Trusty Sword

07/05/2022

The Inn in the Forest's first review! Very thorough overview if you haven't already checked it out.

Overview of The Inn in the Forest for DCC RPG.PDF: https://bit.ly/3OR9gTYContact me using the email address found in this channel's About tab to discuss the ...

02/23/2021

"The Inn in the Forest" is a 40-64 page, time traveling horror adventure by Daniel J. Bishop that Shyloh Wideman (one of the team) is also working on. It is now live for Kickstarter's Zine Quest and comes with a pack of digital resources for virtual table top and in-person gaming: battle maps with and without the grids, monster and PC tokens, handouts, editable character sheets, 12+ pregens, and more being added almost every stretch goal. It's currently funded at 462%.

Multi-session, time-traveling horror adventure by Daniel Bishop. New Dungeon Crawl Classics patron, artifacts, spells, monsters + more.

04/01/2020

DCC RPG Quick Start Rules is now free! https://goodman-games.com/blog/2020/03/31/dcc-quick-start-rules-now-free/

03/17/2020

50 FREE ADVENTURES! Stuck indoors due to the corona virus? So are we!

Among the many things that keep me away from RPG Bard, I have been one of the administrators (and editor, cartographer, layout artist, and webmaster) for The Gongfarmer's Almanac for the last three years. The GFA is a Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG fanzine that is printed and given away for free at Gen Con. Last year was crazy, with us published over 700 pages of content and printing and giving away 1,400 zines at Gen Con!

For Gary Con XII, since it has been moved online, I pulled together a list of all the adventures in case anyone would like to run something. Hopefully you can find something to run yourself or to peruse during our "social distancing" self quarantining.

With the in-person Gary Con XII being cancelled due to the corona virus pandemic, there is precious little time to move everything online and add enough virtual games to support the 3,000+ tickets already sold.

03/17/2020

GARY CON XII NOW ONLINE AND FREE!

24/7 gaming 3/26-3/29 with some of the best in the industry!

AN HOMAGE TO GARY GYGAX

This is the ultimate "grognard" event so many TSR staff and early artists, along with Gary Gygax's kids, will be in attendance. There are seminars, as well as games, on the industry as well as for writing and doing your own fantasy art and cartography. Gaming is also old school, so while you will find a bunch of D&D 5E, you will also find Basic-3E D&D, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and many other classic systems and retro clones or retro-style games.

SIGN UP NOW

About 20 news games are being posted each day and, if you'd like to run something, you can just click Host > Submit Events.

JOIN US

If you do a search for "Dan Steeby" or "Shyloh Wideman", some of the Trusty Sword folks will be running games and doing presentations. We haven't gotten those posted yet, but they should be listed within the next couple days. (And, on a personal note, this is our favorite convention ever.)

Hope you and your loved ones are in good health and not going crazy already from the quarantine. Hopefully this will help. Look forward to (virtually) seeing you there!

This is the VIRTUAL TABLETOP GAMING site for Gary Con XII! Getting a FREE badge to this convention DOES NOT include any ON SITE EVENTS at Gary Con XII!

02/26/2019

DCC RPG/MCC RPG: The 2019 call for submissions for The Gongfarmer's Almanac (GFA) just went out!

GFA is a Dungeon Crawl Classics/Mutant Crawl Classics RPG zine that is distributed for free at Gen Con and then distributed as a free PDF and in an at-cost print-on-demand version.

If you'd like to contribute as a writer, artist, cartographer, editor, or layout editor, you cand find out more at http://gongfarmersalmanac.com/welcome-to-gfa-2019-year-five-survive-the-funnel-edition/ and sign up to participate at http://gongfarmersalmanac.com/participate/.

(One of us volunteers as an web developer, admin, content editor, layout editor, and contributes cartography and writing, while the other saves more of his life for developing his own DCC/MCC zine, which will see its first release at Gary Con in March, 2019.)

Other than that, currently working late days and most weekends still with too much regular client work (a mixed blessing). We have just hired our first new staff (so now 3 of us), which we are hoping will free up enough time to get back to RPG Bard. Feels like we've been hoping for that forever now, but we still try to squeeze in a few hours on it when we can.

Thanks and please pass along this call for submissions to any DCC/MCC gamers you know!

Salutations to our fellow Gongfarmer friends and patrons! We once again lay down the offerings and start the ritual to summon all of you; The amazing authors, artists, editors, proofers, and supporters that year after year help to build the annual gift that is The Gongfarmer’s Almanac. The tenets ...

03/07/2018

Going to Gary Con 2018? We'll be there in a gamer-only capacity. If you'll be there and would like to say hi, we should have some down time on Thursday and Saturday afternoon. Ping us!

Gary Con Gary Con is an annual game convention celebrating the life and works of Gary Gygax, the Father of Role Playing Games. We do this by doing what he loved so much in life, playing Games! Join Gary’s children, friends and fellow game enthusiasts as we celebrate a life well-played. The Gary Co...

01/09/2018

The Gongfarmer's Almanac 2017 has finally been released for free on RPGNow! I co-authored one article with KC White and have about 5 retro maps of all different styles scattered throughout the pages. My business partner (in our non-gaming life) Dan Steeby also contributed one article.

2017 Gongfarmer's Almanac, consolidated edition Vols #1-8 - The Gongfarmer's Almanac is a Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG(TM) 'zine that is written, illustrated, edited and produced by

12/14/2017

Non-RPG Bard Self-Publishing Info

Had a question regarding how much we charge for providing design services directly. While we don't do this at this time, wanted to pass on a good thread on pricing for various RPG services: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2t6vg?Contract-prices-for-marketing-writing-editing.

Also wanted to say that, from everything I've heard from folks in the industry, layout (specifically InDesign) appears to be one of the most expensive services so most independents and small publishers seem to do layout themselves.

For just PDF distribution via DriveThruRPG or other online services, Word also seems to be the preferred choice as most people have it, are familiar with it, and can often generate PDFs directly from it.

In my personal testing of Word for PDF creation, there is a way you can apply a full-size image as a background to Word (or even a tiled background) so you can get that "old paper" background or anything else you want back there. That said, in my testing of this the background image can't be very big so tiled images look crisp while a full-page image will often end up looking blurry.

The last note about using Word and creating things for sale is that DriveThruRPG and other services tend to require certain PDF formats in order to print correctly so if you are trying to generate books for print or print-on-demand, you definitely want to make sure whatever you generate is supported by the service you are going to be selling through. Each service will provide any requirements on their website, usually in the "publisher only" back end that you gain access to once you sign up to sell on their website.

So I'm doing some RPG stuff on my own now days on the side. I'm trying to figure out how much would be the normal cost to pay out to people in regards to contracting things out.

11/22/2017

Our cat sat in for our DM and one of the players during our D&D game tonight. Ended up fighting mice, dogs, and laser pointers.

11/20/2017

Day 19 Village of Hommlet map remake in a D&D 5E (Mark Schley) style. All panels of the hand drawn art complete, scanned in (600dpi), lined up, overlaps removed, the four issues identified, and a test map printed. Need to create the missing content, scan it, and drop it in. Then get to start coloring. More personal projects at https://plus.google.com/+ShylohWideman.