An Overview of All the Upcoming New Big Dragon Releases

All of the following projects are production-ready, except for some final test prints and some final editing/proofing polish. The goal is to release them in September (probably late September, maybe early October). Right now, this is the plan... the initial print release will be as an "all or none" bundle pre-order through the New Big Dragon square storefront, with PDF copies included, with individual sales (including PDF only options) will follow in the weeks after the initial bundles ship. (It's kind of like doing a Kickstarter, without having to do a Kickstarter—too much damn hassle and cost associated with it.)

All of the following are specifically designed for B/X rulesets (and similar).

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Old School Adventures™ Accessory RS1
Fang, Faith, and Legerdemain

This is sort of an abridged DMG for BX, with alternate and supplementary rules, including character information, weapons & armor details, supplementary combat options, expanded monster information, and more!

  

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Old School Adventures™ Module BX1
Adventurers Wanted

This campaign module combines 5 separate adventurers run over recent years at NTRPGCon, written by Richard LeBlanc and legendary D&D contributor and author Steve Marsh. Direct sale print copies feature an old-school "separate cover" map in classic blue and magenta. 

"Rock Sorenson, an adventure broker based in the city of Drekka, is seeking would-be heroes for a mission that will lead to a path of adventure that takes them from wide-eyed novices to established heroes!"

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Old School Adventures™ Accessory CCSB
Creature Compendium Special Edition Boxed Set

This a digest-sized, 4-book boxed set. Each book includes 45 new monsters based on images culled from public domain pulp magazine resources. A couple of the books include some supporting information for the creatures; for example,  book 3 includes 7 new animal-related MU spells and book 4 includes 7 new BXΨ (Basic Psionics) disciplines.

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Dragon Horde, Volumen 2, Issue 2
In Alley & Shadow

This is a digest-sized thief-themed zine (similar in format and content to 2019's Wherein Evil Lies).

  

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1$ gets you: a new character class, a starter level adventure, over 2 dozen NPC encounters, 3 magic items, and more!

... BUT ONLY UNTIL TOMORROW (Thursday, June 18, 2014)!

Right now, the PDF of issue #2 of the The Dragon Horde zine is on sale for $1 at RPGNow.

Those of you lucky enough to attend the NTRPG Con know that I had print copies of The Dragon Horde zine #1 and The Dragon Horde #1 a week and a half ago. Well, now issue #2 is available to the general public in both PDF (from RPGNow) and in print (through the New Big Dragon Marketplace). Unfortunately, I'm still working out international shipping, so print sales are limited to domestic (US) shipping only. (But give me a couple of weeks, and I think I'll have the international thing worked out). Issue #1 has been available as a PWYW PDF for quite some time, but it is now available in print (also at the New Big Dragon Marketplace).

And as usual, when you buy through the marketplace, I'll send you a coupon for a complimentary PDF copy from RPGNow (to the email address you use at the marketplace).

So what's inside this Nordic-themed issue of The Dragon Horde?

• The Monster Roster: Linnorms (Oe/BX/1e information for 6 types)

• The Long and Short of the Viking Longhouse (with several sample maps)

• Here's the Thing... (folkmotes and fitting them into your adventures)

• The Völva: A New NPC Character Class - including several new spells
(part seer, part shaman, part wanderer... all woman)

• Vifillmein: An Adventure for Characters Levels 1-3

• Dealing with Level Drain (a host of alternatives to "by the book" level drain)

• The Houses of the Mark: NPC Encounters Adapted from
William Morris's The House of the Wolfings (NPC encounters for nearly
2 dozen tribes and their most important members)

• A Trio of Norse-inspired Magic Items

And because it's a half-legal size, that means you get about 25% more content than a digest-sized zine with the same page count. Just check it out for yourself...

Dragon Horde Zine #2 Now Available in Print & PDF

Those of you lucky enough to attend the NTRPG Con know that I had print copies of The Dragon Horde zine #1 and The Dragon Horde #1 a week and a half ago. Well, now issue #2 is available to the general public in both PDF (from RPGNow) and in print (through the New Big Dragon Marketplace). Unfortunately, I'm still working out international shipping, so print sales are limited to domestic (US) shipping only. (But give me a couple of weeks, and I think I'll have the international thing worked out). Issue #1 has been available as a PWYW PDF for quite some time, but it is now available in print (also at the New Big Dragon Marketplace).

And as usual, when you buy through the marketplace, I'll send you a coupon for a complimentary PDF copy from RPGNow (to the email address you use at the marketplace).

So what's inside this Nordic-themed issue of The Dragon Horde?

• The Monster Roster: Linnorms (Oe/BX/1e information for 6 types)

• The Long and Short of the Viking Longhouse (with several sample maps)

• Here's the Thing... (folkmotes and fitting them into your adventures)

• The Völva: A New NPC Character Class - including several new spells
(part seer, part shaman, part wanderer... all woman)

• Vifillmein: An Adventure for Characters Levels 1-3

• Dealing with Level Drain (a host of alternatives to "by the book" level drain)

• The Houses of the Mark: NPC Encounters Adapted from
William Morris's The House of the Wolfings (NPC encounters for nearly
2 dozen tribes and their most important members)

• A Trio of Norse-inspired Magic Items

And because it's a half-legal size, that means you get about 25% more content than a digest-sized zine with the same page count. Just check it out for yourself...

Prepping for NTRPG Con& Dragon Horde Zine #2

I'm assuming that a few of you are wondering what's been going on with all the radio silence around this blog for the past couple of weeks. Long story short, I've been spending most of my time prepping for the North Texas RPG Con which starts next week. The majority of that work has been in wrapping up the 2nd issue of the Dragon Horde zine, which will premier at the con. There are just a handful of edits that need to be made, and one article that needs an overhaul. Time permitting, this should mostly be put to bed by late tonight, which allows me to get into the printing tomorrow night. The picture here is a copy of issue 1, and a test print of issue 2 (thus the "X" in the corner that tells me not to mix it up with the final issues, when printed).

So here's what's inside issue 2:

• The Monster Roster: Linnorms - Oe/BX/1e info for 6 types
• The Long and Short of the Viking Longhouse - includes an overview and sample map
• Here's the Thing - an intro to using things/folkmoots in your adventures
• The Volva: A New NPC Character Class - part seer, part shaman, all woman
• Viffilmein - a beetle-infested adventure for characters levels 1-3
• Dealing With Level Drain - guidelines for 10+ variants on monsters' level drain
• The Houses of the Mark - an abundance of NPC encounters adapted from William Morris's The House of the Wolfings
• A Trio of Norse-inspired Magic Items

The print copies of the 2nd issue will probably not be available at the New Big Dragon storefront until the con is over, and the PDF copies on RPGNow will be available the same day as the print copies. The print copies of the 1st issue will be available then as well.

Dragon Horde Zine #2: Sneak Preview

There's still a lot to do on issue #2 of The Dragon Horde zine (e.g., a couple of rounds or proofing, some illustrations yet to be done, a couple of run-throughs on the adventure), but the pages are there. Here's a sneak-preview of what turned out to be a "Special Nordic-themed Issue."

BTW, issue #2 will be available in print (as will issue #1), and they will be exclusively available through the New Big Dragon storefront.

Update: Dragon Horde Zine #2

When I launched The Dragon Horde zine with its inaugural issue, I made a commitment to myself to have as much of the zine's content as possible appear in the zine exclusively (if not as its only appearance, at least as its first appearance). With my work schedule as of late, it's been tough to maintain regular blog posting in addition to the "behind the scenes" work on the next issue of the zine. While the zine is coming along nicely, I feel like this blog (my first baby) is being neglected. I'm going to do my best to post every day this week, including a free adventure on Thursday (which has been written for weeks, but just needs a hair of tweaking), and a new d30 chart on Friday (again, something that's mostly complete, but has been sitting around waiting to be laid out).

Over the weekend, I did make some really good progress on the zine.

• The page count is now up to 32 pages + cover (from 28 + cover)
  
• I finished an article on Viking longhouses (which supports the adventure in the issue).
  
• I've added an article on dealing with level drain
  (since wights are part and parcel of Nordic/Viking-themed adventuring).
  
• I've added some new magic items.
  
• I've started work on an article takes tribes/characters from William Morris’s
  The House of the Wolfings, and turns them into sandbox fodder (giving some overview information on each group, and listing a few notable NPCs from the story). It's about 1/2-done.
  
• I made some progress on the rune-based adventure seed generator.

And, yes... beginning with issue #2, both issue #2 and back issues of #1 will be available in print through my new Square storefront. Wait— did I mention my new Square storefront?

Then I'll talk about that tomorrow.

Dragon Horde Zine #2 Coming Along Nicely

So these are the articles I'm looking at as the "anchor" pieces
for what is to be a Nordic-themed issue...

Monster Roster: Linnorms. I know this is a creature that has been dealt with in a few places (e.g., 2e's AD&D Monstrous Compendium Annual 1, John Turcotte's Stormcrows Gather. I felt like 2e's linnorms were too strong, and Turcotte's linnorm really only came in one variety. I wanted the variety of 2e, but executed with more of a BX vibe (even though Oe/1e stats will be included).

The Völva: A New NPC Character Class. Honestly, the way I've done this one up, there's no reason it doesn't work as a PC character class. I've seen other people mention they'd like to see this as a class for a Nordic/viking-themed RPG, but haven't found anyone working it up (especially for old-school D&D editions and clones).

Vifillmein. This is the issue's adventure designed for beginning level (1st=3rd) characters. I'm feeling pretty good about the concept, and the presentation (even though I do have a lot of work left to flesh out the bones).

A Futhark Rune Adventure Seed Generator. It's based on the actual meaning of the runes, and the various methods used to draw them from the bag. I'm really trying to make this substantially different than the adventure generator from the d30 Sandbox Companion, and keep with the spirit of the runes used as predictions (things for the DM to aspire to, rather than design around, as the adventure goes on). I'm feeling pretty good about it so far, and the "bones" of the system are in place. Mostly, I've just got to get runes broken out to match the dice rolling (trying to keep it completely d6-based).

There will be some other, smaller articles (about a half-dozen or so). But, like I said, these are the main anchors of the issue.

"Shreds of Fabric" Adventure Design Technique

This is a sketch for the adventure I've got in the works for Dragon Horde Zine #2... for which I shared the illustration recently.

There's actually a lot of story going on here that's not obvious from that illustration or this sketch (which really does nothing more than lay out the major encounter areas, and note how they're related). The story does, however, drives the whole thing.

In some ways, the way I'm approaching adventure design as-of-late is based on a technique I'm calling the "shreds of fabric" technique. Hah! I just made that up. Look, if Hemingway could use an "iceberg" approach to storytelling, why can't I use a "shreds of fabric approach." Okay, I'll admit, "shreds of fabric" is just my way of saying that little clues are planted here and there, and as more shreds of fabric and placed to together, the clearer the picture becomes of what really happened. I know that's not really a new technique (and those writing professors out there will probably chime in with a more appropriate term for the technique), but it does help me think about how I want the story to be woven as the characters progress through the encounters, regardless of the order of those encounters.

Part of what I'm resolving in this map-sketch (which actually deals with both encounters AND story), is when and how to reveal the story's big plot twist. (I'm avoiding the tendency to want to railroad this kind of reveal. As such, I'll be reworking those "blocked passages" in the middle of the map.)

I'm reminded of the movie The Sixth Sense. Somebody had warned me not to read too much about it before I saw it, because of the big plot twist at the end. Because I knew there was a twist, when I saw the movie for the first time, I started looking for it. Halfway through the movie, I figured it out. Watching the rest of the movie just reinforced my hypothesis. So when the twist was finally revealed at the end, I thought to myself, "Yep. I figured it out." But it didn't necessarily reduce my enjoyment of the story. I'm hoping this adventure is the same. That even if the characters discover the "plot twist" (i.e., get the "whole picture") halfway through the adventure, that it doesn't keep them from enjoying the other little shreds of fabric as they discover them.

Another illustration from the upcoming Dragon Horde zine #2....

This is the image for the title page of the adventure for the issue.
The adventure is tentatively titled Vifillmein ("beetle plague").

BTW, I'm not sure why I love putting halfings in my illustrations. I just do.

New Illustration: Völva (Before & After)

No... "völva"... with an umlautted "o" (not a "u") - a Norse shaman/seeress. It's an NPC character class I'm working on for issue #2 of The Dragon Horde zine. I was really looking for an old public domain illustration from the lat 1800s or early 1900s that would fit the bill, but to no avail. In lieu of that option, I decided to do my own. My first stab (bottom) was really an attempt to start using my brush pen again. While I like the line quality, it just didn't have the visual punch I wanted (and felt a little to "new school" for what I wanted visually, especially the punkish haircut). So I took another stab, attempting to give it that woodcut inspired look with which I've had some success (see my Bartleby illustration for reference). The new illustration makes her look older, but that's intentional. The further I got into the development of the class, I realized making her a tad older made more sense (and was more in line with the traditional image of a völva).

AFTER...


BEFORE...

Plans for Dragon Horde Zines #2 and #3

For those who've been waiting for issue #2 of the Dragon Horde Zine, here's a little update...

I was getting pretty close to finishing up most of the content for #2, when I had a discussion with Welbo, and we decided to "split" the contents out a bit. So that leaves #2 and #3 each sort of "half-complete," but we have a pretty good track on what will be in each. The main thing that happened in this process is that we took a lot of content originally slated for #2 and are delaying it until the North Texas RPG Con for a special "show" issue that we'll have with us at the con. For example, the adventure from #2 goes to #3, and I've got a really cool new idea for the adventure for #2. BTW, if things roll as desired, issue #2 should be ready at the end of February. But more importantly...

All issues of the Dragon Horde zine will now be available in print!
I think I've found a really great local resource for on-demand printing. Which means, not only will issues #2 and #3 be in print, but will so will back issues of #1. EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY... I believe that I will be able to AFFORDABLY provide print issues of all other products directly to buyers in the U.S.! (E.g., d30 Books, etc.) This still has to be worked out and tested, but it really provides me hope for a lot of quality control that I think is often lacking from Lulu.

Illustration of the Week: Fight On! Preview

I've contributed a couple of illustrations to the upcoming edition of Fight On! magazine. Editor Ignatius Umlaut is putting together what is certain to be an interesting issue that (I believe) will be featuring a Ken St. Andre solo T&T adventure called "Battle School" and an article (adventure?/source material?) for a place called "Fungus Falls" (which I believe the illustration at left will be accompanying.)

BTW, the illustration is a "a wasted druid hooked on psionic mushrooms."