!

RPGaDay 2022!

While I'm not personally participating in #RPGaDay2022, two of my excellent playtesters shared #REAVER character stories. Karl Rodriguez the @gmologist spoke of his shaman, Askold, while Jason Connerly of Nerd's RPG Variety Cast, covered Brutus the rogue. Always a pleasure gaming with these gents! My thanks, fellows!

The GMologist Episode RPGaDay Week 4

Nerd's RPG Variety Cast Episode #390

Happy Birthday to HPL!

H. P. Lovecraft was born on this day, August 20, in 1890, and to celebrate his birthday this year, I teamed with Jason Connerly of The Nerd's RPG Variety Cast to discuss some Lovecraftian films! 

Check out the episode here!

REAVER Session Recaps

Hello everyone!

Reaver has experienced a bit of a rough ride over the past months, but is definitely coalescing into a thing I'll be comfortable releasing. The Quickstart is in layout and will only need to be updated with a more finalized version of the combat rules (when they are ready) and edited. Rest assured, it is still on its way!

In the meantime, several podcasters have been helping me playtest the game as it has evolved since last September. If you are interested in hearing recaps of our sessions, or simply want some great gaming podcasts to listen too, check out Jason over at Nerd's RPG Variety Cast, Karl on The GMologist Presents, and Joe on Hindsightless. 

Thanks to those great fellows for their input and for their awesome session recaps!

REAVER Classes - The Fighter

**Note: Reaver has greatly evolved since this post!** 

This week we’re taking a look at the old staple of character classes, the sword-wielders, the shield-breakers, the slayers—The Fighter! Fighters are ubiquitous in RPGs, having first appeared in the original role-playing game, and they fill the important role of dealing damage, laying foes low, and protecting their fellow party members. In REAVER, Fighters have abilities that represent their masterful battle skills, they are technical warriors, well-versed with all weapons and able to employ all armors—an important ability, because in REAVER, armor grants Damage Reduction and can help keep a character alive.

To explore the Fighter class we are going to try something a bit more historically-oriented and experiment with the protagonist from Bernard Cornwell’s excellent series, The Saxon Tales. I highly recommend this series (and all of Cornwell’s work honestly) to anyone interested in historical fiction. The Saxon Tales take place in the time of Alfred the Great and follow the life and exploits of Uhtred, son of Uhtred, born a Saxon but raised a Dane, as he seeks to reclaim his lost birthright, the lands of Bebbanburg. I’m choosing to create a character from historical fiction to demonstrate that REAVER is malleable enough to handle such characters and their stories, one of the stated goals of the game.

In addition to Uhtred’s own prowess and experience, he gathers about him a number of loyal followers throughout the course of the books. In REAVER, these henchmen would be represented by Companions, sworn followers who have pledged their service to the PC at any time during their career—not just when they are higher level and no special abilities necessary. Instead, acquiring companions is entirely left to the PC’s actions, roleplaying, and the narrative.

 

 

What's Happening?!

 Hi All!

We've moved out of the year of Doom and its time to apprise you all of what's been going on at RGG! 

Regardless of 2020's troubles, I was able to work on Reaver regularly and have a number playtest sessions completed and ongoing. Those sessions revealed certain problems and inconsistencies that led to some moderate rewrites, which also let me clean the rules up quite a bit.

• The player's portion of Reaver is completely drafted and I have been tinkering with layout styles. From the Introduction, through character creation, and inclusive of the Sorcery chapter comes in around 70,000 words.
• Skills have been completely removed in favor of a narrative style of skills based on your class and careers.
• Except the attack roll, all die rolls in the game operate on the die chain. Why not the attack? Because I favor the familiarity of the old-school d20 roll.
• Sorcery has been the most difficult aspect to "get right"-- meaning supportive of the S&S genre and the feel of dark magic. Vancian magic is completely abandoned. Spellcasters must make checks to successfully cast spells, may suffer ill effects if they fumble the check, but can pull off unearthly feats of sorcery with success. They are not easy to play and require some careful use of their spells and abilities. More of that in another post.

What's Next for Reaver? 

• I'm currently working on the GM section--monsters, treasures, advice, special rules, and the like; as well as a basic setting to be included in the book.
• More playtesting! I'll continue running the game myself and plan to recruit some additional GMs to run it.
• I also plan to release a "Quickstart" this summer to get the game in people's hands and support the official playtest.
• Because I want this book to be high quality, I plan to take it to Kickstarter in spring of 2022.

Eldritch Tales has been on the back-burner since last year, but I do have issue #2 of The Eldritch Inquirer partially in layout and in the works. I plan to release this after the Reaver Quickstart. The issue will include support for pulp adventure games and an exciting, pulp scenario written by John Large of Red Dice Diaries!

All the best!