By This Axe is Now Available on DriveThruRPG

The Perfidious Treachery of WOTC Has Forced My Hand!

Jan 12, 2023

Friends, patrons, comrades-at-arms,

Yesterday I dispatched the PDF version of By This Axe to its many backers. For the past decade, it has been my established practice to keep a crowdfunded PDF private until the backers have received their print copies, given them a few months of exclusive access before it is commercially released.

However, the perfidious treachery of WOTC has forced my hand: I cannot risk By This Axe being left unpublished before the OGL is deauthorized. Therefore today I decided to publish By This Axe on DriveThruRPG. You can find it here:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/422931/By-This-Axe-The-Cyclopedia-of-Dwarven-Civilization

The very existence of By This Axe is itself explains why I feel I have to oppose the Open Game License’s replacement with OGL 1.1. The latest version of D&D has largely eliminated the concept of fantasy races altogether. I consider the existence of fantasy races to be a fruitful avenue for game design and worldbuilding — so much so that ACKS has separate classes for each race! I have no ill will towards those who prefer a different approach; they can have their games and I will have mine. But I will not allow myself to be put into a position where my creative work is placed in jeopardy by censors at WOTC.

Other Recent Releases

In my race to release all of my product before the OGL is deauthorized, I have published the following works on DriveThruRPG. A coupon code - which expires tomorrow - is available for Axioms Compendium Vol.2 and for issues 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21, all linked below.

Axioms Compendium Vol. 2 https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?discount=9e3adb5ab6
Axioms 17 https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?discount=9e93e2d691
Axioms 18 https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?discount=967cca3a83
Axioms 19 https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?discount=967c37a2bc
Axioms 20 https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?discount=964f80a591
Axioms 21 https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?discount=9650b88446
Axioms Special Edition 2020 - https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/423078/Axioms-Special-Edition-2020--Compiled-Equipment-Compendium?manufacturers_id=4277
Axioms Special Edition 2021 - https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/423081/Axioms-Special-Edition

About By This Axe

If you’re not familiar with this amazing work of creative genius or madness (depending who you ask), let me tell you about it!

In By This Axe you will find the secrets of the great and proud race of dwarves, compiled, codified, and curated for use in your favorite old-school fantasy role-playing game. With the Cyclopedia, you get:

270 pages of lore and rules bounded in a stitch-bound hardcover and PDF edition
A full-color painted cover by Michael Syrigos
A full-color interior layout with full- and half-page art
Compatibility with Old School Renaissance RPGs such as ACKS, OSE, LL, and LOTFP

By This Axe is organized into ten chapters:

Chapter 1, Introduction, details the audience, purpose, and approach for this book.
Chapter 2, Dwarven Lore, provides an overview of the ethnicity, physiology, language, and customs of dwarves. It is narrated from the point of view of a sage in the world of the Auran Empire.
Chapter 3, Dwarven Characters, explains how to roll up a dwarven character in any one of six racial classes, including the craftpriest, delver, earthforger, fury, machinist, and vaultguard.
Chapter 4, Dwarven Templates, provides eight pre-generated templates for each character class in this book. Using these templates, you can easily make your vaultguard a highborn lord, your machinist an apothecary, or your craftpriest a reliquary guardian.
Chapter 5, Dwarven Earthforging, details a new style of magic, wielded by the earthforger class, whose innate talents have allowed them to channel the power within materials to reshape their form.
Chapter 6, Dwarven Automatons, presents rules for designing, building, and repairing clockwork and steampunk-type machines. The section includes over 20 example vehicles, objects, and other automatons to act as examples for the build process and/or to include in your game as items to encounter or use, or as blueprints in treasure hoards.
Chapter 7, Dwarven Domains, explains how your dwarven characters can establish themselves as rulers of domains and realms, with rules for agriculture, urban settlements, vassals, garrisons, and more.
Chapter 8, Dwarven Mining, expands the rules for domains to include mining for precious metals and quarrying for stone. Special rules for “delving too deep” allow your dwarves to greedily hunger for gold - risking potentially dire consequences.
Chapter 9, Dwarven Mycoculture, details the secret methods of mushroom farming used by the dwarves to feed their vaults and brew their marvelous ales and beers.
Chapter 10, Dwarven Relics, offers a catalog of over 35 rare and powerful dwarven relics, artifacts, and antiquities that might be guarded in sacred reliquaries, wielded by dwarf lords, or re-discovered in lost vaults and deep and hidden places.

By This Axe is designed for use with the Adventurer Conqueror King System™ (ACKS™) but is readily compatible with other fantasy role-playing games built on the same core rules.

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