Tim Bannock

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Treasures Just Beyond - O5R GM Hack
Treasures Just Beyond - O5R GM Hack

Treasures Just Beyond – O5R GM Hack

06/30/2023 / / 0 Comments

Powered by the OGL, inspired by the OSR

Ever run a 5th Edition game and wonder where an important GM-facing rule is? Ever design a dungeon-crawl and grimace when all the PCs can see in the dark unaided? What are torches for in this edition, anyway?

Throw out your game master guide* and use this instead! Treasures Just Beyond – O5R GM Hack is here for you!

Treasures Just Beyond – O5R GM Hack is a super handy, 28-page reference guide and crawling-rules compilation formatted to be printed out as an A5 booklet: just open it in Adobe Acrobat, select Booklet, print, and staple! (You’ll want a long arm stapler: buy, barter for, or steal** one today!)

It compiles the best, fastest route to getting PCs playing in that “old-school” style where light, inventory, and careful exploration matters. On the GM’s side, it’s got all the hazards, trap rules, and object interaction mechanics you’ll ever need. Plus, it features robust social interaction and exploration rules, as well as some new twists on monster rules, all packed into a super-useful, reference-friendly layout.

In these pages, you’ll get killer new “house” rules and references like these:

  • Full dungeon-crawl, hex-crawl, and even settlement-crawling rules utilizing Event Dice.
  • Extremely-simple-yet-robust social rules using old-school reaction rolls.
  • PC defense rolls: Players better pay attention even if it’s not their turn!
  • Old-school morale rules, as well as simple rules and guidelines for boss monsters and minions.
  • Updated procedures dungeon, wilderness, and settlement “turns” that fit on a single page!

With Treasures Just Beyond – O5R GM Hack, everything you need to give your 5th Edition games that old-school feel, and run it smoothly, is right at your fingertips!

*Don’t throw it out! It’s got all the cool magic items in it, and vaguely okay downtime rules!

**Don’t steal stuff!

Cover image by Dean Spencer. All Rights Reserved.

Pay What You Want on itch.io and DrivethruRPG!

Enter The Nerdom logo
Enter The Nerdom

Enter The Nerdom Plays OSR-style Dungeons & Dragons – The Complete Adventure

06/27/2023 / / 0 Comments

All episodes of Enter The Nerdom‘s foray into the old-school goodness of Dungeons & Dragons are out now! Follow along as hosts Stan Moroncini, Chad Cook, and Watson Bradshaw join special guest Dan Mason, and delve into the depths of the Puzzle Dungeon: The Seers Sanctum by Directsun Games! We used a hack of Ben Milton’s incredible Knave to keep the rules simple and straightforward, maximizing our play time and keeping the players on their toes with every death-defying encounter and mystery they faced.

Here’s the complete episode listing:

You can catch all their podcast episodes here. Be sure to tune in, because they cover many amazing “nerdoms”: Ghostbusters fans, the  incredible Star Wars-based charity organization known as The 501st Legion, professional wrestling, anime, and so much more!

I’ve also released some of the assets we used for the game:

I’ll put up a few more bits of information and perhaps some more adventure-specific assets I used in the following days!

Treasures Just Beyond Knave 1st edition hack
Treasures Just Beyond Knave 1st edition hack by Tim Bannock

Treasures Just Beyond – A Knave 1st Edition Hack with Gygaxian Flourishes

06/13/2023 / / 0 Comments

When the hosts of Enter The Nerdom approached me to run them through a game of “Old School style” Dungeons & Dragons, I knew I needed a lightweight ruleset to get us through what was likely to be a pretty fast one-shot scenario. It turned into two sessions, but we all agreed that the setup and “learning” time needed to be at a minimum to keep the podcast playthrough very fast and energetic. I turned to Ben Milton’s Knave to get what I needed!

I’d already worked on some hacks for Knave‘s 1st edition, so I just compiled those into a doc, stripped out some of Knave‘s more “lowlife, dirty bastards” stylings and replaced those with classic Gygaxian and Arnesonian flourishes: non-human PC ancestries, quick-playing dungeon and wilderness crawling rules, and a simple modification to make spellcasters a bit more of a thing via spellbook rules layered on top of the “anyone can use a scroll” magic rules. I topped it off with some Feat-like abilities to replace class abilities, and give the players their own little niche protection.

Here’s the final document I used, as a PDF formatted to be printed “Booklet” style in Adobe Acrobat, and stapled together. I used cardstock for the first page, to give it a sort of “cover” quality, and referenced it during play. Especially when the PCs started dropping to 0 hit points, or scoring critical hits and fumbles. (There were a lot more fumbles than hits, as I recall!)

Keep an eye on Enter The Nerdom to listen to our actual play of Directsun Games’ Puzzle Dungeon: The Seer’s Sanctum using these rules!

Treasures Just Beyond Character Sheet
Treasures Just Beyond Character Sheet

Enter The Nerdom Plays D&D: Treasures Just Beyond Character Sheets

06/12/2023 / / 0 Comments

The continuing adventures of the Enter The Nerdom crew should be posted to your favorite podcast listening service soon! In celebration, here are some character sheets I created for these sessions.

These character sheets are perfect for Knave and most of its hacks, and can probably do in a pinch for any ability score-based D&D retroclone or remix. The particular hack we are using is my current playtest draft of a Knave hack I call Treasures Just Beyond. It adds very basic dungeon and wilderness procedures, provides a slightly more robust social mechanic based on reaction rolls and attitude, and modifies the magic system to mix in elements of the original edition of Dungeons & Dragons and GLOG (perhaps better explained and shown in the Cairn SRD “GLOG Magic Hack“). Don’t worry, I’ll be posting that entire playtest document very soon!

Without further ado, here are the character sheets for Treasures Just Beyond (Enter The Nerdom Variant):

Player Character sheet

NPC Hireling sheet

Editable version of both via Google Slides. You’ll need to click File > Make a Copy and save it to your Drive somewhere, then you can edit it.

Enjoy!

Enter The Nerdom plays Dungeons & Dragons
The first frightening rooms of Puzzle Dungeon: The Seers Sanctum

Enter The Nerdom Actual Play: Adventuring in the The Seers Sanctum with Knave and Dungeons & Dragons

06/01/2023 / / 0 Comments

It’s here! Enter The Nerdom and special guest Dan Mason have ventured into The Seers Sanctum!

The adventuring party is Madmartigan the Greatest Swordmaster in all of the Realms, Pockets the Dragonborn, Krondor the Wild Elf, and Mable the Elf Wizard. And nothing will prepare you for this puzzle-heavy romp with loads of old-school spirit, using Ben Milton’s brilliant Knave alongside B/X-era Dungeons & Dragons spells, magic items, and monsters. (Get Knave 1st edition here, and support Knave 2nd edition in its final hours here!)

This is just part 1 of the quest! Listen to the full episode here or wherever you listen to podcasts. Check out some behind-the-scenes photos over on their Instagram (@enterthenerdom) and stay tuned here for character sheets, rules references, and more.

Huge thank you to the hosts of Enter The Nerdom and Dan for this wonderful gaming opportunity. Looking forward to part 2 in just over a week!

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