Author: Chris Sakkas

Hey folks, the first new content is up on the Grim Portents blog – it’s some monsters and a table of mutations by Johnstone Metzger. There’ll be a post with new classes, monsters, fronts, magic items, etc., every couple of days for as long as you keep sending me stuff! (sanglorian@gmail.com)

https://grimportents.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/spiders-and-their-prey-by-johnstone-metzger/

The second issue of the Dungeon World/Powered by the Apocalypse fan e-zine Grim Portents is available for download from the Grim Portents website! Explore the Wine-Dark Sea, face off against a hydrodaemon, establish your own tavern and generate a secret spy organisation.

Thank you to everyone who contributed articles, illustrations and feedback – and a particular thanks to Jonathan Walton for his cover design and herculean layout job.

All articles are under free and open Creative Commons licences.

CONTRIBUTING

If you’ve written anything for Dungeon World, World of Dungeons or other Powered by the Apocalypse games, we’d be very interested to publish it. First, submit it to sanglorian@gmail.com(or read http://grimportents.wordpress.com/submissions/ for guidance). We’ll post it on the blog within a week or two, and then when we have enough content we’ll compile it into Grim Portents issue 3.

We’re also always interested in artworks.

There is a theme, “The Thaw”, but that’s for inspiration – it’s not required!

All submissions must be licensed under Creative Commons Attribution, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, or CC0 (a public domain licence).

http://grimportents.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/grim-portents-issue-2-now-available-for-free-download/

Hi folks, I have a quick update on my blog regarding where we’re at with Grim Portents 2 and what my plans are for the future – including an idea to create a Dungeon World database and a website based off that database. 

Please give it a read and let me know what you think – either here or on the post. In particular, I’d like to know if ther’e’s software that’s capable of doing this.

http://livinglibre1.wordpress.com/2013/12/07/grim-portents-2-grim-portents-3-and-the-dungeon-world-compendium/

Grim Portents 2 is coming very soon, so I thought I’d share some fun facts:

1) Every article was assigned someone to give feedback

2) There are 19 articles

3) It is around 21,000 words long

4) Each article is illustrated (some with existing open source illustrations, some with originals)

5) The shortest submission is just 143 words

6) The longest is 2,181

7) It is beautifully laid out by Jonathan Walton 

8) Every submission is under a Creative Commons Attribution or Attribution-ShareAlike licence, allowing any person to share and adapt them for any purpose

9) It features an excerpt from Traveller World and articles for World of Secrets and Monster of the Week as well as Dungeon World stuff

10) Submissions are currently open for issue 3. The theme is The Thaw. Email sanglorian@gmail.com with what you come up with (related to the theme or not)

I wrote a short RPG that fused Searchers of the Unknown with Dungeon World. The part I think you might find interesting is the GM section, which gives the GM a constrained list of options rather than principles

https://www.dropbox.com/s/a6gl2kg6k1l5ebb/Down%20and%20Out%20in%20Gadding-Thoth.pdf

Theme for Grim Portents issue 3

Since you have all kindly given me a long list of potential themes, and submissions for GP issue 2 are now closed, I thought that I should release the theme for issue 3 so you can start working on your submissions. 

Feel free to email me your submission when you’re happy with it. At a later date, I’ll declare when submissions will close. This might be a while, as it’s coming up to university exams. 

The theme? ‘The Thaw’. I thought it had a nice symmetry with The Dead of Winter.

Of course, you don’t have to write to the theme, and you are welcome to submit something that you have already shared/published elsewhere.

Destroying Dungeon World Artefacts

I just played Risk Legacy, and really enjoyed the experience of changing the game irrevocably as we played. Of course, in an RPG we already change the game world, but I can only think of one example where the physical artefacts of the games change.

That one example is Adam’s (Sage’s?) idea where you print out all the classes, and when someone dies they have to choose from one of the remaining classes. You slowly work through the classes, never being allowed to repeat them.

You could also do stuff like letting someone who played a particular class write down a new name, look or bond option when that character retired/died.  Sure, YOUR paladin had to be called Alphonso, but the next player can choose ‘Sir Kickass’. 

Or what if at the start of the campaign you had to choose three of five race options for each class? You’d peel off those stickers and stick them to the class playbook, and then tear up the remaining stickers. From then on, only elves, gnomes and fairies can be paladins – no dwarves allowed!

You could even let players choose a compendium class which they then assembled level by level by peeling off moves from a sticker book and sticking them to a blank compendium class playbook.

The most obvious way you could do it is with a map. Slowly stick stickers on to show where the Grim Forest and the Haunted Castle are, and let the MVP choose what they’re called.

Monsters could come on cards and have their third move blank. Through spout lore or some similar move, players and GMs could invent the last move. 

All the playbooks that made it through to the final fight against the BBEG could have their HP or damage die upped for future players.

Any thoughts?

April Fool’s – But Seriously

For April Fool’s, Adam and Sage announced the second edition of Dungeon World and just linked people to the Pathfinder System Reference Document.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had a Dungeon World SRD? Of course, we already have a few HTML versions of the DW core rules, but one nice feature of the PSRD is that it also hosts third party Pathfinder content. We have a lot of DW content that people have generously licensed under CC BY – if we got their permission, we could centrally host it somewhere in a standard, easy-to-read format.

It could also link to DW products for sale, helping to repay the people who have contributed their content for free.

I don’t have the time or know-how to do this, sadly, but is there someone else who would like to get it done?

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/

Hey folks,

The first drafts of written submissions for Grim Portents issue 2 are due in a week’s time (22 April). First sketches of artistic submissions are due in a fortnight’s time (29 April; finals due around the 6th of April), so if you’re interested in illustrating something and that turn around works for you, please get in touch.

The theme is Wine-Dark Sea, but you don’t have to write to the theme. Content that was originally posted elsewhere is also accepted. Submissions must be Creative Commons Attribution or Attribution-ShareAlike licensed. My email is sanglorian@gmail.com

Still on the fence? Here’s a great review from Noofy of the first issue: 

 A fanzine is a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon for the pleasure of others who share their interest… In this case the amazing Storygame Dungeon World by Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel.

Grim Portents is one such non-official publication, and copies are often offered in exchange for similar publications, or for contributions of art, articles, or letters of comment. I was lax and baulked on the chance to submit my furtive ideas for the game, so I offer you a review, in case you have not the time nor inclination to dip into this wonderful milieu. 

So here is my two gold; A Love Letter to the inaugural issue of Grim Portents, a fanzine for Dungeon World (DW).

So after you have devoured the rulebook to DW, what other sources of miscallany about the game can you get your greedy little hands on? Well there is of course the rather ebullient forums over at Barf Forth Apocalyptica, back the various fan-made adventures such as Josh Mannon’s Gears triology, or now you can simply tuck up with your boutique beverage of choice and an e-copy of this brilliant fanzine.

Collated by Chris Sakaas (of Living Libre fame),  this modest first offering is liable to spell out the consequences and ask for more, what with contributors including the illustrious Mike Riverso, the fabled Johnstone Metzger and the prolific verisimilitude of Bill White for all things ‘World, (amongst others of course) this pamphlet of hotness begs for more. It has all the trappings you could want from a fanzine: New Classes, Treasures, Settings, Moves, Player Races, Extra-Planar Zaniness, articles on the development of the game, GM advice, monsters and of course an Adventure or two. Just the sort of inspiration to get your own creative juices flowing, grab your fancy pants [blank] journal that you purloined by backing the kickstarter for DW and sitting down for either some lonely DM fun, or a kick-arse session of one of the most popular re-imaginings of Hipster DnD to date.

The Artwork is muted, suggestive and highly appropriate, in the same way that the GM’s agenda and principles hang together your own vision of Dungeon World. The layout is highly readable and easily digestible, not the hyper-colour nerd-gasm that is Adventurer Magazine for instance, but rather something more congenially old sckool, in the same manner that say Grimoire was lovingly hand-typed on a manual typewriter back in 1978.

My personal favourite this issue has to be the Warrior playbook class by John Ryan. A prime example of the shrewd fan’s need to meddle with the rules as written, you end up straddling the axehaft betwixt the Fighter and the Barbarian. It is a class that screams to be played hard, with bloodlust and vitriol. With Moves like Heat of Battle that introduce a new currency of fury that can be spent on all things Druss. Ooh Baby.

The ‘zine is bound to level up in the next issue, with more art, more articles and in depth interviews, maps and maybe even a dragon centrefold. So keep your ‘inky black eyes’ on this space or over at the forums for the release of this delectable fanzine and think adventurous!