Showing posts with label Monty Haul. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Monty Haul. Show all posts

Saturday, February 20, 2021

Zinequest 3 is upon us! Here Are Some Recommendations!

 Hey, Y'all, I know you're already aware of #Zinequest3 because I've been talking about it non-stop for a few weeks now. Well, Gobsmack! is live and has only a week to go, and it has not funded yet. I know that it's because of the Game of Thrones White Walker Invasion that hit Texas last week, so I'm making a plea for you to check it out and see if it's something you'd be interested in. If you already backed Monty Haul from Zinequest 2 and you liked the content therein, I am confident you're going to dig Gobsmack! as well. Here's the pitch, and the link, in brief:

Gobsmack! is a toolkit to help you re-imagine goblins into an urban setting, right alongside your elves, your dwarfs, and your gnomes as denizens of your grand capital city.  Use them as random NPCs, contacts, rivals, or enemies! Gobsmack! gives you all of the tables, the tools, and the options to create urban goblin NPCs on the fly, with goblin names, goblin jobs, goblin quirks, and goblin motivations, along with plot hooks, story ideas, and suggestions for integrating these funny, ubiquitous little jerks into your urban campaign setting to bedevil, befuddle and delight your players. It's a one-shot zine with artwork by John "Joltin' Johnny" Lucas!


Right now, there are a bunch of young and hungry (metaphorically speaking) content creators and they are doing the same thing as me; creating interesting and original content for rpgs. There's so many, in fact, that you may feel a bit overwhelmed. Not to fear. This is going around right now, and it's pretty brilliant:


But what do you back? Please take a minute and click through to these excellent projects. Any of us would be grateful for even just a buck. It really does help!
The Journal of Fantastic Linguistics - A system neutral Zine presenting a variety of tools, inspirations, and guides for Linguistics and language related content in RPGs. Everything from learning how Dragonborn speak, to how slang and Class-specific jargon can work, to monsters that affect language - all of these and more can be found in the Zine. It’s completely layman friendly, so you can pick up an issue, read an article, and apply what you learned in your games. 

In the Light of a Faded World - a rules-light post-apocalyptic setting about small animals exploring spaces reclaimed by nature in a future where humankind has gone extinct. Illustrated by Amanda Lee Franck (Vampire Cruise), with prose by Zedeck Siew (A Thousand Thousand Islands). (notes: the included rules are an adaptation of Nate Treme’s In the Light of a Ghost Star, with a splash of Tunnel Goons; the setting at your table is a future version of wherever you live in the world.

Cephalopod: Ocean Home - A short Form RPG about escape, alien landscapes and risk. It's also a game about things being funny as hell and having no particular reason behind them beyond that. The aim of the game is to make it to the ocean and be free. The players take the role of different species of Cephalopods who are trapped against their will and need to escape. The game ends when the cephalopods either escape the world they find themselves in or die trying.
 
Hinterland: Peoples and Perils is a system neutral resource for generating locations and encounters for wilderness exploration in fantasy roleplaying games. Each of the 19 encounter and location types is made up of two or three random tables that combine to create a hundred or more unique and flavorful possibilities! Many of them link to other entries, creating a network of people and places across the landscape. All of them leave gaps for you to fill in with your own interpretations and ideas.

Raccoon Sky Pirates is a story-focused, GM-less tabletop RPG for 3 to 6 players that takes about three hours to play. You and your friends play raccoons in a flying ship made of junkyard scraps. Together, you do your best to keep it together so you can fly to the suburbs, loot a house of all the high-end trash you can carry, and escape into the night. If possible, you want to avoid waking the human residents, evade the Neighborhood Watch, and try to keep your ship from exploding. Flying a ship takes coordination and discipline. Unfortunately, you’re a bunch of raccoons.

Errant is a fantasy RPG in the classic style, where you play ne’er-do-wells in search of treasure by any means you can. The game focuses on providing a robust suite of procedures aimed at making gameplay experiences like exploration, downtime activities, and domain management simple, meaningful, and fun.

The Lights of Winthrop Manor is an immersive level-0, self-contained adventure experience for 5e. Inside you'll find everything you need to thoroughly terrorize your party and give your players a night that they'll not soon forget.

This zine kicks off our new setting while, at the same time, acting as an ideal 1-shot for those groups interested in delving into the darker elements of fantasy. More reminiscent of Call of Cthulhu than typical D&D, Winthrop Manor relies heavily on themes of madness and horror. Players will assume the role of 1 or more of the 9 pre-generated characters, each based on new backgrounds and lineages from our upcoming Dreadlands: The Horrors of Glynn campaign setting. The player characters will need to use a special puzzle box to rotate the rooms of the house in order to try and avoid the Keeper and escape with their lives, if not their sanity. 

Cryptid (Mis)Communication is a role playing game to be played outdoors, at a blurry distorted distance. In this game, you and your friend both pretend to be cryptids who just want to catch up. The problem is, if you get too close, you won't be all that mysterious anymore, so you have to keep your distance. To communicate, you need to shout! It is specifically designed with the current circumstances of the world in mind, and will be good silly fun for all ages and friend groups! It is also unequivocally queer ;-)

Cryptid (Mis)Communication is a fun venture that will make you laugh with your friends... from at least 200 feet away.

SUBTLE FLUID is the first print offering from the new sci-fi RPG Stillfleet. After years of work to bring the game and world to life, the team behind this innovative and highly playable RPG is moving into the world of print with an immaculately designed zine about nantotechnology. SUBTLE FLUID offers 24+ pages of rules, art, and hooks that will add dangerous spice to your games of Stillfleet, or any other sci-fi RPG.


Saturday, June 6, 2020

Monty Haul #1 is Alive and Kicking

You can scuttle over to DriveThruRPG right now and pick up a copy here!

Monty Haul #1 is a 'zine dedicated to expanding your options for fantasy table-top role-playing. Issue 1 focuse on magic-users and includes campaign notes on creating magical cities that feel magical, new archetype options for warlocks (the King in Yellow patron), sorcerers (Eldritch Ancestry), and Wizards (the school of Things Man Was Not Meant To Know). 

Two new backgrounds are aslo including, along with a new rule set for dealing with alchemists and apothecaries. A rules light NPC reaction system and a collection of magical pests to plague your mages with rounds out the issue. 48 jam-packed pages in all!

It's a kaleidoscope of usable options, written in a conversational style and grounded in the gaming days of yore. If by "yore" we're talking about the early 1980's, that is. Monty Haul is suitable for discerning DMs and players of the fifth edition of the world's most popular fantasy rpg. 

If you pick up a copy, please let me know what you think. Also, please consider writing a short review on the site. It really does help. Okay, I'm working on issue 2 as we speak! Lots to format. I may not get everything into the issue...what to do, what to do? 


Monday, April 13, 2020

Monty Haul Zero Issue now available!

For those of you were on the fence about whether or not to back my recent Kickstarter campaign, you can now take a look at what I was driving at: Monty Haul #0 is now digitally available.


Monty Haul #0 is a Proof-of-Concept issue, full of assorted optional rules, backgrounds for characters, and more! Featuring a new take on familiars, two new cleric domains, a simple and not-so-deadly critical hit system, the Divine Archeologist archetype for rogues, and several new backgrounds including an expanded trio of options for the noble: dilettante, disgraced noble, and knight errant! Also included is a Noble Family House generator to quickly design interesting families to plague your nobles.

It's a cornucopia of usable options, written in a light and conversational style and grounded in the gaming days of yore. If by "yore" we're talking about the early 1980's. Monty Haul is suitable for discerning DMs and players of the fifth edition of the world's most popular fantasy rpg.

You can get it here, on DriveThruRPG's website.

Monday, March 16, 2020

Top 5 Ways to Weather the Global Pandemic


I’m sure we’ve all seen the meme by now, the mock headline that says something along the lines of “Nerds Everywhere Awaken to a World where Sports Are Cancelled and Everyone Stays Inside Playing Games” or something to that effect. Har-de-har-har, Alice.

As a guy who owns and operates one of the very places the media is begging you not to visit, I’m of two minds, here. On one hand, stay at home, yes, do that. On the other hand, um…me and the missus and our dog need to eat, okay?

Suffice to say, I need a few distractions, and I suspect you do, as well. For example, I’m working on my Kickstarter campaign project, Monty Haul, and it’s going as well as can be expected. I’m also playing my first D&D game on Roll20 with Shane Ivey, Chris Spivey, and Megan and Aser Tolentino. If you’re interested in hearing it play out, you can check out Session Zero on the ArcDream website here. We’re playing through one of Shane’s Sword and Sorceries adventures, and so far, it’s very cool.

But what if you don’t have a lot of irons in the fire? It’s easy; just build a fire, and stick some irons in. I’m only sort of kidding. Even if you just do some spring cleaning, like culling old games and sorting dice and organizing shelves, you’ll feel better, more productive, and less inclined to climb the walls, wall crawler. Idle hands, and all that jazz.

Here are my top five suggestions for Getting Your Game On and staying safe. I’m not going to mention Roll20 or playing online; you already know that. Rather, this is about refilling your braincase with stuff to use when all of this Fauxpocalypse stuff blows over and we can all greet the daylight again like squinting morlocks.

Sunday, February 9, 2020

Monty Haul Design Notes: Alchemy, Herbalism, and Poison

One of David Teniers; many paintings of medieval alchemists
I'm going to put a quick PDF doc here (because I like how it's formatted, and blogger will just make it look ugly, see) about what my thinking process was that led me to write new rules for alchemy in 5th edition. I wrote it originally for this blog, and so it's in my conversational style. I did this for a few reasons:

1. for those of you who don't know me, here's a pretty good snapshot of how I write, and also, how I approach game design.

2. Alchemists and Apothecaries are going to be one of the feature pieces in Monty Haul #1, and here's a bit of a preview.

3. The pdf is easier to distribute as a formatted object and it lets you download it now and read it later. Well, I do that; I don't know if anyone else does. But that's how I think, so, there you have it.

Here's the PDF link from my Google Drive: Design Note on Alchemy
Feel free to snag it and check it out at your leisure; it's a quick read. And if you are so moved to back my 'zine, Monty Haul, that would be great, too! It's already funded and right now I am flogging for stretch goals.

Friday, February 7, 2020

Running a Kickstarter is Hard Work

I now know what a helicopter parent feels like. I've been hovering over my computer, hitting the refresh wheel so much it's now just perpetually spinning like the top from Inception.

But there's a reason for the hovering: people expect updates, and things move pretty fast. It's not really scary, but it's certainly daunting. Oh, and there are questions to answer, as well. But it's all for a good cause, because...Monty Haul is a go!

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Kickstarter is Live!



And despite a rookie mistake at the beginning (which not a lot of people saw since it was the middle of the night), we have pledges, too! If you'd like in on the action, you've got two weeks, starting today: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/markfinn/monty-haul-fifth-edition-zine-with-an-old-school-vibe

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

The Kickstarter is Nigh!

















I love using "nigh" in a sentence, don't you?

Hey, just in case you missed the first notification, here's another one for you: the Kickstarter for Monty Haul, an old-fashioned RPG 'zine for 5e, starts on Wednesday, but YOU can get notified when it drops so as to not miss out. All you gotta do is follow the link below and throw your email into the gaping maw of the Kickstarter beast.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/markfinn/monty-haul-fifth-edition-zine-with-an-old-school-vibe

I will post major updates here, but if you want to stay tied into what's up with the KS, please back the project (even if it's just for a buck) and you can follow along with the updates I will be (hopefully) posting regularly in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks, oh my gentle readers. I'll see you on the other side.

New Digs, Patreon, and More

  Hey folks, This blog is going to remain up, but I won't be adding to it any more. I never quite got it off the ground and did everythi...