Cash Strapped - Supernatural and horror

This week we are presenting a small selection of supernatural and occult goodies. From complete games to resources for use in whatever you may be running.

CJ Carrella's Witchcraft from Eden Studios. Get the full rulebook for absolutely nothing.

Delta Green: Need to Know. A 50+ page quickstart for the Delta Green rpg, including character generation. Gives you a good idea of the full game before you buy it.

The Shivering Circle. A complete game meant to bring players into the realm of British folk lore. Rules light, completely free and is under the Creative Commons license.

47 Villainous Cults, Orders and Guilds. A straight up resource for groups to thwart your adventuring parties. Pay what you want pricing.

If you have any suggestions for cheap or free products to be listed in future posts just mention it in the comments section.

Please check out my other Cash Strapped posts on my blog for more free, cheap and discount resources for those gamers who don't have a lot of money to spend.

Cash Strapped - Basic Fantasy Roleplay

One of the best things that came out of the OGL SRD for Dungeons and Dragons 3.0 was the amount of 'retro clone' games meant to mimic the older DnD editions. Inside of that system at it's core is most of the old original mechanics of the game. Just strip away all the new additional stuff layer by layer until you get it down to what you want and then just rewrite what is missing.

Now one of the best of these retroclones, in my opinion, was the Basic Fantasy Roleplay system. Chris Gonnerman put this together along with several volunteers and put out a very nice looking book, for absolutely free. Even the print versions are available 'at cost' meaning they generate zero profit while getting them into the hands of fans as cheaply as possible.

Currently three books are available over on DrivethruRPG.

Basic Fantasy RPG 3rd Edition
The Basic Fantasy Field Guide
Iron Falcon Rules

Then you can also find downloadable adventures and resources over at the website for the game at basicfantasy.org.  So go and get your old school adventuring on with these wonderful books.

Please check out my other Cash Strapped posts on my blog for more free, cheap and discount resources for those gamers who don't have a lot of money to spend.

Jaded Gamer - encouraging piracy

Nearly everyone in the online tabletop gaming knows that piracy of pdf products is a problem. It's all to easy to get a copy of nearly any game book on the market for absolutely nothing but the time it takes to do a few mouse clicks.  So why would you want to taunt the part of your customer base that is willing to pay?

R. Talsorian just did exactly that. the pdf for the jumpstart kit for Cyberpunk Red popped up on DrivethruRPG the same day as the physical version went on sale at GenCon. The pdf price of fifteen bucks is already enough to make a few folks think twice about spending that much on something that isn't even a full ruleset but a light version of a ruleset. Then at GenCon you give out coupon for fifty percent off that pdf to those who buy the print version BUT you will not be giving that discount to any one who buys it when it becomes available through distribution channels.

That's just telling people to pirate your product. "Can't go to GenCon then we don't care about you." is the message and the result will undoubtedly be "Give them a discount but not anyone else then we don't care about giving you anything at all.".  I can hardly blame anyone who goes this route.

Personally at this point I'm pretty much done with supporting Cyberpunk Red in any shape or form. So I won't be buying, or pirating, I will just do without.

Cash Strapped - Free Quickstarts

Sometimes you need to get a taste of a game before you decide to drop your hard earned cash on it. This is where quickstart rules come in real handy.  This post will be continuously updated whenever I am made aware of something new to add.

Advanced Fighting Fantasy
Basic Roleplaying
Blue Planet: Recontact
Call of Cthulhu 7th edition
Devil's Run
Ghosts of Albion
RuneQuest
Sla Industries 2nd edition
Space: 1889
Upwind


Please check out my other Cash Strapped posts on my blog for more free, cheap and discount resources for those gamers who don't have a lot of money to spend.

Cyberpunk Sunday 001

Recently it an attempt to break out of my gaming funk that I've been sinking into I've started working on my own game once again.  I'm going for something cyberpunk with some supernatural horror thrown in because I like it. So I broke out a composition notebook and started writing out notes instead of trying to keep track of it on my computer as I get distracted way to easily.

Quick setting notes:

I want magic to be there but it's some really dark stuff. This isn't going to be Shadowrun, there is no casting lightening bolts at your enemy. I'm looking more towards a Kult influence. Rituals that require various kinds of sacrifice, blood magic and things that can go horribly wrong if there is an error. The general populace is unaware of it's existence.

Way more punk. There will be no going on missions for the corporation to collect a paycheck. The players will be the ones fighting the powers that be. Almost a revolutionary type of movement.

The government is completely corrupt being ran by corporate powers. Those corporate powers are being controlled themselves by demonic like entities not from our plane of existence.

No defined timeline. Not going to lay out a year by year history of how the world got to where it is. It's going to focus on what it is like right now and what can you do to change that.

Focus will be on the street level type of games. Fighting for survival of yourself and for others who can't protect themselves.

Next weeks update will be what I want out of the game system. Or at least what I think I want at this point.

Cash Strapped - Magic for DnD

Welcome to my first 'Cash Strapped' post on my blog. These posts will be for those of us who are rather limited on how much we can spend on our table top roleplaying hobby. Linking to places where we can LEGALLY obtain free or discounted resources for our games.

So for this first post I will linking to a collection of items over on DrivethruRPG for Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. Wizards of the Coast was releasing pdfs for using various Magic the Gathering planes in 5th edition rules up until the most recent Ravnica block. These were called the Plane Shift series and are completely free. Even if you are not a fan of the Magic settings they are great resources to have your GM toolbox.


Plane Shift: Zendikar
Plane Shift: Innistrad
Plane Shift: Kaladesh
Plane Shift: Amonkhet
Plane Shift: Ixalan
X Marks The Spot A Plane Shift Ixalan Adventure


If you have any other suggestions for products to be put up in future Cash Strapped posts please just let me know in the comments section below.

Jaded Gamer Diary - PbtA fans think they are elite

A collection of quotes seen posted up by PbtA fans as they love to down on other games but hate it when people down theirs.

All that said I can totally understand the appeal of trad gaming and the like where it sits nicely between role playing and tactical combat.

So according to this one people who like trad games aren't full roleplayers.

I happen to love PbtA. It is, arguably, my favorite game system. Further, I share some of your preferences. I generally hate class-based systems. I love elegant game mechanics.

Hey I guess only PbtA has 'elegant' game mechanics.

In my experience, players (including, regrettably, me) frequently come up with terrible, boring and unclear concepts for their characters when left to their own devices, so I feel like trading in broad archetypes improves playability substantially.

Oh so the playbooks are saving us from our terrible, boring and unclear selves.

I disagree. There have been massive changes in rpgs and the relationship between players, GMs, and world building/game playing.

Another person who thinks changes that have been going on in the gaming hobby for well over two decades are something that PbtA is responsible for.

Jaded Gamer Diary - convention exclusives

Game Company: We've made some really neat goodies for our game line.

Fan for decades: Cool, where can I get them at?

Game Company: They're a GenCon exclusive so only at GenCon.

Fan for decades: But I can't begin to afford a trip to GenCon. Hotel costs alone are way out of what I can pay for.

Game Company: Sorry to hear about that. But great goodies for our game line so that is good news!

Fan for decades: Not when you can't buy them.

This sums up my feelings on 'convention exclusive' stuff from game companies. Some of us scrape together what we can to buy your product already. Travelling, hotel costs, eating out every meal for an entire weekend, etc are just something we cannot afford at all. So stuff like this is a giant 'fuck you' and a punishment for not being financially well off enough to satisfy you.

So don't be surprised when we stop buying you stuff all together.