Gavin Norman's Blog, page 2

The Hole in the Oak: Layout Preview

The other day, I posted a bit of info about the upcoming adventure The Hole in the Oak. Today, I want to share some previews of the layout, including the first piece of interior art by James West!

Note: These are previews of the 1st pass layout, so the layout and styling are not 100% final.

Table of ContentsFirst, just for fun, here's a preview of the table of contents.

A few notes:

The intro gives a bit of an overview of the history and factions in the dungeon.It's a decent sized dungeon level, with 57 described areas.There are two locations in the dungeon that lend themselves to expansion, where extra levels could easily be added in.I'm probably going to have room for a sneaky appendix that gives a little bit of background info on the world which this adventure is set in.
Area DescriptionsNow a preview of some area descriptions.
A few notes:The area descriptions use a format that's highly optimised for ease of use at the table. Descriptions are presented in a minimal format, with bolded words highlighting the main elements. More detail on possible eventualities is broken out into bullet lists.Incidentally, this is same format I used in the ENnie nominated Winter's Daughter . The format was such a success that I decided to adopt it as the Necrotic Gnome "house adventure style".You don't see any monster listings on this spread, but they follow the standard Old-School Essentials monster format.Colour art by James West!
How to Get It?All backers of the Old-School Essentials Kickstarter will receive a free copy of The Hole in the Oak. If you missed out on the Kickstarter, you can pre-order the adventure (and loads of other goodies!) at our BackerKit pre-order store.

The Hole in the Oak

One of the stretch goals of the recent Old-School Essentials Kickstarter was a starter adventure. Here's what the stretch goal said:

The Rules Tome and the Black Box contain all the rules and advice you need to create your own campaigns of fantastic adventure, but sometimes you want an intro adventure to kick-start your games. Gavin Norman (creator of Old-School Essentials) will produce a classic (and quirky!) old-school adventure for 1st level characters, set in the Mythic Underworld that lies beyond the hole in an old oak tree. This odd realm will be mapped by the mycologically inclined Karl Stjernberg and illustrated by the phantasmagoric James West.

I realised that I've not said much about this adventure since the stretch goal was unlocked (on the first day of the Kickstarter!), so here goes.

What's it About?In the tradition of classic dungeon modules, The Hole in the Oak isn't really about anything in particular. It just presents a weird subterranean location where PCs can get into trouble and maybe come out with some loot.
In the usual Necrotic Gnome vein, however, the adventure features lots of quirky, non-standard monsters and treasures. As a starter adventure, this dungeon does feature a number of standard monsters, straight out of the rule book, but many of those are given a little twist to surprise experienced players.

Some of the odd inhabitants of this dungeon:

Sheep-headed fauns.Rumbling root faces.Spectral hunters.Evil tree-babies.Mutagenic ogres.River ghouls.Shadow gardeners.Completely normal cutesy gnomes with pointy red hats.
OriginsThis dungeon has a very special place in my personal RPG history -- it's the first dungeon that I ran on my return to old-school gaming a decade ago! As far as I recall, it's not actually the first old-school dungeon I wrote -- I still have the notes for a necromancer's lair dungeon that I wrote but never ran -- but The Hole in the Oak was certainly my group's first voyage into the Mythic Underworld of old-school D&D. We had a lot of fun playing this and the group of characters who survived it stayed together for a long series of subsequent adventures, taking them up to around 6th level.

I think the fresh-faced wonder of returning to an old-school dungeon really shines through in this adventure, and I hope that sense of wonder will inspire others who play it.

The CoverWhile I'm finishing up writing and laying out the adventure, James West has been working on the art for the cover. Here's a near-finished version of it:


This piece depicts a scene from one of the encounter areas in the adventure, where PCs come across a subterranean jungle inhabited with evil tree-babies guarding sacred treasures.

When Will it be Published?The Hole in the Oak will ship along with the rest of the Kickstarter rewards in October. If you missed out on the Kickstarter, you can pre-order the adventure (and loads of other goodies!) at our BackerKit pre-order store.

Old-School Essentials: Index of Druid and Illusionist Spells

Work on the final touches to the Advanced Fantasy: Genre Rules and Advanced Fantasy: Druid and Illusionist Spells books for Old-School Essentials is progressing very well!

I've just made the final tweaks to the text and layout, and have written the introductions for both books. (Writing introductions is always the last thing I do.) Later today, I'll be sending out pre-release PDFs of both books to the wonderful proofreaders who have gallantly offered to pore over these 104 pages of delicious Advanced material. (As so many people offered to proofread these books, I won't be sending them out to everyone. I'll select a group of 10 or so people to do the honours.)

Another thing I just did was to regenerate the indexes in the two books. I thought it'd be fun to share the index of spells, which now shows the final list of spells contained in Advanced Fantasy: Druid and Illusionist Spells.


Click to embiggen
Some NumbersThe book contains a total of 106 spells. 34 druid spells and 72 illusionist spells.19 of the spells have already appeared in Classic Fantasy: Cleric and Magic-User Spells. That means that this book contains 87 new B/X spells.Many of the new spells were adapted from Unearthed Arcana, and have not appeared in a B/X clone before (to my knowledge).A few illusionist spells (I forget how many exactly) were also adapted from AD&D 2e.4 illusionist spells (blacklight, dream quest, through the looking glass, visitation) are completely new creations of my own.
What's Next?Following proofreading and illustration, these books will be published in October, along with the rest of the deluxe Old-School Essentials books that I'm producing following the recent Kickstarter. (For anyone who missed the Kickstarter, you can pre-order everything here.)

New Vivimancer Spell: Anasethesia

A little vivimancer spell that I came up with recently, statted in the Old-School Essentials format.

Anaesthesia (1st level vivimancer spell)Duration: 6 turns +1 per level
Range: Touch

The subject loses the ability to feel pain.

Save bonus: The subject gains a +2 bonus to saves vs death (but not poison).Bonus hit points: The subject’s resolve is not easily shaken by wounds. They gain 1d6 bonus hit points. Any damage suffered is subtracted first from the bonus hit points.When the duration expires: If any of the bonus hit points remain, they disappear.Hit point tracking: The subject does not always realise when they have been injured. While this spell is in effect, the referee should secretly keep track of the subject’s hit points. An examination of the subject reveals their level of injury, which the referee should describe in broad terms (e.g. mildly wounded, seriously wounded), rather than revealing the exact hit point total.

Old-School Essentials: Pre-Order Store Open Now!

For anyone who missed the Kickstarter, now's your chance to get in on everything!
What's Available?A quick run-down on the main things that are available to pre-order:The Old-School Essentials Black Box. This is the complete game (and a complete clone of B/X) in the form of a box of five hardcover rules modules: Core Rules (80 pages), Classic Fantasy: Genre Rules (48 pages), Classic Fantasy: Cleric and Magic-User Spells (48 pages), Classic Fantasy: Monsters (80 pages), Classic Fantasy: Treasures (48 pages).The Old-School Essentials Rules Tome. This is the complete game (and a complete clone of B/X) in a single hardcover tome (296 pages).Advanced Fantasy: Genre Rules. 15 extra classes and a bunch of optional rules for your Old-School Essentials / B/X games! All inspired by AD&D but carefully scaled to match B/X levels of power and complexity.Advanced Fantasy: Druid and Illusionist Spells. 104 new spells for the game!
Here's The Link!https://old-school-essentials.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

Winter's Daughter: Shipping Update

I just wanted to post a very quick update on the fulfillment of the Winter's Daughter pre-orders. Here's the full rundown:
All Orders Have Been Shipped(Except the people who ordered in the last few days.)
US Pre-OrdersUS pre-orders are being handled by our friends at Exalted Funeral. We packed up two massive boxes full of Dolmenwoody goodness a few weeks back (using moss as the padding material, naturally), and sent them off on their merry way to the US of A.
One of the boxes has now arrived at Exalted Funeral HQ, but the other has been slightly delayed by customs gremlins. Despite this small hitch, the US orders will start shipping out to you this week!
Non-US OrdersIf you're not in the US and you've not received your order:If you have a tracking code (not all orders were sent tracked), enter it into https://www.deutschepost.de/sendung/simpleQuery.html?locale=en_GB, along with the date you got the fulfillment email to see where it's at.If you think something's up, just send us an email: summon@necroticgnome.com

Old-School Essentials Kickstarter Live Now!

Funded in under 2 hours! Now it's just fun stretch goal hunting. Go get 'em.

Old-School Essentials Kickstarter — Launching April 12th!

The post title says it all: I'm super excited to announce that the Kickstarter for Old-School Essentials goes live next Friday, April 12th!


RewardsWe'll be producing two things for this Kickstarter:

The Black Box: A luxury box set containing 5 slim hardcover rules modules covering all aspects of the game: Core Rules, Classic Fantasy Genre Rules (your classes, equipment, strongholds, etc), Cleric and Magic-User Spells, Classic Fantasy Monsters, Classic Fantasy Treasures.The Rules Tome: All the Old-School Essentials rules in a single, fat hardcover. Details:Quality: All books will be produced as luxury, sewn-binding hardcovers.Covers: Book and box covers by Andrew Walter and Peter Mullen.Complete B/X clone: Both products form a complete retro-clone of the beloved Basic / Expert rules from 1981!Limited edition Rules Tome: A leatherette-bound, foil-stamped edition of the Rules Tome, only available in this Kickstarter!High-level rewards: Very limited rewards include your name in the credits on the title page of the books, and your face in an illustration!
Stretch GoalsWe have a lot of stretch goals lined up for this campaign (12 to be announced at the start of the campaign, and more lined up if we reach giddy funding heights). Some highlights:Referee's screen: With 4-panel art by Peter Mullen.Advanced books: Two extra books (Advanced Fantasy Genre Rules and Druid and Illusionist Spells) that add 15 new character classes and 106 new spells to the game, all inspired by the beloved Advanced rules from the 1970s, and carefully scaled to mesh smoothly with the lower Basic / Expert levels of power and rules complexity. The covers will be created by Stefan Poag.Character sheets: Three different character sheets for Old-School Essentials, by Gavin Norman, James West, and Frank Reding.Old-School Essentials SRD: An online rules reference for Old-School Essentials.Intro adventure: The Hole in the Oak, by Gavin Norman. Illustrated by James West. Maps by Karl Stjernberg.
More InfoSee here for a bit more information about the Kickstarter and Old-School Essentials in general, including some layout previews.

Winter's Daughter Now Available in PDF!

The tomb of an ancient hero, lost in the tangled depths of the woods. A ring of standing stones, guarded by the sinister Drune cult. A fairy princess who watches with ageless patience from beyond the veil of the mortal. A forgotten treasure that holds the key to her heart.

Winter's Daughter is a romantic fairy-tale dungeon adventure set in the creepy old forest of Dolmenwood.

Suitable for characters of 1st to 3rd level.Available in old-school (B/X) and 5e versions.Encompasses woodland, tomb, and fairy otherworld—all in one handy package!Keyed in a quick-reference, bullet point format.Illustrated by the otherworldly Mish Scott.Cartography by the mycotic Karl Stjernberg.5e conversion by the maximally erudite Thilo Graf. (Read Thilo's blog on his conversion work.)
Get Yer Romantic Fairy-Tale Dungeons 'erePDFs at the Necrotic Gnome store.Deluxe print + PDF at the Necrotic Gnome store.B/X PDF at DriveThruRPG.5e PDF at DriveThruRPG.
People Who Have Already Pre-OrderedI'm afraid I had a, shall we say, "learning experience" when I tried to send you all a code to download your PDFs! What I hadn't realised is that I can only send emails to people who have signed up for the mailing list (which only covered about 25% of people who pre-ordered!).

So for people who pre-ordered, here's how you get the PDF:

Click on this link.You'll arrive at the product page of the PDF version of the book.Add the version you want (old-school or 5th edition) to your cart.Go to your cart. You'll see the full price of the PDF listed at this stage.Go to the checkout. You'll now see the price of the PDF reduced to 0.Confirm the order. You'll now be able to download a ZIP file containing the PDF of the adventure and a PDF containing just the unkeyed maps.

Necrotic Gnome 2019 Style

Hawk-eyed denizens of the web may have noticed a bit of a change of visual style in the Necrotic Gnome department. (Alright, it's actually pretty easy to spot, even for those of us of mole-like visual aptitude.)

I rolled out the new style a week or so back, utterly without fanfare. (I don't like to make a big fuss about such things.) But I thought it'd be worth writing a few words about the changes.

The Necrotic GnomeFirst of all, we have the necrotic gnome himself. He is nameless, which I suppose means that his brains have decayed to such a degree that he no longer recalls his name. Nonetheless, he is ready and willing to give you a cuddle and/or eat your brains.
Behold: Necrotic Gnome mascot. Illustration by Karl Stjernberg
You'll see the mascot popping up in situations where there is ample space to lovingly render his elegant curves, dashing visage, and rotting flesh. For example: banners, posters, t-shirts, bags, etc. The sky is the limit.

Speaking of t-shirts, we'll be printing up a batch soon! Click here to get in on the action.

Brand LogoCharming though he is, the Necrotic Gnome mascot doesn't really fulfill any realistic logo design criteria. Thankfully, my friend and branding consultant Laura Avivar jumped in and saved the day, doing an amazing job of extracting the essence of the mascot and distilling it down into simple logo form.
Behold:
You'll see the logo used online (page banners, social media profile images, etc.) and on books. And who knows, we might even see such wonders as Necrotic Gnome dice in the future!

WebsiteThose with the visual capacity of a bird of prey have probably also noticed the new Necrotic Gnome website: necroticgnome.com. What is this dark sorcery, you may be wondering? Is the DriveThruRPG store not enough?? Allow me to explain.

Until now, Necrotic Gnome has focused purely on publishing PDFs and print-on-demand books. However, times are changing. In order to up our quality game, we will henceforth be dabbling in the occult realm of "offset printing" (aka traditional print runs). But what to do with the results of these fabled print runs? Well, obviously we need somewhere to sell them from. Hence the new website.

So, from now on, there will be two online outlets for Necrotic Gnome goodies:

necroticgnome.com: PDFs and high quality print books.DriveThruRPG: PDFs and print-on-demand books.(In the long run, it's likely that all Necrotic Gnome print-on-demand books will be phased out and replaced by high quality print run versions. But for now, both types of books exist in parallel.)
All For NowI hope the above satisfied your curiosity as to the reasoning behind these changes. Thanks for your continued support!