This is Paul’s take on fantasy D20 Class/Level gaming, streamlined rules with narrative elements, set in the baroque worlds controlled by the Empire of Ys.

If you want more info, there’s a video of Paul and me talking about the game, an interview with the Smart Party Podcast and us, and a 92-page preview pdf (rules up to 5th Level includes an adventure) linked to on the Kickstarter page.

It went live today, and until Tuesday, 4th May, all backers get an early bird backer gift of “The Traveller’s Guide to Polydrones” written by Paul and myself.

Swords and Wizardry is still my favourite of the D&D retro-clones, although the recent arrival of the Old School Essentials Basic and Advance box sets gives it a close run for its money.  Matt Finch brought it back under his Mythmere games imprint after it got a wider audience with Frog God games for a while last year, and now soon, he’s kickstarting a new edition.

• Sign up now to be notified on launch.

Finally, after many false starts, I’ve got a date for the Beyond Dread Portals Kickstarter opening.

Sunday 2nd April

(it would be a day earlier, but you’d think I’d be fooling 😉 )

Check out the preview pdf (but bear in mind the final product will be non-OGL since its author Paul Mitchener has gone through it and purged all D20 SRD content during the OGL fiasco in January).

And here’s me and Mitch having a short chat about it.

And if you want to catch up with the story so far, over the years I’ve made here at the Sorcerer.

• Beyond Dread Portals posts

The Dandy vs the fiend from Beyond Dread Portals, by Dan Barker

Coming soon to Kickstarter just in time for Halloween, The Old Faith is a dark fantasy adventure for OpenQuest. Read more about over at openquestrpg.com

• Something Wicked this Way comes for Halloween

Covers by Paul Tomes, interior art by Jonny Gray and Jesheilds.

One of the joys of running a Kickstarter is that you get a lot of spam from other anonymous creators, offering “you mention my KS and I’ll mention yours” deals. I delete and move on. But over the last couple of days, the deluge of spam got me thinking of what I’d actually recommend.

First up is another BOSR zine running as part of ZineQuest 4,  The Medieval Margin-agerie Zine.  “A 24-page zine of the grotesque, the weird, and the bizarre for OSR games. Featuring eight strange creatures written by Richard August.” This is from my good friends at Just Crunch Games/All Rolled Up, who are just down the road from me in Stockport, Greater Manchester.  It’s already funded with nine days to go.  Just Crunch, who put out Cthulhu Hack and The Dee Sanction recently, put out high-quality products and delivers them timely, so I have no hesitation in recommending this.

• The Medieval Margin-agerie Zine

Only running for one week is Handiwork Game’s Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland. This is Jon Hodgson’s storytelling game, The Silver Road, mixed with his use of midjourney as a veteran industry artist to produce “a psychedelic Mesolithic role-playing game, placing your stories in Forgotten Doggerland – the land that lies drowned beneath the North Sea.”  Again Handiwork Games produces high-quality products in a timely manner, and after receiving A|State 2nd Edition and Beowulf recently, I think they are my new favourite RPG company 🙂  But be fast on this one, there are only six days to go!

• Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland

For Crypts and Things, other OSR games, and fantasy games in general, the third issue of From the Shroud, now in Hellish full colour is coming to Kickstarter’s ZineQuest for two weeks, on Monday 15th August.  Sign up now to be told when the campaign goes live.

• From the Shroud #3 on Kickstarter.

Also here’s a short nine page preview, with one of the six tales that is included with the basic zine, and two of the illustrations from two of the other tales. As stretch goals fund, I’ll be adding additional tales of terror.

• From the Shroud 3 – preview