With RPGNow being shut down, sales figures for that site have been added to those from DriveThruRPG. This has resulted in many of the 50 in 50 supplements reaching Copper level. Sixteen of them in fact, a third of the 48 published so far, and a few are not that far off reaching Silver (and close to 80% of supplements on DriveThruRPG are not even Copper). Thank you to everyone who has purchased them!
The City of Spiders Now a Copper Seller!
The City of Spiders, one of the first supplements published in the 50 in 50 series (there are still some more left to publish; I’m working on finishing off one that Brian sent me but damaging my back, my arm, my shoulder, my finger and Christmas have all got in the way!) has just reached the Copper best seller rank on RPGNow.
This is the first supplement to achieve a best-selling metal rank, although when RPGNow sales are merged with DriveThruRPGs in a month or so, many more are going to achieve this.
So, thank you anyone who bought this supplement. If you haven’t, well here’s The City of Spiders on RPGNow. Showing off its shiny new medal!
Gauntlet on the Ice – Now With a Hex Map
The 50 in 50 (yes, they aren’t quite all done yet) adventure hook Gauntlet on the Ice has just been updated with a new hex grid version of the battlemap in a second PDF.
It’s taken some time to get to this point, but if you have the adventure hook already, and are subscribed, you will have got a message about the update.
Figuring out how to get the hex grid to actually work has been a bit of a problem, but I found something that looks like it does the trick. It is, of all things, a font.
So, feedback on this is appreciated. If it looks good to everyone the rest of the adventures with battlemaps will be updated too.
50-in-50 Latest Release: Curse of the Ancient Tomb
Curse of the Ancient Tomb has the characters exploring a recently uncovered tomb. The tomb is not merely a tomb, but also a prison for a powerful, and now undead, being, and their powerful weapon. The tomb itself has dangers, one subtle but a potentially serious problem, and neither the occupant nor its weapon are remotely safe. Characters could easily run into serious problems exploring the tomb.
This is, to the best of my knowledge, the biggest adventure yet. You get 32 pages including a battle map, adventure, magic items and traps. It is the most purely Rolemaster booklet we have produced with. I would love to see a D&D players face when they read…
“Warding Evil. This is a 40th lvl spell that will repel “Evil” or “Undead”. Any such within 10’ of the Ward must make an RR each round or suffer a “D” critical effect.”
It is the very thought of a 40th level spell that should give a D&D player kittens!
For more sensible people who play Rolemaster then this is an excellent little adventure!
Kill The Priest
Kill The Priest sees a corrupted priest unleashing a creature to look for a religious relic. The creature is now on a quest to kill any and all powerful female priests of the deity in question. The priest is themselves a dupe, and the characters must stop the creatures and the priest.
This adventure has a Terminator style villain who just keeps on coming. It uses the Black Stalker from C&T in the role of Terminator but the priest in the title is a definite manipulator in the background.
Even if you don’t buy this booklet, look up the Black Stalker (RMC C&T pg 79, ENTITIES FROM OTHER PLANES). Awesome foe and one that deserves to grace every campaign at some point!
I do accept that this adventure has a high chance of killing a PC, at least once. The black stalker has +30 initiative, a 180 OB and a slaying weapon. One top of that they have armour that encumbers as AT4 but protects as AT20 and a cloak that adds +50 to Stalk and Hide, oh yes, the regenerate as well.
If your party is up around level 15 or higher then this is a chance for the GM to play a ‘monster’ to the absolute limit of its abilities.
It is not all about hack and slash though. There is an evil plot going on here that you can weave into your game style be it political intrigue or broad strokes.
The game that inspired this had the black stalker coming back on a weekly basis and the players had no end of trouble defeating it. The highlight, for me, was when one character tried to keep and use the black stalkers weapon which was actually slaying against that actual character. The player was happy enough using a sword that had +30 to initiative until he fumbled really badly and delivered a slaying critical to himself!
The Tribulations of the Orachu Tribe is our latest 50in50 offering.
In The Tribulations of the Orachu Tribe, the characters encounter a feared local tribe, coming across the tribe when the characters need something, or simply by chance. The characters will be taken by the tribe and will be required to prove their worthiness in a series of tests.
I don’t want to give anything away but there is an interesting Rolemaster-esque point here. In one of the tribulations there are sharpened stakes upon which the characters could fall.
In Brian’s version he gives the stakes an OB and an attack table, in this case +25OB and the Spear attack table. I have used this same threat in some of my adventures but I tend to use “(x number) of ‘A’ puncture criticals” rather than an OB. On the A puncture critical table there are plenty of chances of no extra damage or just a couple of hits but chances are at least one stake will do something regardless of what level the characters are. With Brian’s version a +25OB means that probably most characters won’t take any damage as their DB will cancel most of the OB and the GM would probably have to roll open ended to ‘hit’.
Furthermore there is only one fatal result (a natural 00) on the ‘A’ puncture critical column. No one really wants the hero to die to a fairly simple staked pit trap or in this case a balancing beam style challenge. Heroes should die heroically, at least most of the time. With my version I don’t need to pull any punches knowing that the challenge could harm, hinder and challenge the party, there are still nasty wounds that can happen on the A critical. That 00 result is a severed vein leading to a heart failure but with life keeping plus vein/artery repair (5th, 7th and 8th level respectively) the fatality can be avoided. Even if your party are not 8th level those spells are ‘overcastable’ at a push.
In contrast an open ended attack roll is five times more likely than a natural 00 on the critical and that opens the way to much more severe criticals than just an A.
So for future adventure hooks which method would you prefer for pits and traps? Fixed criticals or OBs for attacks? Do you care? We can use this to improve our adventure hooks for everyone.
A Knightly Encounter
This weeks publication round up brings you the 25th instalment of our 50 in 50, so exactly half way. I will also highlight A Baker’s Dozen of Pieces of Lore by Neal Litherland.
A Knightly Encounter
In A Knightly Encounter, the characters will be halted in their travels by a group of knights who will pick a fight no matter what. There are a number of different reasons provided as to why they might fight and there are five knights in total, each of whom is described. The encounter pits characters against a dangerous d100 foe.
<oh how I wish we could write Rolemaster NPCs in place of d100 foe!>
A Baker’s Dozen of Pieces of Lore
This is a collection of thirteen different histories, legends and myths that can be used to add colour to a campaign. They describe people, places, items and events. They can be used as possible adventure and encounter hooks or simply to make a world seem more alive. The pieces of lore are not tied to any specific setting so they can be easily dropped into the majority of fantasy campaigns.
I picked out A Baker’s Dozen because this is one of Azukail’s supplements created using freelance writers. I was thinking along the lines of Azukail is Rolemaster-Friendly + Azukail has a growing stable of freelancer writers, therefore if we ever get a license from ICE then RolemasterBlog + Azukail is an increasingly strong proposition for writing supplements.
And talking of supplements…
I am realy busy this week, next weekend I have my face to face RMC gaming weekend (this is the game being run using RMC RAW). I get back on Sunday and then Monday morning I am going on a weeks riding holiday. Once that is over I have the fanzine to put together.
Once all of that is out of the way the very next thing on my ToDo list is the Nomikos Library. I have some technicalities like installing databases and configuring a new wordpress installation but I hope to have something ready to show and tell by the beginning of May.
Watch this space, as the cliche goes.
Cabin in the woods!
I love this adventure hook! I am not going to tell you much about it as it could spoil the surprise if your players got wind of what is actually going on.
What I like about this particular publication is that it is one of the most substantial documents. You get a one page adventure hook but also full colour printable battle maps. You print off the twelve pages and join them together to get the layouts for the adventure. It seems to me that we are ever inching a little closer to producing a really full on adventure module.
In The Cabin in the Woods, the characters may have been hired to deal with a group of bandits or otherwise have heard of them.
The bandits have a cabin in a clearing in the woods but the characters are not the only party looking for the bandits, and it is possible that the characters, and the other party, are both disguised as bandits, leading to several potential outcomes when the actual bandits arrive.