Just a warning folks since this post references the /tg community several of the links with go to sites with strong language.

When ever a fan made game is created there is always the worry of a cease and desist letter halting everything or project members lacking the skill and time to develop the game growing bored and abandoning it.
That was almost the fate of Chapter Master and even when I reviewed it I must confess I thought it wouldn't progress much further however it seems to have risen up once again with the hard work from the user known as Duke with a new version available: [Link Here] 

Not everything has gone well however and Duke had nearly decided to drop the project after financial difficulty and needed to actually support himself.
Not wanting to abandon the project completely and his attempts to find replacement coder not meeting much success a new solution has been proposed by the community and Duke now has a patreon [Link Here] through which he can be contacted and donated to.

In other Chapter Master news its main page over on the the 1D4 Chan wiki has been updated and now has some more information on the diplomacy options within the game and basic tips.
Since some of you would rather understandably avoid the wiki here are the handy gameplay tips below:

Tips

• Don't donate a chaos artefact to anyone but the Inquisition.

• Use tech marines to pick up STC fragments; just unload them from your ships down onto the planet with the STC on it to pick it up. Artefacts can be retrieved in the same way.

• Ancient Ruins can be explored in a similar way to retrieving an STC, as mentioned above. They contain all sorts of useful stuff, so explore them whenever you can. BE WARNED! Ancient Ruins are often infested with Chaos Cultists and even Daemons, so always send Terminators if you can! Make sure the landing party has:
  1) A good selection of both ranged and melee weapons. Assault Cannons, Heavy Flamers, Meltaguns and power weapons are a good choice, but don't load up the landing party with too many of a particular type of weapon - a few heavy weapons dispersed throughout the squad is the best way to go.
  2) At least one Techmarine and one Apothecary in the landing party to retrieve any STC fragments and/or relics, and to make sure that the gene-seed is recovered from any marines who are killed.

• Add Bionics to wounded Marines to quickly heal them and get them back in the fight.

• Never have your entire chapter in a single fleet as warp storms are full of terrors and pop up at most inopportune times.

• THOU SHALL NOT SEND THE ENTIRE CHAPTER:
  1) On a Crusade
  2) To a Space Hulk
  3) Into a dormant Necron Tomb
  To do so will result in bad things.

• Sisters of Battle are a cheap and effective addition to your forces. They have the same Armour Class (AC) as marines in Mk 7 power armour, though they do have less health, and you can't (yet) re-equip them to give them anything other than bolters (So no Retributor Squads, Boo!)

• The Sisters Hospitaller make good(ish) replacements for Apothecaries. Though they can't recover Geneseed from dead marines, they can still prevent deaths and decrease healing time for wounded marines in the same way that the Apothecaries do.

• Techpriests work in much the same way as your Techmarines, repairing vehicles damaged in battle. They can be re-equipped with better armour and weapons (Though the conversion beam projector they come with is usually enough). Add bionics to them to give them more health and increase their combat effectiveness.

Rather than debating if fan games should be legal I'll just be thankfully Chapter Master seems still low on Games Workshops radar since Games Work is well known for its outright relentless IP guarding to the point of destroying their own rules. 

Read more »

Some of the older gamers amongst you may remember the original The Bards Tale also known as Tales of the Unknown Volume I: The Bard's Tale from way back in 1985.

"In mist-shrouded Skara Brae, in the darkest hours of a winter's night, sometimes can be heard a voice on the wind. The Song of the Maiden the locals call it, a song sung since before the standing stones grew moss, a song of ill fortune, that lures those who hear it to their doom, and drives the melancholy to madness, a song, they say, that must never end, for if it does, the world ends with it."

What did the wizard Mangar seek when he cast his spell of Eternal Winter, locking Skara Brae in ice? Why did the invading archmage Lagoth Zanta shatter the Destiny Wand and end seven hundred years of peace? Why did the mad god Tarjan cross the outer planes to burn Skara Brae to the ground and slaughter its people? What secret could drive beings of such great power to again and again lay waste to these ancient isles?

The adventurers who put a stop to these fiends never learned the answer to these questions, but now, a hundred and fifty years after its destruction, and the building of a new town on top of the old, another power, greater than all those before, has turned an eye once again to Skara Brae and the time-lost catacombs beneath it, seeking the secret its predecessors failed to find - and once more, a small group of hapless adventurers are all that stands in its way.

Want to know more well then keep track of the project at either: 
Kickstarter for Bards Tale IV or inXile entertainments homepage

Interested in the original trilogy? Then learn more at:
The Bards Tale Compendium: A fan community for the Series
The Adventurers Guild: A fan community with several emulators and versions of all three games available for download.

Have trouble with emulators www.old-games.com easy installers may be the solution but remember you can only have 2 free downloads per day.
The Bard's Tale, (Amiga Version)
The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight, (Amiga Version)
The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate (Dos Version)

Read more »