GRIDSHOCK 20XX

Perhaps you've been wondering what I've been up to for the past few years. I have good news for you: The Kickstarter campaign for GRIDSHOCK 20XX is now live.

In 1945, superheroes saved the world. In 1986, it ended. In 20XX, supervillains rule what's left. Welcome to GRIDSHOCK 20XX. Four zines. One world of post-apocalyptic synthwave superhero action.

This is the project I've been working on since 2016. I hope you'll give it a look.

A Great Gift or a Unique Snack for Your Office Staff

Since the Demon Verge campaign is on hiatus for the holidays, I haven't got a reliable source of blog-worthy material at the moment. But the good news is that Charles Akins of the Dyvers blog made something called The Great Blog Roll Call, an extremely useful list of stuff to read. Go look.

(This nice fellow happened to say that Dungeonskull Mountain is "a fantastic read that draws you in". Posts like this one disprove that argument, but we can forgive him that one inaccuracy.)

Sorry for the brevity and vapidity. Don't worry! I'm going to start posting a bunch of Rifts-related stuff soon. Everybody likes Rifts, right?

Selling More Stuff

The closet-cleaning continues. I've got more RPG material for sale. Much of it should be of interest to OSRites.

As before, prices are in USD. I recently learned the hard way that USPS charges more for media mail service than it once did, so I now have to ask for $5 for shipping. I will ship via other methods (or internationally) if you're willing to pay for it.

Dungeons & Dragons Creature Crucible series:
PC1 Tall Tales of the Wee Folk $12
PC2 Top Ballista $12
PC4 Night Howlers (cover has been neatly cut in two, along the spine) $10
buy as a bundle for $30


HackMaster Basic:
HackMaster Basic (rulebook, like new) $15
Frandor's Keep (big setting/adventure module, like new) $18
buy as a bundle for $30

RuneQuest II Core Rulebook (Mongoose Publishing hardcover, like new) $20


Fallout: New Vegas (Xbox 360) $12

Alternately, I'm interested in trading this stuff for a few things I'm interested in. Yes, I realize many of these are ridiculous long shots, but what the hey:

AD&D 1st Edition hardcovers (especially the Fiend Folio and Monster Manuals, but pretty much any of them other than the Manual of the Planes and "Adventures" setting books)

Lesserton & Mor
Vornheim: The Complete City Kit
Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Grindhouse Edition

Other OSR stuff (make me an offer)
Legends of Anglerre
OpenQuest
A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplay: Campaign Guide
DC Adventures Hero's Handbook
DC Adventures Heroes & Villains
ICONS
Crusaders of the Amber Coast
Barbarians of the Aftermath
Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide
Pathfinder Ultimate Magic
Pathfinder Ultimate Combat

Drop me a comment if you're interested in buying or trading, if you have any questions, or if you want to haggle. Thanks for looking.

I feel slightly ashamed (but only slightly) for temporarily turning Dungeonskull Mountain into a clearinghouse. I promise I'll go back to having actual gaming content on this blog one of these days.

You Have My ACKS

I've mentioned Adventurer Conqueror King on this blog before, but I probably did a bad job of describing it. I'll let Tavis Allison tell you what the deal is:

The way the Autarch crew has involved all of its supporters in helping to critique and shape the game is a smart move and will certainly result in a better game. There are already supplements in the works, both from Autarch themselves and from luminaries like Chris Kutalik of the excellent Hill Cantons blog.

I'm happy to be a backer of this project and can't wait to get my hands on the book. (It doesn't hurt that backing it at practically any level gets you cool goodies.)

Selling Some Old Stuff

I have some RPG things for sale. All are in that "neat but I'll never use it" category for me. These should be of interest to OSR-minded folks, which is why I'm posting them here first.

Prices are in USD. I usually charge around $3 to ship USPS media mail, but I'm happy to ship another way if you're picky and willing to pay more. Likewise, I'll consider shipping them outside of the US if you're willing to pay extra for shipping.

If you have questions, or want to barter, say so. Here's what I've got:

Central Casting: Dungeons (Task Force Games, 1993). An impressive dungeon generator in the fine, hyper-detailed Central Castings tradition. It's in good shape, though the cover has some corner dings and general buffing. $20. SOLD.

Cities, 2nd Edition (Midkemia Press, 1981). "A guide for all role-playing games - City encounters - City populating - Character catch-up". This book has seen considerable interest in the old-school blogosphere of late. I'd say it's in very good condition - the pages are slightly yellowed from age, and there is a very small stain on one corner of the cover. $15. SOLD.

Best of Dragon Magazine, Vol. III (TSR, 1983).

Best of Dragon Magazine, Vol. IV (TSR, 1985).

Best of Dragon Magazine, Vol. V (TSR, 1986).

Check the links for the details and articles compiled within. There's some fun stuff here, including some nice rules for ruins, demihuman gods, modern weaponry, and notorious character classes like the death-master. All of the Dragon collections are in very good condition. Volume V looks like it has some warping to the bottom of the pages from moisture, the other two are in excellent shape. I'll sell all three for $10. SOLD.

RuneQuest II Core Rulebook (Mongoose Publishing, 2010). Mongoose's acclaimed revision of a Chaosium classic. An excellent, near-mint condition hardcover; I did read it, but you'd never be able to tell. $20.

Thanks for looking.

Adventurer Conqueror King

There's a new old-school RPG in the works: Adventurer Conqueror King.

ACK is a retroclone in the sense that Lamentations of the Flame Princess and the upcoming Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG are retroclones. That is to say that they take the mechanics of classic D&D as their starting point, and then tweak them to suit the style of play the game is intended to encourage. In this case, the focus is on "providing integrated support for play across all levels of a campaign". To put it another way, it's built from the ground up to support things like domain building and that old-school D&D "endgame" people love to talk about.

Autarch, the publishing partnership working on Adventurer Conqueror King, includes luminaries like Alexander Macris (of The Escapist fame) and Tavis Allison (of The Mule Abides and numerous D&D products). The game is currently in its Kickstarter phase but it's evidently well fleshed out already, rules-wise, and also looks like it's going to be top-notch in the production value department.

I recommend checking out the design blog for a better idea of what the ACKS (Adventurer Conqueror King System) is all about.

Mountainskull Dungeon

I've been feeling pretty uninspired lately, so I'm lucky that there's somebody like scottsz out there. He's been going over classic modules with a fine-toothed comb in his Cold Text File series at the Lord of the Green Dragons blog. His latest post on Gary Gygax's classic module, The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, uses my header logo as a sort of instructional aid toward understanding the ancient language of the Aztec people, the ways in which it was recorded visually, and how it's used in an old D&D module.

Trust me, it makes more sense if you just read the article.

So, that logo my brother designed for me isn't just cool to look at, it's educational. Bet you can't say that about your header image.

Fight On! Random Table Contest

I try to avoid posts like this one, but the idea behind this contest is too damn brilliant to ignore. Not just what it's about, not just the prizes, but the way the prizes are determined. I say again: brilliant.

Random tables are a big part of what I love about RPGs. I'm already trying to think up a decent submission or two.

After Lovecraft

My friend Rick Dakan, author of many fine books (including All Flesh Must Be Eaten and the Geek Mafia novel series) has returned to RPG publishing with The Horror at Red Hook: The Cold Case of Robert Suydam. As the title implies, this Call of Cthulhu scenario involves characters picking up the pieces after Lovecraft's short story of the same name.

I'm lucky enough to game with Rick almost weekly. It's also illustrated by my longtime friend and gaming buddy Kent Bonifield, whose art has been featured here on Dungeonskull Mountain before. But I'm not just plugging this scenario here because two friends worked on it - no sir! I playtested this adventure (playing a streetwise hobo named Brown Bottle Bill) and so can vouch for its coolness. In fact, my group's characters are included as pregens (though the names, I'm told, have been changed).

You can grab it in PDF format here. Or, if you're a Luddite like me, order it in print here (or at any other fine gaming establishment, be it brick-and-mortar or online).

Fighting On

I'm happy to announce that issue #5 of Fight On! (the fanzine of the old school renaissance) is available now from Lulu. Along with a bunch of other cool stuff, this issue contains the "Dungeon Motivations" random table Bret Woods and I put together a while back, greatly expanded from Jeff Rients' original.

This is the second gaming product I've managed to get my name on. (The first was the errata document for the new version of Dragon Warriors.) I hope people are able to get some use out of my goofy little contribution.

Maybe I'll use this as an excuse to reorder that copy of Barbarians of Lemuria that I had shipped to the wrong address...

I feel pretty good about this. Movin' on up!