Category Archives: Uncategorized

Harken ye to Witchport!!

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Brian Isikoff has announced his OpenQuest supplement “Whispers from Witchport, Vol I: The Bleak Coast” coming this December.

From his website Witchport Whispers

What is the Bleak Coast setting?

The Bleak Coast is my setting for vaguely West Coast Lovecraftian, swords & sorcery toned fantasy adventures. I’ve been using it, roughly, for the past few years as background for various games, including Labyrinth Lord with Realms of Crawling Chaos, Swords & Wizardry, Crypts & Things, and OpenQuest. I enjoy using it, wanted to develop it and thought others might enjoy it as well. Mythos’ inspired, S&S noir-ish fantasy … what’s not to like (unless, I guess, you’re not a fan of any of those ;) )

It’s meant to be a flavorful region that can host a GM’s campaign as the main sandbox, drop into a larger campaign, or simply be kit bashed for use as a GM needs. I envision the setting as half-baked – it has more flavor and suggestion, and every GM and playgroup should develop and finish it as they like and need.

What is Witchport?

Witchport is one of the three major cities – or townships – in the Bleak Coast region. It’s a particular favorite of this author and GM. Witchport is the dirty fingered city of the three – it’s my Sanctuary, Lankhmar, Kingsport and Vornheim, all rolled into one.

What Bleak Coast products are on the Release Schedule?

The first planned release – currently in development – is “Whispers from Witchport, Vol I: The Bleak Coast“. This book will provide the setting basics and resources including gazetteer, factions, original cults, bestiary, npcs and more. Whispers from Witchport is being developed to support the OpenQuest system. The current release date is December 2012.

Stay tuned for future updates, and thanks for reading!

~ Brian

Its all fun and games until someone loses an eye

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One thing that gets my goat is that people say OpenQuest is an action orientated or cinematic game…

Its a common misconception that OpenQuest is focused on action.  I don’t understand why, just because OQ cuts out some of the crunch of its crunchier brothers doesn’t mean its Jet Li jumping about ignoring hits and doing back flips. Its still the regular “Don’t blunder into combat, plan your attack and pray you don’t get hit” of standard BRP. Remember HeroPoints are optional rule, and even if used you would have to give them out like flowing water and make Hit points based off Con+Siz rather than (Con+Siz/2) to acheive cinematic levels.

Patience, patience…..

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My printer emailed me yesterday to say my final proofs of The Company and Crypts & Things have been sent to me 🙂  Today is first day that the they can turn up, so knowing the Gods of Gaming they will turn up mid next week 😉  Oh well one can hope……………..

12 Days of the UK OSR Day 3: Fighting Fantasist

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Lazy post this one.

The US D&D OSR has Grognardia.

We have Fighting Fantasist and his companion tumblr blog which serves up images of old 80s White Dwarf/Games Workshop art.

Then of course there’s his classic declaration of what the UK OSR is;

Coopdevil is much more eloquent at rambling on about the history and joys of the UK OSR, and he usually gets there first.  Witness his masterful review of all that is good and wonderfull about “What is Dungeons and Dragons?” , a book put out by Penguin/Puffin in the 80s from which I pretty much learnt how to play the game.

So do your self a favour at his blog to yer list 😉

12 Days of the UK OSR : Introduction

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Ok so if you are going from day 1 of the 12 days of XMAS being Christmas Day, I’m one day late but hey according to Wikipedia some traditions start it on Boxing Day and besides I was busy on XMAS day 😛

So onto business. Seems like some folk still need an education about what us UK gamers consider Old School, I’m looking at you narrow minded Yanks here with your love of an Original D&D that never was.  One US OSR fanzine editor noted that in his recent trips over to Dragonmeet & UK Games Expo he hadn’t seen any evidence of OSR publishers….he obviously hadn’t looked at the Cubicle 7 stand , who publish a fine selection of UK OSR games. If you think the UK OSR is just about D&D clones, read on.

For us Brits the Old School is anything that we could have picked up from Games Workshop from the late 70s to late 80s. Sure there may have been other games shops lurking in backstreets of our cities but Games Workshop was the important one, it had a big high street presence in all major cities, and that’s were everyone got their games. They published White Dwarf that was sold in mainstream newsagents, like WH Smiths. The end point of the UK Old school can be very neatly when GW, who had merged with Citadel Miniatures a couple of years previous, dumped RPG support in 1988, quite literally overnight. There’s a reason why RuneQuest is so big in the UK, its because you could pick up GW’s RQ3 hard covers dirt cheap from the bargain bin when they decided to concentrate on miniatures games.  Others took up the retail side of RPGs, notably the games sections of Virgin megastores (where a young Lawrence Whitaker was employed in the Leeds branch), and over time the network of games shops we have today grew up; but it was never on the scale of the halcyon days of 80s Games Workshop.

But in a sense these games never really left us, mainly because of geographical proximity of gamers in this country its easy to find someone playing old school games, and because its a shared gaming heritage amongst UK gamers of playing : D&D*, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 1st Edition, Games Workshop’s Judge Dredd Roleplaying game, Golden Heroes,  Dragon Warriors, RuneQuest*, Stormbringer*, Traveller* and Call of Cthulhu*  (* all these games although not developed by GW had GW editions at some point in the UK).

So its no surprise that with the resurgence of RPG publishing that has occurred over the last decade, that some of these games have re-emerged in new editions or games that have directly been influenced by the fine standards set by those 80s games.

Over the next twelve days I will be quickly reviewing what I consider the highlights of the UK Old School Renaissance 🙂

Age of Shadow PDF bundle

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The excellent OQ powered Age of Shadow is up for a XMAS sale, over at DriveThroughRPG.com

Here’s the blurb

For a limited time you can grab all three of the current booklets from the Age of Shadow Range for just $5. These include:

The Age of Shadow RPG – a complete fantasy role-playing games based upon the OpenQuest System.

The Age of Shadow Campaign Guide – an introductory booklet that deals with the specifics of the Age of Shadow setting.

East Eyre Fortress Map-pack – more than 40 maps depicting one of the great fortifications of the Northern kingdom.

The Company is Go! GO! GO!!!!

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If you like OpenQuest and want a bit of Modern Warfare in your gaming life, I’ve just put The Company on pre-order until the second week of December.  Same clean D100 system as OQ with added rules for vehicles, guns etc , a plausible yet gamable setting, and two introductory adventures. All in all 200+ pages worth of D100 goodness from us. Like Crypts and Things, if the Goal of the preorder is reached everyone gets the first adventure for FREE!

New OpenQuest review

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Chris Helton over at Dorkland has just posted a review of OpenQuest.

All in all, OpenQuest is a very solid fantasy gaming system that deserves a lot more attention than it receives. In 183 pages it manages to cover the basics of what any group would need out of a game system, and do it in a way that is simple and yet still manages to remain robust. If you are a fan of fantasy games, and do not yet have OpenQuest on your bookshelf (virtual or otherwise) then you need to fix this as soon as you can.

Read the rest

Rest assured its not all been about Crypts and Things here at D101 HQ recently. Some big annoucements regarding OpenQuest coming up very soon 🙂