Our Company and Products
LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYINGTM grew out of the incredibly successful, eponymously named, tournament featured at GaryCon each year. The LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYINGTM TOURNAMENT, has proven to be a highly popular series of adventures over the years. Of course, that is no surprise. There is a long tradition of competition tournament modules having a huge fan following and becoming fantasy adventure gaming staples passed down from generation to generation.
These aren't just "old school" adventures in name and appearance, they are old school adventures, heart and soul. These adventures riff on the concepts and themes of those classic tournament modules but are new scenarios, written, edited, illustrated, mapped, and playtested by the original designers. That's right, the band is getting back together.
At one point in time TSR, the company that brought us DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® and ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS®, had the magic. It had a gathering of the most talented creative people in the gaming industry. These people had a certain undeniable alchemy. What they created as tournament modules and adventures for their friends became the fabric of adventure gaming for a generation. That generation passed down the magic, as did the one after that. Now, it is your turn.
So each year we will work to recreate the magic of adventures, played as GaryCon LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYINGTM Tournaments and then published as adventure modules in our LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYINGTM line.
We will also be gathering other adventures and gaming aids under our banner, all created by the legendary designers that founded this hobby, the LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYINGTM themselves!
COMPATIBILITY
All of our products use the OSRICTM System (Oldschool System Reference and Index CompilationTM). The OSRICTM system text may be found at http://www.knights‑n‑knaves.com/osric. The OSRICTM text is copyright of Stuart Marshall. OSRICTM and Oldschool System Reference and Index CompilationTM are trademarks of Stuart Marshall and Matthew Finch and may be used only in accordance with the OSRICTM license.
A free pdf download of the OSRICTM rules is available at the website listed above, you can also buy a downloadable pdf or print‑on‑demand copy on LuluTM (www.lulu.com), you can buy a pdf or print copy of the original 1st edition rules at DriveThru RPGTM (www.drivethrurpg.com), or you can simply buy a used copy of the original 1st edition books—there are literally millions of them out there!
LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYINGTM highly recommends purchasing the excellent hardcover edition of OSRICTM from Black Blade Publishing (www.blackbladepublishing.com).
While LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYINGTM adventures are designed for use with OSRICTM, classic adventures have always transcended the system for which they were written. At LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYINGTM we know a good adventure is a good adventure. However, to aid game masters to adopt these adventures to their own campaigns, LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYINGTM hosts fan‑created system conversion documents at www.legendsofroleplaying.com.
LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYINGTM modules will harken back to the age of old‑school adventures, linking the past to the present to recapture bygone magic. Now you will have your own classics with an eye toward the enduring quality of the originals. These are brand new classics for a new age of adventurers.
Join us!
LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYINGTM ADVENTURES are printed with an old-school, offset printer that matches the quality, look, and feel of the classic TSR Hobbies adventure modules. Like Patch Press in Beloit, Wisconsin, that printed TSR's products, our printer, Print Co., is a family owned business and our print-man, Troy Reding, is the son of the founder. Like the Patch brothers, Fran and Bryce, he sweats press oil and print-ink runs through his veins.
As Troy led me through the building we passed through a dim little room with what looked like five photocopiers placed end-to-end. There wasn't anyone in this room. He said that was their digital press, the kind print-on-demand websites use to cheaply produce a pile of booklets or one or two at a time when ordered.
Then we walked into the press-room where dozens and dozens of workers, were color proofing, loading, unloading, and inking plates, moving massive rolls of paper with fork-lifts, running printing presses, collating and cutting machines, packaging up orders on pallets, and buzzing happily around the brightly lit room. The place smelled of machine oil and printing ink. This! This was the sort of place to have our old-school modules printed!
Gary Gygax insisted on quality with TSR modules and hardcover rulebooks and it showed. Gary knew this cut into the profit margin but he felt it was essential to make gaming aids durable and able to stand up to years of heavy usage—it was a matter of pride in workmanship—like Gary's own work as a humble cobbler.
Sadly, as Gary lost influence and eventually the company itself, the quality of TSR's product declined to the point where the quality of TSR's products were the butt of many a joke. The ones produced under Gary's watch were built to last. Indeed, if any one roleplaying game rulebook could survive the nuclear holocaust we all feared in the eighties it would be the Dungeon Master Guide!
LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYINGTM is with Gary on this 100% and with legendary TSR designers doing design, cartography, art, and editing on our adventures you will get quality old-school product inside and out!
When talking to my friend, legendary TSR artist Dave Sutherland III, before his death in 2005, he was describing going down to Patch Press to oversee the production of TSR adventure modules. He said the place was humming with activity and they were producing the booklets and covers on a massive offset printing press. He said with awe, "Heidelberg Speedmaster—German—so fast and scary, like a giant gray train, thundering along."
Imagine how pleased we were when Troy, our print-man, showed us the machine that was churning along like a high speed train, producing the covers of our LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYINGTM adventure modules—a Heidelberg Speedmaster!
The Speedmaster was printing our sturdy card stock outer covers, which, in addition to their beautiful art and graphics front and back, are separate and can stand up on their own to be used as an old school dice shield or to hide an open module booklet or a notebook for DM notes
Heck, even our LEGENDS OF ROLEPLAYINGTM logo is old-school! Drawn by Darlene, the designer of TSR's original wizard "face" logo, symbolizes a return to old school gaming for the next generation.
As we unloaded our first boxes of modules from the tailgate of our truck, we couldn't help but feel connected to the cobbler, his best friend, and the kid he had taken under his wing as they unloaded boxes from the tailgate of a station wagon some 40 plus years ago; boxes containing a game that would change the world...
