While there is still a strong and vocal contingent out there who support the "toolbox" approach to rpg's, championing the idea that the best games are setting-free and flexible enough to do whatever you like with them, it seems to me of late that the pendulum is starting to swing back the other way. That is to say, people are looking at games--especially fantasy games--and saying, "I'm sure it's a good system and all, but what do I need with another generic fantasy game?"  These people (and there are a growing number of them, it seems) are starting to look for packaged settings again. I started thinking about this recently from observations I've seen on blogs and message boards. When I first put out Spellcraft & Swordplay it sold like hotcakes and got a ton of positive reviews, including ones from such luminary blogs in the old school community as Grognardia.  Unfortunately, graduate school happened, and the increased workload forced me to put El...

In my decade-plus of doing professional game design, I've learned that sometimes it's when you sit down to do something else, and just end up randomly working on one of your design projects that your best stuff comes out, and you get the best work done. I have commissioned an artist to do some work for Twelve Parsecs.  She is a fantastic artist, and working to get her name out there, so she's working for me at a level that I can afford, which is refreshing.  I'm still hoping to get Elf Lair to the point where I can pay professional artists what they deserve.  For now it'll be great having an awesome artist who is a really cool gal on board for this project--hopefully I'll be able to increase her compensation on future projects...that is, if you all continue to support us strongly! Anyway, I sat down to night to e-mail her the draft as it stands so she could begin getting ideas. When I opened the file to make sure it was the right one, I just kind of started ...

I've had a few e-mails lately and wanted to clarify: if you search online and come across a Lulu store containing Elf Lair Games products, these products are out of date and no longer current! Until I joined Drivethrurpg, my company store was on Lulu.com. I left the Lulu files active at the request of some fans who wanted the support to remain available through that site for the old versions that they had purchased. Elf Lair Games WILL not be supporting these old editions in the future.