I have been remiss in my blogging over the past several weeks. My guest bloggers have been awesome at carrying the torch for me so far and that has been much appreciated. They have been responsible for making sure The Iron Tavern has at least something new for you each week.

So if I haven’t been posting here as regularly, what have I been up to?

Mapping

First I have had several products released by various publishers that contain some maps I have created. I am proud to have been involved in each of these products.

For the Dungeon Crawl Classics crowd Thick Skull Adventures released the PDF of The Haunting of Larvik Island a month or two ago. This is a fun 1st level module to run your DCC players through. I drew many of the maps in the product think they came out looking great! Earlier this week The Haunting of Larvik Island was released in print, available at some online stores and hopefully at local game stores in your area soon. So if you wanted a copy in print that is an option as well.

On another front, I have had a couple of tavern maps released under the Christina Stiles Presents line from Super Genius Games. Both Waysides: Didjer’s Crab House and Waysides: Hair of the Dog contain tavern maps I did for the product. These are fun products to drop into your campaign when you need a pre-built tavern with some interesting aspects!

I have another map or two in the works for the Christina Stiles Presents line as well.

Writing

I have a couple of writing projects on the edge of the plate as well. These are still pseudo-secret and because they are personal projects tend to get bumped when other paying freelance opportunities present themselves. But each week I make a little more progress on each and hopefully a little closer to an announcement on those fronts.

Conversions

I also have another much larger project coming up that I also cannot reveal the full details on, as I am not 100% sure I am at liberty to reveal my involvement just yet. But a Kickstarter that funded about two months ago will be using me to handle the conversion to a Pathfinder version of the product. This will be a rather large project, but really looking forward to this one as well. Definitely proud to be a part of the attention to detail this product has received so far. Again – hopefully I can be less vague about the nature of this product in the near future.

Still Here!

Those are some of the things that have been keeping me busy over the past month or so. Lots of exciting things going on. And again – special thanks to my guest bloggers for keeping the doors open and the light on here at The Iron Tavern. I will put additional effort forth to get more posts by me here at The Tavern!

Last week The Iron Tavern put out the call to add a few bloggers to the pages here. I felt there was more going on in the fantasy RPG community than one single blogger could keep up with. I have experimented with guest blogger posts in the past with great success. The Iron Tavern has been able to provide reviews and commentary on other fantasy gaming systems I might not have found time to give the attention to.

By adding bloggers it also presents the opportunity for new perspectives and ideas to be offered on a regular basis at The Iron Tavern.

I had several people interested in blogging for The Iron Tavern as a result of the call I put out last week. I have chosen four of those people to being regular posts. This week will be an exciting week as we see the first of those posts start to appear.

Today I wanted to introduce the new folks. I asked each of them to write a brief bio about themselves for today.

Mark Knights

I am a 39 year old guy living in a small rural town called Elliott in Tasmania, Australia.  I have been role playing since I was 11 years old playing the original versions of Dungeons and Dragons, MERP, Elric, Dragon Warriors and the like amongst other genre games.  I played D&D 2nd Edition through the 90’s but I ran Earthdawn for my fantasy setting and loved it as a GM.  When 3rd Edition came out for D&D I tried it but found it too heavy on rules.  I ignored the 3.5 edition of DnD in favour of Earthdawn (big mistake) as I thought it was just a money spinner.  When 4th Edition DnD came on my players and I gave it a red hot go but hated what it had dumbed the game down to be.  On a trip to Melbourne to buy some 4E stuff from a hobby store an old mate of mine pointed me at Pathfinder and in a Fantasy setting I have never looked back.

Currently I run a couple of Pathfinder campaigns (one on Google+ and the other in person) and a Classic Traveller campaign (on Google+).  I am finishing the alpha version of my own game which is highly confidential at the moment.  I run my own blog at www.thepathfinderchronicles.com which initially was going to be a Pathfinder only blog but has broadened since its start in October last year.  In real life I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, but I am currently working as a teacher of all things Computer!

Brian Fitzpatrick

Brian “Fitz” Fitzpatrick is a Software Engineer who manages (or is that mangles) Game Knight Reviews and tinkers with writing game materials via his Moebius Adventures imprint. When he’s not writing about gaming, he’s actually gaming or at least thinking about gaming in some capacity. During the non-writing, non-gaming time he’s likely trying to keep up with his wife and two daughters or wrangling code for a living!

Alan Kellog

The name is Mythusmage. More formally, Alan Kellogg. I am a blogger and a gamer, and I opine on various subjects and topics. I believe that you should do your best at whatever you do, and I refuse to cheat on your behalf simply because you refuse to try. Personal initiative is what I believe in, and I’ll do what I can to make your adventures interesting. Demand special treatment for any reason and you’re apt to get stomped on by your enemies and opposition. Give it an honest try, and while you may not succeed, others are apt to extend you some respect.

I live in San Diego CA, have been gaming since 1964 (board games) and 1975 (RPGs). Have credits in Dangerous Journeys: Mythus and have helped out with a few other projects (Charlemagne’s Paladins for TSR for instance). Currently working on a revision of Mythus for possible publication.

What will my blog posts here be about? Better gaming, better play, making your adventures more involving and involve more. You’ll learn more as the posts progress. So welcome, and I hope you find what I write interesting, informative, and useful.

Crothian

Well known for his reviews from the glory days of EN World, Crothian brings his wealth of reviewing experience to The Iron Tavern. In addition to reviews Crothian has years decades of gaming experience that often causes him to experiment wildly with game rules to push the limits. From feats at every level in D&D 3.5 to starting a Pathfinder adventure path with existing 9th level characters, Crothian explores the boundaries of various gaming systems.

The Iron Tavern welcomes the new bloggers!

The Iron Tavern is looking for a blogger interested in contributing a regular weekly post to the site. My guest blogger experiments in the past have been a positive experience and now I would like to expand that role a bit.

What can I blog about?

Regular readers of The Iron Tavern know the site is primarily dedicated to the fantasy genre of roleplaying games. Articles tend to track with my current gaming system interest. This is one of my primary motivators for adding a blogger to The Iron Tavern’s author pool, to keep the variety of posts up at the site.

Blog posts can be commentary, recent news in various fantasy RPG systems, commentary fantasy RPGs, or anything else that is related to fantasy RPG systems. Specific areas I would like to see more coverage on regularly is the Pathfinder system, how the D&D Next playtest is going, or your OSR system of choice. If one of those topics sounds like something you would like to write about then send me an email and lets talk.

Why would I want to blog for The Iron Tavern?

This is not a paid blogger position. This is a position for someone that loves to talk about fantasy RPGs and would like to tap into an already established (and growing) audience.

Maybe you are a blogger with your own site who wants a regular guest article at another site to increase your own audience. The Iron Tavern can be the vehicle to help facilitate that.

Or maybe you have wanted to start your own blog but not wanted to handle the maintenance and administration of the site. Or thought you couldn’t keep an audience because you weren’t ready to commit to the number of postings needed to do that per week. The Iron Tavern is an already established blog that can act as your platform.

I am looking for someone that can provide one blog post per week, but maybe you are a more prolific writer than that. The blogger chosen will certainly be allowed to post more than one article a week if you have quality content to provide!

Now what?

Interested in blogging for The Iron Tavern? Contact me at the email address I list in the About page of this blog. Please provide me a brief rundown of writing experience you may have. A short writing sample or links to other blog posts you may have made in the past are fine. Don’t forget to mention what types of topics you think you will cover as you get rolling. If things look to be a good match I will review the flow of providing posts to the blog and we will go from there!

The Iron Tavern wants to wish everyone a Happy Holidays! It has been another great year for the Iron Tavern. I have enjoyed all the discussion on my blog posts throughout the year, whether the discussion is here, on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter. I hope your holidays are filled with gaming and lots of time spent with family!

I will be taking a break from posting for the next week. I have a couple of projects I want to catch up on and sit back and do some reading of my own to recharge the batteries as we head into the New Year! I will be back to posting at the first of the year with a look back at 2012, possibly a full patron write-up for Dungeon Crawl Classics, and a couple of reviews to start out with.

Happy Holidays!

Posting at The Iron Tavern will be a little slow this week. After seeing how the inaugural year went for the blog and being happy with the result I wanted a little more flexibility in my hosting option. With that in mind I am in the process of moving the blog from its current hosting provider to a new one.

Of course I have chosen an extremely busy time of year for me to tackle this! Between a series family medical issues, a death in the family, a writing project entering the playtest phase, and a few more pitches to hammer out in the coming week I could have chosen a period of better downtime to coordinate this move. But, the pricing deal I was waiting for on hosting came up over Black Friday and sales wait for no one!

Please bear with us over the next couple of days as I get the domain name transfer sorted out. I expect minimal downtime, though there might be a couple of hiccups in the early days of re-opening the tavern on the new host. I hope the new host gives The Iron Tavern a slightly more flexible platform as we move forward!