I've had someone report that they can't download Darker Dungeons. I checked the website and I can't get the website itself to load.
I thought you might want to know.

Moderator: Blacky the Blackball
Thanks for the update.Blacky the Blackball wrote:Yep. My ISP has decided to stop providing webspace.
It's looking good.Blacky the Blackball wrote:I've set up a new site here: Gurbintroll Games (the change in name was because there's already at least two other "Gratis Games" out there, but a Google search for "Gurbintroll" got no hits at all).
I've moved some of my stuff onto there.
It looks like you have two titles on "pay what you want" and the other set to free.Blacky the Blackball wrote:Some of my PDFs (Dark Dungeons, Blood, Guts & Glory, and FASERIP) are now available at RPGNow, since they've changed their terms and conditions* so some that are compatible with me giving everything away for free. I'll be making the other titles directly downloadable from the Gurbintroll Games site when I get around to it.
*The terms used to be that you could only put up free downloads if you also had pay-to-download items available. That was fair, since otherwise they'd be losing money on your stuff, but excluded people like me who were committed to giving stuff away for free. However, now you can have some things as "Pay what you want" instead. That's ideal, since I get to still give it away for free, but some people want to give me something for my games despite being able to get them for free and RPGNow get to take their percentage out of that.
So everyone wins. People who want my stuff for free get it for free. People who want to show their appreciation by giving me a "tip" can do so. RPGNow gets a cut of the tips, and I get the rest as store credit to inflate my already bulging RPG collection with.
Do you plan to make Darker Dungeons available to download from your site in the future? On RPGNow so we can leave a tip?Blacky the Blackball wrote:Some of my PDFs (Dark Dungeons, Blood, Guts & Glory, and FASERIP) are now available at RPGNow, since they've changed their terms and conditions* so some that are compatible with me giving everything away for free. I'll be making the other titles directly downloadable from the Gurbintroll Games site when I get around to it.
It was a pain having to re-do stuff - but don't forget, I'm not trying to make money at this or create a "brand" or anything, so as long as I've got somewhere I can point people to if they ask the relative prominence of my site isn't really relevant.Big Mac wrote:It's looking good.
It must be annoying for you though. You effectively have to reinvent the wheel to get back to where you were back when you did all the hard work last time.![]()
That's right. I've put Dark Dungeons and Blood, Guts & Glory on pay-what-you-want because that way it will keep RPGNow happy in that they can make some money for hosting my stuff but people can still download it for free if they want. I didn't put FASERIP on pay-what-you-want because of the art. I'm using Storn Cook's art under a strictly non-Commercial license, and while I contacted him and gained his blessing that giving the PDF away and having the POD book at cost was suitably non-Commercial, I didn't want to push things by then moving from "free" to "pay-what-you-want".It looks like you have two titles on "pay what you want" and the other set to free.
(One thing about "pay what you want" that some people might not realise is that people can "buy it" for nothing and then go back and "buy it again" and pay more money. So if anyone new comes along, they can use the system for a free trial, without loosing the ability to come back later and give you a "tip".)
I might, but the issue there is that doing so might need me to re-do the books due to slight formatting differences between Lightning Source (the POD company that RPGNow uses) and LULU. That could be a lot of work for little to no gain, so I'm putting off thinking about it.Do you think you might go with Print on Demand via RPG Now/DriveThru at some point?
Oh, so it is!BTW: Your old darkdungeons.wordpress.com website is still up. Do you still have access to that, so that you can update the "Dark Dungeons has moved." message?
I'm reluctant to put it on RPGNow in its current state because it's got some fairly major editing/quality-control issues.Tim Baker wrote:Do you plan to make Darker Dungeons available to download from your site in the future? On RPGNow so we can leave a tip?Blacky the Blackball wrote:Some of my PDFs (Dark Dungeons, Blood, Guts & Glory, and FASERIP) are now available at RPGNow, since they've changed their terms and conditions* so some that are compatible with me giving everything away for free. I'll be making the other titles directly downloadable from the Gurbintroll Games site when I get around to it.
Thank you for the quick and detailed response. I hope option 1 or 2 become a reality eventually. It's a nice way of playing RC content with few modifications using a more streamlined and consolidated ruleset. While 5e does a nice job of capturing the feel of older editions, it's not quite a easy to pick up a 30-year-old adventure and play it with little conversion (the sheer number of monsters that can appear in a single battle in many older adventures are likely to overwhelm a 5e party, for example). I think there's room in the hobby for both 5e and Darker Dungeons.Blacky the Blackball wrote:My choices are basically:
I should really do one or other of the first two, but they both involve quite a lot of work and I've not yet built up the enthusiasm for either of them. I could easily do the third, but I'm holding out because I know that if I take the third option "temporarily" I'll never get round to either of the first two.
- Finish writing the "Second Edition" that I abandoned when 5e came out, and put it up on RPGNow.
- Take the existing first edition text (which is in Publisher 2013), re-flow and re-format it into InDesign, cleaning it up as I go, and then put it on RPGNow
- Put the existing first edition PDF, which I know to be full of mistakes and omissions, and put it up on my website.
That works both ways around. Fights against multiple opponents can easily overwhelm a 5e party, but fights against a single opponent (which are also common in old adventures) tend to be much easier than you'd expect.Tim Baker wrote:While 5e does a nice job of capturing the feel of older editions, it's not quite a easy to pick up a 30-year-old adventure and play it with little conversion (the sheer number of monsters that can appear in a single battle in many older adventures are likely to overwhelm a 5e party, for example).
Definitely.I think there's room in the hobby for both 5e and Darker Dungeons.
There's not much to tell, really. I was playing Darker Dungeons and updating it to a second edition. When 5e came out I started a campaign of that - and that campaign is still going. Because I've not been playing Darker Dungeons I've not really been thinking about it either, and I got distracted by other projects and stopped working on the Darker Dungeons update.If you've written about how 5e impacted your work on Darker Dungeons, I'd be interested to read about it. I'm fairly new to the Piazza, and haven't come across a related thread.
Thanks for the additional information. I'm not doing 5e myself, but it's great to see other people giving it a go.Blacky the Blackball wrote:Definitely.Tim Baker wrote:I think there's room in the hobby for both 5e and Darker Dungeons.
There's not much to tell, really. I was playing Darker Dungeons and updating it to a second edition. When 5e came out I started a campaign of that - and that campaign is still going. Because I've not been playing Darker Dungeons I've not really been thinking about it either, and I got distracted by other projects and stopped working on the Darker Dungeons update.Tim Baker wrote:If you've written about how 5e impacted your work on Darker Dungeons, I'd be interested to read about it. I'm fairly new to the Piazza, and haven't come across a related thread.
You make a good point. I hadn't considered that aspect, but you're right.Blacky the Blackball wrote:That works both ways around. Fights against multiple opponents can easily overwhelm a 5e party, but fights against a single opponent (which are also common in old adventures) tend to be much easier than you'd expect.
You must have a pretty good grasp of 5e encounter balance. I found that there's a fair amount of math behind building an encounter that won't bore nor slaughter the party (especially the latter at low level play). I wonder if I'm the exception to the rule? I'll admit that I haven't done a lot of 5e DMing, so perhaps, as with anything, it gets easier with practice.Blacky the Blackball wrote:My big epic 5e campaign has exclusively used BECMI adventures, and I've not had to do any conversion in advance. I just adjust monsters and treasure on the fly and everything seems to work fine. The campaign's been going on weekly since the week the 5e PHB came out, and the party are currently 15th level, having played up from 1st. We have six PCs - a Tempest Cleric, a Wild Mage Sorcerer, a Circle of the Moon Druid, a Way of the Fist Monk, a College of Valor Bard, and an Assassin Rogue.