First of all, do we need a new OSR? No, of course not. There's no shortage of people still creating, playing, or just discussing D&D-style games, with oceans of interesting material available. Also, I'm not going to quibble over the definition of the OSR, or whether it's "alive" or "dead". A lot of photons have … Continue reading The New OSR: The case for the Cepheus Engine
I recently ran a session of Helm, the new OSR system from Jon Davis (sivads-sanctum.itch.io). It's a genuinely fun little system, very much worth picking up. Here's some system notes and a couple of character sheets. Making Characters The character generation system is quite unique. You roll a 1d6 for each body location - Head, … Continue reading Helm: A mini-review and character sheet for a low fantasy game
The latest issue of the Cepheus Journal, the free Cepheus Engine fanzine, recently came out. It's issue #11, centered around the theme of Aliens. Though it's a Cepheus Engine-specific publication, a lot of the articles are system-agnostic and might work for any Sci-Fi game. Definitely worth a download. This isn't a complete review of every … Continue reading Cepheus Journal #11: The Alien Issue
Since I'm putting together more Omega 99 stuff, I thought I'd release my latest version of my fillable Omega 99 character sheet. This one is designed to work with Cepheus Deluxe rules. It'll auto generate Stamina and Lifeblood boxes and has a box for Hero Points. The third page is a foldable table tent that … Continue reading Omega 99: Character sheet for Cepheus Deluxe
I've been flipping through the Space: 1999 Moonbase Alpha Technical Operations Manual I bought directly from the Gerry Anderson online store. It's been inspiring me to start creating some more material for Omega 99, Michael Brown's adaptation of the Space: 1999 setting to the Cepheus Engine. You can also see all the other Omega 99 … Continue reading Omega 99: New Weapons for Moonbase Omega
I just ran a quick one-shot of Clone Farm, a 30 page RPG from Goblinoid Games specifically designed to be run in a single game session. It includes a simplified version of the same rule system that old Pacesetter games like Chill and Timemaster used. The players play clones who wake up in a mysterious … Continue reading Clone Farm: Mini-review, character sheet, and a player map
I recently printed out a copy of Mercator (scroll down to find it), the free supplement for Classic Traveller that allows you to run adventures in the Roman Empire in the 1st and 2nd AD. There are PNG files for the covers, but they're a little too low-res to print properly. So I've made my … Continue reading Mercator: A cover PDF for Traveller in Ancient Rome
I'm finishing up my submission to the Cepheus Journal, the free Cepheus Engine fanzine. The upcoming issue is centered around the theme of aliens. I decided to make some fantasy aliens inspired by the bad guys in the 1983 movie Krull (Wikipedia / YouTube Trailer) . I've previously posted about the research I did for this, and now … Continue reading The Slayers: Preview of my Cepheus Journal article
I've been working on my submission to the Cepheus Journal fanzine. My plan is to create an adaptation of the 1983 science fantasy movie Krull (Wikipedia / YouTube Trailer) for both the Sword of Cepheus & Barbaric! games. Krull itself was a fairly unsuccessful movie, creatively and financially, with some nice visuals. However, the basic … Continue reading Making RPG stuff from a mostly-forgotten film: Krull
Barbaric! There's an interesting low fantasy RPG, based on the Cepheus Engine system, called Barbaric! from Stellagama Publishing. It's a much lighter, quicker version of the whole 2d6/Cepheus/Traveller style of game. There isn't any career lifepath system and the stats have been completely replaced with a common set of seven skills. It's somewhat closer to … Continue reading Warlords of Atlantis: Character sheets for the Barbaric! setting
Polyhedral Nonsense 