I just ran a one-shot of Brindlewood Bay, the RPG by Jason Cordova about little old ladies who solve murder mysteries in a quaint New England town. It's a fun little Powered-by-the-Apocalypse system. I was running the game over Discord, so I needed to see how the players filled out their character sheets. To make … Continue reading Brindlewood Bay: Fillable version of the official character sheet
In 1981, Kirby Lee Davis designed and self-published a small homebrew fantasy RPG - The Spawn of Fashan. It didn't sell particularly well, and was soon out-of-print. The author left the RPG scene altogether. Normally, it would be completely forgotten, but the game has developed a strange afterlife. For a long time, Spawn of Fashan … Continue reading The Spawn of Fashan: Some notes on a mostly-dead RPG and a new character sheet
I recently picked up a copy of the Sword & Sorcery RPG ZeFRS over on Lulu. I'll be running a one-shot of this, so I thought I'd put together a quick mini-review and show off my custom character sheet. History In 1985, TSR (the original D&D publisher) released their Conan RPG. The rules were by Dave … Continue reading ZeFRS: A mini-review and free character sheet for the Conan retroclone
Sivad's Sanctum recently released the Wild West RPG - In the Light of the Setting Sun: Bonanza Edition. It's an update of the old Saddlebag edition of their OSR-inspired western RPG. I've always liked the system and was pleased to see a new version. Here's some notes and a fillable version of the official character … Continue reading In the Light of the Setting Sun: Bonanza Edition – Review and fillable Character Sheet.
I’ve finished up my conversion of the OSR zine Lumberlands (DriveThruRPG / itch.io), the fun lumberjack fantasy setting, to the Black Hack ruleset.. I've assembled everything into two zine-sized (5.5" x 8.5") PDFs that can be downloaded and printed. Remember that you'll need a copy of both the Black Hack and the Lumberlands zine to … Continue reading Lumberlands: A Black Hack conversion in two PDF booklets
I’m continuing my conversion of the OSR zine Lumberlands (DriveThruRPG / itch.io), the fun lumberjack fantasy setting, to the Black Hack ruleset.This time, I'm making a custom character sheet and spell sheet. Previous Posts:Part I – Classes are here.Part II – Sasquatches are here.Part III – Dangerous CreaturesPart IV - More Creatures This character sheet … Continue reading Lumberlands: A Black Hack character sheet for the fantasy forest setting
People in the 80's loved ninjas. There were magazines, books, and an endless number of ninja movies. Not one was good, but most were kind of fun. There were, of course, Ninja RPGs. The best known is probably Ninjas & Superspies from Palladium Games, but there were others. In 1986, IIE Games Corps (now defunct) … Continue reading Night of the Ninja: A Character Sheet for an extremely dead RPG
At the request of a commenter on my Traveller: 1700 post, I've also made a character sheet for 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. It has a set of Traveller careers, rules for … Continue reading Mercator: Ancient Rome, Classic Traveller – Custom Character Sheet
There's a really entertaining little OSR zine called the Wampus County Travel Guide 1: Lumberlands (DriveThruRPG / itch.io) by Lost Pages games. It's a system-agnostic setting for any fantasy game, though it's clearly intended for some kind of OSR system. It's set in a vaguely North American forest setting, with influences from old lumberjack lore. … Continue reading The Lumberlands – An OSR forest setting – Black Hack Conversion part I
At Travellercon/USA 2021 I got to play in a great session of Traveller: 1700. This is a free setting for Classic Traveller created by Greg Caires, originally published in the Freelance Traveller fanzine. It's available for download over at the Freelance Traveller site. Though designed for Classic Traveller, it's easily compatible with more modern versions, and … Continue reading Traveller: 1700 – A custom character sheet and some recommended Colonial American RPG books
Polyhedral Nonsense 