Things are moving very quickly in the D&D-o-sphere.

So, like many others, I am making an effort to both clear inventory, but also use these sales to be able to try and pivot to something else that serves that fanbase while things are still up in the air.

More on that later. Later today, in fact.

For now:

33% Off Sale on OGL-related Material

I have seven OGL-related products to date. I was going to use 2023 to greatly expand on that. But…right now those plans are in a grey murky swamp. A maze of twisty passages, all alike, one might say.

So, bearing that in mind, the following products are on sale. All the titles are LINKS.

Use the coupon code OGL-CLEARANCE in checkout to get the discount, or USE THIS LINK.

Dungeon Grappling

Still possibly my best-selling product ever, I usually get most of my sales at conventions with the (accurate) quip: “Finally D&D grappling rules that don’t suck.”

This book contains rules usable for OSR-based games, Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition; I’ve not checked if they’re PF2 suitable), and 5e. The lighter the ruleset, the better they work.

This product was my first Kickstarter ever, and the first product Gaming Ballistic offered for sale. I think it holds up well.

Dragon Heresy

When Ryan Dancey talks about Fantasy Heartbreakers in this Roll for Combat video…yeah, he’s talking about this.

This was my third Kickstarter, but to date still my largest single book. At 288 pages, this lavishly illustrated hardcover is what I used to joke was “what happens when GURPS and D&D5 get really intoxicated at a game convention, and then 10 months later…”

I  got started writing this after 5e came out, after some fun diatribes from Tim 

Shorts about short and long rests, plus my own doubt (after playing GURPS and Pathfinder) that a +2 to Armor Class was really all the benefit that a shield gave you. I came up with the wounds vs vigor idea (parallel evolution: I know it existed before me, but I didn’t rely on other sources to reinvent it), as well as keeping a one-roll resolution, but moving armor to absorbing damage, and of course the dungeon grappling rules were integrated right in.

One of my old-school reviewers claimed “it’s the only version of 5E I’ll play.”

It was supposed to be a three-volume set, just like the PHB, DMG, and MM. But Kevin Crawford – in a fit of self-confessed “I really shouldn’t give advice, ever” wildness – advised me privately that no one in their right mind would plunk down $100 to $150 on a first-time publisher promising a three-volume 800-page set.” [Dragon Heresy was well underway when I launched Dungeon Grappling, but

Kevin’s advice was “do small stuff first and build trust.” So that’s what I tried to do.]

In any case, it’s a good book, the system plays well. And it was the genesis of all my later “Nordlond” material for the DFRPG, and I had big plans to back-port all of that into Dragon Heresy and also finally publish books on feats, more spells, class levels from 6-20, backgrounds, and more. Alas.

Lost Hall of Tyr (Second Edition)

Every system needs an adventure, and this one was the only one released for Dragon Heresy. The original 1e adventure was run at GenCon 50 in nascent form, and I published it for S&W and 5E. There are seven physical copies remaining; I don’t even offer it for sale.

Lost Hall 2e was a back-port of much better maps and expanded “campaign-like” content, plus the removal of a few “magic maguffins” that were tied to convention-style play as a one-shot. This was a direct impact of a very successful Kickstarter for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG (Powered by GURPS), which drove my product line hard in the beginning.

There are maybe a dozen or two of these 112-page softcovers remaining.

Old-School Solos

These four Choose Your Own Adventure style programmed solo adventures first appeared as adventures for The Fantasy Trip, but formed the core of my most successful Kickstarter to date by every metric in 2022.

Dark Lord’s Doom is an outstanding military-driven solo adventure that makes for a great introduction to Old-School Essentials. It can be played solo, or with a GM and a single player, or with a GM and many players. The branched-path keeps it fast, light, and somewhat deterministic, which is “meh” for a campaign but outstanding for a GM or players’ first time at bat.

Till Death Do Us Part takes the escort quest and puts a great spin on it. Set in the same region of the world as Dark Lord’s Doom and the other two solos below, the player(s) are tasked with helping a baron’s daughter get to her wedding on time, cementing an alliance against the threat of invasion.

Vampire Hunter Belladonna explores true solo play, but with a 6th-level thief with a ton of awesome (and sometimes consumable) magical resources. With a new take on vampires and a whole lot more going on than “lather, stake, repeat,” this adventure sees the titular character Belladonna revisiting her old stomping grounds. This is an opportunity to consciously explore mid-tier play with a character class that tends to die of fatal exposure to traps and fireballs a lot. If we can get past this OGL stuff…you’ll see Bella again as well.

Dragon Hunt! This extremely challenging adventure pits three 9th-level characters against some of the baddest monsters Old-School Essentials has to offer. I remember being impressed at how quickly either glorious victory or crispy-critter defeat could come about. Great risks and great rewards. A wonderful opportunity to explore high-level play.

Looking for New Systems?

While I’m fairly light into OSE and the 5E space at the moment, much of my publishing work since Gaming Ballistic started was as one of the very few – if not the only – licensed third-party publishers to be able to write more or less whatever I want in support of Steve Jackson Games’ Dungeon Fantasy RPG Boxed Set and the new release of The Fantasy Trip Legacy Edition.

Those who gravitate to the details and options of 5E will really dig the Dungeon Fantasy RPG; those to kill orcs old-school should enjoy The Fantasy Trip. After all, it was first released from 1977-1983 and then again in 2019, making it not just “old-school style,” but one of the “OG” fantasy RPGs from back in the day. Lost to a different copyright/ownership issue for 35 years, Steve got back the rights to his game and it’s been awesome content ever since.

My Nordlond setting, which is the same world as Dragon Heresy, has five adventures, several books on character customization, FOUR bestiaries (including a color hardback), and the wonderful Delvers to Grow, which allows generating the otherwise complicated DFRPG characters in anywhere from 5-30 minutes (my own usual is 10 mins). This makes making a new character “old-school fast,” removing one of the real barriers to entry for Powered by GURPS systems.

Check Out My Stuff on shopify!