Children of the Gods The Classical Witch Tradition POD is Live!

This one took WAY longer than it should have, but now I finally worked out all the issues and can announce that the Print on Demand version of  The Children of the Gods The Classical Witch Tradition book for Basic Era Games is now live!

Designed for the BLUEHOLME™ Journeymanne Rules this new book explores:

• The witch class and four new combination classes
• Guidelines for playing any species of witch
• Six witch covens of the Classical Tradition
• 120 Spells and Rituals for witch characters
• 24 Monsters to challenge or be allies
• 29 magic items and six artifacts
•  Three Non-player character witches from pages of mythology

It is a companion to my Cult of Diana: The Amazon Witch for Basic Era Games.  Designed to be used with the BLUEHOLME™ Prentice Rules.

I don't have a Print on Demand version of The Cult of Diana yet.  Similar issues.  If you want one those, let me know!

All of these books are part of my "Back to Basic" series I have been doing all year.

Each one is designed to cover a particular Witchcraft Tradition and to also take advantage of the rules presented in each of the respective Basic Era retro-clone.

Here are the books so far.

• The Daughters of Darkness: The Mara Witch Tradition for Labyrinth Lord
• The Children of the Gods: The Classical Witch Tradition for Blueholme, Journeymanne Rules
• The Cult of Diana: The Amazon Witch Tradition for Blueholme, Prentice Rules

and coming soon

• The Craft of the Wise: The Pagan Tradition for Old School Essentials
• The Basic White Witch: The Pumpkin Spice Witch Tradition for Labyrinth Lord 2019 Pumpkin Spice Edition.
• And one more! (or maybe two).

AD&D First Edition Collector's Books Print on Demand

Speaking of print on demand, I got something else in the mail this week.

The Holy Trinity of AD&D from DriveThruRPG Print on Demand.

These are of course the newer collector's edition covers and honestly, they look great.  As you can see from the pictures these are glossy covers and not the matte finish of the ones you could get in the stores.

Also, there is no ribbon bookmark, no embossed covers, and no gilded pages.

But these POD versions are also slightly bigger than the reprints and the paper is a bit thicker.

The price was great with the sale and I ended up paying about as much for these as I did for my originals back in the 80s.

I was getting these to give as a gift to a friend and I wanted to see how they would turn out.
In truth, I am very, very pleased with these and find I want to keep them! (but I won't).

You really have to hand it to WotC and DriveThru, it has never ever been easier to get books and materials for ANY version of D&D you like.

I would not mind seeing a softcover version of the Player's Handbook to be honest.  Something like the Fiend Folio softcover they have. A little bit cheaper to buy multiple copies of to have an AD&D 1st Ed Start-Up set.  A DMG, a Monster Manual and five PHBs for one price. 

For some reason, I forgot to get a copy of Unearthed Arcana, so I ordered it now.

You can get yours here:

• Monster Manual
• Players Handbook
• Dungeon Master's Guide

There is a lot of great print titles (over 300) you can get from Wizards now.

Daughters of Darkness: The Mara Witch for Basic Era Games in Print

It took me a while (work and a couple of dumb mistakes in editing) but my latest book is now out in print!

Daughters of Darkness: The Mara Witch for Basic Era Games

It looks great and even better when paired with the Witch for Basic Era Games.

100% compatible with that book.  Also compatible with my Swords & Wizardry line of books.

I will share some details about the books so you can see things like spell overlap (spoiler: some version of Bestow Curse appears in every book).

I will send out codes for a discounted print copy for people who already bought the PDF.

Monstrous Monday: Fiend Folio POD

More Old-School mail call from the weekend.  Two boxes from different printers for some Old School joy.

I will admit it, it's not a popular opinion, but I love the Fiend Folio.  I goes back to the time when I was just getting into AD&D and I equated everything British/English as being better than American. (In many ways I still think that!)

So imagine my delight when I saw that the Fiend Folio on DriveThruRPG was now offering a Print on Demand option.  So, of course, I had to get it.  It was soft cover only, but I thought it would work nicely next to my Games Workshop printing softcover Monster Manual.
I was not wrong.

Other than one is a hardcover and the other is a softcover it is very difficult to tell them apart.

Even the interiors compare well.

Compares well to the mini version out a few years back (I guess a "few" now means 20).

Around the same time I ordered this I found a mock-up of an "orange spine" version of the Fiend Folio made by R Nelson Bailey.

A little bit of Lulu legerdemain and I now have something from a parallel universe.

I didn't get the cover perfect, but that is fine really.

The interior of this one looks pretty good too.

My next project needs to be a Fiend Folio II.

The Winter Witch in Print!

Got home last night after a LONG day at work to a little brown box I have been desperately waiting for.  Inside was my print copy of The Winter Witch for Swords & Wizardry!

It looks gorgeous if you ask me.  And it looks great next to her "sisters".

 IF you ordered the PDF before now and want a print copy then please check your notifications on DriveThruRPG/RPGNow.  I sent you a discount code for $3.00 off the print price (to cover the $2.99 PDF cost).

Winter is Now!

Basic Instincts, Part 2

Last week I posted a Lulu version of a possible POD for the D&D Basic book; B/X flavor.
I think it went a long way in showing that a Basic book POD is a viable solution.

To further that end, here is a book from roughly the same time period and with a similar scan. 
The Gamma World boxed set is more of a contemporary with the Holmes D&D boxed set but it is also currently in POD on RPGNow/Drivethru RPG and I got my book in the mail last week.

The cover is the same as the box art. As opposed to the cover of the book inside the box.

All of the box contents are reproduced in the book. Except for adventure and dice.

The text is rather clear and very easy to read.  In fact reading through this again today I found things in the rules that I either forgotten about or never knew!

It is in much better shape than my old GW book.

The PODs from WotC/DriveThru keep getting better and better.  So there is a reasonable expectation that a Basic set POD will look much better than my 15-minute effort.

Looking forward to seeing more PODs from Wizards/DriveThru and hopefully, Basic/Expert D&D will be part of that!

--

Don't forget the Witch for Swords & Wizardry White Box is now out! Featuring the White Witch Tradition.  It is 100% compatible with my other Swords & Wizardry witch books.  Each one with a new tradition, occult powers, magic items, spells, and rituals.  Many even include new monsters.

Basic Instincts

There has been some discussion online and in the B/X groups in particular about getting Print on Demand versions of the Moldvay Basic book and the Cook/Marsh Expert book.

Part of that discussion was how viable are the current PDFs for POD printing. You can see some of that discussion on the Basic D&D DriveThruRPG page (linked above).  Others began to wonder how difficult would it be to do?

Well everyone knows what a huge fan I am of B/X D&D so I thought I would give it a go.
I grabbed my PDF of Basic D&D and set a 10-minute time limit.  If I didn't have a book ready to go by then I would pack it up and go home from work.  It took me 15 minutes.

I fired up Adobe Suite and took apart the PDF to put back together on the Printer's website.

Today I got the results in the mail.

As you can see no one will mistake these for the real deal.  For starters there are no table of contents nor index.

While the newer one has whiter pages and clear text, the cover is not really the best.

Could I make a better one? Sure.  Given time and effort in Photoshop and Acrobat.  But I won't.  For starters the book, while not really expensive, was costlier than say buying a print copy of Basic Fantasy and I get more in that.  There are  other, cheaper options as well.

No this served the purpose I wanted well; could the current PDF make a passible POD.  The answer is Yes, with some work.  Now I have another table copy of D&D Basic and that is never a bad thing.

Mail Call: Star Frontiers

I have always been a fan of Star Frontiers. Despite not having much success with Sci-Fi games, my brother and I picked up a copy as soon as it came out.  We had a fun time with it for a while, but often our games became more "D&D in Space".  While I would go on to other games, Star Frontiers always held a place in my heart.

I was quite pleased to see official copies come out on DriveThruRPG and RPGNow a bit back.  I was also pleased to see the new Print on Demand versions out too.  I wondered how they would simulate the boxed sets.  Well, now I know!

I picked up PoD copies of Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn and Star Frontiers: Knight Hawks.

The color covers are quite bright and there are some color pages inside as well.  But the vast majority of the interior is still black and white.

Can't punch these out though. They do give them to you as a PDF to print and cut out.

I am quite pleased with these.  I'd love to get a game going of this, even if if it is just for a single session.  Now I need some percentile dice!  Maybe blue and red to match the dice that came in my boxed set.