A Role Playing Games Blog
Freebies
Dungeonslayers: First sneak peek at the 4th Edition
1February 1, 2012
Reports that the English version of Dungeonslayers 4 is vaporware are highly exaggerated. DS 4 is alive and well and Christian Kennig has released the updated character creation as a teaser today!
The 10-paged PDF contains the character creation rules, hints at the new hero classes that you can pick after reaching level 10 and gives you the opportunity to check out the artwork and layout of the upcoming book.
By the way, the German version of the game is available in a very cool boxed set, or as a free PDF version. So if you can speak German, why not check it out now?
Get Kobold Quarterly #14 for free
1January 30, 2012
Back in August 2010 I wrote the following about KQ#14:
Currently I play none of the games which are regularly covered by Kobold Quarterly, but so far I’ve enjoyed reading every issue I got my hands on. Aside from a lot of material for games like D&D 4th Edition, Pathfinder or even Dragon Age, a large portion of the magazine contains articles that apply to any fantasy game. And in most cases the game-specific articles can be at least be used to inspire. And because of that Kobold Quarterly can truely be called “The Switzerland of the Edition Wars”!
Recently Open Design LLC decided to give away KQ #14 for free. Just go to the Kobold Quarterly store and use the code “KoboldWelcome” at the checkout! This offer is valid until February 14th 2012. So what are you waiting for? Get you free copy now. It’s definitely worth it!
Freebies: Renaissance
2December 6, 2011
Yay! I have been waiting for this since I first read about it: Renaissance is a free roleplaying system designed for historical and fantasy games in, as the authors put it, “age of blackpowder weapons”. It was created by Peter Cakebread and Ken Walton who are known for Clockwork & Chivalry 1st Edition and Abney’ Park’s Airship Pirates. Renaissance is based on D101 Games’ OpenQuest which itself is based on Mongoose Publishing’s Runequest SRD.
The 139-paged PDF contains all the rules needed to play, two magic systems and a bestiary. Kudos to Cubicle 7 and Cakebread & Walton for releasing the rules for free. The PDF doesn’t contain any artwork, but that’s negligible especially since the PDF is mainly meant as a System Reference Document. The rules of the game can be used under the OGL.
If you are a fan of Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying and Runquest, you actually have the choice between quite a few different rule variants now. There’s Renaissance, Mongoose Publishing’s Legend, D101 Games’ OpenQuest, Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying and Goblinoid Games’ GORE. All those games are more or less compatible, so you can use material designed for one game in the other with ease.
Renaissance looks pretty interesting because it was created with the Renaissance era in mind. The magic system also looks pretty unique. If you’re looking for a skill-based RPG with a percentile dice mechanic, you should definitely check Renaissance out!
Freebies: Atomic Highway
0November 17, 2011
Atomic Highway, an excellent post-apocalyptic roleplaying game written by Colin Chapman is now available for free! Here’s what Colin has written in the announcement on the official Radioactive Ape Designs site:
RIDE FOR FREE!
The Atomic Highway pdf is now free to download! Atomic Highway and its fans have been really good to me these two years since its release, so I felt it was time to release AH into the wild, so to speak. Now, anyone who wants to check it out can grab it for free at DriveThruRPG, in perpetuity.
Grab it from DriveThruRPG!And while you’re there, Irradiated Freaks is now down to $4.99. What have you got to lose?
Atomic Highway is my favorite choice when it comes to post-apocalyptic RPGs and the underlying V6 Engine could work great in other genres as well. I am still hoping that Colin will release a generic V6 rulebook one day for us to tinker with. In the meantime, you should check out AH, especially now that it’s free! If you want to learn more about AH, please check out my post about it.
Update: WR&M in Spanish
1November 8, 2011
Yesterday I got the final PDF of the Spanish translation of WR&M. I have to admit I can’t judge the quality of the translation since I don’t speak Spanish, but I am very happy with the layout and the artwork of this book. The guys from Arcano XIII really put a lot of work into this project, there’s no doubt about that.
When everything goes as planned they’ll officially release it on their blog on the upcoming weekend. I’ll update this post with a link to the PDF as soon as it goes life.
Tricks or Treats at the spookiest RPG Download Store!
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DriveThruRPG is wishing us all happy Halloween by giving away a couple of free products. They’ve hidden pumpkins all over the site that you can click on. It will be either be a treat (an awesome free product) or a fun trick. Of course the free products are mostly horror based and the treats I’ve found so far are not too shabby. So, head over to DriveThruRPG right now and look for the treats. Feel free to post some tips where to look here or at the DriveThruRPG Facebook page!
UPDATE:
These are the products I’ve found so far:
- Little Fears Nightmare Edition
- Profane Miracles
- The Best Little Hellhouse in Texas
- ICONS: Murder of Crowes
- Supernatural Adventures
Living in a Zombie Land – Halloween 2011(This was actually a trick!)
- All Flesh Must be Eaten Revised
- 100 Horror Adventure Seeds
- Midnight Harvest
- Kobold Quarterly #15
- Werewolf: The Apocalypse (Revised Edition)
I actually believe that might be all of them, because the site mentions 13 pumpkins and I found three “tricks”.
They are actually pretty easy to find. Just make sure you explore the DriveThruRPG site thoroughly and don’t forget in your account page!
They are actually pretty easy to find. Just make sure you explore the DriveThruRPG site thoroughly and don’t forget in your account page!
Mistborn
1October 21, 2011
Yesterday Crafty Games released its Mistborn Adventure Game Primer on DriveThruRPG for free. I have to admit I haven’t followed the development of the Mistborn Adventure Game at all. I haven’t heard of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn novels before and I thought it was just another run-of-the-mill fantasy series. Oh boy, was I wrong.
I also expected the game using Crafty Games’ Fantasy Craft system. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that the game uses an all new system. Don’t get me wrong, I like Fantasy Craft. It’s a very cool rule system and I think more people should check it out. But it always was a bit too rules-heavy for me. It’s basically on the same crunch level as Pathfinder or D&D 3.5, but I just don’t have the time for such rules anymore. I want my game rules to be light. But I digress.
So yesterday I downloaded the aforementioned primer to see what all the fuss was about. And I was blown away. The rules are really, really light-weight and have a very narrativist feel to them. That was something I haven’t expected, but I like it. I like it a lot. I think I have to “borrow” some of their ideas for the game I am currently working on. I hope the Craft Games’ guys don’t mind. 
I also quickly realized that the game was no classic fantasy but sounded very unique and the world had some Victorian feel to it. At least that’s what the interior artwork reminded me of. I think I’ll have to get one of the Brandon Sanderson novels soon to learn more about the world. I already downloaded an excerpt from the Kindle book, but I haven’t had the time to give it a closer look.
Alas there are a few things I don’t really like about the primer. The description of the rules is terribly vague. I had to read the paragraph about how to read the dice results several times before I had a faint idea how it’s supposed to work. It get even worse when it comes to conflict. There’s talk of “action dice” you get, but there’s no explanation what these dice are, how many you get, and so on. Perhaps a few examples would have helped.
But overall the primer did what is was intended to do: it piqued my interest. It made me interested not only in the game, but also in the novel series. And I definitely recommend you check it out.
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