SilverAxe and more

Irecently snagged the pdf of this gem from Exalted Funeral, where the print+pdf combo is$15, and am waiting on my hardcover.

You can get it there, or pdf alone at Drivethrurpg for $10

This mini setting is excellent. There are long vanished otherworldly creatures responsible for all of the dungeons and general weirdness, much like Blueholme’s suggestion that elder things and their black pudding servitors built all of the dungeons in the implied world of that game. I use a similsr conceit in my game Northport.

There are 9 thematically interconnected dungeons, a race of cyclopean ogres, and a boss monster straight out of Zelazny by way of the Monster Manual 2 (here). By using the 3 way alignment from Old school Essentials, that entity is aligned with Chaos, and the their surroundings suitably corrupted as a result.

This is good stuff, and I heartily recommend it.

One of its features is a series of cyphered puzzle carvings in a made up language; I did something similar for Todd Leback -shop his store

Recently I have been working with new art materials, and here are a couple items my patrons are going to see next week: a ruined castle and some githkin- a baroque-punk Githyanki and a spartan-zen Githzerai; respectively Astral Reavers (as seen in Dwimmermount) and Void mystics, which I detailed for DF in this post from 2016.

as always,if you like this content, support my Patreon

or buy my art

Baklin, Jewel of the Sea

My primary patron, Gabor Lux has just released a city supplement for 1e/OSRIC, which is readily adaptable to any OSR ruleset, and comes with awesome maps.

The port city is full of intrigue and has several layers of dungeon, with multiple entrances and a variety of inhabitants, from the typical bandits, thieves, goblins, orcs, low rent undead, up to animated armor, trolls and mimics, but also including weirdnesses such as floating eyes, a small army of paladins striving to see every last corpse properly buried, and acollection of doors that lead to strange places.it would be easy to port in Through Ultan’s Door here.

The NPCs have a good selection of interesting magic items and peculiar abities like magic resistance or magical luck.

You can get it here

It is of course, full of my artwork!

as usual, you can support my patreon

Or buy my stuff

Castle Xyntillan!

Gabor Lux has just released his hardcover megadungeon Castle Xyntillan

He talks about it here

It features art by Peter Mullen, Stefan Poag, and fourteen pieces by me!

I spent the last few months working on these commissions, although a few of the pieces are from my stock art bundles.

The castle itself is a haunted mansion that blends Tegel Manor with the weirdness and doomed romanticism of Edgar Allen Poe, and the films of Jean Cocteau.

Also released at this time (in Hungarian,  the English language version is yet to be released) is Shadow of the city God, for which I drew the cover and another illustration. More work by Stefan Poag is in this as well.

I had some fun with the second scene, where some adventurers stumble upon a political cult led by a con artist.  Greta is not amused.

 

As always, if you like my work. Become a patron!

 

 

 

Far Away Land OSR and the Robot Hussein Test

Dirk Stanley’s OSR adaptation of his wonderous setting Far Away Land is now available for those that missed the kickstarter, and you can grab it here

As I have said before, the art looks like the best of Adventure Time

  with a healthy dose of Zardoz, Gamma World, Thundar the Barbarian, mixed with a lot of general happy gonzo weirdness, from player characters that are angry, bear riding telepathic nuns who fight axe wielding evil clones of Abraham Lincoln, and their little stabby hockey masked associates called horrors, to multi eyed, square headed,  or even of jack-o’ lantern faced spellcasters, warriors, or thieves.

The ruleset is roughly based on SWCL

And has four classes: Light Mages, Chaos Mages, Fighters, and Thieves.

Light and Chaos mages each have their own spell list, and a common gray magic list they share. Thieves have no backstab ability, making fighters more important in combat. There are twelve playable races, including dwarves and elves, but those are among the least interesting. All of these races, which were more or less the local equivalent of human from their dimension of origin, get bonus abilities from telepathy, limited teleportation,  weather prediction, favored enemies, resistances and immunities, rapid healing, and bonuses to hit or to ability checks. Humans get their choice of a hit bonus (there is a better version for fighters than thieves) or a bonus spell.

The setting is wildly imaginative, and there are conversion notes for adding materials from the regular FAL game to the FAL OSR game.

There is a lot of support for FAL

and I recommend getting as much as you can to complement the OSR game.

How would I convert this to GURPS? I would take my low level (75 point) character templates (available here), add the racial abilities, and I would then build the characters up to 125 points, which is suitable as a starting point for this

As the setting isn’t Dungeon Fantasy per se, I would eliminate the need for the unusual background “Ha ha! I can teleport” for the Blonin, and charge them as follows: Warp [25] (range limited to 20 yards, -45%, and limited use, twice per day, -30%).

Charging out nonhumans for their racial abilities makes human characters slightly better at their class for the same amount of points, but less flashy.

To play using my preferred system, I heartily recommend buying not only the OSR book, but as many FAL supplements as you can get your hands on, the setting is that good.

There are clockwork characters, but as they are limited to thief and fighter, the system fails what I call the “Robot Hussein” test: can I build an android healer? So far, you can build a Warforged Cleric in some editions if D&D, you can do it in GURPS, of course,  Gamma World, and in Solar Blades and Cosmic Spells .

I want to play a damn Heal bot.

 

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Excellent Customer Service at Necrotic Gnome

As you may know, if you follow this blog, I am a big fan of Gavin Norman‘s Setting Dolemenwood which is available in print and PDF at Drivethrurpg.  I have contributed art to Wormskin #7, and also made an amateur translation of the Demihumans of Dolmenwood into GURPS format.

(Incidentally, the Kickstarters of both DFRPG Monsters 2 and The Citadel at Nordvorn have both funded Whoot!)

The latest of the Dolmenwood books is Winter’s Daughter, a beautifully illustrated adventure about encountering an elf of the Winter Court.  I wanted it, and initially leary of the international shipping rates, opted in for just the PDF at 6 euoro ($7.05). I later rethought this, and Gavin walked me through just ordering the print version (don’t ask him to do this again, anyone in their right mind (i.e.: not me) would have ordered the combo plate for 12 Euro, and what turns out to be a mere 7 Euro shipping. My reluctance came from a package that cost me $56 to ship to Canada. In any case, I managed to screw it up again, and Gavin took care of it all. For a while, I was concerned that I was going to get it and he wasn’t going to get paid, because PayPal took three hours to process the transaction, and I was sure I had screwed up.

I own almost everything from Necrotic Gnome in print, and I have to say they make a lovely Dunsinian product that is easy to convert to any OSR system, and as I have shown, to the Dungeon Fantasy Role Playing Game as well.  Gavin has also Streamlined B/X into the lovely digest sized Old School Essentials line, which works beautifully with the setting, as does John Stater’s Bloody Basic: Weird Fantasy Edition. If you like slightly creepy faerie adventures with nonstandard characters, I cannot reccomend the entirety of Wormskin and the other Dolmenwood line enough.

Blood & Treasure Monster Book II is now available!

I have been contributing illustrations to John Starter Stater’s Zine Nod and to the second edition of his excellent Swords & Wizardry variant, Blood & Treasure.

After two years of work, he has finally released the Blood & Treasure Monster Book II.

I have 16 illustrations in the volume, 14 of which were commissioned specially for it, but there is so much more than my work to recommend it. Over a dozen artists have their work here, and as good as their work is, it is the text they are illustrating that is the star.

The volume of mythological resources mined for this are staggering, and the content ranges the gamuunt from oozes, to extraplanar creatures, undead, dragons, mutant dinosaurs and fey creatures.

The pdf can be got at OBS for $9.99.

The rest of B&T can be found here digitally, and here in print.

You can get the art seen above here.

As always, you can support my work on patreon!

Hall of Judgement, The Nun and progress on Heritage Mini’s

My kickstarter rewards for backing Douglas Cole‘s DFRPG supplement The Hall of  have arrived: Dungeon Grappling (which had its genesis in an article he wrote with Peter Dell’Orto for Tim Shorts‘ zine The Manor) I got these not only because I am a GURPS DF completist, and because I want to support 3rd party GURPS products, so that there will be more of them, but also because of the art. Doug had reached out to me at the beginning of the DG project, but I wasn’t able to work for him because I only digify black and white; I am not proficient enough in illustrator and its ilk to do digital color. (I will paint in acrylics for you (with very little editing possible), but give me specific proportions. I messed up a commission for Charlie Mason by painting it 8×10, and he needed 6×9) The art he chose to use is pretty damn good. He got Gennifer Bone, Michael Clarke, Juan Ochoa, Rick Troula, and Christian Villacis and also John Blaszscyk, Gerasimos Kolokas, Rick Toula, Roland Warzecha, Cornelia Yoder, and Dan Roy. Both books have a nice polished, high end feel to them.

Being largely norse in theme, here is not a lot I would use directly in my faux 14th century France clone game, but there a quite a lot of nice critters in the bestiary that  I do intend to use, and a very thoughtful implementation of humanoids as Fay creatures rather than rival hominids that makes me think of  Alan Gardner’s handling of the svart-alfar in The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.  I also have to implement the Damage Resistance trait from DFRPG for my creatures that are resistant to non-magical weapons, instead of making them all unkillable… like these.

Now, I just blew a couple of Black Tickets to see The Nun, which is Super-Catholic B-Movie Schlock in JamesWan’s shared universe of The Conjuring and Annabelle. Every haunted castle trope was used, but the set! The set was the thing that kept you from imagining that this was an old Hammer Film. It was a terrific castle with dungeons and a backstory that screams for gamification.  Scooby doo style splitting of the party at the worst possible times, innovative use of  (limited number of uses) Artifact, good boss monster, heavy Ravenloft atmosphere, and a bullshit excuse of why their Romanian guide spoke English. If you plan on running a game with these elements, it is worth watching for that alone.

The Miniatures that I deeply indebted myself to obtain are now primed. These are the 8 minis from the Crypt of the Sorcerer on the left ( fighter, wizard, dwarf, hobbit vs orc, skeleton, troll and sorcerer in the back row) and Caverns of Doom on the right (Back row: imp, vampire, skeletons, spider, rats, Dragon, ooze, Hobgoblin vs cleric, barbarian, elf, a different wizard, that same fighter and a thief).  I will update (infrequently I am sure) as I continue painting them.  What I wouldn’t give for the paints that came with the old heritage sets, their chainmail color was great, one of the closest matches I have found is Aquatec’s  pewter paint, but the consistency is different. I may have to use silver ish craft paint and use an ink wash to get the right effect.

Get this now GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Setting: Caverntown

Only $10 at warehouse 23 get it here

This comes very close to the way I run Northport.

What you get: 49 pages of how to run a slightly abstracted city that is built within bowshot of a collection of dungeons. There is significant interplay between guilds and a number of powerful (325-500pt) delvers who run the show, with agood feel for how they and your characters interact. No dungeons are presented, but plenty are suggested. It is a nifty and unique setting and a great way to base a campaign.

My first review

Ten foot pole just reviewed Beneath the Fallen Tower on their blog.

There are some harsh criticisms, but not unmerited. I am an amateur and my product shows it. I can read my handwritten notes, but it doesn’t mean anyone else can.  I will very likely upgrade the maps and bump up some of the room descriptions  There is also the problem of my placement of the entrances, and their lack of labeling in the pertinent text.

I had planned another entrance, and then forgot to remove the reference to it. Sorry to create confusion. Hopefully, I will be a little clearer and better developed with any further releases.

The Manor 9, Nod 33, and AES, Brass Revolution

Tim Short was one of my first patrons, and is the author of The Manor, a great little gaming zine that has, among other things, launched something that became Dungeon Grappling

This issue has not only a cover that Tim commissioned from me, but three other illustrations from my stock art, two of which were prompted by Tim.

He wrote this issue to be compatable with Erik Tenkar’s Swords & Wizardry Continual Light  and includes some custom rules for clerics, a great wilderness encounter table, and a tavern to be found in a dungeon.  I really like the characterizations he has done there, and am making a go of it myself.

Argento Pitts is a Squire with the 125 pt Veteran lens, from DF15, along with the knight/inkeeper lens from DF10., and a variation on the Foul Limb power up, from DF11, except it is considered a construct and not undead, has ST+4 and DR 20 vs non-magical weapons, and is an unnatural feature. He is stubborn, skinny, suspicious, and curious (the last two are quirk level.)

Gunnhild is a guard with bad temper, and a 10 point OPH, gives dirty looks. Kind of reminds me of Masugatan, a crass brute in my game.

Valac is a goblin Wizard, with the 125pt learned lens, has self defense pacifism, curious, wierdness magnet, and an obsession to  learn more. He has DR 20 to nonmagical weapons, but is vulnerable to meteoric iron ones.

His door is a construct with ST 20, 100 hp, DR 10, plus DR 20 to non magical weapons, effectively has Magelock at 25 skill, and can strike for thrust/ crush with a skill of 12, and has regular regeneration.

John Stater, my most consistent, prolific, and generous patron, just released Nod33 which contains a commissioned quintet of African Deities.

He also recently released 

Esoterica Exhumed, after the Unearthed Arcana, contains new classes and spells for Blood&Treasure, or any OSR type game, and includes two more of my illustrations,  for the spell Control Hair, and the Saboteur class.

You can get it here.

Another fine use of my stock art was made in the steampunk game,

AES, Brass Revolution. I haven’t given it a really thoughrough read through, but they seem to have used work from at least four different stock packs of mine., and I think the first use of my Space Opera Art in a publication.

I am always a sucker for airships.

 

 

As always, my stock art can be bought here

And my Tshirts and other products at Teepublic

And prints and more at Society6

Despite billing issues at Patreon, you can always support me there, at a flat monthly rate for cheaper than buying my bundles.