[Free PDF] Burgs & Bailiffs: Warfare too!

Burgs & Bailiffs 2 is done. So, click on the image and get the cover, get the pdf here, or buy it on lulu for very cheap. Featuring 38 pages of pure carnage and violence. You know you want to.

Update: the always awesome Charles Taylor wrote a super-easy spreadsheet implementing the maths in his castle construction article. The spreadsheet is here, you must make a copy to change it.

Grab the first issue here, print version on lulu.

The third issue of Burgs & Bailiffs should come out in January.

So if you want to contribute

To be in the third issue contributors need to:

1. send an email soonish at tsojcanth at gmail dawt com with a generic idea for the article.
2. send a rough draft, possibly before November.
3. send the finished article, possibly before December.

The plan, if all goes the right way, is to make the third issue a bit bigger and better, start to charge a bit more than cost and send physical copies to contributors.

If all goes the right way means, and there should be no need to explain it, SAVE OR DIE.

Burgs and Bailiffs: Warfare too! Call for Articles!

YOUR CAMPAIGN DOESN’T HAVE ENOUGH PILLAGE AND DESTRUCTION

BURGS & BAILIFFS: WARFARE TOO WILL HELP

IT WILL BURN YOUR CAMPAIGN CROPS

SHATTER ITS TROOPS

SHOT ARROWS IN ITS EYES

THEN TIE YOUR CAMPAIGN TO A HORSE

AND RIDE FROM POITIERS TO BAKHCHISARAY

AND THEN BUILD A VICTORY MONUMENT

REMEMBER!

If you want to collaborate write an idea for an article either in the comments or at tsojcanth AT googlemail dawt com or in the comment or on Google Plus here. The very rough deadline for article ideas is March 25th and for the first draft is April 22nd. And we are super-easy with deadlines, so if you feel pressured but still want to contribute drop me a line and we’ll arrange something.

Burgs & Bailiffs: Cities/Warfare Too! Call for Articles!

Hey hey,

The first Burgs & Bailiffs was a good attempt. People liked it, you can buy it on Lulu for very  very cheap and was downloaded by a fair amount of fine nobles, burgers and villeins.

Since the Grimdark Crew can’t stop churning out new and exciting material to enhance the historical verisimilitude of the toils, pain and suffering of your PCs. And therefore your grimacing and fun.

The possible (broad) themes for the second issue are Cities and is Warfare. Feel free to write on any medieval topic though, as long as it’s related to RPGs. Here are the mockups.

  

Yes, the one on the right is a period comic depicting king Harold dying like a chump.

So, if you want to collaborate write an idea for an article either in the comments or at tsojcanth AT googlemail dawt com. The very rough deadline for article ideas is March 25th and for the first draft is April 22nd. And we are super-easy with deadlines, so if you feel pressured but still want to contribute drop me a line and we’ll arrange something.

Oh, the first issue got a new cover!

Free PDF: Burgs & Bailiffs!

Edit: collaborate to the second issue!

Edit: new alternate cover!

Edit: Burgs & Bailiffs is available on Lulu for 1.95£!

Like the taxman, famine, war, or the Black Death, good things come to those that can wait.

Grim up your medieval RPG!

Bring the worst of the Middle Ages to your Game!

Abuse these Player Characters!

Burgs & Bailiffs is a collaborative project aiming to help you, discerning GM, make your Medieval Fantasy grimmer and more medieval. Warfare, Law, Medicine, Food, Cities from a more verosimile perspective.

Alternate Cover

Get Burgs & Bailiffs and unleash it on your PCs!

100% not peer reviewed!

Download text, cover, alternate cover, or a single handy archive.

Comments, as per use, on Google Plus.

The Solstice is Nigh! It’s that time of the year again!

Twelve beheaded dwarves,
Eleven poisoned halflings,
Ten giant frogs a-leaping,
Nine aligned swords,
Eight balors,
Seven keys for seven gates,
Six phoenixes e-xploding,
Five golden rings,
Four shriekers,
Three cockatrices,
Two death ray traps,
And a dragon on his hoard!

Plus a small status update on all things here at the lost blog:

• The Pergamino, CORSICA and Chthonic Codex will be put out by a publisher. Yes, that would be me. The publisher has a name and a site. But the domain registration went wrong so I don’t feel comfortable revealing more details. 
• This means that to pre-order the Pergamino you have to send me an email and/or send me 15£ via Paypal (+5£ for shipping outside of the UK). There are still copies available for preorder, but not a great number. After the site goes live the price will probably be bumped up a little bit.
  
• The publisher will focus on the following business: small press games, limited edition handbound books and tabletop games and a POD+handbinder. This means that you can send me a PDF and I’ll send you back a book bound to order. Due to the problems above online orders are not available yet so send me an email if you want some
• CORSICA (yes! it’s definitely going to be published! 100% not a joke!) went through a preliminary layout experiment to “feel how it feels”; it feels great. Richard and I concluded that since we don’t specially care about shipping it early, we would rather be incredibly ambitious and ship something awesome later. Later means not before Spring 2013. This means I’ll have to go to Amsterdam and looking at rigging and hulls drinking advocaat, well, it’s going to be tough but I’ll gladly take one for the team.
• Chthonic Codex went through a not-great period due to what can be best described as authoral problems. At the moment the manuscript is between 15 and 25 pages of dense text, plus a trainload of illustrations. There is still twice that amount of text to be written plus an unrelated wagonload of drawings I can’t discuss about yet. It’s coming together how me and Chris wanted it to be, which is the most flattering thing I could ever hope to write, really.
• Roger and Rea came to Glasgow and stayed over at mine. Happenstance, on my 33rd birthday. We had hopes of engaging in some gaming, but after a 6 courses dinner we decided to just sit and have a chat. Fruitful discussions about RPGs happened! And design! Amongst the gifts I received Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, shiny purple d30 (I need excuses to use it now) and some character art Roger made years ago. In the back of the character drawing we found the map of Roger’s second campaign ever.
• Burgs and Bailiffs needs only layout. Yay and thanks to everybody that collaborated!

Burgs & Bailiffs: Grimness in Process

Work on Burgs & Bailiffs continues. Typesetting is done and the articles has been sent around for what passes as peer review. It’s not peer review, but I’d rather have more negative feedback on those articles rather than publishing utter BS.

The size should be around 40 pages, depending on the final layout. The table of content at the moment looks like this:

• Medieval Tournaments: The Real Melees – Rich Wilson
• Settling Disputes: Ordeals and Trials – Mike Monaco
• Bowmen, Class & War – Shorty Monster
• Medieval Cooking, or, What’s in that Pie? – Steve Sigety
• Recipe: Gruel, a la mode of My Mother – myself
• Pestilence & Putrescence – Jeremy Whalen
• Leeches, Clysters, and a Hole in the Head: Old School Medicine for Grimmer Games – Mike Monaco
• On Food Surplus: Cities & Armies – myself
• The Night Watch – Mike Monaco

I know it seems that Mike Monaco wrote most of it. Mike is, in fact, the author of almost half of the page count.

Burgs & Bailiffs should be done before the end of November and released as a free PDF, a softcover available at cost through POD.

Burgs & Bailiffs: more submissions please!

Want more grimness in your fantasy setting?

 

OF COURSE YOU DO

 

Burgs and Bailiffs is a collaborative project aiming to give you, discerning DM, free material to bring some Middle Ages grittiness and despair to your campaign world. B&B will not be a boring history journal, but will instead contain small articles on specific topics and how to integrate them with your campaign.

The deadline for submissions is Wednesday the 22nd of August, while a first draft is the 24th of September 2012. We can be flexible with deadlines, but not too much.

This is the current list of proposals:

• Pestilence, Putrescence and Pustules
• Realistic Medieval Archery
• The Importance of Being Earnest: intricacies and ambiguities of medieval feudalism
• On Agriculture: Toiling the Land for Fun and Famine
• To Feed an Army

If you want to contribute send me an email ( tsojcanth+burgsandbailiffs@gmail.com ) specifying:

1. the title of the article
2. a two line summary of the content
3. expected length (a very rough estimate)

If you want to write on a topic already covered, don’t let this stop you. There’s no limit to the number of articles on diseases we’ll print. 🙂

The Middle Ages were Horrible. Burgs & Bailiffs: call for submissions

The Middle Ages were horrible.

I’m not talking about lack of wifi and lattes, but about famine, disease, violence, tyranny, disease, heavy taxation, war, lack of sanitation, abysmal civil rights, disease, lack of healthcare, servitude and disease. And the cherry on top is that Feudalism, the main form of government in Europe, existed mainly to field bigger armies so kill more enemies and grab more land.

Fantasy RPGs often are sheltered from this kind of problems. Escapism often tones down grimness and replaces it with orcs. But sometimes you want to grab your setting and give it a spoonful of historical horrible mixed with gravel.

Burgs & Bailiffs turns your setting’s grimness up to 11

Then punches it in the face and steals its beer

the cover is not final

Burgs & Bailiffs is a collaborative effort aiming at bringing more grimness and suffering to your fantasy campaign world and we’re going to release it on a Creative Commons licence. If you want to collaborate with a small article (400 to 4000 words) that allows a fellow GM to “grim up” a campaign, send me a two lines proposal via email. The deadline for proposals is in a week, Wednesday 22/August/2021, while the deadline for the draft is the 24th of September 2012.

GRIM UP!