My Brief Run-In with Dave Arneson

 

Although I've been a big volunteer for a game company squaring-away the "big" convention tournaments, I've only attended GenCon two or three times. I've always been much more a Origins fan.....far more "bang for my buck" and GenCon is just too much, well for me......"too much".

Regardless, I have attended a few times and most importantly for the purposes of today's post, I attended in 2008. I managed to be able to stay after the con closed and helped KenzerCo tear down their booth, something I was able to do quite a few times at Origins. The lead-in pic is from the Steve Jackson Games guys letting me try on the Munchkin head.....despite several extremely poignant warnings and attempts to dissuade me from doing so. It was as hot, sweaty, and post-con nasty as you'd expect a big mascot head to be.....but also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me.

That wasn't the only once-in-a-lifetime opportunity during that convention.

Now I'm not sure how many Tavern patrons are aware, but last week (April 7th) was the anniversary of the passing of Dave Arneson. We all seem to remember Gary Gygax's passing, but we have his children running a memorial game convention every year that helps all of us remember.....

Anyway, GenCon 2008 was Dave Arneson's last GenCon with us and I briefly got to meet him at the KenzerCo booth. He was being pushed around in a wheelchair and it just seemed he knew it was his last big con. That seems sad, it did in the moment, but at the same time I have to give the man credit 'cause he was (literally) rolling with it. He was going around giving other game designers/artists these little baggies with d20's and a note in them. I was gifted one of these and they were two Gamescience d20's and the note was on a Westin Hotel sticky notepad:

"Rubbed in the hair of a live game designer

-Dave Arneson"

I've never rolled the dice and being a KoDT/HackMaster fan, the whole "fame rub" on a game designer (there is a long story arc about this in the comic) makes this a special memento in a couple of ways.

Now while I have seen The Secrets of Blackmoor, but I personally don't think I quite "get" Arneson's full contribution to this hobby we all share. I know there are some books I probably should pick up someday that might help, but I already have a few "history" books on the early days of this hobby I haven't gotten around to reading yet as it is.

Review of The Vast in the Dark – a Zine About Exploring Dark and Alien Megastructures of an Infinite Realm (Guest Post)

I'd like to thank Doug for submitting this review. As I've stated many times, but I can never state often enough, The Tavern is yours and it is significantly better when members of the community participate in its content - Tenkar

Review of The Vast in the Dark – a Zine About Exploring Dark and Alien Megastructures of an Infinite Realm by Doug Kilmer

I’ll start this review with a thank you to Tenkar’s Tavern for showcasing the Kickstarter ZineQuest (note - The Tavern's YouTube series of Fireside Chats for ZineQuest 2021 can be viewed here) I would never have been aware of this movement, or the great products that were offered this year, without the heads up. I purchased way too many products for my wallet and so far don’t regret one.  

Charlie Ferguson-Avery’s The Vast in the Dark is one of the best.  Published by Feral Indie Studio, it is not only an incredibly useful toolbox, it drips with an original atmosphere and dark character, which is hard to achieve in this now mature industry literally full of thousands of settings.  

From the back cover:

The sky is black as night. A tectonic rumbling can be heard overhead: the ruins sprawl out with a fractal madness. And a vast sea of colorless sand stretches out into the darkness.

That writing alone gets my attention.

The electronic version of The Vast in the Dark is available here for a minimum contribution of $5USD. As identified above, the product is the result of a successful Kickstarter project in early 2021 that has already delivered in full. The electronic product is 28 pages long, including front and back cover, insides of covers, table of contents, and two pages that are predominantly art. The remainder is a toolbox for the creation of this alien environment. The writing is fairly tight and concise, and it is simple and clear to read.  The booklet makes great use of evocative art that reinforces the brooding atmosphere, and the layout is functional and minimizes wasted space.

While technically system neutral, the author recommended systems include DCC, OSE, Pathfinder, Knave, White Hack, and Black Hack.  So obviously, this is going to have an old-school vibe. As a backer of the Kickstarter, I also have a saddle-stitch print version, which is a handy 5” x 8” and fits well with my Old School Essentials books.

What it has…

As I mentioned, this is a toolbox to adventure in a “crumbling alien wasteland.” At its heart, it is a sandbox for hex crawling.  Definitely OSR-ish, hence the system recommendations. Within the limited page count is everything you need to randomly generate an ancient wasteland of some past empire. The ruins of megalithic structures littering a sandy waste, dotted by conclaves of other travelers caught in the dark clinging to existence.

The Vast in the Dark is not meant to be a full setting, but rather what I will call a “side setting.” This product can pretty much be bolted on with any setting. I think it is best used as a diversion from your main campaign, possibly a jaunt on the other side of the veil or being caught up in the planes. Three to four games sessions ought to do it; enough to frustrate your players, make them appreciate escaping this place, and definitely memorable fodder for your players to talk about in years to come. 

Yes, the Vast has that level of potential to turn ugly and hopeless for the party. Walking out of here without some form of permanent mark probably won’t happen. And it shouldn’t in my opinion.

There is no wasted space in this zine. A brief explanation of the setting, rules on exploration in the Vast (e.g., navigation, becoming lost, and quirks that your character can take on due to being too long in the wastes), and an inventory system. The zine also provides a modicum of the mundane necessities of life (e.g., food), a lodestone-based (one of the few setting resources) currency system, and some discussion of the Vast’s society. There are even three representative factions that can be found while wandering the wastes.

The zine also provides a quick and simple exhaustion system.  This is key to playing in this environment, as it reflects the slow wear and tear of struggling to survive in an alien environment.  Characters gain levels of exhaustion when they miss a night’s sleep, are severely wounded, push themselves beyond the norm, and go without food. These build up and can result in an illness or injury, which puts tasks using the associated ability at a disadvantage until rested or healed. Truly reflective of the dark and gritty of the Vast, and definitely will be a challenge to even veteran players of old school systems.

Cool, but not the real treasure.  

The Good…

The random Vast generation tools are the true value. The method starts on the macroscopic level developing regional terrain maps, and then works inward to local scale hexes, and lastly ruins.  The regional and local mapping uses a die drop method to generate the locations of ruins, pillars, and empty wastes. Pillars are enormous constructs made of lodestone that seem to be holding up whatever is above beyond the sight of the ground. Like the ruins, they can also be inhabited.

For ruins, a simple room-by-room grid-based mapping method is provided that can be used on the fly. Example types of rooms, features, treasures, and encounters are all in the booklet. It comes with an associated time tracking guide for room exploration. All very old school.

The Not so good…

I only have two minor criticisms, both of which are admittedly not valid given the limited page goals of zines: not enough original monsters; and, just not enough content.  That’s it. This product definitely leaves you wanting more. I look forward to a companion in the future. Maybe something that fills in what is on top of the pillars.

The lack of unique creatures to encounter is really the only gap in this booklet.  The uniqueness of how the Vast is presented justifies the need for original creatures. There are certainly a plethora of monster manuals that can be pilfered for non-standard creatures, but I want the author’s vision on this as well.

Rating…

On the old five-star system, have to give this a near-perfect 4.5 out of 5.  At $5 for the pdf, this is one of the best values I have come across in years.  Personally, I can’t wait until my players cross the veil and realize they are not in Kansas anymore.

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Deal of the Day - Aryxymaraki's Almanac of Unusual Magic (ACKS / OSR)

I really enjoy the Adventurer Conqueror King System as more than just a ruleset but as a resource. The way ACKS defines classes makes for a great template that can be ported over to almost every other OSR system. Today's Deal of the Day is Aryxymaraki's Almanac of Unusual Magic for the ACKS system. Normally 10 bucks in PDF, until tomorrow morning, Aryxymaraki's Almanac of Unusual Magic is on sale for a mere 5 bucks in PDF.

Within the pages of Aryxymaraki’s Almanac of Unusual Magic, you will find four new kinds of magic-user, each of which uses magic in new and exciting ways:

• Dwarven earthforgers inherit an ancient tradition allowing them to draw on the spark of the divine found in all creation to power their magic.
• Gnomish alchemists are experimenters whose concoctions range from ‘helpful and safe’ to ‘incredibly poisonous’.
• Terran engineers are scientists and builders from another time, whose inventions and tinkering certainly appear magical to most non-technological societies.
• Warlords draw on the chaotic energy of battle, taming it with their practiced tactics and leadership to ensure that their side wins.

These new classes are built for use with Autarch’s Heroic Fantasy Handbook, which provides rules for ceremonial and eldritch magic. Because they use eldritch magic, the new spells (and tactics) described for the gnomish alchemist, the Terran engineer, and the warlord constitute more than one hundred new eldritch spells usable in any campaign that includes eldritch magic, even one that doesn’t include any of these new classes. Of course, it wouldn’t be an ACKS supplement without full builds for all of the classes and spells, and the source factors for gnostic magic, allowing you to build your own content to expand what’s in the Almanac.  

Magic is all around you. Are you a forger of creation, an engineer of wonder, an alchemist of the unknown, or a lord of war? Discover what kind of unusual magic speaks to you, with the help of this Almanac!

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Tome of Adventure Design 50% off Thru April 13th (PDF)

Frog God Games is offering Matt Finch's awesome Tome of Adventure Design at a 50% discount in PDF through April 13th, 2021. Use the above link to receive your discount.

Tome of Adventure Design is currently on the top 100 list on DriveThruRPG. 

We’re proud of our books and we want people to see them, so we’d like to make you a special offer: 50% off Tome of Adventure Design. This is a limited-time offer, good until April 13th. 

Tome of Adventure Design contains a huge number of random generation tables for fantasy RPGs, but that’s not why it has been a consistent best-seller in the gaming community. What’s unusual about it is that it’s a guide for creativity more than a set of quick-roll tables. Many of the tables fold into or branch out from other tables in the book, building adventures intuitively from the combination of many related elements. We hope you’ll take us up on this offer and see why the Tome of Adventure Design is our most popular adventure-writing resource!

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Free RPG - The Lost Outpost, The OpenQuest Quick-Start Rules and Adventure

I'm a huge fan of OpenQuest. Were I to run my classic boxed sets of Pavis & Big Rubble again, I'd use OpenQuest for the ruleset. It's, IMHO, the best presentation of the RQ/BRPG d100 system that I've encountered.

The Lost Outpost, The OpenQuest Quick-Start Rules, and Adventure is a free taste of the new edition of the OpenQuest rules. 75 pages, hyperlinked and ready to roll ;)

This pdf is designed to get players and Referees up and playing OpenQuest, with the minimum of preparation.

It contains the following sections.

• Characters. A rundown of what an OpenQuest character is made up of, both in terms of numbers and concepts.
• Quick Rules. A concise version of the OpenQuest rules, enough to play the adventure.
• Combat. The rules for physical combat.
• Magic. The basic approach to magic, known as Personal Magic.
• The Lost Outpost. An introductory adventure set in OpenQuest’s example setting, the Empire of Gatan.
• A set of six pre-made characters. Players should pick one and get ready to play.

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Deal of the Day - Against the Darkmaster Core Rules

What is Against the Darkmaster? According to the Against the Darkmster Quickstart Rules (available at PWYW pricing, so please, grab the Quickstart before plunking down your cash for the full rules):

Against the Darkmaster (abbreviated in VsD throughout) is a tabletop pen & paper role-playing game of high fantasy, epic adventures, eldritch magic, and heavy-metal combat.

What is Against the Darkmaster inspired from? As we mentioned above, VsD is an epic fantasy game first of all. As such, it draws its main inspiration from the classic works of the masters of the genre, from J.R.R. Tolkien to Ursula K. Le Guin, passing through the two Terrys (Brooks and Goodkind) and their followers, Weis & Hickman, Jordan, and Williams. Anyhow, these are only the original sources of inspiration.

Against the Darkmaster is also inspired by the great fantasy movies of the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s and from the sword & sorcery genre. Think of The Lord of The Rings cartoon from Ralph Bakshi. Think of the cheap ‘80s barbarian movies. Think of the heartbreaker movies a whole generation was raised to: Dragonslayer, Krull, Labyrinth, Clash of the Titans, Legend.

Finally, think of VsD as a mix of all the above as seen through the eyes of a heavy metal music fan. And when we say “heavy metal”, we mean the original genre. The music of Malmsteen, Dio, Black Sabbath, Blind Guardian, Manowar, Iron Maiden. Lyrics and music bringing to life the very clash of steel versus steel, the power of elemental fire and thunder. These are all ingredients you will find in generous doses in the VsD recipe.

Why is it abbreviated VsD?  I'm guessing the original is in Italian, and that is the abbreviation from Italian. I could be wrong, so I'll be happy to correct it.

But really, WHAT IS Against the Darkmaster? For all intents and purposes, it is a clone of the Rolemaster rules. It never comes out and says to, but just looking at the cover, you can see the similarities.

I no longer desire to play rules as fiddly as Rolemaster, but for those that do, Against the Darkmaster Core Rules may be an excellent option. Normally 20 bucks in PDF, until tomorrow morning at 11 am Eastern, the rules are on sale for 10 bucks. Remember, the Quickstart Rules linked above are free.

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Kickstarter - Mythic Table (Open Source, Non-Profit VTT)

I'm a huge fan of Virtual Table Tops, which for brevity's sake I'll refer to as VTTs for the rest of this post. kLoOge.Werks (last updated in June of 2020) was one of the earlier ones I played around with. Screenmonkey (last updated in 2012) was yet another. Battlegrounds was another early VTT I tried, which is still in development. Maptools, iTabletop (I was a forum mod there briefly), Fantasy Grounds (1, 2, and Unity), Roll20, the list goes on. I've probably forgotten more VTTs than many readers have actually used.

All this is to give you my bonafides, not as a VTT expert, as I certainly am not, but as a consumer that enjoys following the development of VTTs and is still looking for that certain VTT that will hit upon all of my wants and dreams, even the dreams that I don't even realize I have.

This brings us to, in a less than direct manner, Mythic Table. An open-source VTT is NOT something I'm used to seeing, and although I am definitely NOT a programer (thus my love/hate relationship with Fantasy Grounds) I can see where a strong community could drive this software, and I think I want to be along for that trip, even if only in the passenger seat ;)

So, what does Mythic Table offer right now?

• Basic assets for out-of-the-box (ootb) playability - maps and characters.
• Campaigns - Viewing, joining, adding, editing, and removing campaigns
• Dice - Rolling, chat, security, rendering, persistence, etc
• User - Registration, login, authentication, guest users, and profiles
• Maps - Viewing, adding, editing, deleting, and more
• Smooth interface - User experience process, UI iterations, and user interviews
• Character - Viewing, adding, editing, deleting, frame, moving persistence, and more.

Stretch goals add more features, like Fog of War (a necessity for me) and World Anvil integration, and backers get discounts at the Open Gaming Network / Open Gaming Store, and at higher backer levels, World Anvil.

I'm a backer and I'm anxious to see how Mythic Table progresses. 

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My Thoughts on a Point About the Recent Candlekeep Mysteries Brouhaha

 

Something you Tavern readers might not realize is that I don't always drink the Tavern's Kool-Aid.....as in I don't read every post here and listen to every podcast or watch every YouTube video. I like Erik personally and enjoy the OSR, and I suspect that most people here are closer to my POV and less overactive Tavern fanboy.

I mention this because recently there has been some drama over WotC editors......editing a writer's submission to meet the needs of the desired publication. Erik posted about it at the Tavern, and I'll state my opinion....he didn't really hit on the important points of the problem very well. (Note: I pre-wrote this post days ago......)

BUT, to be fair, I thought he did a much better job on the YouTube video, and for you non-Kool-Aid drinkers, that would rather listen than read....go check it out.

Now I'm not going to insult you by going over everything I just suggested you watch, but I have a couple of main take-aways from everything I've seen and some of it is from personal experience, which I'll get into in a bit:

1. When you get hired to write something, there are established parameters that you need to conform to. Some are kind of understood, like "submit in English please" and others need to be (and usually are) spelled out, like "submit 5,000 words in this format". If you've been hired to submit a short adventure, regardless of word count, submit a short adventure! Regardless of word count, an adventure that is "a showcase to the deeper lore and history of the FR." kind of stretches the boundary for a short-story. Bringing back and or fundamentally changing a couple races......again stretches the boundary for a short story/adventure.
2. Most every writer has some big idea or a series of ideas.....I assume it's part of the creative process, but a successful writer, in addition to conforming to their client's desires (as expressed in written and unwritten standards mentioned above) does a good job of differentiating between what is and isn't important for the submission. Not the story, the submission. The piece of work that has to be edited and published to meet the needs of the publication itself.

Point #1 is a bit common sense and easy to argue/debate. If a writer is contracted for 5,000 words on an adventure to be written in English for D&D 5th edition and they submit 7,000 words for a French version of 1st Edition AD&D, the publication will just reject it outright and refuse to pay. No brainer there.

Point #2, and this is what I'm seeing in all this drama, is when a writer doesn't do a good job of meeting the needs of the project or audience. Usually this is when they meet the technical aspects of the contract and either ignore the unwritten aspects or disregard the needs of the publication or end-user.

Back when I was in charge of organizing the GenCon and Origins Tournament Adventures for the HackMaster Association/KenzerCo, I ran into Point/Issue #2 more times than I'd have preferred. I'm 110% certain that my early drafts my own writing attempts were guilty of this as well, but I'm sure I've gotten at least somewhat better due to dealing with other writers.......have I gotten good enough, not my place to say.

I will say that as an adventure editor, the whole idea of a writer trying to explain their big "backstory" and/or NPC "motivation", pretty much pisses me off*. I don't want to have to sift through pages of details of shit that is pretty much never going to come into play, or matter, at the game table.....and that is as an editor. As a GM I don't have the time or inclination to read three paragraphs of details, buried in four pages of text, on why one NPC feels a certain way about another NPC.

Show, don't tell.

If you need one NPC to be a dick in an adventure, simply give the GM that direction instead of having to make a reader....or end user, glean that information from a large body of text. If it is something the PCs won't see, it can probably be excluded altogether. Motivations and backstories are internal adventure points, not external, or party-facing. If you don't consolidate and/or dumb-down this unnecessary information, your editor will do it for you....

.....and he/she will hate your for it, and you'll probably hate them for it as well. Current case in point.

HackMaster Tournament adventures, back in the day, had a pretty standard format in that there were a specific number of encounters and there was a general rule as to the numbers and types of encounters. You wrote to a specific level range and while you could tweak things a little bit.....you want to swap out a trap encounter for another combat encounter, go for it.....but expect there to be more editing issues. Unless you inserted combat stat blocks in the body of the text, something I did (in addition to them in the end as a battle-sheet) a tournament adventure ran six pages or so (it's been a decade so my numbers are fuzzy).

I had an author submit twelve pages of content. It took me so long to edit that it would have been easier to just re-write it myself and use the basic idea for each encounter, but no I did the editing back-and-forth with the author. Now I was also the Head GM and as such I have to make sure that all my table GMs have what they need, when they need it, to run a table smoothly as all the tables play concurrently. Depending on the complexity of the adventure this might mean I give the GMs the adventure the week before. Usually a day's advance notice is sufficient because I'd take the time to prep maps and other game-aids when I could. I'd been known to provide battle-matt overlays and even monster tokens, broken out by encounter, so GMs could focus on running the game and not looking for minis or drawing maps.

Anyway this author was going so far as to try and provide me updates to the adventure the morning of the tournament, making sure he was clear enough on some NPCs motivation. It was all too much, and when asked for an evaluation of his adventure I gave some bluntly honest feedback.

If you are able to do so, I encourage you to look at the adventure T1 The Village of Hommlet. I'd argue that there's a lot of game play to be had, multiple game sessions' worth for certain. My PDF copy is 25 pages, counting the covers. The "Backstory" for the entire adventure is roughly a page and half, spread between the intro and some more on the ruins of the moathouse. Even that is a bit of  stretch because there is a generous three pretty much "read to the players" paragraphs and extra notes to the GM that are a mix of "backstory/motivation" and actual notes (like how some buildings aren't numbered). Everything else is condensed to a simple statement where needed.  

For example, entry 25 states that the herdsman "and the Druid of the Grove are friends". As a GM, that's all I need. I don't need to know that the herdsman's prized ewe that won a blue ribbon at the last Spring-Fair came down with hoof and mouth and the Druid spent two days on round-the-clock care, bringing her back to a state of excellent health such that the herdsman was able to sell her twin lambs later that spring for a record price, allowing him to afford his middle- daughter's dowry so she could marry up in social standing. The herdsman now considers the Druid of the Grove a friend and ally and makes a small offering every week.

Yes, I have been given this level of ridiculousness before.....I wish I had saved the files, but at pennies per MB of storage, it wasn't worth the hard-drive space.

Lastly, nobody values your story more than you do. This is a given and just suck it up! If someone values it enough to pay you five cents a word, then make sure they feel they got five cents a word value! Just because you think you are worth ten cents a word, or than your extra 1,000 words are worthwhile....well they just aren't. Deal with it...preferably in some self-evaluation and not on Twitter/Social Media.

*This is why I'm not a fan of overly detailed drivel, er backstory and motivation. My frustration at having to deal with pages of ultimately useless information and distillation of days worth of my wasted time spilled out into a truthful, but clearly negative review of this author's work. Now I definitely know better now how to appropriate review or critique a body of work.....I'd argue I knew then and refused reason, I created an enemy that day. I'd argue long-term wise this guy got his revenge and then some.

New Creature: Champignon Ubermensch (Mushroom Supermen for Swords & Wizardry)

 

Champignon Ubermensch (Mushroom Supermen)

Hit Dice: 4/7

Armor Class: 6/17

Attacks: Bite (1d6) plus Special

Saving Throw: 13/9

Special: Spores

Move: 6

Alignment: Neutral

Challenge Level/XP: 4 HD (5/240, 7 HD 8/800)

Campignon Ubermensch are the result of magical manipulation of a fungal species by a high-level wizard. Barely sentient fungi were imbued with intelligence, which being incompatible with the very nature of fungi, drove the newly aware fungi insane. Campignon Ubermensch seek decomposing bodies to feed, grow and reproduce, and are happy to help living creatures move on to such a state.

Their special attack is a Spore Attack, 5' radius (10' radius for 7 HD UM). Usable once per hour, all within the radius must save or be blinded for 1d6 turns.

Bodies of the victims of Campignon Ubermensch have a 5% chance of becoming one themselves in 1d6 days if the body is not burned.

https://www.tenkarstavern.com/p/ogl.html

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Indiegogo - The Fiend of Turlin's Well (S&W and D&D 5e)

For some reason, every time I read the title of this project, I see "Friend" instead of "Fiend". Then again, I am the same person that types "Time" for "Tim" almost all of the time, so maybe it's me ;)

The Fiend of Turlin's Well is billed as a "psychological horror adventure in a sword & sorcery setting, for 5e D&D and Swords & Wizardry." Its the first Necromancer Games/Frog God Games adventure that has come with a warning to the best of my knowledge:

A Quick Content-Warning On This One: The Fiend of Turlin’s Well is a psychological horror adventure in a swords & sorcery setting. It contains numerous gory descriptions and situations that go beyond the ordinary style of swords & sorcery fiction and are more what one would expect in horror fiction. There is a dark element in most sword & sorcery fiction, which we embrace as a part of that literary genre, but The Fiend of Turlin’s Well unquestionably crosses over from the swords & sorcery approach of “dark-by-implication” into the horror genre of “look-into-the-dark.” Many of our fans have asked for adventures like this one, but by the same token we don’t want to surprise or ambush fans who expect a pure swords & sorcery genre adventure. If you’re interested so far, then by all means, please read on …

 The Basics

The Fiend of Turlin’s Well seems like an ordinary city adventure at the beginning, set in the Turlin’s Well District of the City of Bard’s Gate, but gets darker and stranger as events move on. An unknown troublemaker is progressing from vandalism to kidnapping to murder, and the district’s civil order starts to come unraveled as the city watch remains helpless to stop the very visible crimes. The adventure is for introductory-level characters (level 1-2), but the players should be experienced; the courses of action aren't obvious enough for beginning players.

Spoiler Alert: For the GM Only

Torad Yarog, the Fiend, is not only a doppelganger with multiple personalities, he is also the captain of an inter-dimensional ship and a favored cultist of the Demon-Princess Teratashia, Mistress of the Gaps between realities. Hunting him down leads the characters to an old manor house in the city filled with gruesome evidence of the Fiend’s crimes, and clues that allow them to pursue the truth onward to the Death-Ship of the Roach Princess (soon to be released via Indiegogo).

No Pathfinder version with this one, but if you are a Patreon backer of the author he has permission to do conversion notes. Note, you'd still need a copy of the adventure.

12 bucks in PDF, 24 for the Print plus PDF. I'm in at Print plus PDF.

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Freelancers are Interchangeable Widgets or Cogs, or So I've Heard

You aren't something until you are something.

Freelancers are hired for a specific reason - to provide content at a price that is profitable for the publisher and that, hopefully, requires the smallest amount of editing and/or rewriting.

You may think what you've written is the closest thing to perfection that you've ever done in your life, but the reality is many writers feel that way about their work. What you actually are, as a freelancer, is a content provider. You aren't writing lore. You aren't presenting something magical. Well, maybe you are, but that likely isn't what your publisher is paying you for, and likely such material will fall to the might of the red pen.

Your submission will, hopefully, make enough money for the publisher to make a profit after editing, layout, art, advertising, and anything else that crops up. If it doesn't, the publisher won't be publishing for very long.

Your feelings are irrelevant. 

You are work for hire. You are not staff. You are working for spec.

There are many freelancers. Very few rise to the level that they are sought after by publishers and are followed by fans. The vast majority are interchangeable widgets or cogs in the wheel. They have a job to do and many others waiting in the wings to do it instead if they fail. 

It can be a nasty business.

Does that suck? Sure. But that IS the reality, and many gamers would give their left hand just to be published once by a major publisher, let alone WotC.

Self-publishing has its own hurdles and its own rewards, but you won't be an interchangeable widget with IP that you own, that you control. Something to think about when considering the place of a widget...

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Candlekeep Mysteries Fallout, Freelancing Drama

So, I've covered the Candlekeep Mysteries Freelancing Drama on The Tavern's YouTube channel, but I was asked to provide a summary on the blog side of things. Long story short (you can read the long story at BoLS):

WotC decided to do an adventure collection to be written by authors from marginalized segments of society. This is the same collection that had the wheelchair-accessible dungeon.

Graeme Barber, perhaps better known as PoC Gamer, was signed to write one of the adventures in question. As Graeme stated on his blog:

Its form and content had made it through the pitch and drafting process, and I had no reason at the time of submission to suspect that it would be subject to the edits and modifications that went into it. Especially because we (the writers in general) had been hired specifically because we were “fresh voices” and “new perspectives”.

So, what did Graeme submit?

He submitted an adventure with potentially world-changing fluff:

I determined that I wanted to link back to the Days of Thunder and bring the Grippli back, all by building on what had come before and that was current.

This delved deep into Yuan-ti lore specific to the Forgotten Realms, building on the schism implied in the Tomb of Annihilation about Yuan-ti that weren’t evil (or at least weren’t hostile) and just wanted to exist. The idea was that good Yuan-ti were working to hasten the awakening of the World Serpent, the mother goddess of the serpentfolk, by recovering an ancient tome from the crypt in the old temple (from the story in the book). The evil Yuan-ti want to stop them. The Grippli are caught in the crossfire.

The adventure started with finding the book, and there was a list of things the players might be looking for in Candlekeep. They would find the book, and the first part of the mystery was figuring out how to read both stories that were on the three cylinders therein. The stories were legends from the Batrachi Empire, involving the various frogfolk of the Forgotten Realms. This would reveal the temple, and then lead to the characters learning about the Grippli village. Further investigation revealed lore about both the Grippli and the Yuan-ti. The mystery then shifted to investigating what was happening.

The emphasis here was on the ancient nature and unknown materials that things were made of from the Yuan-ti side of things. The sword was a literal fang from the World Serpent, the scale mail made from a giant snake unknown in the modern era. Metal fittings were made of a mysterious copper alloy. The Yuan-ti had more nuance, and the adventure added a mythology and history to them that could open more doors if desired by the DM and players.

The Grippli were presented as having had patron deity return and bring them back up to speed with the gift of literacy in their ancient language; they had art, nothing was primitive; I used the terms simple and utilitarian, and the domed mud brick village was filled with colours and decorations. Their village was a mix of new made buildings and impossibly ancient buildings and edifices that had withstood the test of time. 

What was published? The adventure without the fluff:

 All references to the Batrachi, World Serpent, Days of Thunder, the tome, or any other motivations were removed. The Yuan-ti were reduced down to just being evil for evil’s sake for the most part (without the cut lore, it makes less sense), the Grippli had their culture stripped out and so on. Colonialist language and imagery around the Grippli was inserted as well, moving them from being simple and utilitarian with obvious culture and technology to being “primitives” who “primitively decorate” their thatched huts with crab bits.

Essentially, where you could see the welds and joins before, you could now see the chop marks and bolts. The story was reduced to a simple rescue mission against unmotivated baddies with confusing parts where bits of the original plot flashed up as absent. This was especially notable in that there was no plotline or reason for anything the Yuan-ti were doing; the conflict between the good and evil Yuan-ti was left completely unexplained until a tidbit at the end of the adventure that, without the cut content, made little sense. 

So, Graeme went on Twitter to complain that WotC butchered his work and he wanted his name removed from further printings of Candlekeep Mysteries. 

Here's the thing. WotC wanted a short adventure, not world-changing setting material. What Graeme wanted to write is fine for one's home campaign, but a bit too specific for a generic published adventure. His hissy fit in Twitter and his blog simply burned bridges, not just with WotC but likely with other potential publishers.

As a freelancer, you need to stick to the script. If you want to change the world, you need to write your own IP.

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Goodman Games Acquires Dark Tower from Judges Guild - Where Does This Leave the CSIO Kickstarter Backers?

Goodman Games announced over the weekend that they had acquired Dark Tower from Judges Guild. Not the rights to the property, the actual property.

Here's the relevant announcement:

So step back in time with us to 1980 and have a crawl through the only non-TSR module to ever make Dungeon Magazine’s cut as one of ‘the greatest D&D modules of all time:’ Dark Tower. Goodman Games has acquired Dark Tower from the Judges’ Guild, and will republish it in fully converted 5E and DCC RPG editions later this year. Director of Product Development Chris Doyle will lead the conversion to 5E, and original Dark Tower creator Jennell Jaquays will be included in design work on the new edition.

Strange, considering last May's announcement:

Goodman Games has stopped selling our previous Judges Guild products through all distribution channels. 

Judges Guild will no longer receive income from Goodman Games products now that sales of their titles have ceased. 

We have one remaining product to release, which is a collector’s edition focused on the works of Jennell Jaquays. Jennell’s story is one quite different from the views espoused by Bob Bledsaw Jr. Judges Guild and Bob Bledsaw Jr. have agreed to receive no royalties of any kind from this title. To say it bluntly: Bob Bledsaw Jr. and Judges Guild will not profit from the Judges Guild Deluxe Collector’s Edition Vol. 2 focused on the works of Jennell Jaquays. Goodman Games will match 20% of the proceeds of this title with donations: 10% to the Anti Defamation League and 10% to GLAAD. The funds that would have been used for a Judges Guild licensing fee will be included in this donation, as requested by Bob Bledsaw Jr. 

After this final volume, we have no plans to release future Judges Guild titles. 

Then there was the Kickstarter announcement from the Judges Guild Deluxe Collector's Edition Vol. 2 in November of 2020.

In lieu of royalties, Judges Guild has agreed to donate a portion of proceeds from the Kickstarter to benefit two special charities, as outlined below.

In lieu of a royalty from the production of this volume of the Deluxe Collector’s Edition, Judges Guild has agreed to donate their royalty to philanthropic causes, and Goodman Games will match that donation. Therefore, a total of 20% of the proceeds from this Kickstarter will be donated to charity. 10% will go to the Anti-Defamation League and 10% to GLAAD.

Those royalties would have amounted to about $8,500 from the Kickstarter. How far would that have gone to making the backers of the City-State of the Invincible Overlord Kickstarter whole?  Probably not far enough, but certainly closer than we are now, and I'm sure the monies could have been accounted for in whatever contract Judges Guild would have had to sign.

So, it begs the question - how much were Bob Bledsaw and Judges Guild paid for the rights to Dark Tower? Is that money being earmarked for the floundering CSIO Kickstarter, or is it going to be spent on hookers and blow - or some other such nonsense?

What changed from "After this final volume, we have no plans to release future Judges Guild titles" to "Goodman Games has acquired Dark Tower from the Judges’ Guild, and will republish it in fully converted 5E and DCC RPG editions later this year" in the course of 10 months? I'm guessing an $85k Kickstarter despite the bad publicity caused a change of heart...

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Kickstarter -The Evolutionary Mishap - a Mutant, Martial Arts Adventure

An alternate reality adventure for use with your favorite mutated animal martial arts RPG system.

Thom Wilson is one of the hardest working folks in the Old School Gaming Community. He seems to always be working on multiple projects, and this one, The Evolutionary Mishap Kickstarter, is truly neat. It APPEARS to be riffing off of the classic TMNT / After the Bomb RPGs, and if that's the case, they can easily be used with most any D20 based RPG of your choice. Sure, the classic system in question was fairly broken, but it was broken in some of the most awesome ways ;)

The Evolutionary Mishap PDF is 5 bucks, Print is 15, and print PLUS PDF is 18. Note, this is already written. Editing has commenced and layout should start in early April, so I expect a quick turn around from Thom, which is usual for him ;)

An adventure for new characters for use with your favorite mutated animal martial arts RPG system. Designed for use with the Megaversal System but easily transformed to the system of your choice.

When an explosion in a nearby section of the laboratory sends you and several other test subjects through an inter-dimensional wormhole, you suddenly find yourself transformed into highly trained, humanoids capable of speech and complex thought. You and your fellow lab animals now find yourself in an alternate version of feudal Japan and in the middle of war. Even worse, your existence in this alternate dimension seems temporary and your very life depends on returning to the world from whence you came—but how?

Note that the adventure book does not contain new RPG rules or mechanics - this is purely an adventure for use with the Megaversal system or system of your choice.

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On Fudging Dice Rolls

 

This weekend is GaryCon, though this year it's virtual. Raise a glass and/or roll some dice in remembrance.....you do you.

Earlier in the week I was chatting with a GM friend of mine, mostly getting her advice on a writing project I was (probably still am) a little out of my depth on. Of course the discussion strayed from the initial topic and in the process I was told that she was going to "stop fudging dice rolls".

Now I'll admit that my initial reaction was more of a "wait, what?" and thinking that's just wrong, but it really got me thinking about the role of the GM, and more importantly, how other people interpret the role of the GM as well.

Now I already know that some of your reading this may have already condemned this GM for her particular style......which is human nature if you have a conflicting style. I've always been a "by the roll" type GM, and player and it's served me well in the past*. Some games you really shouldn't even consider fudging dice rolls, like in DCC where the game balance itself comes from the brutality that is the random dice roll.

Now in this GMs defense, said dice rolls were more like changing a monster's hit point total or under-representing a damage roll to keep from killing a PC. I think most GMs do this as more of a story-telling perspective and to keep the action flowing. Of course I doubt the same type of GM would add hit points to a monster or bump up the damage roll against a PC in order to kill the character because they think the story would be benefitted, which is kind of why I'm against the GM screwing with dice rolls.

Now I can see a different GM fudging dice rolls to the same effect for a vastly different purpose. If I wanted to (well be a dick, but not exactly where I am going....) increase my chances of a Total Party Kill (TPK) or just wanted to hamstring the party in general, I'd fudge the dice obstinately in the "party's favor" to not kill a PC, but bring them down to like 1 hit point. Almost killing a character could be "dramatic", but also is more of a party resource suck than killing said PC. Sure, go ahead and use up your potions and spells to restore that character.......then you won't have them later and I can maybe kill off a few more of the party!

Now I get that this is a game and we play to have fun. I assume that most GMs that fudge dice rolls do so because they want to keep the status quo. They're the storyteller type....well a storyteller type. I'd argue that I'm a storyteller type GM as well, but I let the dice fall where they may......

......but I'm a lazy GM.

Yes, I'm the Arbiter of the game and have to decide what goes, but I'm telling a story, not necessarily the PC's story. The PCs might be the protagonists, but the way I figure...some of the story has to happen outside of the PCs actions...they just get to see the stuff that comes across their path.

Also, I'm not sure I'm good enough of a GM to properly balance an adventure, much less a campaign well enough to keep the adventure fun for everyone involved. Sure, most games have some rough guidance, but it's well....rough. I'm OK with dead ends, red herrings, and unbalanced encounters and adventures. The rough guidance given can get me "close enough" and my actions in shifting in response to the party isn't so much fudging dice rolls, but changing how the world...how the story...is tweaked in the first place.

Instead of changing a die roll I might add or remove some monsters from an encounter before the party starts the adventure. If they lose a PC halfway through I'm not going to change what they might face should they press on, but if I know that one PC isn't playing I might make that change before play starts for the night.

Having been a HackMaster (4th & 5th Edition) GM I have been guilty of the "Player vs. the GM" dynamic at the table. Of course that was more a role I was playing as I generally root for the PCs, but if they think I'm out to get them....well that's a bit of game-table drama in and of itself. Just one more thing that the players can overcome.....they can get over and "win" against the adventure and again of the GM out to get them. I was a big fan of the GM shield and everything.....

.....until I wasn't.

I think out of necessity I had a con game that I didn't have my usual setup so I was forced to play without a GM screen and started rolling out in the open. 

Changed my life.

Sure I was already a "as the dice falls" type of GM, but really the players would have to just take my word for it. Rolling in the open let me tweak the adversarial relationship just a smidge. Clearly I'm still a "killer GM", but I'm not faking any of it. Instead of thinking about how to balance the game in the moment I do some rough "math" before the game and let the dice help tell the story that the players nudge and I arbitrate. Much easier (i.e. Lazy) for me to manage. Sure this means that the players may push themselves too far and get themselves killed, which is clearly reflected in my kills stickers above.

My players have to trust that I'll put adventures in front of them they can probably manage. Is that really my job? not really.......but in real life we don't usually try to bite off more than we can choose, within reason. Now if the adventure or encounter goes South and the party doesn't react accordingly...their fault, not mine. Trying to manipulate things to make the adventure/encounter equitable is a lot or work...and I'd rather just take the lazy route and deal with the aftermath.

Hmm......I wonder....

Ok, took a quick break to see if Gary had anything to say about dice rolls in Master of the Game (an aside......holy fuck, this book is going for $70 now!?) Not seeing anything, but there is a bit about Killer GMs (I'm not actually one) and more about GM laziness, which I've more than implied in this post. Yeah...maybe I need to spend less time musing about fudging dice rolls and more reading Gary's thoughts on "Principles and techniques for becoming an expert Role-playing game master".

*I find it hard today to not leave this rambling without a PC story. For a con session I thought it'd be cool to try and roll up a Half-Ogre Fighter specialized in dual-wielding two-handed swords because who doesn't like two 1d12 attacks per round? The adventure was a gladiatorial arena and while I do not remember much from a Sunday morning con game a decade & a half ago, I do remember my PC being pushed off a 120' tower by a wall of force. Since my guy is looking at 12d6p of damage I asked if he could grab a sword in each hand and smile as he faced his impending death. This was HackMaster 4th edition so dice "penetrated", i.e. if you rolled a the top number on a die, you rolled again and added the result -1 to the total. The average damage roll should have been 48hp. Of course, since this is a story being recalled 15ish years later, the GM rolled poorly. Not a single die penetrated, lots of 1's and 2's. Oh and armor absorbed some damage....and Half-Ogres take 1/2 crushing damage, which falls...er, fall....under. Basically my PC managed to survive the fall and walk away from most certain death. Good times.