Meme-Free Zone

This is a bundle of Against the Darkmaster from Open Ended Games, described as a "FRPG of epic adventure and heavy-metal combat" which is apparently similar to the Middle Earth Role Playing System in concept.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Darkmaster

As usual I have to admit that I no longer play old-school fantasy RPGs. At a quick look presentation is good, the rules seem to have rather a lot of tables but look playable, and it's reasonably good value. I don't personally need another fantasy RPG, since I already have several I'm not using, but it might be worth a look if you're not already locked in to another system.

Just booked my membership for the Continuum 2025 games con on July 25th-28th at Cranfield Management Development Centre which is annoyingly far from the nearest station at Milton Keynes - fortunately there's a direct bus route which is free for freedom pass holders, since taxis are bloody expensive.

Membership costs £60 for the full weekend including Friday, slightly cheaper for other options, with accommodation available on site at £64 a night for a single room, £85.75 for a double.

https://continuumconvention.co.uk/

Good thing I remembered, because they can only accept about another 30 members - I think the site imposes a limit.

Gamelords Traveller - PDF ebooks of 1980s Classic Traveller tabletop roleplaying supplements from two of Traveller's earliest third-party publishers: Gamelords Ltd and Marischal Adventures.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Gamelords2025



When I last saw this I said: "This is.. ..a blast from the past; most of this material is from early in the history of Traveller, when men were real men, small green alien things were real small green alien things, and production values were... a little on the primitive side. Most of them are big swathes of text and random encounter tables etc., scanned from dot matrix originals, and look it. The Cargonauts supplements are more legible, but were written a long time before 2000, so still come from the era when tables were king, and characterization and role playing more of an afterthought in game and scenario design. Having said that, there's a lot here that I haven't seen before, and some interesting ideas and exploration of environments that haven't seen much use in other Traveller material. It isn't incredibly expensive, and with the usual "I didn't actually have to pay for this" caveat I think it's worth a look."

I don't really see any reason to change any of that.


FASA Traveller - .PDF ebooks of the early 1980s Classic Traveller supplements published by FASA Corporation.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/FASATrav2025



When I last saw this I said "I remember this stuff as being pretty good for its day; while that was a long time ago, I think they've held up as well as similar material from GDW. It's a little annoying that the sector where the adventures are set aren't included in the offer, but I think it may belong to GDW rather than FASA - the maps etc. are in the Traveller wiki anyway. Depending on how much of this material you already own it may be worth a look, especially if you like lots of new ships etc."

Again, I don't see any reason to change that.

Eastercon was a lot of fun, so was Dragonmeet: Call to Adventure.

Eastercon was the first in Northern Ireland. I'd never been to Belfast before and it looks like an interesting city - except a lot of things were closed on the Bank holiday days, and the program of the con was good enough that I didn't want to miss much. Food was good but I don't think that Northern Ireland has quite grasped the idea of a small meal. The local market sold burgers that were mountainous piles of meat, ditto most of the other take-away food, even the Hilton's bar snacks were fairly massive. My hotel was about a mile from the con and I walked both ways - I think this might be why I only put on two and a half kilos over the course of the con.

The program item on Dragons was one of the last in the con and fairly well received - I got to say a fair about Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw and my RPG of it, which may be one of the reasons why my web site currently shows bandwidth exceeded, and expounded my crossover theory of dragons and parseltongues in the Harry Potter books - Parseltongues are actually descended from Silurians (Dr. Who) breeding with humans; Dragons also understand the language because they were created by Silurians, but don't normally speak to humans because they're snobs and humans have really lousy Silurian accents...

I'd planned to spend some time exploring before my flight back on Tuesday, but it turned out that a lot of places there take the Tuesday after Easter as a holiday and don't open - also I was pretty tired. So I had a bit of a walk Tuesday morning, then caught the bus to the airport early and had a good flight and train ride home without any problems. Spent some time talking to coth and husband (who is not on Dreamwidth) since we were on the same flight and train which helped pass the time.


Dragonmeet: Call to Adventure was a lot smaller than the annual Dragonmeet con and didn't seem to be as well attended as I'd expected, given that admission was free. But I think all games had a full complement of players, so hopefully it's lured a few newcomers into the hobby. Originally I'd intended to run a Doctor Who adventure I wrote in the 1980s, Curse of the Conqueror, which is largely set in a post-nuclear world in an alternative 1980s. But I was asked what age it was aimed at and had to admit that it might not be entirely kid friendly due to the piles of skeletons, rat hordes, etc., and ended up running Too Many Dragons, one of the adventures from my Nesbit RPG settings Fables and Frolics. Despite all of the characters being children this ended up with mostly adult players and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. There was a certain amount of munchkinry evident, most notably the eight-year-old character with an air rifle who tried to use it to intimidate adults and ended up writing 200 lines after Nanny smacked his bottom, but they ended up reaching the right conclusions and meeting the Dragon Emperor (modelled on John Cleese - "So you're humans, are you? Aren't you usually a bit bigger?") and helping to resolve his marital problems, which was the best outcome of the adventure. It had to end promptly at five so I went on my way rejoicing. But too tired for Doctor Who so I'll probably watch that tonight.

This is a short term offer for a bundle of material for the Apocalypse Keys RPG, an Apocalypse Engine setting involving occult agencies and monsters working as agents for DIVISION, an agency apparently inspired by Hellboy, Men in Black, etc.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/ApocalypseKeys



This is an interesting idea but has a lot of competition, not least Delta Green, the Laundry Files RPG, etc. It also seems to use way too many capitalized words but that's not uncommon. It looks like reasonably good value anyway.

Apologies that this has been posted late - I've been working on preparing material for the scenario I'm running on Saturday and forgot to check my email. The offer ends on Thursday May 1st.

A repeat of a 2022 offer of Sigil Stone Publishing FRPGs which add modern rules to Old School Revival Adventures. One supplement is added from the original release, but if you bought that you will get the new material free so no need to buy it again.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Sigil2025



In 2022 I said "It's about 25 years since I last played a pure dungeon-bashing adventure, and to be honest I don't particularly want to go back to the genre. Both look reasonably well presented, and it's an unusually cheap bundle; if these are the sort of games you like it's worth a look." I don't think any of that has changed.

This is an RPG from publishers Game Machinery, set in a post-Apocalyptic world where supernatural beings including demons, angels, dragons and other entities collectively known as Defiant have decided to protect the last human survivors instead of killing them. The players take on the roles of the supernatural beings, trying to sustain a city and its civilization and keep things from falling apart - the humans are more or less unaware of the problem. The characters start powerful, and accumulate more power through intrigue, throwing the best parties, creating/recruiting more Defiant and overcoming obstacles. Rules prioritize style, intrigue and interaction:

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Defiant



This is an interesting idea, but since I'm not really the partying sort of person I'm not sure how attuned I am to the general game vibe - although having said that, something like a science fiction or games convention might be the sort of thing that a Defiant might think will set up the sort of atmosphere that promotes their goals. It's pretty cheap and I think it's worth a look.

This is an offer of the game Between Clouds, a game about mutant adventurers on another world in the distant future who live in a symbiotic relationship with giant flying animals. It's available for one week only.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/BetweenClouds



This looks interesting though I have a feeling that it might get a little repetitive with prolonged play - a lot of the time adventurers will be in situations that are caused by their relationship with the animals they ride, or the welfare of other animals they encounter. But it's very cheap and you get quite a lot for the money, so I think it's well worth trying.

I'm on one panel at Eastercon - I signed up for it because of writing the game conversion of Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw, as Forgotten Futures X: The Tooth and Claw RPG and a dragon adventure in my Nesbit RPG setting Forgotten Futures VII: Fables and Frolics:

Flying With Dragons

Hopefully it'll be fun, and I will get to explain why the Tooth and Claw RPG has a section entitled Better Living Through Cannibalism...

Couldn't resist donating a few pounds to help fund this


Please spread it!