Early Firearms released on DM's Guild

Let me preface this post by saying that I am not a gun enthusiast. I am a history fan and a D&D fan (if you don't know, how are you here???). So when I began thinking of ways to add early firearm. I'm talking 16-17th century firearms, the era of high chivalry into the musketeers.

Ahhhh musketeers, definitely on my list of favorite books ever.

So I got to thinking to myself: how can I make guns useful in the game without becoming an exercise in gun crafting and handling. I put my ideas on "paper" and refined them. This product is the result of all those thoughts, iterated a few times.

And a few others.

In the end, the book provides a concise series of weapons PCs are likely to use. So muskets, pistols, blunderbuss, and small artillery like swivel guns. Things a party are like to use themselves.

If I could publish this under GOSTOR, this fits right in with the others. However, since the DM's Guild does not allow me to use that imprint...

So you won't find naval guns or battery cannons here. They may be the object of future products.

Get it today and add some boom to your game on the DM's Guild!

Ethereal Scarabs: bringers of nothingness

A few years ago, I came up with a series of creatures that really freaked me out. The basic idea came to me as I was thinking about how to tie the FOEniverse together.

In the time since I created these horrors, they appeared in more than one adventure since then. Typically accompanied with a "OH CRAP!"

The book, Gostor: Ethereal Horrors, is available for sale right now on DrivethruRpg for both 5th Edition or Pathfinder v1.

These miniatures are from one of the Reaper Bones set.

Feel free to share your story of these great little things.

Gostor Nymph Released for 5e

For the past few weeks, I have been posting a few new races that generated a lot of interest on the many groups where I shared them. Many asked me about about some the details of how to integrate them into their campaigns.

Well I had most of that already written when I posted the first "New Race", with all three of the nymphs. At that time, I thought I was done but feedback made me go back to the drawing board on a few things. The constructive criticism I received made the end result better.

So I am very happy to announce the release of Gostor: Nymph. Like all our 5e offerings, this one comes with a Herolab import so you can build your characters without having to do the math yourself.

As an added bonus, you can get it with the 33% off from the Black Friday/Cyber-Monday sale on DriveThruRPG!

Gostor: Ethereal Horrors released for 5e

Way back in 2016, I put out a very successful book called Gostor: Ethereal Horrors which presents a series of monsters from the Ethereal Plane, presented in such a way as to can be easily added to any campaign or setting. That first book was for the Pathfinder RPG. I had someone working with me at the time who wanted to perform the conversion from PF to 5e, so I let him work on it.

As you can see, that work was never done and the porting of the Ethereal Horrors to 5e was never done. So while in Montreal at the end of May, I took time to look at the book and see what it would take to review and alter the creatures to make it to 5e. Less than two weeks later, it was done. The text had been reviewed, cleaned and clarified, the sample encounters had been updated and presented for 5th edition.

In short, it was done.

Therefore, after two long years of procrastination, I am please to announce the release of Gostor: Ethereal Horrors for 5th edition! It is available now on DriveThru RPG and RPGNow, and shortly, on the Open Gaming Store.

Let me know what you think of it! I am really excited to unleash those monsters on unsuspecting players...

[5e] Two books on Ancient Greece released

I have been hard at work getting those two book done and out. With my recent sidetracks into the world of Ancient Greece, a multitude of side plots, items, characters, races and stories. These were placed into one of the many, many text files. Eventually, these ideas were grew and grew until I had to make something out of them. That my kids are interested certainly had something to do with this Ancient Greece thing... The other products of the sub-range include: Gostor Olympians, and the adventure A Question of Judgment.

So the first one is Gostor Medusan, presenting a new player-character race of half-medusas. The idea came one day when I was thinking of an adventure for "Greek Villains". And who is one of the top Greek Villainess? Medusa!

This train of thought led me to think of ways to mae a race that could turn people to stone with just a gaze... Then how to make it not so powerful. When I floated the idea to my team, many immediately went "oh no, that's too powerful" but after I explained how it worked they went "it's pretty cool".

Check it out yourself! Worse case scenario, you spring a surprise monster on your players!

The other product also comes from the Gostor line, Gostor Gifts of the Gods is a collection of twenty five new magic items taken from Greek Myths. These includes such classics as Zeus' Thunderbolts, the Caduceus, Hera's Cloak, and the Golden Fleece.

Big shout-out to my good buddy Wesley-O who served as a sounding board for these items and who offered valuable insight that made these items so much better.

This is the first time I am releasing two non-adventure products at the same time. It is also great to release them both on DriveThruRPG/RPGNow, AND the Open Gaming Store.

Gostor: Olympians for 5th edition released!

I love Greek Mythology. The stories have entertained me since before I first read Clash of the Titans (yes, I read the novelization before I saw the original movie). Fun tales of heroes, misbehaving gods, magic items, and bands of warrior traveling to the ends of the world.

My eldest daughter has been taken with the same stories through some of the plentiful young adult literature that is available these days. She too is taken by the variety and imagination in the stories.

These two loves led me to the creation of this new book. I decided to build this new race. Over the course of creation, I came up with the basis of a race that allowed players to be children of the gods. The more I worked and designed it, the more obvious it became that I really needed to think of them as an umbrella race, that each god had to provide different powers.

For the original product, I opted to provide the children and favored of twelve of the main gods of Olympus (I replaced Hestia with Hades). So you can have a full party of Olympians and all of them be quite different.

So now I am very happy to announce the release of Gostor: Olympians, also available through RPGNow, and soon, through the Open Gaming Store (the current link points to all Gostor Products on OGS).

New Release: Gostor Thirty 5e Feats with Herolab plugin

I had just finished with the Tyrants of Saggakar Player's Guide and I had to cut a few things out of it. Then I worked on Rhym and I had to trim some material that did not feel fully flavored. I still have a number of snippets of rule elements: feats, spells, random ideas, partial stat blocks.

Like many other writers, I keep a list of these on a cutting floor. These few files are filled with half-formed ideas: names, one-line ideas, and even a few entries that needs cleaning up but that I don't need immediately. So one day, I looked at the list and saw that it had grown beyond "just a few". So I decided to look into them and develop them.

That I wanted to use some of them for an upcoming adventure has nothing to do with it... So I spent many evenings refining, talking about them and running a few playtests. Because one thing I personally am quite conscious about is game balance. I do not want these feats to overpower the game.

With my list coalescing at thirty (it originally had 34 but some I decided to take out), I thought about using them... so I created a HeroLab file for them.

So it is with great pride that I announce the release of Gostor: Thirty 5e Feats through DriveThru RPG, RPGNow, and now DM's Guild. The price for the book includes the HeroLab extension!

Amazon for Pathfinder RPG

I am please to announce the release of Gostor: Amazon. This is the first book that features only a single, playable race for the Pathfinder RPG (the 5e version is coming soon).

I have been thinking about an adventure that featured amazons, and an amazon culture way back in 2009-10, when I worked on the now-defunct Akos project. For years, this project just lingered in there as I tried to resolve one big question: Why would a group of women become complete recluse and do so for a long time. Finally inspiration struck and I began to put notes into a document that spent even more time on the back-burner as I worked on other projects.

With the Rhym project coming to a close, I got a few hours to put into this and spent quite a few evenings expanding the book. I got my good friend Jen-M (who wrote some of Legacies' best adventures) to provide me with her perspective. I also contacted a new artist, Daniela to do a few Amazon characters (you can see some of the art above).

So, what is in this book?
- The Amazon: why are they different? how do they live?
- A Playable race: a fully detailed race for the Pathfinder RPG, complete with alternate racial traits
- Three new feats
- Four sample amazons from a lowly scout to a powerful crone.

So, where can you get this book?
- DriveThru RPG
- RPG Now

Oh yeah! If you buy this product during the month of May, you get to benefit from JP's birthday massive 40% sale!!! Get this even cheaper now!

Does Herolab module help sales?

I have been toying with the creation of a HeroLab extension for the next two Gostor releases: Gostor Amazon and Gostor Seishin. This is to try and see if the investment of time and energy into creating this is worth it. As I have limited time, I have a "mostly" working Saggakar supplement that allows me to generate stat basic blocks that I must then re-tweak (sometime a lot) to come up with something useful.

But these, I want to be different. I want them to be the basic of something good, something solid.

Would having a HeroLab extension for FOE make you more likely, less likely, or equally likely to buy the product? That's a question I really am asking myself.

Ethereal Horrors

With the recent release of Gostor: Etheral Horrors, I had to create some minis to go with them. Turns out I have the perfect minis - thanks to Reaper Bones - in my bag o minis! Here are the ethereal scarabs and the ethereal hulk.

Fitting their background, I put them on a grey dirt background (which some of you will recognize as the same effect I do for Will's ArcadiaQuest, just don't tell).

Gostor: Ethereal Horrors released!

Here is a book I have been thinking about for the longest time. Initially, I wanted to include it into Saggakar, and as I worked on developing and expanding the creatures so they become a different and unique threat, it felt that limiting them to "just" Saggakar. So that's why I decided that it should be a Gostor product. It made sense to me: the content was not unique, it had nothing that was specifically setting-specific.

Where did I get the idea? I was going over an old storyline written for Living Greyhawk. One I really enjoyed, but that I thought had a weak ending. Creatures from the Ethereal Plane broke through and attacked, a nation.

So I sat back and thought about the creatures. If I had been in charge of this plot, how would have I gone about it? First, I needed creatures, more than one type of them to provide variety. Next, I had to think of a target threat level, in Pathfinder this means CR. High CR creatures sound good, but I found that few people care for putting them. So I went for some lower-powered creatures. This affected the rest of my design work.
- First, it meant the PCs could fight them at low level. Low-level meant the PCs would not have access to cross-planar travel methods.
- Second, the ethereals could be used in large numbers rather than one big monster: a personal love of mine.
- Third, I could create non-magical equipment specifically to combat the ethereals.

With that in mind, I put everything together. And left it there.

Yeah, I just left it in my pile of "stuff I need to finish". I worked on other projects (many I'm still working on today) and let this one were it was.

I was looking through the internet for another project when I happened on something for this one. WOW! It was better than I thought! So I quickly returned to the book, and began working on Ethereal Horrors again. I quickly got things up and running: formatted and aligned. I thought I was done in a day or so. But after a hardcopy review, a number of additional ideas came to me. Things I wanted to share with the prospective GM. So I went back to my document and added a number of extra information. Namely, unique magic items and expanded the campaign section I had.

So with all this, I am really proud to announce the official release of Gostor: Ethereal Horrors for the Pathfinder RPG.

I will tease you that Loren is working on making the 5e version of the book! Great stuff!

You can get a copy of Gostor: Ethereal Horror on DriveThru RPG or RPGNow!

JP

Gostor: Wilderness creates vast stretches of land in seconds

This book was written to answer a simple question: “What’s here?”

At the time, I was working on an adventure set in the desert (actually grassy plain) so I did research on the desert and drawing on my own experience in the Arizona and Colorado and my readings, I put everything together.

As a child, I thought the desert was an empty place filled with sand dunes and a few rocks. A family road trip in 2006 changed that perception. The desert became a place of many features, many colors, mostly yellow-brown, I will admit, but many colors.

Then as I started to put down a list of elements for the desert, ideas came to me for other types of terrains. In no time, I had entries for mountains, coast, and plains.

At that point, a very rough draft of this book was done. As the original reason for this book dropped, I left it behind in my work in progress folder, waiting for the time I would need it again.

I began work on a new project, one which required me to work on maps. Then I suddenly remembered this rough draft. With my need in mind, this book came together fairly quickly. This book focuses on realistic terrain and does not include any fantastical or magical terrain by design. Such content may form the core of a future Gostor product…

Click here to check out more about Gostor: Wilderness

JP

[GM Aid] Working on a Wilderness book

Inspiration is a fickle and fun thing. Back in the days when I was writing for NeoExodus, I was thinking about creating a dynamic system to build locations for the campaign. Something where I could define and build up a region, and provide it to the players. So I put down a number of ideas: interesting locations, settlements, and terrain features. There were quite a few things in there.

The idea quickly evolved into a way to create a map on the fly. Those of you who purchased our no-longer available book on the city of Gytha will immediately recognize that the swamp itself was left nebulous, and ready to explore. It was my idea, really.

Imagine an empty hexmap. Why? Because Hexmaps always seem more appropriate for wilderness areas. Why? Because I'm an old guy and back in my days, we drew our wilderness maps on hexmaps. Now stop arguing, and just focus on the story.

Dang kids. Won't listen. Won't do what they're told.

Picture an empty hexmap. Pick a spot in the center of the map. What is there?

I know the map is empty! Hence why I'm asking what your players find there... That's right. You are drawing a blank. Gostor: Wilderness will let you know with a few quick dice roll what is there. Then as they explore the area around and beyond, you can do the same and just expand as they travel.

What I lacked was a format to make it all come together. So the book stayed in my "Work in Progress" folder. And I saw it every time I open this directory (read: multiple times per day).

Then a few days ago, I was reading the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide. and I happened to fall upon the section about wilderness adventuring. I returned to the document with a few ideas on how to sort out the chaotic mess I had.

With a format defined, I reworked, and cleaned up the content to make it into a clean and simple set of entries, much like the rest of the Gostor products. As the product began taking shape, I could immediately see synergies with other Gostor products.
- Gostor: Bandits Because any trip in the wild may lead to conflict!
- Gostor: Ruins Because ruins are a natural site for adventure!
- Gostor: While on the road Because sometimes you just want to provide a quick overview of the trip. Gostor: Wilderness is the "opposite" approach.

So I am now in the final stages of touching up this book and plan on releasing later this week.

JP

Gostor: Nobles now available!

Gostor Nobles is a product I've had on my plate for months now. I have been playing with it here and there, tweaking the verbiage, adding or removing feats. Finally, I decided to sit down and get it done. I flipflopped about whether I wanted to produce such a book. In the end, I decided it was worth getting it done and out. The resulting class is one that is very much of a skill monkey, with some social-based abilities to confirm and expand their roles as noble.

I used the 3.5 Arcanis class as a base and both simplified, streamlined and "Pathfinder-ized" it to its current form.

I am very curious about having people play and use the class in their adventures, so I published it under the Gostor imprint. The final class should fill a role and add to your Pathfinder game.

In addition to the noble base class, I added a new prestige class, the ambassador. The ambassador works well with the noble by being the direct representative of their liege to another group or species. I always thought such a role is not very well represented in Pathfinder. Though the design came as I worked on the noble. I kept imagining an archetype of the class, but I kept thinking "I don't really want to give major powers to a 1st level character" so I had to make it into a prestige class. Needless to say the two are tightly linked and a noble has an "easier" path into the class, but anyone could become an ambassador.

So here it is, folks: the Noble class for Pathfinder!

As an added bonus, the entire content of this book is now available for your Legacies characters!

JP

Gostor: Bandits!

Last week, I was reading the excellent Sea of Stars blog and he posted a mini-bandit gang post.

Suddenly I remembered that I started on a book about gangs myself but that I dropped the product as my need for it waned. The project I started it for didn't need it anymore, so I left the notes with charts and options in a document in my "Work In Progress" directory.

Reading the post, I remembered my own abandoned work and thought "Hey I should get this bandit book of mine finished!" Sean's own post had a concept which I did not have in my own book and thus I quickly added it.

For the last two days, I have been going over my stuff and completed some entries, cleaned up some of the text and added a few example gangs. The book now includes the Forty-Seven Ronin, Ali Baba's Forty Thieves, Bonnie and Clyde, Grace O'Malley's pirate empire, Robin Hood and his Merry Men, the Vendean rebels of Revolutionary France, and a Viking raiding party.

My original notes were for a book that was definitely focused on fantasy (and to a large extend it still is). However, the more I read about outlaws and bandits into the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, the more I thought "You know, I could use this for some modern or sci-fi." So I did some more web-searching and added Bonnie and Clyde and the Vendean rebels as example of a more modern group of thieves. There are a lot more examples I could have used, particularly with the "Old West": the James Gang or Billy the Kid. I tried to limit myself to one example per country.

EDITI forgot the Link to Gostor: Bandits!!! *Dohp*

JP

Gostor: Warriors of the Americas

If you follow this blog, you definitely know by now that I am a history aficionado. I love to read about history and recent archaeological discoveries. Then, mixing my love of gaming and my love of history is something that brings me a lot of personal satisfaction.

This book was started many weeks ago as a side project with me adding all kinds of prestige class, archetypes and other material ideas into a document. Then, a few weeks back, I stumbled upon an article related to a Maya find. After reading it, my mind went to my drop file and after some editing, I realized that I had more than a few things worth making into a small PDF document. Really, perfect size for a Gostor product!

A few hours later, some tidying up the wording, I already had most of the art, so I focused trying to come up with classes that were more flavorful than historical. I also put a few historical details, after all why create a book based on historical warriors and not pass on a little of that knowledge?

The Dog Soldiers, Eagle and Jaguar knights and the False Face Society are detailed in this book. From the history of the Aztec, the Cheyenne and the Iroquois. The research into these groups was easily my favorite element, so that when I finalized everything, I felt I could really pass their flavor on to the reader.

The content of this book will be allowed as part of the Legacies Campaign.

Check it out here: Gostor: Warriors of the Americas on RPGNow!

JP

Gostor's Hordes released!

It is with great pride that I can finally announce the release of Gostor's latest product: HORDES!!! This product is one that has been a long time coming because it is so close to my heart.

Hordes contains two pieces of rules for the Pathfinder RPG: Minions represent low quality enemies the PCs should be able to plow through. The rules are heavily influenced by those found in Mutants and Mastermind (over the time wasting they were in 4e). These guys are dangerous and must be dealt with quickly by the PCs, but they have no staying power. The other group, mobs represent an undisciplined group of antagonistic opponents who are acting well... as a mob. Mobs are not tactical, they merely move to attack any enemies. Part swarm, part single enemy, they have a unique rule called "damage cap", which forces someone to have to "beat down the mob"...

Both of those rules have been in used in Legacies adventures for a long time now (mobs appeared for the first time back in 2012).

Minions are a newer addition, the original brainchild of my good friend, James McTeague. When he was writing his excellent 94-LC-03 Need of the Many, we were talking about one encounter and I was proposing some things, but he kept pushing back "That's not what I want to do" he kept saying. I won't lie and say that I was a little annoyed, but the conversation never stopped. It kept going as idea kept being re-hashed. Finally, I think I mentioned minions and that clicked. He went off and came up with a set of rules that made me go "WOW" the face of the encounter itself was changed and it made the adventure so much better.

Since then, minions have appeared in a number of adventures and personal games. They work REALLY well. You can't ignore them...

Try them out and let me know what you think about those rules!

You can find it on RPGNow!

JP

Gostor: Not bolted down released!

Anyone who plays with me or who has read this blog for any length of time know that I find the idea of storing any form of wealth in coins like uncle scrooge is simple ludicrous. Wealth has to be found in things, in items that one can use. This Gostor product, like most of them so far all come from personal charts and tables I generated over the years. This product brings them all together into a consistent whole. The writing was tightened and the tables made clearer.

This product is available now from RPGNow.com for the sum of 2$ I rather than go with 1.99, I just rounded the cost of ALL Gostor products to 2$, bringing the price of some of them down.

Gostor products are written in a way that they can be added to a campaign simply without too much fuss. Like others in the series, this one is system-agnostic, meaning you can use it with any system you use, from fantasy to sci-fi!

Let me know what you think!

JP

Future Gostor Preview: What next from FOE

Since FOE started back in October, I have been working and teaching myself a number of new skills. Since LPJ isn't the one doing the layouts, I've had to do them myself. I have been listening to a lot of feedback about a number of things: the look, the layout, the colors, everything.

My own skills with MS-Word have improved as I delve more and more into the capacity and limitations of the tool. For example, the Yr 2 adventures are fairly bland and straight-up PDFs of the adventures. Meanwhile, as we moved into 93AU, I began to add images, from the public domain, some commissions. Slowly.

Since then I came up with a number of small products I published under the "Gostor" imprint (thanks to Mike Dulock for help on the name). These small products have done well for me, but I want to push the look and feel of them. I have two Gostor products I am finishing, both of them system-agnostics, so they'll work for any game system.

The two products are "While on the road..." a product that details how to create and present an overland trek to your players rather than simply saying "you get there". Or "you get there and have to fight those X monsters." And I've filled it with GM tips

The other is called Not bolted down, something my regular players will recognize from playing with me. It is a light framework to create valuable items that stand out. I even provide real-life examples such as Fabergé eggs and the Mona Lisa! That's right. I consolidated and expanded a lot of personal notes for this one.

So a lot of things coming from FOE in a short time.

In addition to the goodies at Origins and Gencon!

JP

New Gostor Release! Build ruins on the fly!

I have been working on a number of side-projects among the madness that has been the last few weeks, in preparation for Genghis Con, AND my weekend off at Winter Fantasy. One of these is a small document on ruins I had been playing with for a short while.

This is a collection of notes and tables I have been using myself for years. I was searching for them the other day (because I misplaced one the pages) and thought "Man, having this as a pdf would really simplify my life!" This GOSTOR: Ruins was born!

What is "GOSTOR: Ruins"? Like all Gostor products, it is a light and simple framework. GOSTOR:Ruins aimed at GMs to quickly generate a set of ruins. Not the maps, but the story and details behind the ruins. Questions like "What happened?", "What do we see from the outside?", "Who lives there now?" Condensed in six tables, providing a total of over 825,000 combinations! Enough for you never to run out of idea!

Also a few pieces of advice on creating ruins from a fluff perspective.

Did I mention it was system-agnostic? It can be used with any game system!

You can get your copy of Gostor: Ruins on RPGNow

JP