FREE Spellcraft & Swordplay Deluxe E-book

Spellcraft & Swordplay Deluxe E-book

For the next few days (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) Elf Lair Games will be offering their (our really) flagship game, Spellcraft & Swordplay completely free.

http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/spellcraft-swordplay-deluxe-e-book/7340307

Everything you need to get started, minus dice, is right here.

Inspired by the earliest days of the Fantasy Role-playign Game, Spellcraft & Swordplay is a great mix of old-school roleplaying and cinematic action. Designed by Jason Vey whose previous credits have been with Paladium, Eden Studios (AFMBE, Buffy) and others.

Or just read his post about it here: http://elflairgames.blogspot.com/2009/07/elf-lair-games-free-rpg-days.html

Ghosts of Ablion at Gen Con

I am running three Gen Con events this year for Ghosts of Albion.

These are the official times and places from Gen Con. Registration is closed now, so you can register for these at the con or use the generic tickets.

I will repost this when I have more information

Here are the details.

Ghosts of Albion: Blight

RPG0906270 - 08/13/2009 07:00:00 PM (Thursday) Crowne Plaza, Grand Central Ballroom B, Table 3

RPG0906268 - 08/14/2009 07:00:00 PM (Friday) Crowne Plaza, Grand Central Ballroom B, Table 3

Ireland is dying. Her Protector has been murdered and you are the primary suspects. Can you clear your name, regain your magic and stop whatever necromancies befoul the land? Time is short, yours and one million lives hang in the balance. Set in 1847 this is an adventure for the Ghosts of Albion RPG.

Ghosts of Albion: Obsession

RPG0906269 - 08/15/2009 07:00:00 PM (Saturday) Crowne Plaza, Grand Central Ballroom B, Table 3

There is trouble at the Plough Street Theatre. The Times reports that authorities have found the strangled body of prominent actress and performer, Miriam White. However Miss White has herself commented to The Times that she is in fact alive and well and has been seen not only on stage, but having lunch with her manager just outside the theatre. You are requested by James V. Harold, esq., owner of the Plough Street Theatre to discreetly investigate this matter.

Ærypt and Zakhara

Following up on my previous post on Desert Elves & Orcs, I thought I might detail the region they live in some more.

Ærypt is a pastiche of Arypt, Erypt, and Egypt with Gygax's Necropolis and Ravenloft's Har'Akir thrown in.

 
So Zakhara was detailed in the Al-Qadim boxed set and I am going to use that as much as possible. Ærypt is different. I mentioned that I want to use Gygax's Necropolis product as a basis. "Necropolis" is actually two products. The first was Gary's "The Necropolis - And the Land of Egypt" for the Mythus RPG. The second was "Gary Gygax's Necropolis" for d20. Both offer me something that my Ærypt needs; a springboard.

What if we took 3^rd or 4^th Dynasty Egypt, and then made it very evil and full of undead? We get Ærypt. I will also borrow from my other favorite setting, Ravenloft, and use the background for Har'Akir and its Darklord Anhktepot combined with the Masque of the Red Death background on Egypt and Imhotep. I never liked MotRD's treatment of Imhotep, but Anhktepot is fair game! I have some ideas here, but I also have an issue now. My Ærypt is sun-baked deserts and Zakhara is a land of sands, dunes, and trade routes by camels and oasis's. Looking at the Mystara Map, Arypt is a land of some savannas, scrub land, and jungles! That won't do at all.

So I was comparing these two maps. One is of Arypt of Mystara and the other is Erypt of Oerth. The shapes are similar and fit well with the "Lower Ærypt" on my map. What can account for the changes? Simple. Dark Sun. Or at least the ideas from Dark Sun. Combine those, knowing that my starting point is lush Pre-Dynastic Egypt and my ending is the sun, baked, undead infested lands like Har'Akir or Necropolis, I have my history. Plus the nice thing is I am using the Mystara timeline, but about 640 in the future.
Here we go:

Long Ago* the lands known as Ærypt and Zakhara were once a fertile plain. The inhabitants were few, but they made peaceful lives. To the far west Jungle Gnomes and Jungle Elves lived. Along the Eastern Coast lived tribes of Catmen, known as Rakastas. Till one day a great hole opened in the sky and down came gods (Humans really) they brought with them their slaves (orcs) and began to settle. While the peace of the land was broken, there was no outright warfare. The Gnomes went farther west to avoid contact, but elves were fascinated by the new gods. The Rakasta found much in common with these humans and were soon integrated into their society. Yet as the years grew on it was obvious that these gods were not the benevolent kind. To erect their giant pyramids they soon took elves as slaves as well, with the Rakasta as their cruel task masters. For years untold the elves suffered under the yoke of the humans and watch as their forests were plundered and cut down to build more and more temples, all for the glory of the Sorcerer Kings. But even this was not enough.

The latest Sorcerer King, Anhktepot craved more and more power. Eventually he came upon a ritual that would enable him to take magic from the very Earth herself. He drained the land to fuel his own urge for power. The there was a price. The land around him died and became a desert and he became a withered undead thing. The growth of this desert was horrifically fast. Within 100 years the lush green land was nothing but sands. Having enough of this the tribes of Elves and Orcs banded together and overthrew the Sorcerer King. Anhktepot was defeated and buried alive deep in his own pyramid in the dead city of Har'Akir.

The elves. Homeless began to travel the deserts in search for a new life, but unwilling to leave the lands of their birth.

Let the place simmer for 500 years and voilà. Instant new land with history and reasons to adventure. All that treasure that the locals won't touch. Danger, mystery, everything we game for.


Enjoy your Fourth of July weekend!

Just a test.

Witch Girls Adventures + WitchCraft RPG = Crazy Delicious!

I know I said I would not do this, I even warned against such things in my own review of WGA. But yet there it is, taunting me.




WitchCraft RPG (from Eden Studios) and Witch Girls Adventures (from Chanel M) would really work nice together. Both cover a lot of the same ground and both have similar backgrounds, worlds and ideas. Both books/games use many of the same tropes and world views. So merging them seems to be a no brainer. BUT, I fear that the essential spirit of both games are sacrificed in a merge, but I can see this:

Use the Witch Girls Adventures book to help shape how young gifted fit into the world of WitchCraft. Use WitchCraft to help decide how the adults work in WGA. And Witch Girls provides something that WitchCraft lacks; a way and a means of dealing with the children of the gifted/supernaturals.

Are the "Fear the Witchspiracy" groups nothing more than a Combine training-camp? Could I break the Insider and Sorcerer Cliques down into "Wicce" and "Rosicrucian"?

One thing I am sure of, translations between the two games is pretty easy.

Witch Girl Adventures / Drama Dice System	WitchCraft RPG / Unisystem
D2	1
D4	2
D6	3
D8	4
D10	5
D12	6
D12+1	7

Attribute costs are roughly equal. WGA "Other Attibutes" add up to about the same as attribute costs for Gifted Attributes. Though the attributes don't exactly line up to each other; WGA has more mental attributes for example and only one physical to WitchCraft's three of both. I am not worried so much about actual numbers here, only what "feels right".

Mundanes are Mundanes in both games. Though Witch Girl Adventures does not have a "lesser gifted" at all though. Maybe Lesser Gifted could be the same as "Outsiders" with their Magic Die dropped to a d4 or d6 and given them an extra mundane skill at rank 2. I suppose that it should be noted that even some Mundanes in WGA have Magic at d4.

My quick look tells me that powerwise, a 14 year-old witch in WGA is more powerful than a 14-year old Wicce in Witchcraft. But they also live in different worlds. I would need some sort of way to "normalize" the world for both to really see. To that end I am going to re-tool my Generation HEX project a bit and try running it under WGA for a while. I have tried it under Unisystem, Mutants & Masterminds and even True 20. So what is one more system, really?

Lots of things to consider really, I just wish I had to time to do all of this, my writing and all the other stuff I need to do.

In the mean time, here are some links.

Eden Studio's WitchCraft RPG, http://edenstudios.net/witchcraft/ Download the free rules.

Witch Girls Adventures, http://www.witchgirlsadventures.com/ Download the free goodies.

Discussion of my review of WGA, http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=458968

Review at Teen Blips. Not your average game review. http://teenblips.dailyradar.com/story/witch_girls_adventures_ddg_a_diffrent_kind_of_game_for/

Malcolm Harris interview at everyone's favorite Sequential Tart, http://www.sequentialtart.com/article.php?id=1409

Witch Girls Adventures Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Witch-Girls-Adventures/72148672606?ref=mf

OLD D&D Commercial

See a very young Jami Gertz and Alan Ruck play D&D in this commercial from the early 80's.

http://www.retrojunk.com/details_commercial/61/

Thanks to The Gamer Dome for this one.

I can't recall if I ever saw this or not.

The narrator's voice though is familiar.

Though, where are their character sheets?

Doctor Who RPG

My friend the The Acrobatic Flea over at Hero Press is discussing the new Doctor Who RPG from Cubicle Seven.

The Doctor Who RPG: What We Know...

As a playtester I can't discuss much about this game. But I am happy to have TAF do it for me.

I will say this. It will be awesome. EVEN IF I didn't know anything about the game, I know Dave Chapman from working on Con X 2.0 and other projects. And Cubicle 7 is a bunch of great guys, so it will have good support.

I am totally geeking over the fact that it will be a boxed set.

I am just bummed I will have to wait so long to see it.