Golden Age

Ask anyone when the golden age of RPG gaming was or is and you are likely to get a lot of different answers.

Plenty of people know the rich history behind RPG games. Others probably only know the more recent games.

Where we are today there is a rich catalogue of systems and adventures. With the advent of the internet more people than ever before can publish their masterpieces.

But equally there is a sea of total chaff to wade through. Sometimes you have parted with cash and you feel cheated, other times you feel elated at what you have found.

When people had to get publishers and editors and all the other bits lined up for real world publishing, when they had to persuade someone (possibly themselves) to part with real cash to make this happen. Bad reviews would leave copies unsold, so quality was paramount.

Oh I'm sure people can probably reel off the bad ones but the people out of pocket more than anyone would have been the writers publishers etc.

So that leaves me at when do I think the golden age was/is? I think it is here, right now. Never before have gamers been able to connect with each other so easily globally. The resources are richer and more abundant than ever and gaming systems far more accessible. All this leads to a great environment for gaming. So let's all go enjoy it!

Completing an adventure

So. I'm so close to being able to playtest and release/publish the carnival of dreams that I can taste it.

However every step forwards also seems to have 2 steps backwards!I have a definitive list of what I need to do.

Pre generated character sheets are first on my list.
Then maps.
At this point it's time for play testing.
Commission the front page art.
Tidy up the layout and consistency.

Publish.....
Shout out to everyone that it is in the wild.

I figure it will come in at around 60 pages give or take. That's. A ruck load of information . Yes it's a one night adventure but the GM can use or ignore whatever they want. There is enough depth (I hope) to support less experienced GMs giving them lots to fall back on. For more experienced GMs, they can ad lib throwing in random NPC's and flexing the story to make it their own.

In the meantime while I continue on that I am waiting for MonkeyBloodDesign to start their Midderlands Kickstarter. Slated for 1st of July. Can't wait!

Till next time.

UK Games Expo

Last weekend I was fortunate enough to get to the UK Games Expo. I have to say it was a fantastic event and certainly something I plan on doing again.

So here are some musings from the event!

Getting their Early(ish) the traffic was ok. I arrived around 10.

I didn't plan what I was going to do! My son some friends and I sort of wandered the stalls, chatted to a few people and generally soaked up the atmosphere and spent money for 5 hours.

There was a lot of Pathfinder stuff there! I have to say I knew Pathfinder is popular but the amount of stuff there for Pathfinder was breathtaking. I've tried reading the Pathfinder rules and I just couldn't get on with them. Maybe I need to give them another read through but to be honest I like the simplicity of Swords and Wizardry. If you haven't checked it out then do, you can get the PDF from Frog God Games for free so worth checking out!

There were a load of new and upcoming board games. I wish we had sat down and played a few!

There were board games... I mean lots and lots of board games. Lots of stalls, and lots of variance in prices which is interesting. I saw the same board game vary from 26 - 35 pounds so it pays to scan around.

Oh and while on the subject of what we saw, there was quite a lot of Cthulu based stuff which all looked pretty fantastic.The Black Hat stand was brilliant, nicely laid out with some great stuff on there. 

There were some good Fate powered products there, but I wish there had been more, they were swamped out by D&D Pathfinder and Cthulu. Oh and Doctor Who .... which did look very tempting!

I may just have missed some of the products though as I know at least one book my mate turned over had a Powered By Fate logo on the back.

So what would I change ... well here goes with the plan for next year!

Plan is the word .. I would aim to plan the visit with more structure. So I want to get round all the stands for sure ... more than once as you always miss stuff! However I want to break it up and play some of the great board games people are demoing!

If I can pre-book then I want to pre-book on some of the RPG stuff, especially anything from from 4 - 6 ish time frame. 

I want more money to spend .... I need to start saving now!

So there you go, in a nutshell. Take cash, plan the trip, have fun!

The Home Straight

Well, as a journey, trying to get my first indie published RPG adventure has taught me a lot so far. So as a quick summary:

• For every note written down there are 20 things I have generated in my head.
• I have to try and get those 20 things out, and in a way that makes sense!
• The first thing I write is likely tosh and will require re-writing.
• Art makes things really look better.
• Layout is really not the easiest thing in the world.
• Layout takes way more time than anyone could imagine if they haven't had to do it.
• When I layout a document, it flows subtly differently to when it is just in a text document. I need to change some of the text to take this into account.

So after those quick lessons learnt I'm heading into what I see as the final stretch! So whats left to do ...

• Lay everything out. (I have a PDF with everything in but the page numbers need sorting, and the formatting is only done for the first 3 chapters)
• Commission the art I want to finish it off. I have 2 pieces in, and 2 out on commission at the moment. My rate of art commissioning is dictated by my available funds :\
• Finish the pre-generated characters (I'm setting myself a goal of 1 per night and I need 8, one for each super power).
• Get the maps and insert them in.
• Get it play tested.
• Make changes from play testing.
• Publish.

Ok so looking at it now that list looks quite daunting, but really compared to getting everything written originally it isn't worrying me :) 

So as I sit here I have a PDF that is starting to look like a finished article. Still a work in progress but the bulk of the content is there. I find myself querying whether I put too much information in, whether it is overkill, this is meant as a one night adventure. I know one of the great things with Fate is that there is so much scope to expand the story and go in any direction, it shouldn't be too constrained. But then I also, and this is just my opinion, think that if I'm asking for someone to pay for something, then I should give them as much information and content as possible. They can use as much or as little as they want, but the seeds should be there for them to build off, or use in their entirety.

Only time will tell. With this being my first piece of work I'm sure there will be things I get wrong, and I will need to work on that and improve what I deliver. But then I think we could use that as a great way of living life. I will try, I may well get things wrong, but I will learn and I will strive to get better.

On that note I'm going to go work on a mechanic for a totally different RPG.

Is simplicity the key?

So. The other day I read a rather well known and popular systems SRD. I didn't get far into it before calling it quits. It looked way too much effort to be fun, and that was just to work out if I hit something. I closed it down and haven't been back.

Fast forward to today. I was playing in a Cthulu Black Hack adventure. Minimalist rules, but enough to really let you do what you want to do. The tension, the atmosphere all really build a fantastic game.

I have also in the meantime read some other OSR rule sets, or rules that people would put inside that sphere, and none of them filled me with the sort of dread the first SRD I read did.

So this evening I got to thinking, is minimalist rules they key. I'm starting notes on my second RPG adventure to publish and I think I want to follow those rules. Keep it small and tight, but let the players and GM expand it where and when necessary.

I'm still keen on the idea of a library of one night adventures. Simple to pickup and play, but with enough to them that they can be played more than once, and they will be intriguing to play through.

So there you have my musings, maybe if the simple systems got more limelight more people would see the beauty of the RPG and fall in love with the game style.

RPG: Head in the world and Immersion

So I recently delivered a bespoke adventure which for want of a better way of putting it was a commission piece. Now I'm moving back from that piece into finishing off the Carnival of Dreams adventure.

What I have found is that transitioning my thinking from someone elses world, back into worlds of my own making is in its own right a process.

My process works as follows.

Step 1
Read the source material. If this is the authors RPG world, or anything else they reference in their material. I read through everything in its entirety and then I leave myself a few days. This lets it start sinking into my head. During this time I won't work on other projects, I'll doodle and make notes but on the whole I stay away from other items.

Step 2
Read the source material... Now you are probably thinking hasn't he already done this! Yes. But with every reading the world they are building strengthens itself in my head. Political intrigue, monster habits, the time of day the local occult hold their ceremonies. It all seeps into the brain. After completing my second reading I ease off again giving it chance to settle in the back of my head.

Step 3
Read the source material .. Ok I realise I sound like a broken record now, but this one is different! Now I start making notes. Predominantly key facts figures and events that I think could be used to create adventures, or be wound into them to support the atmosphere.

Step 4
Using the ideas from step 3 I create what I call pitches. They are shortish phrases or paragraphs that give a feel for what I'm thinking the adventure could be. These then are presented so that the client can select what they are most interested in.

Step 5
If they didn't like any of the ideas, it is back to Step 4 to work up some more pitches. If there were multiple that they liked the idea of I then add a bit more depth to those and re-pitch. I keep following this process until I have what they want.

Obviously Steps 4 and 5 are redundant if the client already has an idea and just needs someone to write it up.

Step 6
Write, investigate, write and re-write. So start putting in the key sections, the key ideas of what happens in each section. Stopping to investigate elements that may be required. So for example checking the speed of horses, or the methods spies use to identify an unknown contact. Each element is written and re-written until I am happy with it.

Step 7
Submit the piece. If they are happy great. If they aren't back to step 6 and a re-write of anything they aren't happy for. The client/customer is king. This is their world and has to represent what they want.


What I'm finding is that after this process my head is still "in" that other world. I'm a strong believer in getting yourself in the right frame of mind. I spent time reading and re-reading source material to help in scene setting. After being really immersed in that I'm now struggling to let that world go, to get back into this piece.

Now there are a lot of differences, different rules system, different backgrounds, history atmosphere etc. I also have loads of other sub ideas, potential adventures and items that are floating around for that world, ones that I hope will be given chance to see the light of day! Only time will tell on that though.

In the meantime I need to settle my mind and re-immerse into my world. Oddly enough I have never had this problem before, possibly because I have always worked on purely worlds of my own creation, and shifting my mind from one of my own worlds to another of my own worlds is a seamless transition.

All told the process was really enjoyable, and if I'm lucky I'll get to build on those.

For now I wait with baited breath to see how the adventure is received (I believe the person it was written for is happy with it). I shall continue to chip away at putting my brain back into gear to get the Carnival of Dreams moving!

Writing Process - Carnival of Dreams

Let me catch you up if you want to skip all those previous posts! I'm on a journey to write and publish my first RPG adventure. I want to go on to publish multiple adventurers, hopefully improving as I go!

The last month or so I got super busy with writing a totally different adventure, but at the moment I'm back onto Carnival of Dreams.

One of the things about Carnival of dreams is super heroes and super powers, but a more tongue in cheek version. So as I write I tend to start with ideas, then I re-write, and I change and I morph what I have. Eventually I settle on something, for better or for worse, hopefully the better of the options.

As an example of this I was working on the farting super power ..... oh come on what non serious super power set would be complete without some form of flatulence! Each power has its cost, what you can do, and a description. The point of this post is to show the different options and the way things change.

Note the items below would potentially need work and rework in their own right. I have put them in with poor grammar and typos as I hammered in the keys, as it is a look into the process.

So my first description was this ....

A look of peace spreads over the heroes face as their inner tension releases into the world around them. Dirty green gaseous tendrils stretch out from the hero seeking their enemies.

Now that just didn't hit the spot for me. Time to try again ....

A look of relief spreads over the heroes face their whole body seeming to deflate, the tension built up in their guts releasing into the world. Dirty green gaseous tendrils thread their way out of the hero, winding and stretching away searching and probing for enemies.

.. ok getting there but still not what I'm looking for ... maybe third re-write is a charm ..

The heroes eye starts to twitch, the corner of their lip twitching in concert with their eye, their brow furrowed as tension builds up in their whole body. As quickly as the twitching starts it ceases, a look of peace spreading across their face, their body slumping as the tension leaves their body. Murky green gaseous tendrils wrap around their torso before spreading out probing for enemies. If the tendrils touch an enemy they speed up expanding around the enemy smothering their face, pushing into their eyes and nostrils and any available orifice.

..too long too much repetition and just not quite right. Feels like a bit more off track ... dive in for number 4 ...

The heroes eye and mouth twitch, their brow furrowing as tension build sin their whole body. As quickly as it starts the process ends, a look of peace washing over their face their body slumping as the tension leaves their body. Murky green gaseous tendrils wrap around the hero before reaching out for enemies. If the tendrils touch an enemy their flowing speeds up as they expand around the enemy smothering their face and pushing into their eyes nostrils and any available orifice.

...ok a bit better but still too long for me and not quite flowing how I would like it to, back to the keyboard ...

The heroes eye twitches, their brow furrowing as tension contorts their whole body. As quickly as it begins the process ends, their whole body sagging with relief as the tension oozes out of them. Murky green tendrils wrap around the hero before reaching outwards. If the tendrils touch an enemy their flow speeds up as they smother their face, pushing into their eyes, nostrils and any available orifice.

.. Right I'm semi happy at this point. It is certainly closer to what I was looking for. But maybe still not quite there. Lets change it a bit ..

The heroes body spasms as it tenses. A look of peace suddenly washes over their face as the tension oozes out of their bum, murky green tendrils wrapping around the hero, before probing outwards. If the tendrils touch an enemy they seek their eyes, mouth or any available orifice.

Ok I like that one. Might needs some polishing but on the whole I'm not upset with it, but I'll give this one more shot to see what I can get ...

The heroes back arches as spasms wrack their body. As quickly as they begin the spasms stop, a look of peace washing over their face as the tension oozes out of their body, pulsing green tendrils wrapping around the hero before probing outwards. If the tendrils touch an enemy they pulse more quickly as if excited, searching out the enemies eyes, mouth or any other available orifice.

Ok so the last one I like as well. I can already see things I would tweak with it. But I guess what I'm trying to get at, is when you see something written down, in print or online, the author probably put a lot of different versions into it. You may like what they put, you may hate it. The thing is they may well have put a lot more time into trying to get it to resonate with what they are looking for than you realise.

So I'm still not sure on which of the last two I like the most. But I do know I will carry on writing.