Free: Midsummer Wood

It's midsummer and in the darkest, weirdest wood the fairies meet in mask to feast and fête. Of mortals, the canniest and most wary can dare to join them. The rewards are wealth and poetry, pleasure, love and magic. The risks are sanity and soul. One of you is just such, a mortal man or mortal woman cunning, lovely and bold. Can you move uncaught among these, the perilous and subtle, shapechangers, elementals, embodiments of the oldest fears? Can you rob them of their treasures and escape, or will they discover you, bind you, and make you theirs?

Midsummer Wood is a competitive single-session rpg for 4 or 5 players designed by D. Vincent Baker. Get it for free here. 

Freebie Alert: Mini Six

Mini Six is a variant of the OpenD6 system. It's generic, though there are several starter campaign ideas presented including fantasy, science fiction, and a lighthearted take on a 1970's cop action show style game.

The mechanics of Mini Six revolve around rolling a dice pool made of a number of six side dice, resulting in a total that is compared to a target number set by the game master. You can download it by clicking here.

Freebie Alert: Fate Core

Grab your plasma rifles, spell components, and jetpacks! Name your game; Fate Core is the foundation that can make it happen. Fate Core is a flexible system that can support whatever worlds you dream up. Have you always wanted to play a post-apocalyptic spaghetti western with tentacle monsters? Swords and sorcery in space? Wish there was a game based on your favorite series of books, film, or television, but it never happened? Fate Core is your answer.

Fate Core is a tabletop roleplaying game about proactive, capable people who lead dramatic lives. The type of drama they experience is up to you. But wherever they go, you can expect a fun storytelling experience full of twists…of fate.

Grab the accelerated version here. 

One Year, One Hundred Posts, Time to Give Stuff Away

This is the 100th post on this blog. The 29th of April was also the one year anniversary. To celebrate this aligning of events, I'm going to give away a free copy of the Burning Wheel Gold book to one lucky internet stranger. How does one get lucky? Simple. Submit to me your best fantasy plot hook in 140 characters or less. Multiple entries are acceptable. Entries outside the US are permissible.

The winner will be announced on June 15th, 2013 (Free RPG Day!). All entries will be posted to serve as a GM resource.

You can submit one of two ways: email me your submissions at gazrax at gmail dot com or send me a tweet @earthlightacdmy.

Free: Burning Wheel

For a game I've talked about so much, I'm surprised I haven't linked this before. You can get the basic rules for free here. You can find some of the more advanced stuff on the Burning Wiki. Grab some friends and fight for what you believe!

Freebie Alert: Old School Hack

A table-top roleplaying system that's a hack of a hack of the original Red Box version of a certain popular hack-and-slash fantasy game. That's a lot of hacking.

Check out the full game here.

Freebie Alert (Kind of): The Quiet Year

The Quiet Year is a map game. You define the struggles of a post-apocalyptic community, and attempt to build something good within their quiet year. Every decision and every action is set against a backdrop of dwindling time and rising concern.

The game is played using a deck of cards – each of the 52 cards corresponds to a week during the quiet year. Each card triggers certain events – bringing bad news, good omens, project delays and sudden changes in luck. At the end of the quiet year, the Frost Shepherds will come, ending the game.

Check out the site here! You will notice that the game is not actually free. Buried Without Ceremony, the publisher, has a program called "Paying With Good Deeds". Basically, they will send you a PDF of any of their games for a number of good deeds. The Quiet Year PDF can be yours for about an hour of volunteer work, donating food or clothing, or cleaning up a local park. More publishers should offer programs like this. 

Freebie Alert: Lady Blackbird

Lady Blackbird is on the run from an arranged marriage to Count Carlowe. She hired a smuggler skyship, The Owl, to take her from her palace on the Imperial world of Ilysium to the far reaches of the Remnants, so she could be with her once secret lover: the pirate king Uriah Flint.

HOWEVER, just before reaching the halfway point of Haven, The Owl was pursued and captured by the Imperial cruiser Hand of Sorrow, under charges of flying a false flag.

EVEN NOW, Lady Blackbird, her bodyguard, and the crew of The Owl are detained in the brig, while the Imperial commander runs the smuggler ship’s registry over the wireless. It’s only a matter of time before they discover the outstanding warrants and learn that The Owl is owned by none other than the infamous outcast, Cyrus Vance.

How will Lady Blackbird and the others escape the Hand of Sorrow?

What dangers lie in their path?

Will they be able to find the secret lair of the pirate king? if they do, will Uriah Flint accept Lady Blackbird as his bride? By the time they get there, will she want him to?

Go. Play. And find out.

Lady Blackbird is an adventure module for 2-6 people. It contains a starting situation, setting, pregen characters, and quick-play rules perfect for a no-prep game of 1-3 sessions or more.

Check it out here!

Freebie: Stars Without Number

You should cruise over to DriveThruRPG and snag a free copy of Stars Without Number. The ruleset looks similar to OSR versions of D&D but, you know, science fiction. Even if you never run it, it's worth the read.