Labyrinth Lord Resources Lists Update

The Labyrinth Lord Resource Lists were updated to remove multiple dead links to sites, pages, and products. These lists have not been maintained since late 2011 so are missing products from the last 5 years.

Bug Fix: Labyrinth Lord Spell Book

I fixed a minor issue in the Labyrinth Lord treasure generation system. Specifically, the issue was not capping level for druids (from AEC) to a maximum of 14. The other spell casting classes have spell progressions to level 20. Due to the lack of a cap, occasionally the spell book creation process failed for druids.

The Spell Book / Known Spells and Treasure Generator were affected by the bug.

LL Resources Updated: Black Streams – The Pacts of the Wise

Pacts of the Wise

Sorcerers often make promises they find difficult to keep. In the Pacts of the Wise, a Labyrinth Lord will find six sinister bargains suitable for PC and NPC wizards alike, each one offering advantages to the canny arcanist in exchange for the mildest of services. Any might tempt the prudence of a bold young adventurer, but will the wizard find it quite so fine a bargain when his patron’s price come due?

While the Pacts of the Wise fits with the sorceries revealed in the Crimson Pandect and is set within the world of the Red Tide Campaign Setting and Sandbox Toolkit, the contents are perfectly usable with any old-school gaming system. You’ll find the patrons, magic items, and plot seeds for each occult devotion, all free for the taking for your own campaign!

Need more resources? Check out the list of supplements and expansions available for Labyrinth Lord™. Perhaps a browseable list of compatible modules is useful?

Do You Want to Play in Garbage?

I ripped off that intro to announce that Dylan Hartwell’s latest Labyrinth Lord™ module has been added to the ever expanding list of available modules. Dylan’s latest incarnation is completely different than what you would expect in a traditional setting and adventure. I’ll let it speak for itself.

The Horrendous Heap of Sixteen Cities!

Extending above a haze of reeking steam rise sixteen peaks of garbage magically transported from sixteen different cities. It spreads, like an ever-growing fungus, across the landscape, encompassing and corrupting nearly fifty square miles. Hideous flies, crows, and vultures circle the piles, perpetually avoiding garbage falling from magical portals thousands of feet in the air. Giant rats, skunks, maggots, and other manner of repugnant beasts scuttle about the surface, surviving off the offal. Underneath, giant worms crawl through the debris. Periodic explosions reform the horizon. Some cultures call it “Sheoal”, others “Kol Katta”. All, however, use the common vernacular “The Heap”. And everywhere its name is synonymous with “Hell”.

THE HORRENDOUS HEAP OF SIXTEEN CITIES! is a sandbox fantasy adventure. Contained within are original and terrifying monsters, maps of The Heap, and multiple adventures for months of play.

17 New Monsters
3 Maps
5 Detailed Non-Player Characters
More than 25 Original Illustrations
7 Plot Hooks

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The Horrendous Heap is available now on RPGNow.

Experimenting: Free for Free — Product Publicity

A few days ago, I launched a product experiment by releasing the Medieval Names books for sale on DriveThruRPG. Once I’d figured out the process, I bundled both books for $0.98 and priced the individual titles at $0.59. Similar products provide far fewer names for more money. The response was quite positive. I’m not going to get rich but I’ll have a few extra bucks to spend on gaming materials.

Yesterday, I published the Labyrinth Lord Treasure Book on Demand as a free product. Based on feedback from the original consumers and posts on other sites, the TBoD is useful to many people. The book is neither pretty or ground breaking. Simply put, it contains treasure lists for the time challenged game master.

So why release it as a free product on a commercial site?

Two reasons – 1) I suck at marketing and 2) links from others confirm my ineptitude. The latter comments have included such gems as “great stuff but the guy doesn’t post anywhere – we need to get the word out”. I cannot disagree. I feel completely uncomfortable visiting sites only to promote what I’ve done. The entire idea of starting an account for the sole purpose of self promotion makes me shudder. I have the same feelings on social media sites. Those I use to connect with other like minded individuals — not spam them with my latest and greatest thought.

Tossing a free product onto a commercial site full of cool titles is likely to get lost in the noise, right? Not to mention its from a completely unknown “publisher” of gaming products. I trusted DriveThru to provide marketing. My trust was not misplaced. In fact, I had to start filtering sales notifications.

Bat Guano Crazy

Granted, these are free product notifications. My best day of hits on the same generation system is far less than the sales in a single day. I’ve long known Mithril & Mages was not known by the majority of the Labyrinth Lord community. The magnitude of the difference is shocking.

Oh yeah, those free books? They are marked page by page with the web address. I might still suck at the marketing front but a few more folks know about me.

LL Resources Update

Cool new stuff. If you enjoy Gothic fantasy, this addition is for you.

Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque from Jack W. Shear

An introduction to Gothic Fantasy spanning 116 pages including Jack’s campaign setting, three new classes compatible with the AEC, house rules, 44 monsters, 26 spells, 7 magic items, and numerous random tables.

Tales could have went in a number of different places but landed in the Supplements section since I had to choose.

Head Down, Mind in the Weeds

ROTWORLD scenario is finished. Okay, close to finished, may have to tweak a bit more. Labyrinth Lord session is nearly there. That’s all I’m going to prep for VisionCon. I’m going to play more than I run but figured it would be useful to have some things ready to roll should the opportunity strike .

While I was in that process, I did a massive amount of code for some new generators. Neither of them are done. I went tangential on both generators. Tangents add interesting bits but defeat a completion target. Tangents win. My personal efforts have no deadlines.

It is 2012. I’m going to game more and code less.

Three weeks to go.