Selling Physical Books

 Because of the SummerCon and the start of the semester, I've been pretty busy the past two weeks. I was going to post about a recent YouTube video from the Mystic Arts channel where he seemed to not quite get what OSR is (or, as I was thinking, maybe OSR has moved on from what it once was and he's right and I'm stuck in the past). But Ben from Questing Beast made a response video with Dađi that addressed most of what I was thinking of writing about. 

So we move on. A few days ago, Richard was asking if I was ever planning to release a PoD version of Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins. Honestly, formatting Chanbara for DriveThru was a bit of a chore, and the books are just Pay-What-You-Want anyway, so I never planned to. But he said he'd like copies if I ever did. 

A little earlier, Justin had mentioned that he's going to be involved in a book fair again in October.  He asked if I wanted to sell some copies of Chanbara or some adventures or whatnot. I ordered some copies of Chanbara from DriveThru. They arrived two days ago. 

Anyway, Justin and Richard got me thinking again about Korean PoD options. I looked at a couple of sites, and found one that looked simple and easy. Especially since they said they could accept PDFs created in Word, not just ones made InDesign or Scribus or whatever.  I'm using LibreOffice, but that should work, right? We'll see!

As implied there, I have re-formatted the TS&R line (well, not the rules reference books, but very few people download those anyway). I still have a little work do do on the covers for some of the books, but I'm almost there. Last night, I ordered copies of the Ruby Players Rules. 

The service can print 2 copies, or multiples of 10 only. I should have played it safe and ordered two, but went ahead and ordered 10. I know Richard will buy one. If Justin can sell two more at his book fair, that will reimburse me for the printing costs. It was 50,000 won (40 page softback, with single-side cover printing) including shipping (3,500 won), which at the current exchange rate is about $37. 

The website estimated they'd ship on Wednesday so I should have them by the end of the week. If they're good enough quality, I'll order the other TS&R line of books to be printed. I know Justin won't sell them all, but I can sell one set to Richard, keep one set for myself, and what Justin can't sell this time I can try to sell at a future book fair or game event. Some of my regular players might be interested in getting their own copies as well.  

Font Testing

I've been using a title font for my drafts of Missions & Mayhem since the beginning (more or less), but talking to Jeremy about using some of his monster art last night, he asked if I had a logo for the game yet. I didn't. So I made up a simple logo in GIMP. 

Today, I figured I'd test a few other font options to see if I liked any of these others better. I think I'll stick with my initial font, called Gunplay/Gunplay 3D. But I figure I might as well stick the tests up here to see what people think. 

If you've got any preference, or suggestions for the logo as a whole, please let me know what you think. 

 

 

Gunplay font, no border

Gunplay font, border

Jeremy suggested TTRPG instead of just RPG

 

And then the ones I made today: 

Action Force

HP PSG

MisterEarl

Weathered Solid

 

IM FELL English

Edit/Update: After discussing designs and swapping ides with Jeremy a bit more, I came up with this: 

Along with an inverted color version for the inside title page: 

 Pretty sure this is what I'll go with. Gunplay 3D for the main title, Gunplay for the subtitle. 

Thanks to Jeremy, PatrickW, Anzon, and my son Steven for the feedback. If anyone else has some feedback though, please let me know!

TTRPG in Korea's Online SummerCon 2026

 SummerCon 2026 is approaching. It will be on August 28th to 30th, KST (GMT +9). 

We have a lot more games than gamers, apparently. Maybe lots of folks are on vacations at the end of the summer. Whatever the reason, we have a lot of games with open spots. So we (I'm part of the organizing committee) have decided to open up the Con to people outside Korea. 

 If anyone reading is interested, check out our registration page on Warhorn. You'll need to register with Warhorn, and the Con is on Discord (plus various VTTs at each GM's preference) so you'll also need to join the TTRPG in Korea Discord server at least until the end of the conference. 

SummerCon Registration 

https://warhorn.net/events/korea-summercon-2026

TTRPG in Korea

https://discord.gg/5P7pM7Vpn 

I'm running a Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins Ruby game, and I've got the Exploration Focused Play workshop as well, both on Saturday. The only person yet to sign up for the workshop is also on the organizing committee, so I may cancel that and just chat with him about the topic one-on-one sometime. But there's still a week to sign up, so maybe it will get a little more interest. 

There is a wide variety of games, old school, new school, traditional, narrative, cozy, etc.  

Infinite Cryptids!

 For Cryptids & Conspiracy, the first campaign module I'm working on for Missions & Mayhem, I want to keep things brief. For this reason, I've got only a handful of cryptids, aliens, paranormal entities, and prehistoric beasties statted up for the game. 

However, I've got a "Create-A-Cryptid" system for GMs to make their own. It's got guidelines for giving the creatures stats, and also several random tables for the cryptid's appearance and behaviors. With that, a GM will never run out of strange creatures for their Heroes to investigate. 

I finally finished up the creature section. Yesterday, I wrote some guidelines for how to structure missions (adventures) in the game. Most cryptid hunts won't be "dungeon" adventures, although a haunted house could be. So I've got guidelines for using the 5-Room Dungeon narrative structure in a more loose sense to stage not five encounters in five locations in a row, but five stages of a mission with some advice on the types of possible encounters that could happen in each stage. 

So, to keep score, I've got complete: 

Advice on what sort of campaign this is (or could be with modification)

3 Advanced Classes

Psychic Powers

Relevant Gear/Vehicles/Weapons

Guideline for creating Conspiracy groups

Creatures

XP guidelines

Mission creation guidelines 

 

What I still need to finish: 

Freelancers/Hirelings/Services (halfway done)

Occult and Alien Devices (notes only) 

Example Missions (I plan to include two or three short ones)

___________________________

So I'm almost done with this. Of course, I still haven't finished the Mission Creation Guidelines for the main rule book. Need to work on that, too. That and a bit of a better introduction/explanation of the game at the start are all I need still to work on for the main game. Well, of course there will still be some adjustments as I continue to play test it.  

After Cryptids & Conspiracy, I'll probably start working on Bughunts & Bedlam, the military sci-fi/horror module (based on Aliens, Starship Troopers, The Forever War, Terminator's Future War, etc.). I'd like to have three modules done before I start getting the main book finalized and laid out for release. But who knows, maybe I'll have all five of my planned modules done in time. 

While you're here, why not get yourself a gift?

 My blog traffic has been up, by a LOT lately. I'm getting four to eight times the hits I usually get on my posts. Fingers crossed it's not just Russian or Chinese bots. 

If my new readers are actual flesh and blood humans (get those Voight-Kampff tests ready), and you haven't yet, why not check out my RPG store on DriveThruRPG? 

Here's a handy link! 

That's where you can find Chanbara, my OSR RPG of fantasy feudal Japan. 

And Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins, my OSR fantasy heartbreaker. 

It contains the Ruby Players Rules (classes, equipment, spells for Euro-fantasy), Jade Players Rules (the same for Asio-fantasy), Ruby and Jade Bestiary & Treasury (monsters and treasure for both Euro and Asian fantasy campaigns), the Game Master Guidebook (rules to run games for either Ruby or Jade), Ruby and Jade Rules Reference books (handy table lookup books for the two sets). 

And then there are my printable paper minis! I've got character types and lots of monster types, covering the Basic and Expert (BX/BE of BECMI) monsters, including all the dinosaurs and weirdos from the Isle of Dread. 

Chanbara is reasonably priced (digital or print), the paper minis are cheap (digital), and TS&R books are all pay what you want (digital only for now). 

So why not get a gift for yourself and help a brother out? Let's see if I get a small sales spike, or if these really are just bots.  

Mistborn of the Thorn Isles (Appendix N Jam 2025)

 I'm not on itch.io...or rather, I wasn't on itch before last week. So I wasn't aware of the Appendix N Jam adventure writing contest until Justin (of Vaults of Ur fame) told me about it. With his encouragement, and with only a week left to submit something, I applied, got a title, and made a 4-page (A5 size) adventure. 

 You can see my submission here. If you use itch.io, you can log in and vote for it. And check out the other submissions, too. I've only had time to look at a small fraction, but there's a ton of creativity and cool ideas on display. 

 If you're unaware (as I was), the idea is that the guys running the contest pick a title that sounds like it could be a story or novel in Gary Gygax's Appendix N. Something written by Lovecraft, Leiber, Anderson, Howard, Tolkien, Moorcock, Burroughs, or one of those other luminaries of early genre fiction. Then you design an adventure for an old school style RPG with similar flavor. 

There's a cash prize for the two best entries, but I'm not likely to win and don't care much if I don't. It was just a fun way to spend a weekend. I had a few ideas in my head for adventure ideas in the old adventure fantasy style, but when I got my title, Mistborn of the Thorn Isles, none of my preconceived notions fit. But it seemed like the sort of title a Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser, Conan the Cimmerian, Solomon Kane, or maybe Corum story would have. 

So I came up with an idea for a cursed island, Celtic themed (with definitely a dash of Christopher Lee in The Wicker Man), and with some elements that might be found in Appendix N style stories (a cursed people, pirates chasing damsels in distress, and a treasure map leading to the isle). It's for 3rd to 6th level PCs, and written for BX/BECMI, but should be easy enough to convert to AD&D, OD&D, or your retro-clone or modern OSR game of choice.

Of course, I had to leave some stuff out. With a mock up cover page taking up 1/4 of my page space, that left three pages for background, a map, a time counter, random encounters, placed encounters, and a new monster write up. I had ideas for making a small dungeon, or notes to expand on the adventure, but there was no space for that. Maybe, after the contest is over, I'll expand it a bit. But I think it's good enough as it is. 

Anyway, if you were unaware, check out the Appendix N Jam. I'll be looking over more submissions over the next couple of days. I doubt I'll have time to read them all before the audience judging portion is over. But I'll be downloading a lot of them to look over when I have more time. 
 

Progress on Flying Swordsmen 2E

 In the past few days, I've been pretty busy. My older boy is back in Korea for summer vacation. I'm working on my next research paper. I've also been painting some minis in my spare time to relax. Oh, and I've got the first draft of Flying Swordsmen 2E more or less finished. I still need to add some examples (NPCs, making adventures, a sample of how a game plays). But the basic mechanics for creating characters, training/improving characters, running the game, creating campaigns and adventures, setting rewards, and the setting information are all there. 

I will need to decide if I want to license art this time, or stick to PD images...

 

The past two days, I've been going through it with find/replace to make sure I'm consistent with names of the skills, powers, abilities, etc. including which ones are capitalized, in italics, and so on. I also have used some words too often. 

Ability is used for the six main stats of the game (Prowess, Might, Agility, Observation, Presence, Education) but I also have used it indiscriminately to talk about capacities. 

Power is used for the special martial arts stats (Qinggong [lightness], Neigong [internal], Dianxue [acupressure], Suan Ming [divination], Wu [white magic], and Ku [black magic]) that allow for the use of Techniques (martial arts maneuvers, spells, feats). I also talk about creature powers, power as in political or social clout, etc. 

Luckily, I seem to have stuck to using skill mostly for mechanical skills within the game. 

My document is A4, single column, mostly 12 point font. Obviously headers use larger fonts, and some of the tables and some notes I use 10.5 point font. The document is 147 pages long, including 16 pages with character templates (two per page). No art yet, other than my Zhongyang Dalu map from the first edition.

I've got 41 skills, 108 techniques, around 60 monsters, 25 sample magic items (with notes on how to design more), and detailed but hopefully simple rules for combat including actions, reactions, special maneuvers, improvised weaponry, special types of damage (energy, poison, etc.), and so on. I've got a system for training new skills, and one for learning new Powers and Techniques. These are similar, but not exactly the same. Skills are a little easier to learn than a new Power, but if your Power increases you can learn a Technique automatically. 

Once I get done with the terminology consistency passes, I'll make a separate document with just the player facing information and work up an adventure or two to playtest the rules with my group.

Happy Lunar New Year!

It is the Lunar New Year, known as Chinese New Year in many foreign lands such as the USA. And to celebrate, we did what most Korean families do. Get up way too early, go to my mother-in-law's house, honor the departed family members, then eat a bunch of really good food! 

If you'd like to celebrate, why not pick up a copy of Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins Jade Players Rules on DriveThruRPG? It's Pay What You Want, so pick it up for free and if you like it, come back and give me a tip. If you want to add Asian-style classes like Kensei (weapon masters), Wu Jen (Taoist sorcerers) or Xia (wandering martial artists) to your OSR game of choice, they'll fit right in. 

And if you're the DM, you can pick up TS&R Jade Bestiary & Treasury to get lots of Asian inspired monsters and magic items. Also PWYW so grab it for free or give me a little LNY gift if you like.

Fortune and Glory? Nah, just play some Elfgames.

I had a discussion last night with my older boy about gaming, marketing, and all that. He's got some game ideas (card games, board games, computer games) and was wondering about how successful he might be. 

Interestingly, I'd just finished reading the recent (now pulled) article on how toxic the RPG online community is, and that definitely influenced the direction of our conversation. 

We talked about how easy it is to promote games on DriveThru, how easy it is to run a Kickstarter or other crowdfunding campaign, and so on. 

Want some numbers? Flynn did. In the past six years since I released Chanbara, I've sold just shy of 300 copies, and made $1600 from those sales. I've made less than that from the paper minis and TS&R. 

All told, since 2015 when I uploaded my first printable paper minis file, including pay-what-you-want downloads that didn't pay anything, I've sold 2413 products on DriveThru, and made $2338.11. Not exactly the big bucks. 

But then the bigger names in the TTRPG circles (many of them named in that article for being toxic presences in the community) regularly have crowdfunding campaigns that make tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. A few have topped the million mark. 

Now, I'm not trying to cast any aspersions on the "big names." And this is not sour grapes. I was just being realistic to my son. Yes, it's possible to make good money by publishing games online, but to do so you really need to work on promotion, really need to get out there and get known, and need other big names to support and promote your work. But the bigger you get, the more of a target you can become. 

So I'm happy to stay a little fish in a small pond. I really do appreciate all of you who read this blog, review and promote my offerings, and everyone who's purchased something I've put out there. But I'm also never going to put in the effort needed to become one of the luminaries of the hobby, because I don't need to. That $2000+ I've made over the past nearly a decade has helped me to buy other gaming goods, and every now and then a birthday or Christmas present. I don't need gaming money to support my family. I'm happy to do this just for the joy of creating stuff, putting it out there, and seeing positive reactions to it. 

That's why TS&R is PWYW and I'll probably never get around to making the second edition of Flying Swordsmen, with actual new art from paid artists rather than public domain and donated art. 

I'm happy with my place in the hobby. 

But hey, if my son can create some board or card games that become a hit, I'll do my best to support him in his efforts. 

And also, if Zak S. is reading this, my apologies. I don't think I jumped on the anti-Zak bandwagon, but I wasn't a big fan of his and took the words of others at face value when I shouldn't have. Looking back at some of my old blog posts, I was pretty much just dismissive of him at the time Mandy was accusing him of some pretty horrible (and not completely believable) stuff. I hope that the word gets out and he gets a chance to make a come-back. 

I never had a negative interaction with him personally, and I should have been more critical of others claiming that they had had negative interactions with him rather than letting those claims color my opinion of him.

Even a man who is pure at heart and says his prayers by night...

 ...may become a grognard when the dice are rolled, and the gaming mood is right.

Oh, wait, that's not the way that rhyme is supposed to go. Anyway, I'm going to do something today that I haven't done in quite a while, but should get back to doing semi-regularly. I've got a newish blog that I want to promote. 

Savage Lair of the Weregrognard

It looks like Weregrognard started the blog last year for the Dungeon23 challenge, and now that that has wrapped up, he's been blogging about his take on old school gaming. So far, I've found his posts on the topic to be interesting and entertaining. 

I haven't read through all of his Dungeon23 posts, but of what he's written since then, I'm the only person who's left a comment. And I think he deserves more feedback on his Lessons from the OSR series. It's good.

Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins Ruby Players Rules now available!

I've just uploaded my regular D&D house rules to DriveThruRPG, at my Hidden Treasure Books storefront. 

Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins Jade Players Rules 

It's fully compatible with the TS&R Jade Asian-inspired rules (the Fighter and Thief class are identical in both, just with different suggested examples of each type listed). 

In it, you'll find rules for running a game somewhere between BX/BECMI style and AD&D style games, with mostly the simplicity of the box sets, but with separate race & class, and a few other complexities from AD&D (and a few more modern conventions I like such as ascending AC). 

Ruby has rules for the following races: Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Halflings, Half-Orcs. As with AD&D, demi-humans have class restrictions and level limits, although a bit more generous than old Gary originally suggested.

And the following classes: Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Illusionist, Magic-User, Paladin, Ranger, Thief. Advancement goes to level 15.

Plus spells up to level 6, full equipment lists, and some handy rules for players to engage in exploration and combat, and some notes for higher level play. 

As with TS&R Jade, this is Pay-What-You-Want so feel free to download it for free, or tip me a few bucks if you enjoy it and can afford it!

Acronyms & Ampersands

So, a little update. I'm just about done with my two versions of the Players' Rules books: Ruby and Jade. 

Ruby is standard Euro-Tolkien D&D races and classes. Jade is my version of Oriental Adventures. 

For the overall game title, I'm going to stick with Treasures, Serpents, and Ruins. The ordering just flows better than reversed, at least to me. 

BUT!

When I abbreviate it into an acronym from now on, it will be TS&R. 

Hopefully that's enough of a change to set my little house rules docs apart from the racist wannabes and their grifting. 

And who knows, maybe a better name will come to me before I release this thing to the wilds. 

Anyway, the game so far includes: 

TS&R Ruby Players Rules: PC races including humans, dwarves, elves, halflings, gnomes, and half-orcs (half-elves just use the human or elf rules, whichever side they favor). For classes, I have Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Illusionist, Magic-User, Paladin, Ranger, Thief. No subclasses. No multiclassing (I will have optional rules for that in the GM Guidebook). Levels 1-15, with demi-humans capped at 8, 10 or 12 (as in BX and BECMI, but class assortments similar if not identical to 1E AD&D). Spells levels 1-6 (1-4 for bards, paladins and rangers). Equipment lists and some rules for play including some higher level end-game stuff. Still need to add some art to this one but the text is done.

TS&R Jade Players Rules: PC races including humans, koropokuru (dwarves), shenmin (spirit folk), vanara (monkey-men) and yeongno (oni-folk). Classes are Cleric, Fighter, Kensei, Sohei, Thief, Wu Jen, Xia (monk/martial artist), Yakuza. Everything else pretty much the same as in Ruby. Completely done, including art.

TS&R Jade Bestiary and Treasury: Lots of monsters for Asian fantasy games, plus treasure tables and magic item lists, and wandering monster tables. Text is done, just need to add art.

TS&R Rules and Procedures: The small book with how to run a game, including rules for managing exploration and combat, creating adventures and campaigns (still working on writing this section), and to include rules for high level "end game" play (to be written). 

The things still to be created include: 

TS&R Ruby Bestiary and Treasury: I actually just need to edit out the stuff that's too Asian from my current working document that I use for my West Marches campaign. I've already done that for Jade, since I was planning to release the East Marches adventure and wanted something without the Greek/Norse/British/etc. monsters in it to work from. Although a few creatures were just re-skinned (like turning minotaurs into yakmen, or having chimeras with tiger heads instead of lions'). I'll do the same for Ruby fairly easily. 

TS&R GM Guidebook: This is where I plan to stick the (half-baked?) advice for GMs. Rules and Procedures is how to run a game. GM Guidebook will try to explain why things are the way they are, and suggest ways to change things up. Reading back over Flying Swordsmen and Chanbara lately, I think I've got some solid advice that I can include, but every time I get too wordy in my R&P, I end up deleting it as I want that to be just stuff that is needed at the table. So R&P will be the handy rules reference, GMG will be my attempt to out-Gygax old Gary. 

And especially once R&P and GMG are done, it should be pretty easy to make Players Rules and Bestiary and Treasury books for other genres of play. 

Oh, and despite being told it's a bad idea because people will just shit all over it, I've decided that these will all be released Pay What You Want. I make good enough money from work. Chanbara has been a nice little bonus each month, but I'm not gonna get rich from this game. It's just D&D in a different package, after all. Might as well just let people have them and they can throw me a few bucks if they appreciate what I've done.

Playing Black Hack? Need monsters?

Jeremy (been talking about him a lot lately) has been regularly putting out monster books for 5E, OSE, and Black Hack type games. He's currently running a kickstarter for Black Hack conversions of some of his previous monsters. If you're running a BH powered game, and want monster stats, printable paper minis, and VTT tokens, give it a look.

Check it out here.

Gnomish Tarot

Dean, who has been a good friend and fellow gamer for many years now, has always produced some gorgeous art derived from our games, dating back to Justin's Vaults of Ur campaign (see the labels to this post). Through Ur, Chanbara play tests, various games run by Jeremy, and into West Marches, he's consistently drawn a lot of amazingly detailed pieces that illustrate our games. I've posted some of it here before. He also ran a pretty amazing campaign himself, that started as 4E and migrated to 5E along the way. The campaign was a bizarre mix of Oz, Spencer's Faerie Queene, Narnia, Pellucidar, Dr. Who... and tons of fun. 

He's back in Canada now, and producing a webtoon based on his campaign. You can check it out here: 

Tales from the Gnomish Tarot

Dean actually gifted me a lot of his original work that he produced while he lived here in Busan. Here's a couple of illos I have on my hard drive (the originals are in my office, I'm at home right now):

From my Megadungeon games

From Vaults of Ur

Initiation

 Several weeks back, in April or early May, an acquaintance from the local English radio station* started liking my posts on Facebook about my twice-monthly West Marches games. I reached out to her, and yes, it turns out that she was interested in trying out D&D. She'd never played any RPGs before, and when I asked a few questions to see how much I'd need to explain, it seems like she hasn't really had much experience with computer RPG games either. 

We chatted via text, and I explained in fairly simple terms how RPGs play, and made a few suggestions, tried to find out what sort of character she wanted to play. 

Then when the next game session came up, she was too busy. Didn't hear from her for a while. I thought maybe she had lost interest. I did give her quite an info dump, even if I was simplifying things. 

But this past week, she contacted me again. She'd seen some 5E character sheets and a YouTube video about how to roll up a character. I assured her that the system I run is simpler than that.

She still wasn't sure about what sort of character to play, so I ended up rolling four pregens, a Human Cleric, Dwarf Fighter, Elf Magic-User, and Halfling Thief. Yep, hitting the four iconic (stereotypical) characters. Might as well start her with something easy. 

She quickly emails me back, asking if she can play a Half-Elf Ranger. And I'm like, of course! I made a few modifications to the pregens to make that PC for her, and sent it to her. 

At game time, several players were late, and she was also late. So we started the game. She finally contacted me, asking if it was too late to join. I said no, and resent the game links. She had some trouble logging into both Roll20 and Meet at the same time, but we finally got her in the game. 

And she did brilliantly. Granted, she does have some amateur acting chops. She's been in some local plays and short films in addition to her radio work. She got into character, asked good questions, had some good teamwork with the existing players, etc. And of course my usual crew is used to new people popping into our games, so that was no big deal for them. 

She sent me a message yesterday, thanking me for the game and asking if I was running again that night! I mentioned another game that I play in that is next Saturday, but she's already got plans (we'll get her in it eventually, I think). But she's on the hook for the following week when I run West Marches again. 

*Yes, I do a 1-hour radio weekly show. Yes, it's on the internet, but trust me, unless you listen to the other programs on the station, my show won't be interesting at all. Even if you do listen to the other shows, it's still not THAT interesting.

Chanbara Price

I just reduced the price of the Chanbara PDF to $5.00. If you never picked it up because you thought $10 was too much, now's your chance!

The print version is $15, as well.

Get 'em while they're still sorta luke warm!*

*Chanbara has never really been "hot" but I'm happy with it! Hope you all enjoy it, too!

Come on, WotC!

I'm sure you've seen this video. It's obviously making the rounds of the Gamosphere.

If Renault Brazil can make an awesome commercial like this, I think you know what to do, WotC. Hollywood's all about the reboot/modernization of old 70's/80's properties right now. Get Hazbro to make a deal with Disney or Time/Warner or someone and make this happen as a big budget feature film! With the current film culture of big budget CGI spectacle and cashing in on Gen X nostalgia, this should be a no-brainer.

More Paper Minis!

I've just completed another set of paper minis, available from my Hidden Treasure Books storefront on DriveThruRPG.

Linkage!

This set is Expert Monsters Set 2, covering all the creatures from the Mentzer Expert Set that weren't covered in Set 1.

For a refresher, Set 1 contains all the creatures from Animal Herd to Griffon. Set 2 contains all the creatures from Hellhound to Wyvern. This is the bigger set, 24 pages plus cover, mostly because the "Men" entry in the book contains so many types of men, with varying armaments. And I've got figures to cover them, including leader types. Also, most leader types get a male/female version to be more inclusive.

$3 per set, so for $6 you can get all your Mentzer Expert monster love going!

As usual, each image on a page is on its own layer, so you can turn off images you don't need to print. And unlike my Basic Monsters sets (which I'm thinking of revising to match the Expert style), there are multiple copies of most of the creatures that would be encountered in groups. This will save paper if you need to print a bunch of one type of creature.

If you're a BX fan (or a fan of a retro-clone of BX), there are a few monsters in the Moldvay Basic and Cook Expert that aren't in BECMI. I've got the list, and will be starting in on those monsters soon. Plus, I'm going to cover the Isle of Dread creatures as well. Because more dinosaurs is always better!

Paper Minis Expert Monsters Set 1 for sale

You may remember (and a few of you purchased - Thank You!) my fold-up paper minis based on the monsters from the Basic Set D&D. They're still for sale over at my DriveThruRPG page, Hidden Treasure Books.

And now, the first of three sets covering monsters from the Expert Set is up for sale!

Direct Link right here!

It's got all the monsters from the Mentzer Expert Set from Animal Herd to Griffon.

If you purchased my Basic Monsters sets, you may have been less than satisfied that there was only one image of each monster. I've reformatted this set, so there are multiple monsters of creatures you might encounter in groups, like the giants, herd animals, blink dogs, etc. Creatures that are normally encountered solo, like elementals, devil swine, and golems just get one picture each (but I have different sized elementals for each summoning method).

$5 for 20 pages full of Expert Monsters, in full color. Not bad, I think.

Set 2 should be coming out in a few months. Need to finish the images for each monster. Layout shouldn't take too long once the images are ready.

Set 3 will cover the 20 or so monsters in the Cook Expert Set that aren't in BECMI, and if I get ambitious also the Isle of Dread monsters. Who doesn't love more dinosaurs?

Chanbara: Additional Content!

Stefan, who playtested, edited and was there for me to toss ideas around with when making Chanbara, is more into anime than I am. I don't hate it, just never really delved deeply into the waters that are Japanese animation. When he was playtesting the rules, he made a few mods to bring his game more in line with anime (while mine was Lafcadio Hearn stories directed by Kurosawa Akira).

Now, he's developing an alternate spellcaster class for the game -- the Ganshu -- based on the 3E/4E/5E Warlock model. I think it may need a bit of playtesting for balance, and so far he's only got one profile up: the Miko (shrine maiden). The other profiles he's working on are the Tsukimono-mochi, which has a very creepy pact with yokai vibe, and Shotokandoka, which is straight out of Street Fighter II or other 90's fighting games.

And if you don't have Chanbara yet and have no idea what I'm talking about, you can check it out here! Only $10 for the pdf, $20 for print or print/pdf bundle.