Monsieur Nerluc clings to the local mountainside. Villagers tell frightened children that the monstrous form of earthen stone is just a natural rock formation. It’s a lie they’d like to believe themselves. Monsieur Nerluc is, in fact, the lord of all Tarasques, and strange cultists seek to waken him. If they do, his age-old toothache will begin to throb, and he’s going to be horrendously angry. 

 Can the heroes get to the “root” of the problem? Will they have a Tarasque lord running wild?  This adventure will be approximately 14 pages long when layout is finished and aimed at a party of 4–5 heroes of 5th level.

Back it NOW!

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The Journey

Up to now I’ve written and played modules in older editions and paid for help in the 5e conversions. No more. We found a local friend (Herman) and we talked about how to proceed. We would take it slow; stop, complain, look things up, and make a real effort to understand this edition. It turns out there was less complaining in play than anticipated but we do still need to look various things up. This slows play a bit, but we are progressing through the game better than expected.

Previously I had read the books and tried it a few times but always with a bit of expectation that the game was still what it once was. Of course, this is a foolish approach because those editions have already been printed. WOTC wouldn’t reprint the same game twice.

My Personal Issues in 5e

I have discovered by playing 5E weekly, rotating playing and GMing, that my issues were less with the game than with the way the information is presented in the books. The game plays differently than it reads when the dice start rolling. Running also seems to have smoothed out a bit with the progression of time as we become more familiar with the rules.

The Latest Adventures

Tonight players finished The Witch’s Trial in the Lands of Lunacy. During my time behind the character sheet, Herman is running us through the Phandelver adventure. The more hours we all spend on both sides of the screen, the more we are learning to like 5E. The power ratchet is real, however, doing 2 HP of damage to a monster with 6 HP is the same as doing 20 HP of damage to one with 60. We are also learning to better write to this edition from the ground up.

The Fun Side

As players, we are discarding the idea and verbiage of “Character Builds”. The Squad didn’t want to try to find the most powerful character stack. We are purposefully choosing the race class combinations we want to play and fitting the numbers and choices into that story. We had fears of overly complex play and abilities, overpowered classes (which is still on the horizon as we rise through levels), and spending hours looking up various abilities and skills.

I feel that we are all pleasantly surprised at how smoothly the game plays once the dice roll and the books are closed. Yes, we still need to look things up, but no more than we did in the 1E and 2E versions. The various character abilities are laid on slowly in lairs so GMs and player grow accustom to the options and abilities. It still feels like a night of D&D at the end of the evening and nothing more complicated than the “Complete Book of” era we went through.

The more we game, the more we all look forward to gaming again. The more we put the rules to practical application, the more we seem to accept the changes. It has taken us some time to adapt to 5E from our 0E to 2E roots, but we are indeed adapting.

We tested a live stream tonight and have discussed plans for future, better, and upgraded stream arrangements for FSG games to come online. Follow us on Facebook to keep up to date with our adventure into 5E and our games.

This acceptance of 5E came just as we were considering dropping production to the system and focusing on BECMI / LL. I’m glad we gave it one more try.

The post FSG Kicking up 5E appeared first on Fail Squad Games.

This Kickstarter is launching soon. the writing is complete, most of the map work done, edits finished and more than half the illustrations are in place. We need to complete the 5E conversion and layout before we launch. That’s right, as with all Fail Squad Games Kickstarters almost all the work is done at launch, we just need to support of backers to go to print.

Coming to a table near you…. Brindlemarsh!!! (Nagareth the Terrible)

The post Brindlemarsh BR-2 appeared first on Fail Squad Games.

The OSR (Old School Renaissance or Revival) community is comprised heavily of small indie publishers working multiple jobs, solo entrepreneurs who LOVE games, small companies scraping to get by, or giant companies with very deep pockets. WOTC and Paizo haven’t ignored the OSR as they release and re-hash old titles, so they are included. Of course Paizo had a major hand in making the OSR possible with Pathfinder’s divergence from D&D 3.0 pushing the limits of the Open Gaming License.

What does this have to do with the Ennies?

I’m glad I asked. The Ennies are the yearly awards at the worlds largest RPG convention, Gen Con. They recognize excellence in the gaming arena and there are a lot of nominees. However, it’s also become a “David and Goliath” battle. For the most part, many small indie producers take the nomination as an honor and check out. It’s difficult to wrangle votes for an indie publisher even for the best of products when you are up against huge markets, giant companies, and deep promotional pockets. Small press publishers don’t print 300,000 copies of anything, or have thousands of marketing dollars. And it’s not for lack of quality, it’s often for lack of voice. They also don’t have mailing lists and magazines that are 100,000 or more subscribers deep.

WOTC, Paizo, and other big players of course, do produce note-worthy products with mind-blowing art, writing, and production value. Again, they can afford to do this with dozens or hundreds of hired minds. When an OSR entrepreneur creates something of note however, they too deserve the recognition and reward of a glimmer of hope of achieving the notoriety an Ennie brings within the community. We shouldn’t ignore the small voice in a gale of the storm at sea. Consideration of these small OSR companies (Like Fail Squad Games) in these big oceans can make or break the scenario for some.

Who of note in the OSR  are nominees?

Some of the nominees taking on the goliaths are as follows:

• Hobbs and Friends RPG Podcast, zines, and materials.
• Frostbitten & Mutilated (RPG Setting)
• Vaginas are Magic
• The Midderlands
• The Scenario from Ontario

These are all small press OSR folks producing quality gaming materials who are up against the goliaths of the industry for votes and attention. Being nominated for an Ennie is certainly an honor, but winning a category can truly shift gears for a small press. I urge all the Fail Squad Games readers and supporters to check out these entries to this year’s ENnie awards and consider them along side the others when you are voting.

Share their links and their products. They deserve a splash of the spot light. Trust me when I say – This isn’t an easy business to survive in, it takes LOVE of gaming to make it happen at all.

The post Ennies and the OSR appeared first on Fail Squad Games.

This piece of cardstock vibrates with the essence of gaming. The artisanal paper is hand-made from Classic AD&D books.

Damaged, well-played, seasoned books and leaves collected from 330 Center Street in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. For those who don’t know, 330 Center Street was the home of Gary Gygax and is the birthplace of Dungeons & Dragons.

The world and gaming were forever changed from this modest little home. The leaves were collected, cleaned, destemmed, then soaked for months to make the fibers pliable enough to be added to paper. These pages and leaves are then hand-pressed to create this one of a kind paper that carries the essence of gaming in every cell.

Lloyd Metcalf, Art director of Gary Con and CEO of Fail Squad Games, and lead goblin at Apple Con, collected the leaves, made the paper, and finally adorned each piece with thoughtful art in archival ink. Each drawing is intended to bring the essence of classic Dungeons & Dragons and RPGs to everyone who holds it.

Since the first piece was created, it has come to be believed that dice resting on this paper are imbued with the luck and adventures of legend. Is it possible that a roll in a game might somehow be altered by the will of all the heroes of center street, and the uncountable nostalgic adventures that were had with the paper that was recycled into this one little square?

You’ll have to try it to find out.

I will have a very limited supply of these,  all artwork is unique and different to each piece.  Whatever I make will be for sale in the online store CLICK HERE to get yours now!

The post A Piece of Gaming Mecca or Magic Item? appeared first on Fail Squad Games.

Who let the dogs out?

Some hellhounds have escaped their domain in the Lands of Lunacy (or a small island on the Elemental Plane of Fire). One of Brimfire’s (a fire giant) hounds discovered a jewel that opens a portal to the Prime Material Plane, and the hounds are wreaking havoc hunting and terrorizing the mortals.

The newest adventure to hit the virtual shelves from Fail Squad Games. a 6 page, full color Interlude adventure. BECMI / Labyrinth Lord rule set – for just $3.00.

Don’t have $3?

Join the Fail Squad Games Guild and get it for half off – ($1.50). Just pop up to the upper right hand section of the site and sign up now.

Click here to pop over to the store now.

Thank you for supporting Fail Squad Games, there are plenty more fun adventures, free stuff, and games to come!

~Lloyd M (worker Goblin)

The post Hell Hath No Furry appeared first on Fail Squad Games.

Expect – BECMI, Labyrinth Lord, OSRIC, 1E type of material, not to mention Lands of Lunacy and other slick stuff to keep your players off-guard.
Bookmark the page HERE also don’t forget to “subscribe to blog” at the bottom of the page so you won’t miss anything.

For some real up-coming treats, sign up for FSG exclusives at the top-right of the page.

The post Free Stuff Section appeared first on Fail Squad Games.

I love electronic gadgets, tablets, and laptops, and they are handy for gaming. Searchable PDFs of modules, supplements, rule books, the E-version of RPG books are everywhere and usually quite a bit cheaper than the print version. It seems like a no-brainer to bring them to the table. Does this mean print books are becoming obsolete?

I sometimes feel like I should lead the charge in the switch to digital media for gaming. I have a degree in communications / new media, I write in Word, Layout, illustrate, and design in the adobe suite. All of our products from Fail Squad Games are in digital format. However, when I sit down at the table to game and see devices come out I start to lose the magic. Even tablets that I KNOW are there with character sheets and game rule books on them show up and I feel… kind of funny. In fact, I like having my laptop handy for maps. I can’t deny the usefulness of these tools. After about 10 minutes, I start to realize that this makes me feel awkward too.

There is some essence about the game of Dungeons & Dragons (and the variants of it) that resides in books, paper, and pencils.

What is it?

I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly. Newer players to the hobby don’t seem as inclined to feel it, but it’s different. I feel that when a player is looking up a rule or spell in a book, they still hear what’s going on and what’s being said. When it’s being looked up on a device, I personally feel like the table is being shut out. Even if someone tells me it’s not true, I feel like it is.

Is it just nostalgia that keeps me stuck to the idea of the feel of books? The sound of turning pages and dragging a finger across the words to find that spell – A piece of the game lives in that for me. Am I just a stodgy old fart resisting change?

My trouble with PDF

I personally struggle to read PDFs. I don’t like that sitting at my computer staring at a screen. They fit uncomfortably on a tablet, requiring me to scroll side to side. Even when reading on a tablet with a PDF that fits, I tend to put my feet up, squirm around, accidentally touch the screen or the power button, or get distracted by a comment on Facebook or Twitter. A piece of the game, even when I’m on my own time, is captured between the printed pages. Adventure and inspiration builds up in the air between pages. When I flip them open, I can SMELL it!! Sometimes it’s elven forests, sometimes it’s an otyugh – depends where I’m reading.

Even when I am writing adventures, I sit at my desk with MSWord open. My outline, rough maps, and mechanics books (Rules cyclopedia, AD&D, Labyrinth Lord) are in print. I know I can download and search them in pdf, and I lose the excitement of designing an adventure if I do.

While slowly learning Roll20 and preparing to run adventures there, I think I will continue to keep my books in my hand. Will it satisfy the itch that can only be scratched at a table?

The smell of chips, the fizz of soda, the side jokes, breaks where you talk about what’s happened. A piece of this hobby is certainly physical and I think that printed books will not go out as fast as phone books and Ma-Bell booths.

The post Are print products like the phone book now? appeared first on Fail Squad Games.

I truly salute you. It takes a real love of the game that not many have, to do what you have done. That is, to keep gaming with the wind pushing against you. The language in the Holmes, BECMI and AD&D rule sets is needlessly masculine, and I don’t mean just a little bit and I am not exaggerating “Needlessly“.

 

I am trying to imagine how it would feel if I sat down to a game with a table full of women. Then I read the rules and the entire text was “she” based, my character would be limited based on gender, and I STILL would return for weeks, months or years to play the game. Sometimes even with the men or boys ridiculing me for not “getting it”. I’m slow, but I really am starting to “get ” it. Maybe this article is long overdue from Fail Squad Games.

Women who game TRULY did and do love the game, because you are still here and playing after all this time.

The Authors

Before I continue, I would like to make it clear that this is NOT a personal dig at the original authors of any edition of D&D, BECMI, AD&D. I know many of them and have a deep respect for them as creators of my favorite game, and ultimately my career. I hope they consider this article as a constructive critique if they haven’t changed with the times, and as a sign post to personal growth if they have.

The Excusing Text

In all the old school books like Rules Cyclopedia, BECMI, and AD&D there is a paragraph that reads something like the following (from Rules Cyclopedia):

Pronoun Note
The male pronouns (he, him, his) are used throughout this book. We hope this won’t be interpreted by anyone as an attempt to exclude females from the game or to imply their exclusion. Centuries of use have made these pronouns neutral, and we feel their use provides for clear and concise written text.

As a young teen / preteen reader this made perfect sense to me. I accepted this and never understood why girls or women would feel any twinge of issue with anything about the game. Ok, I could kind of get the chain mail bikini thing, even back then. but hey, images of Elise Gygax sold me the book IN a chain mail bikini!

Was it really THAT bad?

Yeah, it was that bad. As an adult, and an RPG producer in 2018 re reading the text, even I find it distracting as an aging white male. It really is that bad. Come at the text as if you were your daughter reading the book and it sheds a little light on it. Let’s look at a paragraph, there are so many, but I’ll just pick ONE. Rules Cyclopedia page 7

A Magic user is a character who wields magic. He has little or nothing in the way of fighting ability,  and in the early part of his career he has little in the way of magical ability either. But as he gains  in experience, he becomes a powerful character and can wield powerful spells. The magic user’s prime requisite is his intelligence.

For that one paragraph a masculine tense is used SIX times. there are only 61 words in that paragraph! Only the very first sentence doesn’t reference the magic user being male. This paragraph isn’t a cherry picked exception in the book. It’s a standard example of the text.

I know what you are thinking, “Oh dammit! another article by a ‘Social Justice Warrior'” or some such crap. Please, stop right there. This is an article by a long time gamer and a publisher of games and most importantly a DAD to a young woman who likes to game. I am writing this article mostly as a father, secondly as an author, and thirdly as someone who wants everyone to game at my table.

So how do you fix that?

I wanted to write, but the texts I read with the gender pronouns seemed the only logical way to build a sentence. When I first started writing in the genre, I recalled those excusing paragraphs, but something didn’t sit quite right. There were growing pains in the gaming world and a number of solutions came up.

• Use she instead of he everywhere. [The same issue but in reverse. this just feels like vengeance]
• Use he / she [ ok but clumsy to type and read. What about those who are neither?]
• Use he in one instance, then she in the next. [Yeah, this happened around the 3.0 – 3.5 days and it is AWFUL to read and confusing as hell!]
• Use they or proper nouns or reword the sentence to not need a gender. [This is the Fail Squad Games fix and many other OSR publishers are getting on board]

So how would the sentence above read if published in a Fail Squad Games module today?

A Magic User is a character who wields magic. They have little or nothing in the way of fighting ability and in the early part of their career have little in the way of magical ability either. But as the magic user gains  in experience, they become a powerful character and wield powerful spells. The magic user’s prime requisite is intelligence.

It takes about 15 minutes of thinking when you first start writing this way. It makes more sense, the text actually reads smoother when written this way. It is more “clear and concise written text.” The Game master is either “GM, they, their”. Why assume he/his/him at all? After about 1,000 words in, this is the natural way to write and when you read gendered text it’s almost painful. I cringe when I see new authors in the RPG genre writing this way.

Characters with a gender are of course referred to as their gender in the game, it’s a simple, easy thing to do that makes your product better.

Helmets off to the Women

All through this, there are women who loved the game so much, they let this slide. Even when the rules set their maximum strength less than their male counterparts. I always found this troubling and in poor design even as a teen player.

Here’s to you for sticking with the hobby. Here’s to you for gaming through in an instance where, if the tables were reversed, I doubt many – if any-  men would be left standing. I salute your strength of character. I salute you for your love of the game and some who changed perceptions from the inside out. I also humbly apologize for anything you have endured to get here. I love BECMI, truly love the game. I love AD&D, all its authors, artists and contributors. I don’t like this one aspect of it and what it has done.  It was absolutely not necessary to write this way. It is my job as an inheritor of the hobby to fix it.

I will still play the games. I will ALSO continue to produce gaming supplements for the old systems and their clones. I WON’T be using that language in any Fail Squad Games product. I hope I can invite those who aren’t on board, to get on board. You’re on a sinking ship if you think you MUST write he, him, his a half-dozen times in a brief paragraph of 60 words.

What this Isn’t

This isn’t the chain mail bikini debate. I know Tarzan, Conan, Red Sonja, and Caldwell’s babes. This is a pronoun debate. A simple change in literary thinking that improves our hobby as a whole. As a young reader, I didn’t realize what this does to a line of thinking. As an adult dad, I do. As they say in Goonies, “This is OUR TIME! Down here!”

This is OUR time. We are inheriting this hobby from the previous generation. it’s time to fix this. With a couple of minutes of thought, any text can be written without the he, his, him bit. I don’t care that it was used my Shakespeare, Defoe, or any others for centuries. It’s not an excuse to use it now. It’ REALLY is not an excuse to purposefully use it in a hobby that wants to be inclusive. If anything, gaming incorporates the disenfranchised and this language should be something that our hobby leads the way in changing.

I welcome your comments below. If you think you must write with gender *fight me* I’ll rewrite your example text.

The post Women Who Game appeared first on Fail Squad Games.

The latest announcement from Fail Squad Games

Is the creation of Maximum HP, the OSR Quarterly subscription with more hit points than a world-eater! If you love old school gaming, if you want to add more old-school flavor to your 5E games, you don’t want to be caught without this!

Maximum HP is a quarterly subscription aimed directly at the Old School and OSR (Old School Revival) tabletop gaming crowd.

In each Issue you can find things to add hours, days and even weeks to your gaming table like:

• Original Adventures
• Stories
• Interviews
• New Monsters
• New Treasures
• 5E conversions
• And who knows what?  in Appendix N

You can’t afford NOT to have Maximum HP at your table to keep the dice rolling! Subscription launch is coming soon!

Click here to learn more! 

The post Maximum HP Announced! appeared first on Fail Squad Games.