It’s been awfully quiet around my site. That’s deceptive: my head’s been down working on a lot of really cool stuff! Let’s take a look at some of things fast approaching the finish line.

New Maps by Elven Tower

Matthew Bannock AKA @proudgamer and I released the adventure module The Darkness Beneath Dalentown over a year ago now; it’s available for OSR games and DeScriptors. The reception prompted me to reach out to Elven Tower Cartography and get the Dalentown map revised for the newly released Adventures in Dalentown (for 5th edition and DeScriptors). In turn, the response to that was amazing, so I’ve gone back to Elven Tower and had them rework all of the maps for The Darkness Beneath Dalentown!

I’ll be updating the existing versions with the new maps shortly, so if you already bought it, you’ll just download the new version. Plus, there’s a 5th edition version is in the works!

Domille’s Wondrous Works

Matthew has forged a partnership with Domille’s Wondrous Works! Domille’s Wondrous Works creates high quality battle maps, art packs, tokens, and more for virtual tabletops like Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds, as well as for printing, via DriveThruRPG and their Patreon. Check out what we’ve been working on below.

Character Sheets!

I’ve always liked simple, clean, and roomy character sheets that fit everything on a single, front-only page. Domille’s Wondrous Works and I have combined forces to create such a sheet, which will be made available in static and form-fillable PDF versions. These will be available on Dungeon Masters Guild.

Plus Pregens!

Matthew has been building entire adventuring parties of low- and mid-tier characters. We will slap these on the sweet new character sheet mentioned above and make them available on DMsGuild in the following formats:

  • Standard D&D 5e character sheet
  • Our new, simplified character sheet
  • Versions with and without names, personality and backstory info

Maps & Adventures!

Domille’s Wondrous Works is known for gorgeously detailed maps, so why not leverage that? Matthew will be writing adventure scenarios to accompany the maps using 5th edition fantasy rules as well as support for DeScriptors. This way, folks can pick up a fully realized one-shot adventure for either game system, complete with a beautiful map and all of the rules necessary to run the adventure. You’ll see these coming to DriveThruRPG in the very near future!

Farm Champions BETA – not finalized art; characters by Misosile Busher(HIZIKI)

FARM Champions BETA

Matthew had created a short OSR-inspired fantasy adventuring game called FARM Champions: FARM being short for Fighter, Acolyte, Rogue, and Mage. Between the simple structure of the game — young, fledgling heroes forced by choice or circumstance to rise up and protect their community — and some discussion on The Gauntlet’s forums about community prosperity game systems in roleplaying games, I added some settlement-focused rules to FARM Champions. The results became a flood of inspiration and ideas, and now we are in the process of finalizing a BETA version of the game to release on DriveThruRPG.

Highlights of FARM Champions:

  • Challenges are resolves using 2d6 plus modifiers.
  • Most rolls are modified by a character’s health (generally ranging from +0 to +3) and a pertinent skill (also usually +0 to +3). Highly specialized items might also apply a small bonus.
  • Each class — Fighter, Acolyte, Rogue, Mage — gets one unique, iconic ability.
  • Magic works on a spell point system, and spell points refresh after short periods of downtime.
  • Spells are somewhat free-form.
  • The players and GM build the starting settlement as part of character creation.
  • A settlement has the following attributes: Safety, Resources, Industry, Enlightenment, Solidarity, and Leadership. The score in each helps to determine if a settlement can attract new people, is falling into decline, or faces detrimental events or external threats.
  • Each character has a background (day job), guardian figure that raised them, and a problem, all of which affect the stats of their settlement.

The current rule set is very simple (even simpler than Dungeon World), but we’ve developed “advanced” rules that dig a little deeper. Things you’d see in the advanced rules are adding heritage (elf, dwarf, etc.) modifiers during character creation, more involved community rules, epic spells and magical items, and so on. The BETA will include both, so that we can best determine the complexity level at which we will finalize the game. If all goes well, this could lead to the final version of the game sometime near the holidays or beginning of next year, and a possible Kickstarter.

A Dark Sequel

The Darkness Beneath Dalentown has been spoken of quite a bit here, and the reason is simple: it was really well received! A sequel has been drafted, featuring the lingering effects of the events depicted in the adventure. The Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor ventures deeper into the horror motif, and will scare the socks off of your players! Expect 5th edition and DeScriptors versions.

More DeScriptors

Matthew has never slowed down on creating fun and unique micro-fiction to build campaign settings off of. Many of these will show up for DeScriptors in the near future, all with a handful of pregenerated characters and scenario ideas, and some with new mechanics for the DeScriptors game.

OSR Hexcrawl Goodness

Todd Leback (@thirdkingdom1 on Twitter) has been publishing a populated hexcrawl series via Patreon for some time, and I’m taking over editing and layout duties. More immediately, I’ll be publishing his foundational releases for this series that have not yet seen a full-fledged release:

  • Hexcrawl Basics
  • NPC Wealth
  • Domain Building

These releases provide a full-fledged old school experience compatible with the recently Kickstarted Old School Essentials by Necrotic Gnome, as well as any B/X-inspired OSR system. Todd has a way of diving incredibly deep into the mechanics and finding the fun regarding hexcrawls, domain management, and high-level play. Since I had such great success with Hexcrawling: Wilderness Exploration and Random Encounters on DMsGuild, it’s an honor to revisit this sort of gameplay in a classic system.

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Happy gaming to ya!