50% Off Expeditious Retreat Press Sale! (PDFs)

Heya all, GM's day is right around the corner (March 4th), so we here at XRP have put several of our PDF products on sale at Your Games Now. For those of you who don't know, we don't do many sales a year, perhaps one or two, so if you've been waiting for a bargain price on PDFs, now's the time to jump.

The sale ends on March 8th.

We've taken 50% off our entire 1E Advanced Adventures line!
We've taken 50% off our 1E monster book Malevolent & Benign!
We've taken 50% off our entire Sorcery & Super Science line!

Immobilizing Attack

A new power for Sorcery & Super Science!

Immobilizing Attack: (Active, Transferable, Uncommon) You have an unusual distance attack that does not harm your target, and instead immobilizes. You should state what happens when you use this power, such as you spit sticky mucus, you shoot spider webs, or you command the air to solidify around a target. You can only immobilize creatures of the indicated size or smaller and, if hit by your attack, a victim can free himself the next turn with a successful Strength conflict against the indicated rank. After that, a conflict to escape may be attempted once every minute.

T    Range    Weight    Break Rank
B    20           200               4
I     40           400               6
A    60          600               8
U    80         1200             10

The Back Cover of The Secret of the Callair Hills

Since it seems everyone dropped by look at the front cover art yesterday, I thought I should bring the back cover to the party as well. IMO, the style of the art is not only interesting in-and-of itself, it also fits perfectly with the contents and style of the adventure - a good low to low-mid leveler.

The Secret of the Callair Hills Cover Preview

I got the art from John Bingham a few days ago and here's the cover for Advanced Adventures #19: The Secret of the Callair Hills. John did the inks and his wife, Daisey, did the colors. I'm thoroughly enamored of the look. The way I like to describe it is, "Imagine if the artists of the 16th century could have used color inks when printing their woodcuts." I like the clean lines and clean color. I think it's distinctively old-school, yet a brand-new vision.

The Whispers of the Bone Lord

A new whisper track for Sorcery & Super Science!

The Whispers of The Bone Lord

Bone Ladder (Basic): Activating this whisper pulls bones from the ground that quickly assemble into a ladder capable of holding 5 tons. The ladder is normally 30 feet tall, but the sorcerer may spend an additional 1 point of Fortune to extend the ladder an additional 10 feet to a maximum of 100 feet. The ladder lasts for 10 minutes. Activating this whisper costs 1 Fortune.

Bone Horse (Intermediate): Activating this whisper pulls bones from the ground that quickly assemble into a horse-like shape. The bone horse can carry 1 ton, move at 20/176, and follows the commands of the sorcerer. It can take up to 20 points of Health damage before failing. The bone horse lasts 6 hours. Activating this whisper costs 2 Fortune.

Bone Fists of the Countless Dead (Advanced): Activating this whisper pulls dozens of bony clenched fists from the soil in a 50 foot radius centered upon the sorcerer. All living creatures larger than a house cat (except the sorcerer) are subject to an attack at Combat 10 dealing +6 bludgeoning damage and a +4/ rank 4 combat condition. Activating this whisper costs 6 Fortune.

Bone Lock (Ultra): Activating this whisper pulls multiple bone segments from the sorcerer, dealing 20 Health damage and reducing the sorcerer’s physical primary abilities by 1 for the next week while the lost bones regrow. The sorcerer can mold the bone parts into a mystical lock that can only be opened by its creator. The bone lock cannot be damaged (by anything), and also acts as mystical armor against bashing attempts to gain entrance into what is has locked. Any attempts to damage the locked object find their damage reduced by 30 points. Activating this whisper costs 8 Fortune.

Tome of Tomes

Another in the series. I really like doing these. Nice bit of flavor, IMO.

Mosses and Lichens of the Dim Zones
Author: Durnal Stonefist
Race: Dwarf
Dimensions: 8x10x1.5
Weight: 4lbs.
Materials: Leather-bound, woodboard, parchment
Rarity: Common
Fields of Study: Flora
Special Knowledge Categories: Mosses & ferns
Value: 50 gp

Stonefist’s work on the mosses and lichens found underground in “dim zones” (areas with some slight light) is an old work, but a thorough one. Stonefist must have traveled extensively underground, as the book contains a wide variety of mosses and lichens which are often found hundreds of miles apart. Illustrated nicely, the work can be used to identify the most common varieties of mosses and lichens found underground in dim zones after a month’s study by someone with at least a 12 Intelligence.

Tome of Tomes

Another tome for your libraries...

Crypts of Eternity
Author: Yerals Abitis
Race: Unknown
Dimensions: 8x8x1
Weight: 2 lbs.
Materials: Leather-bound, woodboard, vellum
Rarity: Very rare
Fields of Study: Supernatural & unusual
Special Knowledge Categories: Planes (outer)
Value: 625 gp

This small tome contains descriptions of the 44 crypts within the pocket dimension titled by the author as Eternity. Whoever Yearals Abitis was, he was not an adventurer of the common sort, for only the outer appearance and entrance room of each crypt is described and illustrated. It is unknown if the crypts are undisturbed and, more telling perhaps, that if the pocket dimension and its crypts exist.

Slow Day

Slow day here at the XRP  household. Woke up to find 5 inches of snow that needed shoveling so we could get out and get some groceries. We have a long driveway/alleyway and removing the snow (that we could remove) took almost 2 hours to accomplish.

So it's almost 3pm now and I've done very little work. *sigh* I guess it'll be a slow, long day. :)

300 Post!

Just hit our 300th post here at Sorcery & Super Science! I've been very conscientiously trying to post often enough to let people drop by everyday (if only for a brief moment) to see if there's something of interest to them as well as to make sure that the people that drop by once a week or so have enough new and varied material to keep their interest. I think I've been successful in both accounts.

On the XRP front, just got the final art for Advanced Adventure #19: The Secret of the Callair Hills. I think it looks very good and I'm excited to get another lower-level Advanced Adventure out there. Callair Hills is for levels 3-6 and it's a pretty sandboxy affair. I think it works out nicely and in the hands of a GM willing to personalize it, I think it could be a lot of fun.

I've also been working on more character-oriented stuff for Sorcery & Super Science! I have several new whispers, highlights and powers and I'm nearing completion on Characters Below the Shattered Moon - Volume 2. Hopefully I'll get the final 1000 words done today and we'll see it out by next week.

So here's to the next 300 posts!

Sorry for the Silence

Sorry for no updates in the past few days. Suzi and I were out of town visiting friends. It was a nice little trip and we were able to play several games each of Ticket to Ride, Pandemic, and Twelve Crowns. All three are great fun. I lost my first-ever game of Pandemic, scored an amazingly-low score of 29 in Ticket to Ride (seriously, that is utterly horrible *and I was trying!*), and I managed to go 6 rounds in Twelve Crowns only scoring 3 points.

All in all good fun. Now back to work!

Expeditious Retreat Press's Advanced Adventures the focus of a scholarly paper about the OSR

There are so few scholarly treatments of table-top gaming, that I thought I should let everyone know that I'm majorly stoked that our Advanced Adventures line is the focus of a Master's degree paper about art, nostalgia, and the Old-School Renaissance. Awesome!

The essay was written by Darren Allan Crouse, and supervised by Dr. Greg Gillespie, in the Department of Popular Culture at Brock University in Ontario. In the study, Crouse discusses the construction of nostalgia in the art of our Advanced Adventures line. He challenges traditional academic understandings of nostalgia as simple escapism. Crouse argues that, while the Advanced Adventures pay homage to the history of RPGs, the series is an expression of an emerging old school gaming subculture who use nostalgia in new and creative ways - while charting new directions for their hobby.

This is obviously a dreadfully terse simplification of the paper. Read the entire paper for yourself at Your Games Now. Regardless if you end up agreeing or disagreeing with Mr. Crouse, I think we can all sit back and enjoy the fact that the OSR has spurred one of the few professional analysis of the hobby that we all love. I hope there will be more and more.

I want to express my heartiest thanks to our artists Stefan Poag, Bradley McDevitt, Peter Mullen, John Bingham, Jeffrey Womack, Matt Finch, and William McAusland. It is their collective visions that bring the Advanced Adventure series to visual life. Personally, I'm finding it hard to express just how happy and proud I am. I never thought that anything I had a hand in would end up as a subject of scholasticism. So I think I'm going to keep grinning like a fool for quite some time... :)

If you would like to contact Dr. Greg Gillespie at Brock University, his e-mail is ggillespie@brocku.ca

Formula Folio

And we continue with the 1st-Level clerical ink formulas...

Detect Magic
For the ink required to scribe a clerical detect magic scroll

1 oz. of giant squid sepia
1 oz. of giant octopus ink
1 oz. of holy water
1 mugwort

In a crystal container upon the holy altar, mix 1 oz. of sepia with holy water and coat the mugwort. Seal container with beeswax and let sit for 1 year. Open at midnight and remove liquid and mix with 1 oz. of octopus ink. Makes enough ink for 2 scrolls. Any special quill is suitable.

Objects Below the Shattered Moon - Volume 3 out now!

This short PDF provides harried GMs with new sorcerous artifacts, firearms, armors and shields, a few lesser miscellaneous items, as well as a comprehensive accounting of the different types of field rations found on the world below the shattered moon.

It's available at Your Games Now and at RPGnow. It will shortly be available at Paizo and e23.

CD Drive Broken In My Laptop

I am grumpy. Very grumpy.

Beef Cake! (Iron Rations, that is.)

Iron Rations
The earliest type of rations, these are known for their odd taste and texture. They do fill you up, however, and they sure taste a lot better than a famine tube.

Beef Cake Iron Ration (I) 4; Value 20
Skill Sets: C (I) 1, Ma (I) 1; Components: (I) 4
Description: A trio of small cakes (made from beef bouillon powder and wheat), and trio of 1-ounce bars of sweetened fruit, nuts, and wheat, and a packet each of salt and pepper.
Effects: Food for one meal.

Corned Beef Iron Ration (I): 6; Value 30
Skill Sets: C (I) 1, Ma (I) 1; Components: (I) 6
Description: A tin of corned beef, two cans filled with hardtack biscuits, a single cup’s worth of ground coffee, a packet of sugar and one of salt. Additionally, there’s a small packet of tobacco and 10 rolling papers.
Effects: Food for one meal and some smokes as a side-benefit.

Beef Jerky Iron Ration (I): 6; Value 30
Skill Sets: C (I) 1, Ma (I) 1; Components: (I) 6
Description: A tin of beef jerky, two cans filled with hardtack biscuits, a single cup’s worth of ground coffee, a packet of sugar and one of salt. Additionally, there’s a small packet of tobacco and 10 rolling papers.
Effects: Food for one meal and some smokes as a side-benefit.

Pork and Beans Iron Ration (I): 6; Value 30
Skill Sets: C (I) 1, Ma (I) 1; Components: (I) 6
Description: A tin of pork and beans, two cans filled with hardtack biscuits, a single cup’s worth of ground coffee, a packet of sugar and one of salt. Additionally, there’s a small packet of tobacco and 10 rolling papers.
Effects: Food for one meal and some smokes as a side-benefit.