Uhluht'c Awakens

Gamicon Feb. 10-12 in Iowa City, IA

2012-01-29T09:21:00.000-08:00

Now that Gamicon in Iowa City is only a few weeks away I wanted to let people know that there will be a Goblinoid Games booth at this convention. I'll be manning the booth and running pickup games of anything that catches peoples' interest. The booth will be stocking most of my product lines, with a few extras like Pacesetter and Timemaster t-shirts and other swag.

So if you live in the midwest and like to hit some of these smaller cons drop in and say hi! The Iowa House Hotel has some great convention rates and is directly connected to the convention building. Be sure to call them and ask them about their Gamicon rate, last I checked it is very cheap and you'll get a better rate by calling than by booking online.

Hope to see some of you there!

Also I'll be at Fire & Ice in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, Feb. 24-26. I'll post a reminder about that one as the time approaches.

Pacesetter Reborn!

2012-01-12T13:06:00.000-08:00

From the mists of the 1980s a familiar brand reemerges...

It is with great pleasure that I announce that Goblinoid Games has purchased the Pacesetter logo and brand. The familiar Pacesetter logo and Pacesetter System™ brands will be used to identify our game line that includes TIMEMASTER, ROTWORLD, and other forthcoming games using the same universal Action Table for task resolution.

Pacesetter lives again!

Two men enter, one man leaves.

2012-01-09T11:13:00.001-08:00

In one corner we have Wizards of the Coast warming up their new contender for heavy-weight champion of the table-top fantasy role-playing game market. In the other corner we have Paizo, continuing to train their champion Pathfinder, who dethroned the D&D brand when 4th edition alienated too many of its fans.

Only one will leave the ring.

One of the issues that I think has either been obfuscated or just plain ignored is that more than anything else 5th edition is a response to Pathfinder. Whatever else WotC may say about including older editions in the new edition's design, they won't be a priority. They can't be. The ideological gap between old-school D&D and 3.5/4th is just too vast. There is no way to bridge that chasm. No, this is a heavy weight match for the big title. At the end of the day it won't impact old-school gaming in the slightest unless part of their strategy is to reprint older editions. Nothing short of that would bring fans of all editions back.

LL screen update

2011-12-28T10:17:00.000-08:00

Hi all, just wanted to post an update here on the progress of this project.

First, many thanks to all who preordered! I received a proof and everything looks good, so I gave the thumbs up for the printer to get started. Assuming all goes as planned, I should receive the print run at the end of the first week of January. Then I'll send Steve the copies that need to be signed and I'll get started on mailing all the non-signed orders. Once I receive the signed screens back from Steve those orders will go out. So everything is looking on schedule to complete all orders by the end of January.

For people who were unable to preorder, my plan is for the screens to go into distribution in March or thereabouts. However, in January I'll probably also send product to online retailers so keep an eye out at places like Noble Knight Games for earlier availability.

Only 6 days left for the LL screen Kickstarter!

2011-12-04T07:23:00.000-08:00

Preorders for the Labyrinth Lord Referee Screen will close after 6 more days. After that time the signed copies will no longer be available. After preorders are filled in January, the remaining print run will go into distribution, probably sometime in the first quarter of 2012. For this preorder unsigned screens are $10, but retail price will go up to $12.95 once they go to distribution.

The Pacesetter System Part 2: The Action Table

2011-11-21T15:13:00.000-08:00

It's a true shame that Pacesetter went out of business when it seemed like they were just hitting their stride. Of the products they published, it was really only CHILL that went on to enjoy future support, but the second edition used a revised system published my Mayfair Games.

I think if Pacesetter had survived longer the Action Table system would have become better known. It is a real gem, but if it suffered in any way other than its short published lifespan it was only because it is quite different from anything else and probably needs to be introduced to a reader in stages rather than all at once.

At its heart the system is a percentile system. I talked about attributes and how skill percentages are determined in the last article. Whenever the outcome for an event or action needs to be determined, like skills, paranormal talents, or some other kind of roll like avoiding the effects of poison, the player or referee will roll percentile dice.

There are two kinds of these checks. One is called a "general" check and the other is a "specific" check. If the check is a general check, you are only trying to roll equal to or less than the target number. Some skills and paranormal talents work this way, where you are only interested in a binary success or failure. So far that sounds pretty familiar, right? These kinds of rolls are common to pretty much all RPGs. The specific check is where things are different. Refer to the Action Table below (thanks Tim, I borrowed the one you posted on your blog!):

So let's say I'm rolling against my Gambling skill of 74%. You'll note that on the Action Table there are 10 columns under Defense Column. Usually skills use Column 3. If I roll 44 on 1d%, I subtract 44 from 74, with a result of 30. Looking at the Attack Margin Column I cross-reference a margin of 30 to column 2. The result is "C". What that letter means for a specific check when dealing with skills or paranormal talents is specifically tailored to the skill or talent. In this case it allows me a big bonus to cheat at gambling. Yeah me!

You will also note on the chart that ability checks usually use column 2. Sometimes a referee might decide a task is harder than usual and require a higher column number to roll on, thus limiting the degree of success that is possible.

But what about combat? One of the differences between the Action Table system and most other games is that essentially all weapons do the same damage. This was one of the hardest things for me to wrap my mind around at first. Most games are what I would call "front loaded". Damage is decided by perceived lethality of the weapon, and generally skill of use does not affect damage even though ability adjustments might. So a sword in the hand of a 1st level fighter in Labyrinth Lord will do the same damage as a 5th level fighter or even a 15th level fighter, though increased skill may be reflected in additional attacks at those higher levels. But with high skill also comes more attacks in the Action Table system, too.

But the Action Table system is "back loaded". Rather than split hairs about whether something deals 1d6 vs. 1d8 damage, the degree of success in a skill roll determines how well the weapon is used. When fighting melee combat the attacker matches the defender's equivalent skill percentage to the range of numbers above the Defense Column to see which column results are used. So for example, if I'm attacking someone with a sword, we use the defender's sword skill percentage to determine defense. This makes a lot of sense. He can use his skill to parry, anticipate my actions, and deflect damage. If the defender does not have the particular skill that the attacker is using, then he uses his Unskilled Melee ability (which all characters have) to decide the defense column.

So what's happened here are three things. The Action Table will have accounted for the attacker's skill when looking at attack margin, at the defender's ability in using his skill to decide the defense column, and third, the defense ability is also accounting for the ability to dodge or parry. So many games have a separate dodge skill, which in my opinion is a terrible way to handle dodge or parry. It often results in an endless combat circle of "I hit!" - "Wait, no you didn't, he rolled his dodge skill!"

Missile weapons, including everything from bows to laser guns, work just slightly different. There is a wider margin of chance for melee weapons. The defender does not use a skill to determine defense column because there is no chance to parry and dodge in the same way one might in a knife fight. Instead, chance plays the role here and the defender rolls a d10 to decide which defense column is used.

Aside from some situational modifiers, that's pretty much it. The Action System is actually not so complicated. You could sit down and play right now with this basic understanding. It is quite elegant in its ability to handle many situations within the table. Now of course, there can be more to it. There are various situational modifiers that many RPGs have that cal alter your skill roll. Characters with high strength can inflict more damage in melee combat, etc.

In this system characters have both stamina points and wound boxes. When wound boxes reach zero a character dies. When stamina reaches zero the character passes out, which could make him as good as dead depending on the situation. This is a gritty, deadly system.

I haven't decided yet if there will be a "Part 3" to this series. Maybe I should open it up to questions. Does anyone out there have any questions about the system? Has there always been something that baffled you about it? Just want a clarification? Fire away!

ROTWORLD print versions now available!

2011-11-15T16:19:00.000-08:00

The day of mass consumption of turkey flesh approaches, and what a better way to celebrate than by role-playing that you are fighting against undead flesh eaters! But they're after an entirely different white meat...

Now you can buy a perfect bound or hard cover print copy of ROTWORLD!

Labyrinth Lord Referee Screen Kickstarter Launched!

2011-11-10T09:18:00.000-08:00

Over the years there have been a number of requests for Goblinoid Games to publish a referee screen. I've launched a Kickstarter for this project, so drop on by and pledge your support! We're also offering signed screens exclusively through this Kickstarter opportunity.

The Pacesetter System Part 1: Intro and Characters

2011-11-07T11:10:00.000-08:00

Introduction

The Pacesetter house system, also called the Action Table System (ATS), was used in TIMEMASTER, CHILL (1st edition), Star Ace, and Sandman. Pacesetter was a company started by Mark Acres and colleagues, who broke away from TSR in the early 80s. There was a period in the early 80s where game companies were trying out a slightly different approach to RPG systems by using a chart from which most game resolution would reference.

As many readers already know, Goblinoid Games is the current owner of TIMEMASTER, and recently released ROTWORLD, a zombie survival horror game, using the same system. ROTWORLD is the first in a series of RPGs for this system that will cover various genres.

One of the things that separates ATS from other chart systems is the wide applicability and granularity. The system is gritty, and manages to be a functional universal system without feeling like it makes sacrifices in resolution complexity. This is (in my opinion) where some other universal systems (chart-based or not) fail. This post is the first in a series of posts where I talk about the system and some of my thoughts on its applications and strengths. Many people are unfamiliar with the ATS or haven't looked at it for many years, so this series is a way to bring everyone up to speed.

Characters

Characters are built based on eight basic abilities: Strength, Dexterity, Agility, Personality, Perception, Willpower, Luck, and Stamina. These abilities are generated initially by rolling 3d10 and adding together the results. This produces a bell curve, similar to using 3d6 in Labyrinth Lord. However, the ATS is a percentile and d10-based system, so to get these scores within that range the sum generated for each ability is doubled, then 20 is added, producing a range of 26-80. This is important because skills reference these abilities and ability checks also need to be applied to a range compatible with a d%.

All of my readers are familiar with RPGs, so these abilities will be self explanatory for our purposes. However, the Luck ability is something a lot of RPGs don't have, so I'll say a few things about that here. Luck can be used by a PC to reduce damage dealt by attacks. The Luck score generated at character creation can be permanently reduced to avoid damage. I like this mechanic because it meshes well with my old-school system sensibilities. Luck mechanics in some other games are bottomless pools. In the ATS, Luck is a very useful resource, but it is a resource, and when a PC is out of luck, well....he's out of luck! A character's Luck can also be used by the referee as a base percentage chance for a PC to avoid death in certain situations, or to simply have a lucky break at some point.

Skills

In the Action Table System skills are percentile-based. Each skill references one, two, sometimes even three, basic abilities, and is divided by the number of contributing abilities. So for example, Wrestling is Strength+Agility, divided by 2. Then, characters will have a level in the skill. There are three levels, Specialist, Expert, and Master. They grant +15, +30, and +55, respectively, to the base skill percent generated by abilities. At character creation a character can buy a skill at Expert level, but only through play and experience points can he raise it to Master.

One important and refreshing thing about skills in this system is that characters will start with only a few skills. Some skills default to abilities, and so they can be performed by anyone. I like skill-based systems generally, but when a character becomes a laundry list of 30 skills it is not just cumbersome in play, but it reflects a system philosophy that tries to identify a skill for about anything that a character can do. In my opinion this is the root of the problem with most people who dislike skill-based systems. So many mechanics are placed into skills that all characters have to be encyclopedias of skills. So ATS gets this right in creating a balance between having a smaller number of meaningful skills, but also in having a system that does not put characters in a straightjacket for doing other things not defined by skills.

Paranormal Talents

Paranormal talents (PTs) are supernatural abilities possessed by some characters. Obviously, these will not always be available to characters depending on the specific implementation of the ATS and the genre of game. For example, they are always a part of TIMEMASTER games, but are purely optional in ROTWORLD. The PTs available are not always the same either between games. PTs function in a similar manner to skills, being based on abilities and used as a percentage roll for resolution. The number of PTs characters start with also varies depending on the game, but in general characters start with only one or a few, and can buy more with experience. Using PTs costs Willpower. Characters have a fluid pool of Willpower that is based on the Willpower ability, and they regenerate points with rest.

This is where I'll leave the discussion for now. Next time I'll start to actually get into the Action Table and how skills, PTs, and other actions are resolved.

First Rotworld review

2011-10-29T04:39:00.001-07:00

Check out the first review of Rotworld here!

ROTWORLD now available in electronic format!

2011-10-26T12:06:00.001-07:00

As promised, ROTWORLD is now available, just in time for Halloween!

The electronic version is up for download, and print versions will follow by the middle of November.

The Rotting Dead Walk before Halloween!

2011-10-21T08:27:00.000-07:00

Still looking for a game to run for Halloween?

Goblinoid Games is pleased to announce that before Halloween we will release a new game of zombie survival horror.

Fight for survival in a world gone to rotters!

Visit the ROTWORLD website, and download the Action Table and character sheet.

The Rotting Dead Walk Among Us!

Realms of Crawling Chaos in distribution

2011-10-14T10:57:00.001-07:00

Just a heads up for anyone waiting to buy this book at your local game store--it is now available through distribution channels!

Star Explorer Print on Demand now available

2011-10-12T13:07:00.000-07:00

For those who may be waiting for a print option for Star Explorer, I got the proof back the other day and the game is now available via POD at The Game Crafter.

TIMEMASTER reprint now available

2011-10-04T16:15:00.000-07:00

Listen up recruits! We didn’t save you from death in your own time only to have you die at the hands of a stinking Demorean. So pay close attention. You were extracted a fraction of a second before your deaths because we recognized a talent in each of you that made you a good candidate for the Time Corps. Would you rather be rotting in the distant past or saving humanity’s future? That’s what I thought.

You’ll see and experience things in the Time Corps your momma never prepared you for. The cusp of human evolution? Been there. The meteor that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? I had to put it back on its collision course. I dined and drank with kings, and fought for scraps in the prison camps of Gliese 777 IV. The Demoreans will destroy us if they can, and you’re the last defense in time and space…

The reprint of the core TIMEMASTER rules is now available! The PDF ($4.99) has been updated at RPGnow--if you've already purchased the PDF you are able to download the updated version for free in your account.

The physical reprint is available in both hard cover ($28.95) and perfect bound ($18.95) versions.

The interior features new art by Mark Allen. The reprint combines the two manuals included in the original boxed set. The introductory adventure is now available as a free PDF.

Join the Time Corps and fight the Demoreans in the 4th dimension!

Star Explorer electronic version now available

2011-09-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

The electronic version for home printing and assemble is now up at RPGnow!

All files are high-res, so they are large but they will produce a high quality print for you.

The print on demand version will follow soon.

Geekdad at Wired talks about old-school D&D

2011-08-27T11:25:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to Geekdad's discussion about old-school D&D, with mention of retroclones as a great alternative to the original books. He says LL + AEC is his favorite version, I'm honored!

Otherworld Miniatures Official Labyrinth Lord Line Coming in September!

2011-08-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

Otherworld has announced the release of their first Official Labyrinth Lord Miniatures boxed sets, beginning in late September with the Level One Monsters boxed sets.

Check out the preview of the box art here!

Free one-page adventure at Gen Con

2011-07-25T07:15:00.000-07:00

Each publisher participating in the OSR booth at Gen Con this year will have one flyer that goes into bags when people purchase items at the booth. I decided that rather than waste the space on the other side I would include a free one-page adventure! Side 2 of the flyer includes a 20 area adventure for 1st level characters, titled "The Gibbering Tower." The adventure should provide 3-4 hours of play, and would be perfect for a pick-up game at the con.

This adventure is signed and numbered. There are 150 of them so be sure to hit the OSR booth early and check out all the great products from many different publishers. Also note that this adventure will not be provided anywhere else except in PDF form to Labyrinth Lord Society members on the weekend of Gen Con. So if you have not yet joined, drop on by the website to join up!

Stonehell Dungeon play reports and other thoughts about demo games

2011-07-12T04:52:00.000-07:00

For those who like reading play reports I wanted to direct your attention to James Mishler's blog, where is has posted a compilation of play reports so far from the sessions I'm running at Chimera Hobby Shop.

I've been running a biweekly game at the store and we've had four sessions. It's been a great experience so far. One of the things that I've always felt was true but couldn't quite get a bead on was the idea that there are many people out there who played old-school D&D and still would if they could. For whatever reason they don't have a group, or maybe they've lost touch with the scene when new editions came out. Other people who still prefer older editions may not even come to their local store anymore, except possibly to buy miniatures or another game that they're into. So far my experience at Chimera seems to confirm this (not just in recent weeks, but based on my discussions with James and observations about the store since September last year), as there are many old-schoolers who come in for other reasons and are lucky enough to have James there to explain the range of old-school products that are out there right now.

As a result of James and running games in the store we've brought in several people who played D&D "back in the day", not to mention some people who never gamed before at all. In our last session one gamer jumped in who is there on the same days James and I have run Labyrinth Lord over the last many months. He hadn't played in our sessions before, but this time he decided to give it a go. After talking with him it turns out that he did play first edition in the past but is now mainly into gaming with miniatures (Warhammer I think). He just wasn't interested in the new editions of D&D. He may not become a regular player, but our demo games were able to entice him back into the fold.

There are cases where a parent comes into the store who remembers playing old-school D&D in high school or college, and wants to introduce his/her child to RPGs now that he/she is old enough. James has turned more than one parent on to Labyrinth Lord in this situation. We're able to introduce a whole new generation to old-school gaming. Labyrinth Lord is doing fairly well in distribution, so I hope this is happening at other stores across the country.

Another thing I've learned is that it is impossible to determine all of this from internet feedback alone. There are a lot of people out there who use the internet to buy products, download resources, etc. but most never contact you or post on forums or blogs. Those of us who are active at communicating in this "community" on the internet can forget that we are the exception, not the norm. There is a whole silent audience out there. Some of the kids who show up at the game table in the store use free resources they've downloaded and that I'm not even aware of! Yet they've never posted anywhere in our community.

From an operational standpoint it can be challenging to run a large group for a demo game. James had been running Labyrinth Lord for several months before I started Stonehell, so the word had already been circulating in our community. Since I started we've always had at least eight people playing, and the last two times we've had 9 (plus play deaths require making new characters, taking table time). Things are always in flux, so even though a few people are pretty regular we always have new people or people who can come maybe every other time. What this means is that if they all show up at once I might find myself trying to run a group of 15-18!

If the numbers enlarge consistently it begs the question of how to handle it. Lucky for me James is here and if I wanted to split the party into two separate groups we could do that. Not everyone on the Labyrinth Lord Society Demo Team may have that option. I've thought about other possibilities, such as weekly signup. Since one of the goals of demo games in a store is to introduce new people, one might even have a policy that new people are allowed to reserve a spot by signing up, and returning people can join as space allows. It's hard to make a choice like that because it would suck to turn anyone away, which is why I have not tried it at this point. However, for other demo people it might be an option if you find yourself with this abundance of riches in players.

It's been a long time since I ran a group this big. My ideal group size would probably be about five if I were running the game at home. The added challenge to the large size is that the players and characters can change each session. The upside is that the demo sessions are extremely effective in getting the word out about Labyrinth Lord, the store has sold a lot of books, but the downside especially as time goes on is that due to the nature of the game I am limited in the way I can approach refereeing. There are areas I'd like to go into more depth, both with rules and complexity of the gaming environment, but when you are trying to keep a full table focused and moving you have to cut corners. It most cases for demo games it may not be necessary to increase complexity--but one reason I feel that way is because the regular attendees transition at some point from being new players to being seasoned players, and with large transient groups it is hard to add spice and keep things moving. One of the things this all boils down to is the question of whether you are able to demo a game to your best potential if the group size is not ideal.

Another challenge is the age range. We have two new players, one who is 10 years old and her mother, both never played any RPG before. It is absolutely delightful to see the enthusiasm of a young first time player. Everything is a novelty, from striking down your first zombie to buying a pony for your halfling adventurer. The hard part is indulging these natural desires to explore the small details of this new game while there are 8 other players, some only a little older but experienced RPGers, and others much older and have been playing for 30 years.

On the plus side, these are wonderful "problems" to have! One thing that is apparent is that there is fertile ground in my local area for old-school gaming and I will start thinking more seriously now about establishing a game convention. Probably something smaller and less formal the first few years, more like a "game day(s)" but we'll see how it goes.

Creatures of the Tropical Wastelands for Mutant Future

2011-07-06T04:43:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to give a heads up that Skirmisher Publishing has released a new source book for Mutant Future!

New Module: Shadowbrook Manor for Labyrinth Lord

2011-06-23T09:20:00.000-07:00

Patrick Kennedy brings us Shadowbrook Manor, a challenging "funhouse" adventure for characters of levels 1-3.

Once a powerful proponent of Law, the Archmage Tazimack the Red was eventually driven mad by a fear of mortality. As he slipped into insanity his retirement home began to reflect the chaotic bent of his mind. Long after Tazimack’s unnaturally animated body has disintegrated, his manor house remains as a shadow cast by a twisted intellect. Can the characters bring order to this chaos?

Find it in print and in PDF format!

Review of Mutant Future on RPGnet

2011-06-20T07:31:00.000-07:00

There is a nice review of MF just posted on RPGnet. Looks like he is reviewing the version with the old art, but not a bad review nonetheless!

Is there a market for campaign worlds?

2011-06-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to throw the question out there. I could be wrong but my perception is that the one product that old-school gamers desire least of all is a campaign world. Does that seem accurate? How interested are you in published campaign worlds, and what would one need to be like to be of interest--in terms of presentation and originality? Do you prefer straight up typical fantasy or does a world need a "twist"? How far is too far when trying to be "original"? Just testing the waters.

The term "Retro-Clone" keeps evolving

2011-06-14T08:40:00.000-07:00

Dave recently talked a bit about the term retro-clone on his blog. I've started to notice something else interesting going on lately. It seems like people are now extending the term to include things like Palladium Fantasy, Rolemaster, Tunnels and Trolls, and other early fantasy games from the 80s. There are two interesting parts to this. One is that the term seems to be losing the temporal element it originally had, to include things that are "retro" by virtue of actually being old, not newly "created" to be retro. The second is that the "clone" element, even though it already had become blurred from it's original intent, is now seeming to encompass fantasy heartbreakers in general regardless of game system. Or in other words, any early fantasy RPG also that was created as a reaction to early D&D. There also seems to be an element of shift so that anything claiming to capture an "old-school feel" regardless of system (tweaked d20, or something pretty different), is being called a retro-clone.

Has anyone else noticed this? Where do you think this is going?

Labyrinth Lord and the Advanced Edition Companion Reordered

2011-06-13T16:07:00.000-07:00

Almost out in the warehouse, more now on the way!

The OSR Publishing Group at Lulu is Dead.

2011-06-11T10:53:00.000-07:00

Over two years ago I started the Old School Renaissance Group Store at Lulu. It was an effort to "unify" the OSR, or keep track of the various published materials from different sources. It was met with much enthusiasm and was well support for several years. I think it helped a lot of people track down products they never would have known about otherwise. I became very busy and didn't put as much effort into updating it and keeping it going for the last year or so, and today I sought to rectify that to reinvigorate it and the Labyrinth Lord Publishing Group store. Unfortunately, I discovered that Lulu recently stopped supporting groups.

The store still exists for the time being but no new products can be added. So the store is effectively dead. Despite how large the OSR has grown, I still think there could be a need to create a kind of "hub" for publishers. I have a few ideas about how to do that, but as much as I wish I could maintain such a thing I have to be realistic in that I simply don't have the time. There are added headaches in deciding what to include and what not to. An ideal website would allow each publisher to update his/her own publisher info page. In any case, if anyone is willing to step up to host and maintain such a site I'd love to have a discussion about how to do it.

As I write this I'm actually a little surprised at how sad it makes me that the group store is dead. At the time it was made I felt it was a very positive thing, uniting people who were all into the same kind of gaming across the various clones and publishers. It was a way of showing that we don't have to break apart and faction into various micro-niches of competition. Maybe that hope is already unrealistic because of how much the OSR has grown since 2009. Also, there are more delivery methods today for POD than just Lulu, also more companies only offer print products from their own stores, so trying to create a group store would be almost impossible. Still, a kind of hub to direct people to various publishers and other sources might be doable.

Dungeon Module ASE1 by Henchman Abuse

2011-06-11T09:01:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to give a shout out about Henchman Abuse, and their new module for Labyrinth Lord. Dungeon Module ASE1 is an impressively large module that a lot of game play can be squeezed from. It is gonzo in the sense that it incorporates a lot of science fantasy, which could be an injection of something fresh to you campaign. Henchman Abuse was kind enough to send me a PDF comp copy, so I wanted to give it a mention here.

DCC RPG: Observations and Comments

2011-06-09T10:13:00.000-07:00

When I downloaded the DCC RPG beta rules I have to admit that when I moved past the cover image I was greeted with something that caught me completely by surprise. I guess I was expecting either a full color interior with art more in the style of the cover, or at least fancy layout with b/w interior. What greeted me was a very definite and probably exaggerated presentation of old-school styled art and layout. As I looked through the beta release I realized that the design and presentation is very strongly influenced by the internet phenomena we commonly call the OSR, which surprised me even more. Some readers will think, “well duh” to that, but the reason it surprised me is because a little over two years ago Joseph Goodman contacted myself and some other old-school publishers about getting Labyrinth Lord and other materials into distribution (which was just a few months before I relaunched LL back into distro myself). I had a few conversations with Joe that left me with the impression that he felt the online scene was too small to market to alone, and that more of an effort needs to be directed at stores and gamers at conventions. So to come full circle, this is why it surprised me that the DCC RPG would be so influenced by opinions from blogs and forums. I think in some ways Joe was right in that it’s always good to try to widen an audience, but for him to inform much of system design and presentation based on the internet surprised me.

This is very interesting for a few reasons. One reason is that it looks like the “OSR”, whatever it is or isn’t, has reached a level of influence that many people would have never anticipated. This isn’t to say the influence is huge, because I still think the majority of people who don’t frequent forums etc. know nothing of it. Nonetheless, WotC has clearly noticed it and reacted to it, and others continue to as time goes on. Another thing that is interesting about this is that I’ve learned that the majority of publishers these days receive most of their income through internet sales/orders, with that being direct sales, POD, or with electronic books, or in many cases a combination of these. Sales through traditional distribution, for most, are smaller in number and profits are less per unit because of the distribution structure.

What all of this comes around to is that my impression of the DCC RPC is that it has been designed and presented specifically to attract people from the OSR and to touch some of the “nerves” of the OSR that are frequently talked about. The game probably is not aimed at people who are really die hard about playing only the original games books, but there are many people in the OSR who are more flexible, and might be willing to play something like the DCC RPG even with its 3rd edition heritage.

I’m not going to do a complete review of the DCC RPG, partly because it is probably not appropriate for me to do so. I write this as a person interested in old-school D&D and the “revival” of that, however you decide to label it. I’ll talk about four of the “OSR nerves” that I think Goodman is trying to hit and my thoughts about it.

Appendix N: This is one of the areas that immediately tells me Goodman is aiming for the online OSR movement. If you could gather all of the OSR bloggers and a bunch of regular posters to old-school D&D forums into one room, I bet the majority of them would know what you are referring to if you ask “what is Appendix N?” Now go into your local game store and grab a random gamer and tell him you heard about a cool new fantasy RPG based on Appendix N. “Appendix huh?”

But I think this approach has been successful in terms of getting online attention. What perplexes me about it though, aside from the lack of “real world” recognizability, is that I always thought the wave of Appendix N blog and forum posts that pop up now and again was a far more casual discussion, not a doctrine, and wouldn’t warrant not just a marketing angle but also inform a lot of system design. I’m not going to go into whether I think the system design lives up to this “ideal” if you can call it that. I leave that to others. My main point is that by hyperfocusing on Appendix N it feels like there is an attempt to fetishize or create an idol of something that isn’t as big of a deal as Goodman seems to think it is. Maybe I’m wrong? Old-school D&D is already designed with Appendix N in mind, after all.

“You’re not a hero.”: One of the dichotomies (maybe the most important) between “new school” vs. “old-school” D&D is the attitude toward characters. The new school approach that really became emphasized in D&D 3.x and even more so in 4th edition is the idea that characters are (super) heroes. They don’t die often and they start out with powers/abilities way outside of the reach of old-school characters and normal men. The term “hero” really just means way above the human norm. Old-school gamers of D&D have often criticized this approach, preferring that a PC crawl up from being a weak 1st level character toward something that might seem more heroic. This kind of translates into the idea that one should “earn” that additional power, often through many character losses along the way. I think this is one area where Goodman took that sentiment and exaggerated it too far in the DCC RPG. The tagline “You’re not a hero” is most definitely a reference to this old-school philosophy, but to me it seemed to miss some of the point. The DCC RPG sort of goes for a soft Hackmaster angle, but in the end I think it takes the idea of character mortality further than it needs to. By default in classic D&D character survival is precarious. Something not often talked about as a reality of this is that many people houserule various ways to increase survivability—max hit points at 1st level, healing potions for the starting group, survival below 0 hit points with one method or another, etc. But in the end upping character mortality (to me) in the DCC RPG doesn’t make it “more” old-school than existing games, and maybe even creates an imbalance. It felt like an attempt to ratchet up this concept to a higher level, when it is already higher than a lot of old-school players deal with by the book anyway.

Old-school art/layout: Personally I think this is one of the areas that the DCC RPG both succeeds and fails at simultaneously. It succeeds in that it includes a lot of very old-school art by some great artists. It fails to me in that it doesn’t seem to strike a great balance between homage and aping. As others have pointed out, a few of the art pieces are very clearly copies of some pieces from the Moldvay/Cook B/X set, a move that is very perplexing to me due to the obvious copyright issues on one hand (they also did not fill out the copyright section of the OGL correctly, they left out the SRDs). But on the other hand, because that combined with the number of other homage pieces gives the impression that the DCC RPG is either floundering for its own image (which had a great start in the cover), or it is trying to blast its readers with an overload of old-school art homage and art/page density in order to influence perceptions of the game beyond (or in spite of) the actual gaming content. Is that a fair assessment? I’m not sure. There is a definite message being conveyed(“this is old-school”), but maybe it is being said to forcefully.

Tables: One of the things old-school gamers love is a good table for determining random outcomes. In fact I’d say that after the issue of heroes vs. adventurers, one of the other big differences between the new and old schools of D&D is the degree to which the characters’ fates and the game in general is left to random die rolls. Accordingly, the DCC RPG includes a lot of tables. But I wonder if they are the wrong kind of tables? Or at least, too many of what might be the right kind in some circumstances? Again this is an area where it felt to me like the DCC RPG was designed with a laundry list of old-school elements. The randomness of the spells, for me, is off-putting. I understand and like the core concept, but for every spell to be like that changes spell casting in a way that removes it from the heritage the DCC RPG is trying to embrace. It really becomes a sort of “wild magic” game. There are other ways unpredictable magic could have been introduced, perhaps even in a modular way so people can use it or leave it. For example, instead of constant uncertainty in spell casting what if the uncertainty is only introduced when magics from more than one caster, or maybe a caster in proximity to some other magical effect, are operating with a certain range. You can get a kind of pulp fiction vibe from magic in various ways.

There are some positive elements to the DCC RPG, too, lest readers think I’m being too negative. I like the flavor of the “Gods of the Eternal Struggle,” even if I’m a bit hesitant on the system execution of turning unholy. I like the concept of the spell tables and their effects, even if it makes magic a bit too random for my tastes. In the end I can’t (and won’t) say whether I think the DCC RPG is a “good” or “bad” game. What I am left with is a lot of confusion about who this game is written for. Clearly from the above discussion, much of it is geared toward the OSR, with varying levels of success. But the inclusion of things like 3rd edition saving throws and AC, or old-school thief skill percentages and separate class experience charts, seem to make the game too old-school for some and not old-school enough for others. I suppose the real question is whether there has been enough of a balance achieved, like in Castles & Crusades, to attract a similar fan base. We’ll see how it all shakes out. Since much of the response to the DCC RPG has seemed to be luke warm right now it’s hard to say, but it is a beta release after all, so the jury is still out. In any case I wish Goodman Games much success with it.

Vigilance Press Releases "Nuclear Sunset", a world setting for Mutant Future!

2011-06-07T15:08:00.001-07:00

Vigilance Press has been a publisher of old-school RPG products for several years. Today they've thrown their hats in the ring of support for Mutant Future with the release of Nuclear Sunset, the first in a series of books describing an all new post-apocalyptic world setting.

I'm delighted to see additional support for Mutant Future. This is the first setting to be released for the game. Here is a description of the product:

Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest is the first installment in a post-apocalyptic campaign setting.

Though written with Mutant Future in mind, this campaign is almost 100% mechanics-free and could easily be adapted to any post-apocalyptic rules set.

Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest contains a map of the region, description of settlements and ruins and a full slate of post-apocalyptic organizations, including:

Hell's Heart: This enormous biker gang strikes terror into the entire southwest as they move from town to town, raping and pillaging with impunity.

The 88th: This pre-war military unit was considered a great experiment in fielding an all-synthetic battlefield command. They have bided their time since the apocalypse and know the time is ripe for them to take control of this shattered world.

The Cartel: This crime family has maintained the family business since before the Earth was destroyed in the great war. In fact, for these ruthless criminals, business has never been better.

The Marshalls: In the dark days immediately following the great war, a group of self-appointed vigilantes rose from the darkness to maintain justice.

In a land where law is often a comforting dream, the Marshalls settle for justice, even revenge, striking fear in the hearts of the wicked and cruel.

Free Labyrinth Lord Online Utilities

2011-05-30T11:08:00.000-07:00

People who are not regulars to the Goblinoid Games forums may be missing out on some of the great utilities being posted online to make your Labyrinth Lord games easier. So I thought I'd post a link to a few of them. These may not be totally inclusive (there is so much material these days it's hard to keep up), so if anyone wants to direct people to additional resources in the comments please feel free.

Djeryv's Graveyard: Click on the Labyrinth Lord link on the left. There are a number of useful resources there, but I particularly want to draw your attention to a few of the items. The dungeon map creator assembles a random set of geomorphs contributed from a number of sources, to create a new map each time you reload the page. Number areas and then use the Random Dungeon Area generator to come up with a list of randomly designed areas, following the system in the Labyrinth Lord rules. There is also a Monsters & Treasure Assortment generator, to create a booklet in the style of the old resource of the same name. The other thing I will point out before you explore all of the great utilities is the Monster Listing. You can download the PDF of a complete listing of all creatures from the LL core rules and the Advanced Edition Companion, with the appropriate abbreviated game statistics.

Mithril & Mages: This is a relatively new site offering a growing number of free labyrinth Lord utilities. Explore some of the other items posted there, but I particularly want to mention the Labyrinth Lord Treasure on Demand section. You can use this to generate random lists of treasure computed for any LL hoard class. Or if you are in a hurry download any of several complete treasure books, akin to the old Monster & Treasure Assortments. The you get an entire book of 100 randomly generated treasures for each of the hoard classes--that's a book of over 40 pages! Very useful for just going down a list to hand out treasure, or roll on it randomly with a d%.

Goblinoid Games Travels Back in Time!

2011-04-27T15:49:00.000-07:00

Goblinoid Games has always taken inspiration from the spirit of the 70s and 80s, publishing retro games such as Starships & Spacemen, Labyrinth Lord, and Mutant Future. Now we are pleased to announce that Goblinoid Games has been recruited into the Time Corps and is traveling back in time to bring a new classic title into the family.

Goblinoid Games has purchased the rights to TIMEMASTER: Adventures in the 4th Dimension! Originally published by Pacesetter in 1984, TIMEMASTER was an innovative RPG for its time (pun intended), presenting one of the earliest percentile “chart-based” game systems and a heavily supported and playable game of time travel; a feat few have been able to repeat. TIMEMASTER never suffered from the commonly perceived problems of time travel games, as it set out a very playable premise based on a number of “laws” of time travel, and infinite universes. A referee can run highly accurate historical games if desired, or fudge the details since it is in the distant past of the setting or even in an alternate timeline.

Lurching into action, your battered chronoscooter crosses the void of time and space. Another lurch, and the vertigo fades. The countryside comes into view. Knights in armor battle, clanging sword against shield, and then someone blasts at your neck with a laser beam. Once again, all of Time is a mess, and as an agent of the Time Corps, you must set this world straight or die trying! Adventure to any place, any time, in this universe and beyond! The TimeMaster Roleplaying Game makes you master of the "Fourth Dimension", guiding you to the ultimate adventure in history, legend, and science fiction. fight cunning aliens and savage renegades who twist Time to their own purposes. Only skill and wit stand between the world you know and absolute chaos!

The current time in the game is in the 72nd Century, leaving a wide swath of time between (our) today and the future for the referee to design. History in your campaign could have taken various paths over such a vast time period. For example, characters could go back to the beginnings of interstellar travel, or the post-apocalyptic period following the blights and radioactive fallout of the third world war, if you envision your milieu following that timeline. The possibilities are quite literally endless.

Join the ranks of the Time Corps, and you can be the Master of Time!

The TIMEMASTER product line is currently available in electronic format, and in the coming months the line will be released via print on demand. Note: the electronic files currently available are identical to what has been offered previously. As the books become ready for POD the electronic files will be updated as well, and will be much higher quality. Anyone who purchases the current version will be able to download the upgrades later free of charge!

For people unfamiliar with this game or who just need to fill gaps in the product line, the entire electronic product line is being offered at 60% off the regular electronic price for a limited time! The product line currently includes the original rule set that included a rule book, sample adventure, and campaign guide in addition to 12 modules and an indispensable expansion book.

Over the next year we plan to support the TIMEMASTER product line in several ways, so watch for future announcements!

Mutant Future sold out in distribution

2011-04-10T08:45:00.001-07:00

The first print run for MF that went to distribution has sold out of the warehouse...more on the way soon!

STAR EXPLORER update and play surface preview

2011-04-05T09:11:00.000-07:00

Things are moving along toward a release of STAR EXPLORER, probably late this month. I've decided to make the game available both as a PDF that can be assembled at home and as a print on demand game at The Game Crafter (all retail prices are yet to be determined). Because of the components available, the game surface of the POD version will be sized a little differently than the PDF version. The PDF version is slightly larger. The game board for the POD version will be printed on two 10" x 16" boards that will be placed side by side for play. As I understand it the boards are not folded, they ship in a box to fit their size, so this should make it easier to set them side by side and extend the life of the components.

Here is a preview of the play surface.

Labyrinth Lord Second Edition on the way! Re-envisioned from Appendix J!

2011-04-01T05:42:00.000-07:00

Many people may have noticed over the last few years that the "retro-clone backlash" has been building. Increasing accusations of a lack of innovation, contempt for not "getting on with the times" and other variations of these arguments have suggested that retro-clones should not exist or have no place in the gaming world of today. Some publishers wanting to break into the market created by the growing interest in retro games try to distinguish themselves by "innovating" 3e lite in different ways for new RPGs.

I've always prided Goblinoid Games on being responsive to customer demand, so after much soul-searching I've decided to discontinue Labyrinth Lord in it's current form, and revise and re-envision it with a stronger 3e lens. It's time to adopt the superior rules that have been developed by better-informed game designers! But wait, this won't be yet another retro-clone!

There are a number of similar games out there already, and others in development. There are already 3e lite versions that try to present a pseudo-1e or classic feel with the innovative and updated 3e mechanics, and still more in development that use some aspect of the original game as a spring-board, such as reinterpreting the entire game based on Appendix N of the 1e DMG. I'd like to take advantage of a spin like that before someone else beats me to it, so the new Labyrinth Lord will be totally redesigned taking inspiration from Appendix J: Herbs, Spices, and Medicinal Vegetables.

What if Gygax and Arneson had not been quite so interested in medieval battles and weaponry, but had degrees in botany instead? What if they were less inclined to war games but instead spent their Saturdays creating tinctures and tending their herb gardens? Think about it. No really, think about it! Not only that, but what if they didn't have to design all the rules themselves starting from proverbial sticks and stones, but could instead base their game on "more advanced technology," if you will, that already exists in the 3e SRD?

If you can wrap your mind around all of those alternative histories, you start to get a feel for what Labyrinth Lord: Herbalists and Vegetable Adventurers is all about!

You're not a hero. You're a vegetable in a world of vegetarians. You battle for your perennial lives in dank light-less worlds inhospitable to photosynthesizers, against creatures with an insatiable hunger for plant-based nutrients!

Traditional Vancian magic, classic races, and standard classes will be removed. All races will be built as race-classes on the concept of sentient vegetables. Labyrinth Lord: Herbalists and Vegetable Adventurers will feature the following classes:

Carrot Assassins,
Parsnip Priests,
Broccoli Barbarians,
Zuchini Vegemancers,
Beet Herbalists, and last but not least,
Wasabi Warriors!

In the coming weeks expect to find previews of some of these classes, and a sneak peek at some of the new monsters that will strike fear into the plant vascular systems of characters! Here are just a few of monsters you will see:

Hydroponic Elemental
Blight Swarm
Zinc Deficient Zombies
Alluring Algae Amazons
Turnip Trolls
...and many more!

This is an exciting time for retro gaming! Appendix J!

STAR EXPLORER!

2011-03-18T14:37:00.000-07:00

Goblinoid Games has purchased the rights to STAR EXPLORER, the role-play board game that takes place in the same universe as Starships & Spacemen. Originally published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1982, this classic game of space exploration has been long out of print and hard to obtain. The game is currently being converted to PDF format for download and home assembly, and should be ready to purchase at our online store within the next two weeks. Depending on demand, the game may be brought back into print as a physical product as well. The PDF release will feature the original green playsheet for people wanting the original, and a revised playsheet for those who want a fresh look. The rulebook will account for errata and minor rule revisions that have been implemented over the last 29 years.

From the back of the box:

Now you too can be a STAR EXPLORER!

In this game of exploration and confrontation you play the role of the Captain of a StarShip of the Federation. You are on a mission to explore several new worlds.

On the way, your StarShip may encounter the hazards of space. You may be called upon to perform your secondary mission of keeping the StarLanes free from pirates.

Although an uneasy truce exists with the Zangid Empire, each encounter with one of their vessels is potentially explosive.

Once you begin your voyage you must decide how your ship will be equipped. You must also choose your crew from the available manpower. You then set out on your exploration mission.

STAR EXPLORER is a role-play board game for as many as four players. It can even be played solitaire since competition is directed more against the universe as presented in the game than against the other players.

The player who completes his mission quickly and with a string of successful resolutions to encounters will do well.

The game contains:

A 17” x 22” mapsheet which contains the stellar display, space combat display, and a number of handy reference charts. This will be provided as four tiles for home printing, and as one sheet for printing at a print shop.

A 8.5” x 11” sheet of counters to be cut out that represent crew teams, ships, hazards, and planets.

A ship logsheet and planetary logsheet, to be printed for record keeping.

A 16 page rulebook.

Dogs in the Dungeon

2011-03-18T07:58:00.000-07:00

Available at RPGnow!

Dogs in the Dungeon

This article presents new optional rules for using dogs in the dungeon as useful companions for the Labyrinth Lord rules set, and is usable with other basic or advanced FRPGs. In addition to new rules for using dogs, new war dogs, scenthounds, waterhounds, sighthounds, and two new exotic dog types are detailed to add variety to the kinds of dogs that may be employed by PCs.

This article refers to the Labyrinth Lord core rules and the Advanced Edition Companion, both of which are available at RPGnow and the Goblinoid Games website. Free no-art versions are available as well.

The Eye of Terror!

2011-03-16T06:54:00.000-07:00

As many people will remember, Otherworld Miniatures will be releasing licensed Labyrinth Lord miniatures boxed sets, scheduled to be released this spring after a number of delays related to sourcing box components. Despite those setbacks they have been busy working away on more figures, with an Eye of Terror to be released in a few weeks!

Lulu vs. RPGnow POD

2011-03-11T11:19:00.001-08:00

[PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT]

I've been seeing more and more reviews in various places of print quality comparing the POD products of Lulu vs. RPGnow. I just wanted to post a brief note about this because I think it is important for everyone to know that Lulu and RPGnow use the same printer, Lightning Source. We need to dispel the myth that the printers are different.

All short run printing (in general) is done via digital printing (essentially high quality laser printers for text), whether ultimately through LS or some other printer, which means you will likely see more variation between individual books compared to offset printing of many thousands of books. Add to this the variation of individual printer machines, of which a printer may have several.

The point being that any variation people see between the services of Lulu and RPGnow has nothing to do with the front end the book was ordered from, but the back end at printing, which is the same company. The quality of the product is identical between these companies.

[/PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT]

Mutant Future now in distribution!

2011-03-04T21:42:00.000-08:00

As the title says, Mutant Future is now working its way through distribution channels! If you prefer to shop online, you can also purchase the book from fine online retailers such as Noble Knight Games.

In addition, both Labyrinth Lord and the Advanced Edition Companion have been restocked and should be available for order again through wholesale channels.

As always, if you prefer to skip the middlemen and buy via print on demand, visit our online POD store.

GM's Day Sale!

2011-03-02T15:41:00.001-08:00

If there are any Goblinoid Games PDFs you've been meaning to pick up, be sure to drop on by RPGnow where we have a discount on all our products for GM's Day!

You wanted a Rosetta Clone.

2011-02-02T19:55:00.000-08:00

You got it! As John Adams of Brave Halfling Publishing recently announced, their new original edition clone will be designed to match terminology with Labyrinth Lord.

What does that mean? It means for the first time in the OSR two publishers are working together to unify their games, instead of working totally separately and possibly further fragmenting old-school gamers.

What will that mean? It means that in the design of Delving Deeper instead of inventing new and different terminology, like some spell or monster names, or saving throw names, etc. There will be a coordinated effort to make these things consistent between Labyrinth Lord and Delving Deeper.

Sometime back a number of people voiced frustration with all the new games coming out, all just slightly incompatible in ways that might make using modules between games a little tricky. John and I realized we had a chance to collectively create the Rosetta Clone everyone has been looking for. Between Delving Deeper and the Labyrinth Lord core rules and Advanced Edition Companion, for the first time the full range of old-school fantasy will be available in a way that makes any modules or other supplemental material easily ported between games.

We'll all be speaking the same language toward the same goal!

So, for real this time, "Zee game is Zee Zame." Just different flavors.

Realms of Crawling Chaos...now available!

2011-01-22T17:15:00.000-08:00

Get the electronic file here and the print version here!

The book will go into distribution sometime early this summer.

Realms of Crawling Chaos...sooner rather than later!

2011-01-21T11:25:00.000-08:00

Due to all the rest of the art arriving in fast time and some other factors, I'm anticipating the release of RoCC within the next several days to a week at most! I sent on the free preview to the Labyrinth Lord Society Organizer, Dave Macauley, and I'm sure it will go out to members soon.

Goblinoid Games to participate in the OSR booth at Gen Con!

2011-01-13T10:57:00.000-08:00

Joe Browning of Expedition Retreat Press is organizing an OSR booth for Gen Con! They will be carrying Goblinoid Games products among the many fine products by other old-school publishers. See Joe's announcement here.

RoCC Preview for LLS Members!

2011-01-08T16:53:00.000-08:00

About a week or two before the release of Realms of Crawling Chaos, Labyrinth Lord Society members will receive a free sample of the book, one page from the spells section, one page from artifacts, and one from monsters.

We have 200+ members at this point, have you joined yet?

Rehashing is the new expression of house rules

2011-01-07T14:45:00.000-08:00

There has been some talk lately about whether we are seeing too much "rehashing". Part of this (at least as far as I can tell) came with the announcement by Goodman Games about their upcoming Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG.

I think that's because we are inundated with so much more now than in 2006-2007, it's easy to forget the history of all this. The first two "true clone" efforts (as I define it here), OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord, were attempts not to rehash but to keep these two rule sets in print. This is an important thing to keep in mind, because at the time this was a completely new phenomenon. They were not created to put a new spin on anything, they were created to fill a niche that 3 and 4 years ago desperately needed to be filled. When these two rules sets were released people were still waiting to see if myself, Stuart Marshall, and to a lesser extent Matt Finch (who had by then basically left the OSRIC project) would be the canaries in the coal mine, whether we'd be sued into oblivion. When that didn't happen, we've seen a proliferation of systems with more in development.

There's nothing wrong with that. It's only natural now that people have the tools that they can take the work previously done and alter it to suit their idiosyncratic needs. This is the new way of expressing house rules. Why? Because why add your house rules to an existing system, when you can cut and paste a full rules set pretty quickly, rewriting bits here and there? You can make the rules "your own" in a sense. All of that is great. It's what open gaming is all about, and I am proud to have contributed to helping make that happen.

However, the part a lot of people haven't figured out yet (and the thing that IMHO is causing the angst) is that each time a new house rule rules set emerges no one is under any obligation to care.

I think people are feeling OSR fatigue. Their arms are getting tired from all the high-fiving, but it doesn't have to be that way. I'm not saying these efforts should be ignored, but not every effort needs to be so aggressively "supported" by the community. People don't need to feel obligated to buy everything. Open gaming has revolutionized how people approach their home games. We're going to see so many of these tweaked games from here on out that trying to keep track of them much less buy them all will be futile.

As for Dungeon Crawl Classics, I wish him all the best in the effort. I really, truly do. Just as the old-school rules are being rehashed, so have the d20 rules for a very long time. Everything from True 20 to Castles & Crusades and many in-between keep rehashing, simplifying d20, giving it a twist here or there. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Will another rehash of d20 stand out? Who knows? But Goodman Games has the same right as all of the OSR publishers who want to put their own stamp on the rules.

This is all really about the fact that for the first time in the 30+ year history of RPGs the gamers have the tools (easy POD and electronic publishing) and freely available source material (OGL, all the SRDs and open content rule sets) to express themselves. Let them! We just need to let go of the idea that we have to pay attention to all of it. We just can't. Let it take on the life of its own that it inevitably will, and create the kind of stuff you want to see. You can only create what you're passionate about.

Realms of Crawling Chaos...coming late winter!

2011-01-06T16:19:00.000-08:00

I started this project in the late spring of 2008. It took a backseat for a long time so I could get other projects done (not to mention a pesky dissertation) but with no more further ado...

In R’lyeh, Cthulhu Stirs…

Evil cultists consummate their union with Shub-Niggurath in dark woods no other mortals dare go. Alien terrors lurk in the underworld; their vast riches wait, or their incomprehensible powers could leave you broken, dead, or worse. Adventure in underworlds filled with horrible entities, or the ruins of alien beings that enslaved the ape-like ancestors of mankind. Seek hidden secrets from the arctic wastes to dark, briny seas. But as you approach the ocean, what are those strange longings you feel?

Realms of Crawling Chaos is a Lovecraftian Dark Fantasy campaign supplement for Labyrinth Lord and the Advanced Edition Companion. Referees can incorporate the new material into existing campaigns, or design an entirely new milieu of gritty sword and sorcery gaming.

In this book you will find:

New player races from the works of H. P. Lovecraft, including white apes, white ape hybrids, sea blood, and subhumans. New races are presented both as race-class options and as races for use with advanced classes.

New spells

New monsters

New artifacts and a system for designing unique artifacts

Rules for psionics, fully compatible with Mutant Future

Pages: 64

Written by Daniel Proctor and Michael Curtis

Labyrinth Lord and the Advanced Edition Companion sold out!

2011-01-02T15:35:00.000-08:00

I've been anticipating another print run and I got confirmation a few days ago that these have sold out of the warehouse. More print runs on the way!

Mutant Future: Revised Edition now available!

2010-12-15T16:38:00.001-08:00

The revised edition of Mutant Future is now available at our print store and electronic store!

Got the proofs today and they look spectacular!

The Goblinoid Games forums have moved!

2010-12-15T10:00:00.000-08:00

The time had finally come to host my own forums. The ads on the free forums were just too intrusive to keep the boards on the old site. In addition, I learned that the owners of the free site will not allow me to back up the old forums at all...so I figured that it was better sooner than later to move them.

The old forum will remain up as an archive, though since it is hosted by another company it could disappear at any time. All current play-by-post games will remain on the old forums so as not to disrupt them. Any new p-b-p games will start on the new forums.

Because of the nature of this transition, all members will have to register again. Sorry for the inconvenience!

http://goblinoidgames.com/forums/

Mutant Future: Revised Edition coming in late December!

2010-11-29T19:13:00.000-08:00

As promised earlier this year, Mutant Future will enter traditional distribution! To prepare it for its debut, it's getting a face lift with an all new cover and a lot of new interior art (but not all, the stock art and public domain art will be replaced, which is quite a lot).

In the meantime check out the new cover art by Mark Allen!

[Petty Gods] Offer for contributors

2010-11-09T16:06:00.000-08:00

Most people reading this are aware of James M's Petty Gods project. I just wanted to post a quick note that I have given James some RPGnow coupon codes to give out to contributors of art or writing (or layout, etc., anyone who helps out with the book) so that they can get a free copy of the PDFs with full art of Labyrinth Lord and the Advanced Edition Companion!

So if you don't have these PDFs yet and you want to contribute to the Petty Gods project, whip up a God and send it on to James!

Need an idea for a God? Here are a few topics I had brainstormed (but I sent in a God of a different type than these):

Pit traps
Underground waters
Tentative investigations (using 10’ poles to find traps, etc.)
Torture devices (maybe even a god for each device, how petty is that!?)
Alchemy
Swimming
Flesh
Zombies
Prey
Pipes
guard dogs
dice games
soap
dried rations
frugal dungeoneering
watered down wine
hireling and henchmen fodder (the god of red shirts)
suspicious idols

Orcus Posters For Sale!

2010-10-15T07:54:00.000-07:00

A bit ago Mark Allen announced that he is now selling the Orcus posters (see the blog post below). I understand he has sold several, and there is a limited supply at this point, so be sure to grab one now while you can!

Unapologetically Old-School

2010-09-08T18:10:00.000-07:00

Here is a poster Mark Allen illustrated. This poster will be going out to retailers, especially those who are hosting games from the Labyrinth Lord Society. If you are interested in purchasing a print, please contact Mark.

Goblinoid Games Facebook Page

2010-08-28T10:59:00.000-07:00

Hi all, just a heads up that there is a Goblinoid Games Facebook page. If you're on Facebook drop on by!

Report: The ACD Trade Show

2010-08-27T16:21:00.000-07:00

I drove down to Madison yesterday for the ACD Games Day (ACD is one of the big game distributors, and a nice bunch of people), which is a trade show for publishers to tell retailers what they have going on and so that retailers can get ideas for what to stock in their stores, etc. This was my first time at an event like this, and it was a blast. Very educational, also. I spoke to far more retailers than I thought I would and was able to let them know about Labyrinth Lord. I also met a number of retailers who are already stocking Labyrinth Lord, and it was great to hear that it's a steady seller for them. I came away from the trade show armed with a lot of new information that will help me a great deal in getting Labyrinth Lord out there to an ever wider audience.

One of the things I found so exhilarating about the experience was the enthusiasm of the retailers. It was fun to meet so many people who love games so much. If anyone is out there who I spoke to, thanks for dropping by and I look forward to speaking with you again!

Badge of Honor

2010-08-25T15:42:00.000-07:00

ACD Games Day, Madison WI

2010-08-24T19:34:00.000-07:00

This is just a heads up that on Thursday, August 26th, I'll be at the ACD Games Day in Madison. I'll be there at the booth with Impressions Advertising & Marketing, which is my agent for selling to distributors. If you're a retailer who is attending the convention please drop by!

Labyrinth Lord new print run on the way

2010-08-24T14:29:00.000-07:00

If you've been having trouble getting a copy of Labyrinth Lord at your local game store, have no fear, a new print run is on the way! The print runs are selling out faster than anticipated, so there has been a gap of a few weeks here and there where distributor orders can't be fulfilled. I anticipate the Advanced Edition Companion selling out again soon too, but I plan to get a head start on that one.

Product vs. Service and Brand Dilemmas

2010-07-21T05:57:00.000-07:00

Hello gentle readers, welcome to the latest episode of the Armchair Marketeer! In this installment I want to set up a purely theoretical problem. A thought exercise, if you will. As I sit here with a glass of cognac, puffing my cigar in front of a roaring fire (ok, it's actually 8 AM on a July morning and I'm drinking coffee, but go with the imagery, ok?) I can't help but let my mind attempt to unravel great mysteries that have plagued mankind since he stepped down from the trees and discovered AC/DC.

I was reading a post on Joethelawyer's blog, and remembering a previous post of my own, which got me to thinking about a brand and product problem.

Ok, let's say you own a brand. This brand is for a product that is traditionally viewed as static and non-consumable. What I mean by that is it's not like a bag of potato chips where your customers keep coming back for more. It's static in that the product is what it is and it's bought one time. Theoretically a customer could buy your product one time and be set for life unless it wears out.

But here's the thing -- you'd rather if your product behaved more like a consumable item, something with a shelf life. That way, people would come back to spend more money. The problem is that in order to do that you need to have a product that is less static, it needs to change, and it needs to change in a way that makes customers want to buy it to keep up with those changes. The obstacle we need to overcome in this situation is that since customers historically view this product as "static," we need to find a way to reduce product loyalty and increase brand loyalty.

What does that mean? Well, let's look at an example. I decide I haven't read The Hobbit in a while, so I go to the bookstore and pick up a copy. I'm buying the book because of the content, not the title. If they changed the title to "Short People Doing Cool Things," I might be annoyed because it's harder to find on the shelf compared to what I'm used to, but the content is the same so it ultimately doesn't matter. Another example might be if I get a headache and need a "Tylenol". I'm after the content, not the name, so I might just as easily buy the store brand.

Now, what if I go buy a book called The Hobbit and discover that Bilbo is no longer a hobbit, but instead some new race of muscled brute with horns and the ability to fart a fireball? What if I crack open a bottle of Tylenol and discover jelly beans?

I didn't get what I was expecting from the product.

That is a problem for a company that needs to change a product to increase sales. We need to somehow change the way our customers think about the brand. What if we could make it so that people come looking for the brand instead of a specific product? I don't mean we entirely change the nature of the product -- people come looking for Mountain Dew and they still get a sweet, carbonated beverage -- it's just that we can alter the product in various ways that are irrelevant if the consumer is after the brand in the first place, and the flavor second.

From now on when you buy Mountain Dew you’re getting a general genre of product, and the taste may change from week to week. In fact, as a consumer I want you to keep buying each week so you can keep up with how the flavor has changed or what new element we've added. After a while you're thinking about Mountain Dew less as a specific, static product but instead as a consumable experience.

As a company we can create added incentive in the minds of our customers. Why should they keep trying our product week to week? Well, it's not just that we're changing the product at a whim. We convince our customers that we're improving it with each change. That's right, if you (the customer) don't keep up, the last product you sampled was inferior to what we're offering this week. All your friends have tried it this week, and if you don't you're behind.

This example isn't perfect.

So let's talk about what we're really talking about. Let's say we own the Dungeons & Dragons brand.

What if "Dungeons & Dragons" were less about a product and more about an experience? What if we can dispel the entire idea of "editions" from consumers of Dungeons & Dragons? The edition angle worked for a while, but the mileage on that is running out. Is there really going to be a D&D 10e? No, it just won't work. The whole paradigm of editions suggests a "reboot" and the expectations that customers will have to buy the exact same material again and again, though retooled for however the rules have been changed. I think we can convince people less often that our new edition is "the best ever" every few years. This seems to lead to a significant proportion of consumer resentment. We have to reconcile the need for consistent consumption with the customer expectation of a static product.

So, instead of producing a game that's marketed as done, complete, and improved from before, we simply market D&D. The very nature of the game itself will remain in flux to facilitate a subscription-based consumption plan. This way, customers always expect to be paying money and so long as the content changes can be integrated into the subscription plan there are few problems. Customers need to be retrained to think of the game rules and character options as less fixed. That way they expect the game to keep changing and they return to the brand no matter what form it's in. We still give them a static product -- we always call it Dungeons & Dragons -- but customers are loyal to the brand, not the product.

I don't know, sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

ENnies voting has started!

2010-07-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

There are a number of old-school publishers represented this year, so be sure to go vote! James Raggi has a module up, and there are several publishers up for fan's choice for best publisher...so go make your picks here! Note that you can select several publishers.

The "OSR" has spidergoats.

2010-07-15T12:42:00.000-07:00

That's our innovation!

Labyrinth Lord Gets an Honorable Mention for the Ennies: Best Game

2010-07-09T16:16:00.001-07:00

As anyone who follows the ENnies knows, the category of Best Game always has very tight competition. I entered Labyrinth Lord: Revised Edition into the ENnies this year. It got Honorable Mention for Best Game, beating out a lot of other fairly high profile games, such as Hackmaster Basic. I'm very grateful and humbled by this, and I thank the judges for the mention. I think this just further shows that our collective work and efforts to preserve old-school games is being recognized more and more. Thanks in no small part to everyone's wonderful support of Goblinoid Games and Labyrinth Lord, making it just one representative of old-school gaming that is picking up traction each year. Speaking of which, the print run for the Advanced Edition Companion is almost sold out -- better order some more!

Labyrinth Lord: Revised Edition Third Printing Now Shipping

2010-07-07T04:45:00.001-07:00

I just wanted to give a heads up to everyone that the third printing of LL has reached the warehouse and distributor back orders will now be filled. If you've been waiting for your local store to be able to order it you should be able to do so soon. Alliance and ACD, among other distributors, are carrying Goblinoid Games products.

Goblinoid Games First Quarter Report

2010-05-18T12:24:00.001-07:00

James Raggi said in a recent post that I have "taken [an] absence away from the scene." I'm assuming he means that I have taken a hiatus from Goblinoid Games, but nothing can be further from the truth. He also mentioned that Labyrinth Lord wasn't my #1 priority, which is only partly true. Goblinoid Games, as a business, is second to graduating with my Ph.D. this summer (I haven't spent the last 14 years of my life in college for nothing!) and finding a job, but I do take it very seriously nonetheless. It just doesn't pay the bills right now, even though it is generating a significant income that will allow Goblinoid Games to grow in coming years. So to clear up any confusion I just thought I'd post an update on current Goblinoid Games happenings. I've been busy with a whole bunch of things, many of which actually are for Goblinoid Games, so if there are periods when I don't post as often on forums or blogs this shouldn't be construed as me taking an absence from things. Things still continue to happen behind the scenes. So let's do a first quarter report for 2010.

1) We just released our 5th monthly Labyrinth Lord Society Newsletter, which began in January. We're continuing to get a great variety of contributions from Society members. Thanks everyone! The LLS has been a major priority as an effort to build a tight community around Labyrinth Lord, Mutant Future, and now Starships & Spacemen. We're up to almost 200 members and growing each month. Of course this couldn't be done without all of the hard work of David Macauley (Greyharp), the LLS organizer, who keeps things running.

2) So far in 2010 Goblinoid Games has released the very well received Advanced Edition Companion. The AEC entered distribution last month and is selling very well in distribution and POD alike.

3) We purchased the rights to Starships & Spacemen, which is in preliminary development for a second edition. The original book was redone (by me) by scanning the original book and then recreating the original layout. It was made available in PDF and POD format. It has sold more copies now in the last month with Goblinoid Games than it sold in the last 6 years it was available from FGU. The second edition is looking promising!

4) In addition, I recently finished working with four new authors, and we have three new Labyrinth Lord modules and one Mutant Future module all written and in various stages of playtesting and editing. This will come out interspersed throughout the rest of 2010. We also have several other authors with manuscripts in various stages.

5) We struck a deal with Otherworld Miniatures for licensed Labyrinth Lord miniatures. Look for those starting this summer!

6) The ball is getting back to rolling for a campaign supplement that will be for Labyrinth Lord and the Advanced Edition Companion, which I have been working on slowly for a few years now. I'm bringing in some other talent to help me get this project out the door. It is mostly all written, we just need some final fleshing out.

7) Labyrinth Lord has sold through two print runs in distribution, and I'm now ordering a third. I continue to build direct to retailer relationships as well.

So, if that is what you call a hiatus, man, I'd like to see what I could do if this was a full time job! ;-)

S&S hardcover now available

2010-05-04T15:17:00.001-07:00

I got the proof for the S&S hardcover today, and it looks great! You can find it at my print store.

Starships & Spacemen perfect bound now available!

2010-04-30T12:45:00.000-07:00

I got the perfect bound proofs in today, and they are now available at the Goblinoid Games print store.

I should get the hard cover proof in by early next week.

YouTube Review of Labyrinth Lord

2010-04-28T21:06:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to offer a friendly shout-out to Samwise for his YouTube reviews of Labyrinth Lord. I always find it interesting to get the perspective of a gamer who is more accustomed to post-2e D&D. Here are the links to his two part review...

Part 1.

Part 2.

Goblinoid Games takes you on a trek to the stars.

2010-04-26T16:01:00.000-07:00

Back in 1978 the second sci-fi RPG ever to be published was released by Fantasy Games Unlimited, Starships & Spacemen, by Leonard H. Kanterman. Inspired by many sci-fi influences, Starships & Spacemen trekked new ground. You could play a Tauran with a machine-like, logical mind, and adventure in space hunting for alien treasures on unexplored worlds. You might face the aggressive Videni who resembled Taurans in appearance, but not intentions. Against that backdrop one might reach an uneasy truce with the militant Zangids.

Fast forward 32 years later. Goblinoid Games has purchased the Starships & Spacemen property, and plans to continue these classic voyages today and into the future! The original core rule book will soon be brought back into print through print on demand, and is already available at our online electronic stores in PDF format.

In the near future, we will release a new revised second edition of Starships and Spacemen, expanding character information and planet-side adventuring. The system will be adjusted slightly to make it fully compatible with Mutant Future and Labyrinth Lord. If you are a big fan of the original rules, have no fear. Those rules will remain in print, and future modules and supplements will have stats for both systems (though they are very similar to begin with).

Join us as we carry out missions in the final frontier. The Federation of Allied Worlds is recruiting. Join the Federation Space Fleet, explore exotic new worlds and make contact with alien civilizations!

AEC shipping to the warehouse

2010-04-20T08:40:00.000-07:00

The print run for the Advanced Edition Companion shipped off to the warehouse yesterday, so we are a little ahead of schedule! So you should be seeing AEC in hobby shops earlier in May rather than later. I also will have copies on hand for sale direct to retailers, so look for Noble Knight to be restocked probably by early next week.

Star Trek: Forehead Proliferation

2010-04-10T22:43:00.000-07:00

I've been on a Star Trek kick ever since I met up with Steve Zieser a while back at a convention and we played Federation Commander. I'm a big fan of the original series and the animated series. Granted, the acting is strained at times, dare I say a bit exaggerated? But nonetheless there is just something about it that seems so much more interesting than a lot of the later series. Part of it I think is that the crew went on adventures.

Sure, the props are hokey sometimes, but they get an A for effort. The hallmark of the original series is the crew going planet side to engage in various shenanigans. I actually do like The Next Generation in many ways, which is why I started watching it from the beginning again recently. I hadn't seen as many of the earlier episodes for a long time, and I was struck by how much the first season and a lot of the second season actually did have a lot of that original series feel. The women even wore similar short skirts in the first few seasons. Even though I think there are a number of excellent episodes in later seasons of TNG, the overall trend became less about going on adventures and more about unusual situations on the ship, mostly cerebral sort of problems, with a very heavy reliance on making up more and more technobabble to create a problem to which the crew needs to find a solution. So what I'm getting at is that rather than go to new worlds more often (and they do sometimes, don't get me wrong) where they find adventure, instead we are introduced to more and more exotic made up radiation, particles, etc. that wreak havoc.

And, we cant forget, forehead proliferation. In the beginning of TNG it was neat in a way how the makeup looked. But after a while I started to cringe whenever a new alien is invented, because they always are completely human except for a weird forehead. It starts to get ridiculous, and I can image a bunch of writers and makeup specialists sitting around trying to figure out how many sorts of unique forehead prostheses can be made. It just became too silly. I could submit a number of other criticisms and present arguments about how I think a lot of TNG is actually more racist than the original series, and promotes an incorrect perspective of cultural and biological evolution, but I'll abandon that for the moment. I have to write academic stuff often enough that I feel too lazy to do it here.

Coming back around to the subject of RPGs though, I think the original and animated series of Star Trek are great models for how one might set up a sci-fi campaign of this type. Hmmm, come to think of it I'm not sure I've watched all of the episodes yet from my animated DVD series set. I better go do that!

LLS Newsletter reminder!

2010-04-07T09:15:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder that the LLS April newsletter will be going out this weekend, so if you are a Society member and you have an essay or some other contribution (new monster? new magic item? recipe for kobold burgers?) send it on to me for inclusion! I'll need contributions by Saturday (April 10) morning. Also, if you are a publisher with an announcement, calls for playtesters, or have an ad you want to run drop me a line. These are always free!

...and if you're not a Society member yet, what have you been waiting for? Don't make me send the Recruitment Squad of Orcus to your door. When they knock they have more to deliver than just pamphlets!

Advanced Edition Companion off to the printer!

2010-04-02T08:52:00.000-07:00

I got the printer all squared away for the AEC print run that will go into distribution. It took longer than I expected, but these things always do. Look for a release of the AEC into your local hobby store sometime in May!

Writers wanted!

2010-03-19T21:14:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I'm looking for module submissions for both Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future. There is some great talent out there, so send in your submissions! I'm very happy to work with new authors, as long as you're patient and don't mind working with me (I may or may not have advice for revisions as we go through the process), so lets get some great stuff out there together!

Visit my submissions page for some basic info, and then drop me a line! I like to look at proposals from new authors but if you are experienced or already have a manuscript ready send it on over for me to look at.

About 9 years ago I got my start by writing fan material for Eden Studios (and then a couple of publications through them). Chances are, if you are a good writer and love doing this kind of thing, you can write a good adventure. So lets do it.

http://goblinoidgames.com/submissions.html

Note that I'm looking for site-based modules at the moment (keyed rooms sort of stuff), not so much looser wilderness stuff. I may look at things like that later. I'm especially looking for lower level adventures, with preference for equal to or lower than 5th level.

Gaming myth? Was the Mentzer boxed set really easier to learn?

2010-03-16T10:04:00.000-07:00

One piece of accepted "truth" in the world of old-school gaming is that the D&D boxed set edited and revised by Frank Mentzer was "easier" for kids to learn. In discussions on the internet about this set this idea seems to be repeated over and over as if it is a mantra. But I wonder, is it actually true? If you cracked open the first set by Mentzer would it be easier to learn than the set by Moldvay? I have my doubts.

The first set I encountered was the Mentzer set. In all fairness I have to state that at the time I was about 9 years old or so. We played this set every day the summer we discovered it, and a lot thereafter, but the way we played hardly even resembled the "true" way it is supposed to be played. So were we able to learn the game despite how well written the introduction was? No, not at all.

A few years back I read the first Mentzer set and the Moldvay set as a comparison, and even now I had a heck of a time getting through the Mentzer set. There's no doubt it was intended for young people, but even as an adult I don't know if it would be easy to decipher the game (doable, but not intuitive). The realization I've come to is that even though the Mentzer set was designed to hold your hand and lead you through the process of learning what the game was about, it was just too damn wordy. Even now reading through it I find myself thinking "ok get to the point already!" So I wonder if the game really succeeded at its goal of being more instructive or if people just keep saying it was because everyone believes it was. When I think about it, I have never heard anyone say they actually played any version of the game the "real way" it should be played when they discovered the game as a kid.

What I do know is that what Moldvay's set had going for it was that it was much more concise. It goes in, tells you what's what and gets out. It takes pages upon pages of explanation in the Mentzer set for what should be a simple concept. It's too much reading for one thing to cover a few basic points, and if the audience is younger kids for the Mentzer set I think its failure is in requiring not just reading comprehension but the ability to follow an "argument" so to speak over the course of many pages. In other words, I wonder if an instructional bent to the rules would benefit more from being brief and to the point. In all honesty I think that when revisiting the set by Moldvay they hit the nail on the head right away. It was designed for young people and adults, and is easy to jump in to. With the Mentzer set I think they were probably identifying a problem that was real but they chose the wrong approach to correct it. The problem was of how to make the game more understandable to kids. As it turns out, making a lengthy instructional book was not a solution that worked.

To approach the topic from a slightly different angle, we can think of it this way. How many 8 year olds can pick up a game of Monopoly, read the rules, and start playing it exactly as intended? I have a feeling that not too many can. It's not because kids aren't smart enough to learn the rules, but it is the way they are delivered that matters. We usually learn these games from other people, which is a very different delivery method than reading the rules on paper. Now consider that D&D, even before AD&D, is far more complex not just in rules but in overall concept compared to Monopoly, and I think what becomes clear is that probably no matter how you try to word it a written introduction to the full game is only going to lead to failure if the goal is for your young audience to read the rules and play the game as intended without the guidance of people who are already familiar with it.

So what's the solution? I'm not sure. I think people forget that the complexity of the rules as represented even in original D&D to Moldvay's set were never really written for kids anyway. Keep in mind that the rules in Moldvay and OD&D are nearly identical (and by extension, Mentzer's set). Today people tend to think of "basic" D&D as the kids version, but that's only because of the marketing attempts of the 80s. In retrospect I'm not so sure how "good" for kids it really was since I've never met anyone who was introduced to any version as a kid who was able to figure the rules out on their own. We might want to take a step back and ask whether any version to date is actually a very good version for young kids at all. Sure, if it is being taught and run by older kids or adults there is no question that young kids can figure out how to play. But if the goal is for the game to be picked up and played by younger kids without the outside influence of older people, should the game be made simpler in the first place? I wonder.

Goblinoid Games and Otherworld Miniatures team up!

2010-03-07T11:57:00.001-08:00

This Summer, Otherworld Miniatures and Goblinoid Games will launch a partnership project. Starting in August 2010, a range of boxed sets of ‘Official Labyrinth Lord Miniatures’ will be available, featuring 28mm figures made by Otherworld Miniatures. Most of these models will come from Otherworld’s existing ranges, but some will be designed and sculpted specifically for the new Labyrinth Lord sets.

These boxed sets will be level specific, with the first sets featuring the weaker monsters found in the upper labyrinth levels. Later sets will contain progressively stronger monsters which dwell in the deeper levels. Some wilderness-themed sets will also feature woodland inhabitants and creatures found in a marshland habitat.

This range of boxed sets will be tied together by a set of mini-adventures which are included in the boxes. Individually, they’ll make an entertaining evening’s adventuring, but together they make up an exciting mini-campaign. Adventures will be written by some of the best writers of the old-school gaming scene, including Jeff Talanian, James Maliszewski, Rob Conley and Michael Curtis, and many others.

“I have been a role-player and miniatures enthusiast for over 30 years. Otherworld Miniatures now produce the figures that I wish I had been able to buy when I first started gaming. They are inspired by old-school imagery, but we use modern sculpting techniques and production standards to make miniatures that would never have been possible in the early years of our hobby. Goblinoid Games follow similar principles with their Labyrinth Lord game, and I think that we’re ideally suited to work as partners.”

Richard Scott
Otherworld Miniatures

“Richard started Otherworld Miniatures right about the same time I started Goblinoid Games. Over the last 3+ years I’ve been totally blown away by the figures they have produced. Not just because of their quality, but also because they truly do produce figures that capture that period of time in gaming history when everything seemed new and dungeons were filled with gritty danger. I’m very excited at this partnership. Our companies have both come a long way since 2006, and it seems only natural for us to team up now to promote our mutual goals of keeping the old-school torch burning.”

Daniel Proctor
Goblinoid Games

Gone but not forgotten

2010-03-04T06:39:00.000-08:00

Advanced Edition Companion and Idol of the Orcs at Noble Knight

2010-02-25T16:46:00.001-08:00

Just a quick update to let people know that Noble Knight Games has the Advanced Edition Companion and Idol of the Orcs in stock. So if NKG is one of your preferred online vendors (and they do have great service) and you haven't had a chance to pick these books up, check them out! They even list them at a discount, and their shipping is better than Lulu!

Skills in a class-based game...thoughts?

2010-02-17T15:33:00.000-08:00

The traditional complaint about the thief class in earlier versions of D&D is that it adds a new class of abilities, skills, to the game. As D&D went through more editions, proficiencies were added, which are skills but they are not percentage-based like thief skills are. People have proposed alternative "skills" for thieves, but from my perspective simply changing the dice used, to say 1-2 on 1d6, is simply a different way of presenting a probability, not really a different fundamental solution.

I never liked the way skills were handled in AD&D 2e, or 1e for that matter. They took a different path with the Palladium system and fully embraced percentage-based skills and integrated them into classes. The Chaosium system, which shares a definite heritage in OD&D, integrates percentage skills but does away with classes altogether, defining what a character is by his/her collection of skills.

The only point to this is that I'm curious to get peoples' different perspectives about these ideas.

Discuss!

Ran Mutant Future at Gamicon...

2010-02-16T16:54:00.000-08:00

...and I'm not gonna tell you about it! heh heh. I had a blast...so to speak...but I plan to make some adjustments to the adventure, add to it and publish it sometime in the near future so I'll keep the details to myself.

Advanced Edition Companion...now available!

2010-02-03T14:24:00.000-08:00

Advance the Game
To the next level of play
The advanced first edition game as you remember it.

Labyrinth Lord gives you the play experience of the old editions of the world’s most popular fantasy roleplaying game! The Advanced Edition Companion is a handbook of advanced player and referee options. Play the race and class possibilities from the “advanced” first edition 1978 rules. Introduce the essential first edition monsters, spells, and magic items to your Labyrinth Lord game. All of these options are fully compatible with the core Labyrinth Lord rules, so that you can continue to play race-classes right along with all of the advanced classes and races.

In the deepest level of the underworld the Demon Lord of the Undead, Orcus, awaits you. He watches from his throne of human bones and commands his undead minions. Will they defeat you on your quest in the labyrinth, as you seek fantastic wealth, defeat horrible enemies, and unravel unholy secrets? Take the first edition challenge. Fight your way to the deepest level. Defeat Orcus...if you can.

In this book you will find...

A complete player’s guide to advanced play
Additional core first edition monsters
The full range of first edition spells and spellcasters
The essential first edition magic items
Optional advanced rules for greater depth of play

Welcome back to the first edition game table.

We saved you a seat. Right next to Orcus.

This book is not a complete game. You will require the core Labyrinth Lord rules to play.

Find the electronic book at our e-store.

Perfect bound and hardcover version can be found at our print store.

Somewhere out there a time traveller is embarrassed...

2010-01-24T10:56:00.000-08:00

Nice food for the imagination...

Link to article.

AEC preview is out!

2010-01-24T07:49:00.000-08:00

If you are a Labyrinth Lord Society member you should have the advanced preview no-art version of the Advanced Edition Companion in your email.

Gygax quote, offered without comment

2010-01-21T08:19:00.000-08:00

I offer this quote by Gary Gygax. This was written a short time before the 1e DM guide was released, but after the players guide and monster manual had already come out. There is a lot that could be said about this but I think I'll let each reader digest it for himself/herself.

From The Dragon #22, February 1979

An excerpt from “Dungeons & Dragons, What it is and Where it’s Going,” by Gary Gygax

Fanatical game hobbyists often express the opinion that DUNGEONS & DRAGONS will continue as an ever-expanding, always improving game system. TSR and I see it a bit differently. Currently D&D is moving in two directions. There is the “Original” game system and the new ADVANCED D&D® system. New participants can move from the “Basic Set” into either form without undue difficulty— especially as playing aid offerings become more numerous, and that is in process now. Americans have somehow come to equate change with improvement. Somehow the school of continuing evolution has conceived that D&D can go on in a state of flux, each new version “new and improved!” From a standpoint of sales, I beam broadly at the very thought of an unending string of new, improved, super, energized, versions of D&D being hyped to the loyal followers of the gaming hobby in general and role playing fantasy games in particular. As a game designer I do not agree, particularly as a gamer who began with chess. The original could benefit from a careful reorganization and expansion to clarify things, and this might be done at some future time. As all of the ADVANCED D&D system is not written yet, it is a bit early for prognostication, but I envision only minor expansions and some rules amending on a gradual, edition to edition, basis. When you have a fine product, it is time to let well enough alone. I do not believe that hobbyists and casual players should be continually barraged with new rules, new systems, and new drains on their purses. Certainly there will be changes, for the game is not perfect; but I do not believe the game is so imperfect as to require constant improvement.

AEC advanced access to LLS members!

2010-01-18T08:01:00.000-08:00

I'm very close to being able to order a proof copy of the Advanced Edition Companion! Likely this week some time. Normally I would wait to release the free no-art pdf and the for pay electronic version until after the paperback is approved, but as soon as I get the proof ordered this time I plan to send the no-art version out via email to Society members so that you can get an extra week or two weeks jump on seeing what's inside!

So, if you are already a Society member, just sit back and you'll find it in your inbox before too long. If you're not yet a member...what are you waiting for? Don't make me send Orcus after you...

Information about the Labyrinth Lord Society can be found here.

What is Labyrinth Lord really?

2010-01-16T00:32:00.000-08:00

If you've read the foreword to Labyrinth Lord then you probably know where I'm coming from. In another post at some other time I may discuss what I think may be happening as we continue on emulating the old-school games, but right now I want to post a link that is a reminder of where it all started.

Labyrinth Lord and the Advanced Edition Companion that will come out shortly are an effort to bring old-school gaming back onto game stores and back onto the modern gamers' tables. But the thing I hope we never lose sight of is that Labyrinth Lord is a tribute.

(For those unfamiliar, you may have to investigate TD a bit to really get this. Nothing beats Stairway to Heaven. IMO old-school D&D is the Stairway to Heaven of RPGs)

Here's another version.

Riffing on Mike Mearls' post about game balance

2010-01-12T18:56:00.000-08:00

Mike Mearls recently posted on his blog about issues of game balance, primarily in relation to 4e but also in relation to post-core 2e D&D. I just want to pull one small piece of that out to comment on here. He said:

If you do like combat, though, then game balance is very important. A DM needs the system to provide some framework for building encounters, or at least judging their difficulty. If each class has wildly different combat abilities and the game doesn't account for that, the system falls apart and the DM's judgment and experience have to take over. That probably means lots of trial, lots of error, and hopefully a patient enough group that a DM learns to balance the game using his own set of metrics. Of course, if a few PCs die and classes rotate in and out of the group, the balance act starts all over again.

There's some part of me that recoils at using the term "paradigm" when it comes to gaming, but in this case I think it fits. In earlier editions of D&D classes do have wildly different combat abilities. The default assumption is that different archtypes are better at different tasks, and it is absolutely assumed that combat will mostly be the job of fighter types and clerics secondarily. One of the things that is interesting about this quote is how the burden of balancing combat is entirely on the DM. There certainly are guidelines in earlier editions for balancing encounters, but this is relatively a loose balancing effort (since it is based mostly on raw HD and encounter numbers without much in the way of considering monster special abilities) and a lot of the time the players have to make the right choices and have a strategy because taking on a combat head-to-head will often result in character deaths. In later editions, or "new-school" D&D it is the burden of the DM to balance an encounter in a way that a party of multiple classes yet of equal fighting ability can attack head-to-head and have a reasonable chance of success.

The old-school approach can weather a fuzzy game balance issue because the duty is nearly as much on the players to decide what they can handle, when to fight, and when to run. Another interesting thing is how "DM judgment" seems to be mentioned as a bad thing to have to employ, as if the DM needs a concise formula for crafting encounters. Again, I think this illustrates a difference between new-school D&D and old-school D&D, but of course in older editions of D&D it is within the context of game balance being present but a fairly loose thing. As far as D&D is concerned it is a relatively new philosophy that "balance" means equal class abilities. In the past, balance was only approximate and across archetypes while acknowledging different class capabilities. This left room for player innovation in play. In the old-school there is a definite feeling that anything around the corner of the next dungeon hallway could spell doom, and thus style of play takes that into account by being cautious, asking lots of questions about the environment and what is seen, etc.

I'm not implying any sort of value judgment to this analysis, and the only reason I found it noteworthy to discuss was because it struck me as to how alien post-2e D&D is to me, especially 4th edition. For example, in old-school D&D if you choose to play a magic-user there are a host of weaknesses you enroll in, that you agree to undertake, which means you will have to adopt a certain play style that is different from fighters in the group. Not everyone liked to play magic-users because of their weaknesses, which is why multiclassing is probably so popular, but nonetheless when you choose to play a class that is not a fighter you find fun in the way that class is played. You may not get to stab at orcs in from of the line but you'll be doing other things to try to help the party when your spells run out. It's just a different mentality about how to "have fun" when playing the game. On some level I can appreciate the desire to have all characters be able to take about the same damage and deal about the same damage, and participate in the game in the same ways, but to me this new-school approach to characters takes a big chunk of the fun out of trying a different class that comes with different strategies to survival. But then old-school D&D is very much a game of adventure and survival, whereas new-school is in some ways superheroic, so there is more than just a paradigm of balance at issue here, there is an entire shift of genre.

Labyrinth Lord Facebook Page

2010-01-10T13:15:00.000-08:00

It's long overdue that I point everyone to the Labyrinth Lords Facebook page. If you are a Facebook member, drop on by and join up! Thanks go to Moritz Mehlem for setting this up some time back.

Mutant Future now at Noble Knight Games!

2010-01-09T16:40:00.000-08:00

If you're looking for another retro-game to add to your next Noble Knight order, they now have Mutant Future in stock! I see they already sold the Labyrinth Lord revised edition books they had in stock, but I'm sure they'll get more soon!

Orcus wants YOU!

2010-01-04T20:38:00.001-08:00

Advanced Edition Companion Preview: Demon and Devil Art

2010-01-02T10:55:00.000-08:00

Many people have already seen the cover preview from a thread on the Goblinoid Games forums. I wanted to share with you the art for the demons and devils. Sean Aaberg contacted me a while back about doing art for Goblinoid Games. He does underground comics among other funky projects, and I thought his style fit perfectly for this project.

He has the art posted on his flickr account here.

You'll need to look at the first three pages or so to see them all. Enjoy! I love all of them but I really like his take on Orcus. I've always felt (and this has been said elsewhere by others) that the old game books had a sort of underground comics feel from the art style, so I'm delighted to have Sean on board to inject that old-school love.

Where to order Labyrinth Lord

2009-12-28T20:19:00.000-08:00

On the Goblinoid Games forums more and more reports of Labyrinth Lord sightings in game stores are rolling in. If you want your local store to order the book, they can find it listed with Alliance so far. It may also be listed with other distributors, but I don't yet have confirmation on that.

If you want to order the core book online from a source other than Lulu, you can find it at FRP Games and Noble Knight Games. I'll also be sending off a shipment of Mutant Future to Noble Knight this week, so keep an eye out for that to turn up there soon.

That's all for now, more updates later!

Labyrinth Lord now in Italian!

2009-12-07T16:37:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the hard work of Danilo Callegari, Antonio Eleuteri, Chiara Fattorelli, Tito Leati, Emiliano Marchetti, Andrea Marmugi and Roberto Pecoraro we now have an Italian translation of Labyrinth Lord!

This version is updated to the current revised edition, including all the great art by Steve Zieser! The electonic version is available as a free complementary no-art version and a version with art at a discounted price. These are currently available at the Goblinoid Games RPGnow store. A POD version is soon to follow at Lulu and at RPGnow when their POD service is up and running.

Have I created a monster?

2009-11-20T06:02:00.000-08:00

With all of my "real life" work I hadn't had the chance to do any gaming of note for over a year. Some readers know I was overseas for a good hunk of last year and this year, and when I got back I was too busy to prepare gaming sessions, much less find a new group.

My wife had never played table top RPGs before, but she does enjoy games like Diablo. She struck up a conversation about gaming with a colleague of ours and it turned out he is an enthusiastic player of D&D 3.5 and other games (and he only lives like two blocks away), so we set up a session for last Saturday. I ran Labyrinth Lord with some components from the not yet released Advanced Edition Companion.

The group consisted of my wife, our new friend, and his girlfriend. His girlfriend had never played RPGs either. My wife told me ahead of time that she would play out of pity for me because I hadn't been able to play for so long and we needed bodies in the chair, and that she didn't anticipate liking it very much. I think this is probably common for people with spouses or significant others who are not gamers. Gaming is, after all, a pretty weird and geeky thing. Guys sitting around pretending to be elves or whatever, rolling dice and getting all excited about things that aren't real.

When we started playing there was definitely some awkwardness. Partly because I'm a bit rusty but also partly because it is a new group, mostly people who had never played before and the one person who is experienced is experienced mostly with later editions of D&D (but did play 2e). I was too busy during the week to create something new so I used The Tomb of Sigyfel.

My wife did make some attempts to roleplay her characters (they were each using two 1st level characters, because with the new group I anticipated deaths in the party) but I could tell she was feeling self conscious. Once the group got into the tomb though, there was an interesting shift in tension.

Suddenly the game became more accessible to the new players, I think. They were exploring the tomb slowly, methodically, checking for traps at every step. My wife independently reinvented the use of the 10' pole as she had her character use it to prod every step of the place (she is a natural, apparently!). She would throw torches into dark rooms before entering to see what was there. I was watching the birth and emergence of old-school play again before my very eyes. When they encountered some skeletons they made short work of them and I think it was at that point she was hooked.

We played fairly late, and when I got up the next morning my wife announced that she wanted to go to the hobby store to pick up some paints and other supplies to paint the miniatures I've had sitting around in a box for years (I didn't have any miniatures out so we used dice the night before). So it looks like I've created a monster! Not only did she unexpectedly enjoy herself, but now she wants to get into painting minis and wants to play again ASAP. It looks like she's started down the path of becoming a gamer girl.

I bet it's been 20 years since I played with people who were new to RPGs. That being the case it has been a long time since I actually tried to teach someone completely new to RPGs how to play, and it made me realize a few things. A lot of gamers talk about how "basic" D&D is, well, basic. It is actually about the same as the original three booklets of D&D from 1974, but since it was repackaged and sold as a "kids game" in the 80s it has the unshakable perception of being simplistic. What I realized as I was explaining how to play, what the numbers mean, etc. is that this is not a "basic" game. It can only be viewed as basic to people who have a frame of reference to more complex RPGs, but to people new to these games even a simpler game like Labyrinth Lord can be complex. I've never met or heard from anyone who started playing with the basic boxed set as a kid, any version, who actually read and understood the rules and played "correctly."

I'd never played with someone who is more into 3.5, either, which was interesting. He did just fine, but he commented that my play style is very different than his. I think what he meant is that he is used to more "story driven" play, with characters that have elaborate backgrounds, etc. This kind of play is not alien to me, because I've played that way before too. I was really into Vampire in the 90s, and even some of our early D&D games were played with more "story" type elements, I suppose. This session made me realize how I have come full circle in my play style. I enjoy the roleplaying aspect of early D&D, but not at the expense of "the game" if that makes sense. In my experience, games that are focused on "the story" value the immersion into character and plot more than "the game." As an example, in a story-based game I think people are much more likely to ignore dice results if they prefer a different outcome to a situation. There is a lot invested in characters in terms of development, so character death is not something that comes easily. It is less of a "threat" in the game. I prefer for a story, for lack of a better term, to emerge through play and the result of character choices, dice results, etc. The story is what happens when playing the game, the "game" is not just a smaller component of telling the story. If that makes sense.

In the end fun was had by all, and I know my wife is hooked. I also managed (I think) to remind a player of more recent games of how the game "used to be played" and it seems to me there is still something desirable in that style of play. When I went to the hobby shop for paints and brushes last Sunday I had a long conversation with one of the guys working there. He is probably about my age and played a lot of AD&D 1e back in the day, but his current group played 3.5 and switched to Pathfinder when 4e came out. We were discussing AD&D and he said he'd like to play it again if he hadn't gotten rid of all his books years ago. This got me thinking that despite how D&D has changed in tone, mechanics, and game play in more recent editions, many people look fondly on the old editions. They were just good fun. This is a testament I think not just to the idea that game "evolution" is mostly cultural, but it is also evidence that the more recent versions are not the same game. They may be good in their own right, they just don't deliver the same experience.

That's why I think that when we introduce people to the older editions or talk to people who no longer play the older editions, the best way to approach it is simply from the angle of them being different games. We should break away from the false dichotomy of new vs. old. You don't have to play only an older edition or only a newer edition any more than someone would choose to only play one RPG and never any others. The older editions are simply different, both mechanically and aesthetically. I think if approached in that way there is room for both new and old versions alike at peoples' game table.

Labyrinth Lord now in distribution! (again)

2009-11-19T08:11:00.001-08:00

The print run for the new Labyrinth Lord: Revised Edition reached the warehouse a few days ago, and will begin shipping out probably next week. If you want the book in your local store be sure to have the hobby shop check their distributor listings for the book, and if it isn't listed yet they can tell them it is available from Impressions.

Greyhawk Fetish

2009-10-24T11:14:00.000-07:00

James and Joseph posted recently about how Gary Gygax never published a full megadungeon, and have differing views of whether publishing a megadungeon is even possible.

To me there are really two issues in this discussion. The first, whether a megadungeon can be published, I think can be answered with "yes." The followup question is whether it would be a product people would want to buy. I would envision the "best" format being maps with some keyed rooms, but with a lot of tables for random encounters, random placing of weird phenomenon, generation of treasure and other situations or encounters idiosyncratic to a dungeon level or even subsection. It would very much be a campaign book rather than a ready to go dungeon. In many ways I think writing such a book would actually be harder than a fully fleshed out dungeon, but would the payoff be there? Do people even want it?

This leads to the other issue in this discussion, which is the (non-sexual) fetishism of Greyhawk and Gary Gygax in general. If we take a step back for a second I think what people really want is a megadungeon published by Gary, or maybe even one of the other TSR guys, but not by anyone else. If anyone else publishes one, then by definition it will not be the "real thing." The only authority that will be accepted by a certain crowd is the product penned by an exclusive, very small collection of people.

I do agree that just for fun, and from a historical perspective, it would be cool to see Gary's actual notes and hand drawn maps published. Do I think there is any deep insight waiting in those note that will revolutionize the way we play? No, I actually think that's a silly idea and more of an idea that comes from the phenomenon of fandom than anything else. It is interesting how the people who played in Gary's regular home game do not seem to pine away for those materials to be published as much as other people do. I only played in one short session Gary ran in his Greyhawk dungeon. He had a three-ring folder with his maps in it, and paper with room keys and other notes. It looked just like any other gamer's way of doing things to me. I did catch a glimpse of some of the maps, which looked just like other gamer's hand drawn maps. There is no deep method of play waiting there guys. It is the same stuff everyone already does.

So in the end what people really want is to share the actual experience of playing with Gary, but people won't get that from his notes even if they were published. I might be a heretic for saying this, but it seems to me Gary would scoff at all the fetishizing going on because it hearkens back to what he talked about before about how so many people looked to him and other folks at TSR for "official" ways of doing things. The truth is that those guys at TSR were just gamers like everyone else, and the way things are done at your own game table is just as creative and works just as well. When enough people would write or call to ask for a way of doing something, they might crank out an "official" system of doing it, but that system would not likely be the way they did it at home. At home, they played like everyone else did. The idea that you can take Gary's home game notes and use them to play "the way the game is supposed to be played" if only they would publish them is not only untrue but tragically misguided. We already have so much that Gary published. We already have the tools to play the way he intended, with countless archived message board posts to guide us in addition to all the material from the old rule books and modules.

That's as close as anyone will ever get to Gary now, and even though the psychology of fandom seems to pine away for more I think it would be far more productive to write the things you want yourself instead if wishing they existed.

Updates

2009-10-20T13:18:00.001-07:00

I'm still around, just busy with a "real life" writing project that will be underway until spring. So, if I haven't responded to you're email please forgive me. I probably flagged it for a later reply and didn't get back to it. If you need an urgent response please try me again!

The Advanced Edition Companion is still underway, just running slower on it than I had planned. Editing is still underway but were plugging away at things. I'm starting to make requests for art.

The print run for Labyrinth Lord is underway. We're still on schedule for distribution in November. I will have some copies of LL and Mutant Future on hand for direct sale to retailers. The Mutant Future print run is behind because I had to get a new cover proof. The error was on the printer's side of things, but nonetheless it cost us a few weeks.

There are some upcoming announcements about foreign editions of Labyrinth Lord. We're not yet ready for saying anything official but keep an eye out.

Skirmisher Publishing supporting Mutant Future!

2009-10-10T07:04:00.000-07:00

Some readers may already know that Skirmisher Publishing released a supplement a while back for Mutant Future, called Creatures of the Wastelands.
They have been releasing more new products recently. For those of you out there who have been itching for more Mutant Future support, here it is!

Mutant Future podcast review

2009-10-06T13:30:00.000-07:00

There is a great deal of retro-clone coverage in the latest podcast of All Games Considered. They have a nice review of Mutant Future in there.