UPDATE: Tickets for ATCON 2017 are sold out! See you next year! Please feel free to sign up for the ATCON email list for news about ATCON 2018. Good AbTabternoon friends, We’ve decided to have a formal get-together – and you’re invited. We’re happy to announce the inaugural Absolute Tabletop Convention. This will be our first meet-up (and mini-convention) for anyone interested in hanging out and gaming with us in Tacoma, Washington on July 8, 2017.  (You can check out the formal press release here.) We’re going to gather in the gaming area of Tacoma Games, play some games, and make the...

One thing that catches up Dungeon Masters old and new is the monster “mob.” We want to recreate that scene in Fellowship of the Ring when the party clashes with dozens of goblins, but we aren’t sure we want to deal with 20-something separate HP totals. I propose a solution: the hit-point pool. The basic premise is this: instead of a group of enemies each having separate HP totals, the group has a single HP “pool” that is reduced when the player characters deal damage. This pool abstractly represents the total fighting force of a group of enemies. It requires...

We love adventure modules. We’ve even written a few ourselves. But we recognize the challenges of using pre-written adventures, and we’ve all struggled to prep using them, sifting through pages and pages of detail to find the real meat. So we’re working on something new that we think you’ll really dig: Adventure Kits – a new, fast and fluid way to create custom adventures to run at your table. We’ll provide the pieces, you provide the glue – with inspirational roll tables, monstrous encounters, and detailed maps included in each Adventure Kit, you’ll never get the same result twice. Adventure Kits are designed to...

We’re happy to present the first installment in a series of short narratives exploring the setting of Harbinger, our upcoming dark science fantasy ruleset for use with the basic rules of D&D 5E. You can read more about Harbinger here. This piece, entitled Holdout, illustrates the volatile nature of astra, and the true power of mancers. Sign Up for Our Harbinger Playtest   The klaxons blared while Vintus bled. He slumped against the bulkhead, grunting as the Slipstream heaved beneath him. Metal strained and groaned as the vessel hurtled through the void, attempting feebly to stabilize itself. Through the viewport, Vintus saw the...

Since the announcement of the Open Gaming License for the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons, we’ve dreamed of creating a unique sci-fi setting and ruleset using 5E. Bringing our shared loves of science fiction, medieval fantasy, and eldritch horror to the table, we began to build something we’re pretty proud of – something we call Harbinger. Harbinger’s first official limited playtest is fast approaching, taking the existing 5E rules and augmenting them with an entirely new set of spacefaring classes, along with a dangerous but dynamic new magic system. Check out our first recorded Harbinger playtest below to see...

“Stars eternal, shrouded in its wake. Witness, the Dark One – Harbinger of fate.” – Excerpt from the Account of the Eclipse More than 400 gamers participated in our first playtest for Harbinger, our new dark science fantasy setting and supplemental ruleset for use with the fifth edition basic rules. We collected tons of feedback and now we’re preparing to unveil Harbinger v0.2: coming June 2! If you’re already signed up for our playtest, then you’re good to go! But if you haven’t yet signed up, you can do so here to get v0.2 as soon as it is available.   SIGN UP NOW...