Got OSR game files you want to share?

Well, maybe some of you never even noticed, what with the infrequent posting around here, but when Mediafire started dicking around with my files and not being helpful at all, I nuked my account there.  Luckily, most of my downloadable files (over there --> at the top of the sidebar!) are back up thanks in no small part to Brad of Skull Crushing For Great Justice. 

Did you know he's got a website devoted to hosting files for us in the OSR?  RPGFiles.org?  Heard of it?

No, I hadn't either, until he chimed in on the comments to the post I made complaining about the douchebags who tagged Flying Swordsmen as being in potential violation of copyright.*

Anyway, Brad is running http://www.rpgfiles.org/ and that's where all my documents are now being hosted.  If you've got some game modules or your own retro-simulo-heart-breakero-Mine type game to distribute or whatever, I suggest you contact Brad and put them up on his site.  It's free and it was pretty easy.  And even though he's got an acidic wit on his blog (one of the reasons I like to read it), he was very patient with my annoying questions along the way.

What can I say, I've got no experience with web-site coding, or running servers, or anything.  I'm lazy and like to just use services like Blogger that do it all for me.  But Brad set me up with some server space to host my files, and helped with the FTP process, and all kinds of good stuff.

Now I just need to find where on my various hard drives the last couple files are (one went missing thanks to a missing USB flash memory stick, but I've got a hard copy I could use to recreate it) and get the last few files back up for people to download.

Thanks, Brad!



*Man, IP law is getting really fucked up.  There's no "innocent until proven guilty" when Hollywood and publishing houses and the music industry have deep pockets and aren't afraid to buy a politician or two.  I sent a rather abusive email to MediaFire during the dust-up.  Granted, they were being unhelpful, but when a nice lady replied to my rant politely and explained that they're legally required to treat claims of copyright infringement as guilty until proven innocent, I felt kinda bad for her.  They're just doing their jobs and following an unjust law because their bosses are too chicken-shit to fight it.

I need to be a) badgering my elected officials, and b) looking for the French douchebag company and trying to see if they have any materials on the web that I could then accuse of being in violation of my copyright and let them have to deal with what they dish out.  But since I've got grad school presentations and readings to take care of, I probably won't get around to either.

Funny what a change to the definite article will do

You've likely seen my Unique Magic Weapons documents over on the right side of the screen. Some of you have even downloaded them and given me a small amount of praise for them. Thanks, by the way!

Using them, plus this awesome idea from Netherworks, the Old School Heretic, plus the definite article, and magic items become a whole lot cooler.

Using my documents, weapons armor and wands/staves/rods become unique items with a bit of personalized flair.

Using Netherworks' idea, scrolls and potions if you extend it to them, become a bit more mysterious and fun.

Then where does the definite article come in?

Simple. For Miscellaneous Magic Items (and Rings until I get around to making a Unique Magic Rings document), simply add the article "the" to the front of the name, and never drop more than one of each item in the campaign, and they get valued as well.

The Bag of Holding is much more important to have than 'a bag of holding.'

Unique Magic Weapons

Well, they ain't pretty, but they're complete. And I haven't bothered to do any more editing in the past four months or so, so I guess I'm about satisfied with them.

What am I talking about? Look over on the right, above the blog's co-pilot and you'll see links to my three freebie documents designed to make DMing a little easier, and the game a little cooler for the players.

They're my Unique Magic Items series. I've been using them in my recent games as the ONLY magic weapons, wands/staves/rods and armors/shields that will be encountered. They've all got names (taken from a wide variety of fiction, cinema, video games, mythology, and general pop culture), descriptions, often a bit of history or fluff that can be fodder for rumors.

Of course you don't need to use them the way I do, you can always just use them as the specials among the mundane +1 swords and wands of paralyzation if you want. But hopefully players will feel a bit more attached to these items as they're given names and descriptions to work with.

Most of them come from the normal treasure tables, but there are a few specials I invented. Have fun with them!

Unique Magic Weapons series

Sitting here at work printing out what are likely the second to last drafts of my Unique Magic Weapons, Unique Magic Armors & Shields, and Unique Magic Wands, Staves and Rods documents.

Assuming I don't find any glaring omissions or typos or just plain wrong things, I'll likely finally be releasing them soon.

RPG Projects

So I'm working on some things. Have been for a while, so I can't really put up a "coming soon" banner or anything, but here are those things I'm working on. They'll all be free downloadables once I finally get around to posting them somewhere.

Unique Magic Weapons
This document is intended as a DM aid, detailing 100 magic swords, 100 other melee weapons, and a bunch of magical ranged weapons and ammunition (100 total entries, it's about 40/60 weapons to ammo). It's to avoid the 'another +1 sword?' problem.

This one's complete, and ready to go.

Unique Magic Wands, Staves, and Rods
Similar to the above, this details 100 wands, 50 staves, and 20 rods for use in adding a layer of coolness to these magic items. I've got quite a few new items on here, where the magic weapons tend to be mostly by the book.

This one's complete, but needs to be proofread.

Unique Magic Armors and Shields
The third document in the series (I may to Rings...or may not). Again, it lists and describes lots of magic armors and shields, so DMs don't have to give out generic magic armors. It's got 100 total entries, with 25 being just shields, 50 just armor, and 25 armor and shield sets (50 shields, 75 suits of armor total).

This one's still being written. I've got to do the descriptions for plate armors, suit armors, and all of the combination sets. And maybe rework lots of names so that they're not all "Gawain's Hauberk" or "Aragorn's Breastplate." Wands/Staves/Rods already suffers from that, whereas weapons tend to have names already, or they are easy to give a name that fits.