Tag Archives: d20

Buy Up Green Ronin d20 Stock Now!

Posted on October 11, 2008 | 4 comments

Since Wizards has decided to be big ol’ buttplugs and eliminate the old d20 license, a lot of publishers are having to destroy their d20 stock by a WotC-mandated deadline.  But in the meantime, this means sales!  And Green Ronin is having a “Green Ronin Apocalypse Sale” on paizo.com you can’t afford to miss.

My favorites?  Well, anything Freeport, for one.  The first adventure I bought for D&D 3e was “Death in Freeport,” from Green Ronin, at Gen Con 2000 when 3e released.  Our gaming group loved the pirate haven of Freeport and ran campaigns in and around there for years.  They’re selling a number of Freeport products but the most important is The Freeport Trilogy, all three of the classic Freeport modules in one, updated for 3.5e.

Also, their “Bleeding Edge Adventures” are very good.  Strong story and interesting locales and characters.  Not just dungeon crawls!  I own them all already.

Then, depending on what you like, they have a variety of variant setting d20 RPGs – from Thieves’ World to Testament to Rome to Egypt…   d20 Modern stuff, and also some of the most solid D&D rules supplements from any 3p publisher.  Book the the Righteous is great.  I have Ultramodern Firearms d20…

Don’t let any of it burn, buy it up now!

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Green Ronin/Paizo Podcast on Open Gaming

Posted on June 1, 2008 | 1 comment

Chris Pramas, Nicole Lindroos, and Erik Mona talk about open gaming – OGL, GSL, 4e, Pathfinder, True20, and more in this podcast! Get a free 1 1/2 hours (maybe from not going to see the new Indiana Jones movie) and listen to it! Yes, Wizards is still sitting on the new GSL, so much is speculation, but it’s a good overview.

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Microlite20 – Beauty in Terseness

Posted on April 20, 2008 | 5 comments

There’s a snazzy little super-simplified version of d20 fantasy rules called Microlite20.  It’s pretty sweet – in a couple pages, it captures 80% of what you ever really want to use from D&D.  This is done largely by taking all the extraneous crap out that has been shoved into D&D to make a DM’s discretion useless.  As a result, the core rules are 2 pages long.  How does this work?  Check after the jump…
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Open Gaming for Dummies

Posted on April 19, 2008 | 11 comments

If one thing’s clear from the discussion about the new Wizards license for D&D Fourth Edition, it’s that people like to spout off on the subject without knowing what the heck the OGL says, what the difference is between the OGL and d20 STL, and what an “open” license is in the first place.  So here’s a convenient summary if you want to know what all of this means.  Read and understand – personally, I don’t mind differing opinions, but I do mind ignorant opinions.

Open Gaming License (OGL): A license written by Wizards of the Coast to be a generic “open” license suitable for RPGs.  WotC released most of the core 3e and then 3.5e D&D rules under the OGL.  Many other gaming companies have published OGL games – some partly based on D&D OGL content, some completely original and unrelated to the D&D rules.

The official OGL v1.0a: http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/OGLv1.0a.rtf

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RPG Superstar Final Round is Here!

Posted on February 14, 2008 | 1 comment

Paizo Publishing’s excellent RPG Superstar contest is in its final round, and the four finalist’s complete adventure proposals are up! Read them, evaluate them, and vote!

However it turns out, compliments to all the participants and especially the final four, Christine Schnieder, Clinton Boomer, Jason Nelson, and Rob McCreary!

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RPG Superstar Encounter Round

Posted on January 25, 2008 | 1 comment

Finally!  The wait between RPG Superstar rounds is getting hard to take!  The final six present a full encounter for your judgement.

As in the last round, Christine from Germany and Boomer from Illinois are my hands down favorites.  Her Chase on Charred Ground is an exciting ride down an active volcano on orc bone sleds!  Boomer’s Impartial Tribunal comes in second for me – some flaws, but fun.  Many of the rest are usable, if IMO not competitive with the others.  Check ’em out!

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RPG Superstar Monster Round

Posted on January 10, 2008 | 1 comment

Ah, finally, the monsters are up and ready to vote on in the RPG Superstar contest!   And there’s some great ones.

My picks for the two totally awesome entries are Christine’s “Mind the Machine” set and Boomer’s “The Hunger That Moves.”

Christine’s envisioning of the Dungeon Core and Complexity Golem – they’re phenomenally inventive *and* very usable!  And Boomer’s bizarre ecosystem of freakish creatures would be great to base an adventure around.   Check them out!

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The New Open Gaming License Is Revealed – Kind Of

Posted on January 9, 2008 | 1 comment

Well, I’m glad they finally got around to letting third party publishers know how they’re going to be able to stay in business.  There’s a couple unfortunate things about this, however. 

1.  The $5000 fee.  That’s a lot of money for a RPG publisher.  This effectively prices out everyone except the very largest third party companies.  I’m not sure why – I can see them wanting to keep it out of the hands of “dude in his garage” but that’s steep.  And it’s only for a couple months of lead time, so the publishers would need to be making more than $5k profit on their 4e product(s) in that time to make it worthwhile. 

2.  The community standards.  I worry about this one, especially with some of the frankly candyass things some of the Wizards have said lately, like leaving out half-orcs because of the “disturbing implications of their creation.”  Where do they plan to draw the line?  Just the Book of Erotic Fantasy (which did lose its d20 license)?  How about the d20 version of Macho Women With Guns?  Some of the recent Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path episodes have definitely been R rated.    

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