Tournaments, Fairs, & Taverns - Coming Soon

[RangerWickett]

I know things have been going a little slowly, but let me assure you that we've been working. TF&T is at the layout designer now, and should be on the digital shelves by mid-May at latest.

Okay, get this, when we first envisioned Tournaments, Fairs, & Taverns, we thought it'd be about 32 pages, with two dozen or so games, and some quick tips on implementing them in your game. Since then, we decided to expand quite a bit. We had to bring in a second writer to handle the extra workload, and we had to lament that we only contracted our artist for 7 pictures. 7 pics for 30 pages is pretty good, but for a ~70 page book, it'll be a bit sparse. Actually, it's 71 pages in manuscript form, so it might be much more once formatting and layout is done.

Here's a quick run through of what's in TF&T.

*Drinking rules (and a wide menu of alcoholic beverages).
*Guidelines for how to handle gambling.
*Useful skills for various games, including a full detail of Knowledge (gaming and gambling). Advice for cheating.
*A simplified (we hope) system for running tournaments with hundreds of competitors.
*Three sample locations (a tournament, a fair, and a tavern), which provide plot hooks and a quick way to make use of the book' games.
*Advice for running games within the game.
*A handful of sample entrees and performers for quick taverns.

And now for the games. We tried to keep each game's mechanics simple, so it could be used to represent a myriad of games. For example, the card game rules could be used for poker, spades, go fish, or even Magic: the Gathering.

*Arm Wrestling
*Card and Dice Games
*Drinking Competitions
*Long Throw
*Races (foot, climbing, swimming, vehicular, mounted, etc)
*Strategy games (chess, checkers, Axis & Allies)
*Archery Tournaments
*Bear Wrasslin'
*Duels
*Field Lists
*Jousts (including rules for qualifying events)
*Drinksmash (orcish game where you take a drink, then hit another person; last one standing wins)
*The Tree Game (derived from a real Native American game, where archers try to knock targets out of trees)
*Drunken Daggers (get drunk and toss daggers at a target; the catch is that you and your opponent both stand in front of the targets, so you have to miss the person and hit the target)
*The Everyman's Fireball (firebreathing tricks to try to burn mock-ups of monsters)
*Gin and Rabbits (a drinking and card game)
*Stageless Play (D&D in D&D)
*Trollbridge (variant of king of the mountain)
*Baal'meral'ruun (a magic-user's version of football/basketball, where spells are encouraged; stats for a sample team are included)
*Conjuration Combat (a magical cockfight involving summoned critters)
*Forms (spellcasters take turns shapeshifting into different forms, trying to outdo each other)
*A Dragon's Gold (people operate a cloth Dragon costume to defend a hoard of stray and baubles; festival game)
*Board Tumbling Game (based on a game popular among servants of noble lords several centuries ago in Europe, you try to throw a rock to tumble a board).
*Squashgoblin (10-ton boulder, tunnels filled with scarecrows that resemble Goblins, and a race against another team to squash the most Goblins)
*Temperature Climbing (magic metal ladders that can heat metal or chill metal at will; try to climb them without letting go in pain)
*Tripstep's Ladder (another ladder game [screwy, ain't it?], where stepping on the wrong rung causes all the rungs to briefly vanish; reach the top for a prize)
*Tower of Castilo (one person plays the Sorcerer, who stands next to his Tower [a barrel] and defends it from the Gnolls [other players] who throw spears and catapult ammo [balls and small beanbags] to try to knock over the tower)

Our projected release date is May 12th, give or take a week.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

WOW!


Sounds good. Can't wait.