Class Struggles: Class Compendium Books

RPGNow has a big sale going on on various d20 books.

I am not done with the class analysis I wanted to do today so I thought maybe I would highlight some of the books with new classes for your OSR games.  Some of these I have reviewed in the past.  I am sure there must be others, but these are the ones I am most familiar with.  Not all these books are on sale.

A Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore
One of the first, this is the book that launched BRW games and Adventures Dark & Deep. Part of +Joseph Bloch's "What If" experiment of a hypothetical Gary helmed 2nd Edition.  I recently went back and reread some of the articles from Gary about the 2nd Ed. game of AD&D that never was.  Interestingly he made comments about a 3rd and 4th edition game too!  This book covers the Bard, Jester, Mystic, Savant, and Mountebank classes.  The mystic was the first class I looked at for the Class Struggles series.

The Complete B/X Adventurer
This is the second book of the B/X Companion series by +Jonathan Becker.  Where Adventures Dark & Deep gave us a hypothetical AD&D 2nd Ed, Becker gives us a Companion set that never was.    This book gives us some extra rules but the main feature are the classes.  The classes are Acrobat, Archer, Barbarian, Bard, Beastmaster, Bounty Hunter, Centaur, Duelist, Gnome, Mountebank, Mystic, Ogre-Kin, Scout, Summoner, Tattoo Mage, Witch, and Witch Hunter. 17 new classes.  New classes in B/X and BECMI related games are a bit more varied since races are also classes.  But there are a lot of great classes here.

Basic Arcana
+Tom Doolan published his first work, Basic Arcana all the way back in 2013!  This is also a "Basic Era" product.  It starts with some "Class Variants"; Dwarf Priest, Dwarf Scout, Elf Sorcerer, and Elf Warrior. For humans we have the Martialist (like a monk) and the Barbarian. All of this and some extra rules on combat and a page of spells.

Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts
A favorite of mine, this book introduces a baker's dozen of new magic using classes and their spells. +Dyson Logos gives us the:  Cleric, Wizard, Elven Swordmage, Elven Warder, Enchanter, Fleshcrafter, Healer, Inquisitor, Merchant Prince, Necromancer, Pact-Bound, Theurge, and the Unseen.

ACKS Player's Companion
ACKS is still one of the slickest look games around.  +Alexander Macris gives us 19 new character classes, including the Anti-paladin, Barbarian, Dwarven Delver, Dwarven Fury, Dwarven Machinist, Elven Courtier, Elven Enchanter, Elven Ranger, Gnomish Trickster, Mystic, Nobiran Wonderworker, Paladin, Priestess, Shaman, Thrassian Gladiator, Venturer, Warlock, Witch, and Zaharan Ruinguard.  So a good collection really. That takes up about 44 pages of the book's 160.  New classes have new spells as well. Best of all is a character class creation guide. It look like a similar idea that appeared in Dragon years ago.  Basically it reduces any class to a set of points and you point buy a new class just like you would in say GURPS or Unisystem.  Maybe one day I'll check out a bunch of classes using this.

Theorems & Thaumaturgy
This is part a class book and of course all the new spells.  It's not part of the sale, but +Gavin Norman offers it as Pay What You Want, so make this worth his while.  The new Classes are the Elementalist, Necromancer and Vivimancer. The Vivimancer later gets his own book, but these are three very solid class choices.

Class Compendium
+James Spahn has been delivering solid classes since the dawn of his Barrel Rider Games.  This is a collection, edit of some of his best selling and favorite classes. The first 166 or pages are dedicated to a Basic Era/Labyrinth Lord compatible class.   Well this book is huge and we are given 52 classes, divided by category.
Arcane Allies: Alienist, Familiar, Thopian Gnome, Wild Wizard
Doughty Dwarves: Raging Slayer, Rune-Smith, Warchanter
Enchanting Elves: Dark Elf, Greensinger, Half-Elf, Sylvan Elf
Heroic Halflings: Burglar, Feast Master, Huckster, Lucky Fool, Tavern Singer
Holy Rollers: Angel, Friar, Inquisitor, Undead Slayer
In Shining Armor: Commander, Dragon Slayer, Knight
Martial Masters: Barbarian, Berserker, Gladiator, Samurai, Sword Master
Monstrous Marauders: Dragon, Goblin,  Half-Ogre, Half-Orc, Treant
Second Star to the Right: Fairy, Lost Boy, Pirate
Traveling Trouble-Makers: Acrobat, Explorer, Fortune Teller, Wanderer
Unhallowed Heroes: Cultist, Damphir, Death Knight. Eidolon
Urban Adventurers: Bandit, Bard, Bounty Hunter, Watchman
Virtuous Victorians: Automation, Investigator, Metaphysician, Shootist

New Class Options
One of the most recent one this comes from Genus Loci Games and +Johua De Santo.  The classes included here are the: Blood Witch, Chesh, Forrester, Highlander, Mermaid of the In-Land Sea, Mythwood Elf, Pixie, Prodigal, Ruca and the Draken-Knight.  I covered the Blood Witch in some detail a while back.

So. Over 120 (give or take) new classes.  Not to bad really.

Assembling the troops...

I'll get back to gods in a bit, but I am assembling all the pieces I need for the War of the Witch Queens.

Some OSR monster books, some rules, a bunch of different adventures. Yes that is a 4e book in the mix too.

Still working out details and having a lot of fun.  If I decide to go to a maximum of 13th level then I am sticking with Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.  If I think it will go higher than that, all the way to 20th level then I want to use Castles & Crusades.

What Role Do Gods Play in Your Games?

Working out some details for my games and it got me thinking about gods.

I am toying around with the idea that the gods are nothing more that super-powerful mortals ala the D&D Immortals rules.  I am even tossing around this idea that the gods loose their powers and fall to the Prime Material.

For example, I was thinking of making many of the goddesses of magic, witchcraft and the like really powerful witches, they have just come to be regarded as goddesses. So Hecate, Wee Jas, and the like.
Doing something similar with the various pantheons also seems to fix a few issues I am currently running into in my world building.

What roles do the Gods play in your games?  Do you use them much?

Dark Albion, ad initium

Good weekend for gaming purchases.  I picked some finds at Half-Price books (that I may talk about later) and this was waiting for me when I got home.

I opted for the alternate cover of Dark Albion.  It looked a little cooler on my shelf I thought,

Looks great next to my copy of Fantastic Heroes & Witchery.

Zatannurday: DC Bombshells #2

Zatanna in the latest DC Bombshells comic.
All this info is courtesy of Supergirl Comic Box Commentary.

Head on over to read their point of view of issue #2.

http://comicboxcommentary.blogspot.com/2015/09/review-dc-comics-bombshells-2.html

Interesting choice of having Zee as part of a cabret.

Ok so Zatanna is jewish? Ok, I can work with that. Let's see where this goes.

#1 was great with some great Batwoman moments and this one looks like it is just as good.

Friday Night Videos: Sojourn in Hell, Part 2

A while back I posted some songs to a "mix tape" I was calling "A Sojourn in Hell".
One of the things I didn't mention in the first post is how the collection of songs got together.

On September 10, 2001 I was working at my dream job at a dot com.  Yeah I'll admit it, I was making a ton of cash. It was the near the end of the Clinton economy and we were rolling investment capital.  And then the bottom dropped out and the dot com crash happened.  I was laid off and went home for lunch.

A year before I picked up the D&D 3.0 Player's Handbook, so I thought I would sit down and finish up my new 3.0 witch book, Liber Mysterium.  Napster had just died and had a ton of MP3s.

Then I sat at home the next day, September 11, 2001 and watched TV in horror.
What began, for various reasons that I will get into on a later date (if at all) my own Sojourn in Hell.

Today I can listen to these songs and they now mean something else to me.  They represent part of my life where I was deep into writing gaming material and producing it at a rate I have not matched.

One of the videos I loved the best in the early days of MTV was Peter Gabriel's "Shock the Monkey". The video was legitimately creepy and Gabriel was the only one who seemed to know how to use this new medium.  The Nu-Metal band Coal Chamber teamed up with Ozzy "Prince of Darkness" Osbourne to do a cover of this song.  It's good but lacks something the original had. Still though I really enjoy it.




For reasons I am not entirely sure of myself I really enjoy Eminem.  It's a guilty pleasure.  Kinda like listening to Spice Girls...er wait. Maybe not.  But the deal with Marshal is he is actually pretty damned talented.  This song has nothing to do with me getting laid off. Nothing. Really.
Plus I have to admit that Dr. Dre looking over to Eminem like he is an idiot throughout this video is great.




I know the pieces fit cuz I watched them tumble down
no fault, none to blame it doesn't mean I don't desire to
point the finger, blame the other, watch the temple topple over.

Tool is the thinking person's dark metal. Lateralus should go down in history with such albums as "The Wall". "Schism" is another song that spoke to me a lot during this time.




There is a rumor/story that when Trent Reznor first heard Johnny Cash's cover his song "Hurt" he was silent for a few minutes and then said "yeah. That's what I meant."  You would have a very difficult time convincing me that Cash's version is not the TRUE version.  Much like "All Along the Watchtower" is Jimi Hendrix's song and not Bob Dylan's, despite what the liner notes say.
This is, as my brother Dan says, like watching an old man slowly die before your eyes.




"Tales of Brave Ulysses" seems the odd one out here, but not really if you consider the feel I was going for in the books I working on then.  I guess to say it makes sense to me.




Deep Purple was always one of those bands I felt that people either got or they didn't. A little like Uriah Heep. "Hush" is notable for being the first song to go into the "Sojourn in Hell" folder on my old Gateway.



I wanted to end the collection on an upbeat note.  I figure I could do worse than the Wiseguys "Start the Commotion".

Tales from the Floating Vagabond...sorta

Back in the early 90s "Tales from the Floating Vagabond" was the game that people most wanted to play in my neck of the woods.  I knew a guy who had playtested it and could ramble of adventure ideas with the best of them.

This is not a post about that game.

This is a post about a place very, very, very much like the Floating Vagabond.

I present, "Hell's Club".



Think of it as Rifts: Disco.