Hill Cantons Compendium II Released

After half an eternity (in internet gaming circles time) the Hill Cantons Compendium has been revised and extended. You can Pay Whatever the Hell You Want for the PDF right here on DriveThru.

Gone thanks to Mike Davison's able layout hand is the clumsy (I would like to think charmingly amateur, but who am I fooling) layout and unused house rule sections. Expanded (almost doubled) are the number of dumb/brilliant player classes and I even threw several pages of special snowflake information about the Hill Cantons proper.

What you will find inside:

• Nine variant old school fantasy (and Labyrinth Lord)-compatible player classes: the Mountebank, Chaos Monk, Robo-Dwarf, Feral Dwarf, White Wizard, Half-Ogre, Black “Halflings”, Pantless Barbarian and, of course, the War Bear.
• Character background mini-game/alternative generator with quick random equipment charts.
• Zero-level character generation and play rules.
• Variant rules for simple attribute checks.

Hot off the Vanity Press

The Hill Cantons Compendium print version, complete with slick-as-a-politician full-color Bilibin front and back (pictured above) cover, is up and ready for those who prefer dead plant matter copies. Find it here. 

I basically priced the booklet just above production cost and Lulu's blood money—and even slapped on a 10 percent discount that will last until the red moon rises late Friday night. You can get an even deeper discount, 15 percent off, on any Lulu products if you use the following code: AWESOME305. Any extra funds left over will be donated to the Pulp Fantasy Society. 

One useful thing I learned is that if you put something up for sale on Lulu, you currently get a free “proof copy” for your own use (minus shipping). In other words, even if you don't care a fig about selling or publishing, you can get a free color-cover slick copy of any home campaign or other material you want just by slapping it up there—lots of DIY possibility there for the milking.

Shilling and tip-off finished, now a few niceties and back to finishing the day's real post.

As a shared world the Hill Cantons is as much about the players as it is the GM. As such they deserve a shout out and thank you—not of course in that “I want to thank all the little people” kind of way—but out of real gratitude for contributing, debunking, and playing through the lunacy found in the booklet and at my dining room table over the past two and a half years.

Thanks to the San Antonio crew for their determined exploration of the mysteries of the HC: Desert “The Professor” Scribe, Monica “Frontline Umma” Brad Skullcrusher “The Indeterminate One nee Cugel”, the Special Knitter Friend “Barbarella”, and Dave “Whatever the Hell the Druid's Name is.”

Thanks also to my friends in Siggy's Tomb Raiders: Scott “The Ringleader”, Brent “The OG Montebank”, Dan “the Scaled One Down Under”, and Bill “the Elf-hant Man”.

Hill Cantons Compendium, Extended Dance Mix

Whine and ye shall receive.

After my last round of public wool gathering about how blog content seems to float away into the ether—and my general preference for dead plant matter media—Kenneth the Often Slain (in the Austin iteration of the Hill Cantons), did me a highly generous turn. Taking a number of non-Domain Game related posts he spliced the related content with the Hill Cantons Compendium, my previously-released compilation of quirky home-campaign variants, into one 30-page package.

Getting beyond the first page of HC setting fluff and house rules there is a truckload of other stuff that may be of value for other tinkering souls playing Classic D&D/Labyrinth Lord-style games including such things various and sundry as:

• Five variant Classic D&D/LL-compatible classes: the Mountebank, Feral Dwarf, Lankmarian White Wizard, Half-Ogre, and Black “Halflings”.
  
  
• A variant experience point system, character death, magical research and retainer/follower system.
  
  
• Variant rules for Charisma, reputation, and simple attribute checks.
  
  
• That previously much harped-on character background mini-game with quick random equipment charts.
  
  
• Simple expanded options for killing and being killed.
  
  
• New weapons and armor and some simple variant rules.
  
  
• Zero-level character generation and play rules.

In keeping with my usual personal disdain for things commercial, you can find it for free here on Lulu.

(The at-cost print version is available here.)