Throwing Rocks in Texas (Part Four)

Matt Finch runs Mythrus Tower

After “Expect the Unexpected” wrapped up, I had time to grab an early dinner before I started preparing for my Saturday night game of Dungeon Crawl Classics. Unfortunately, that meant I had to skip the Artists’ Panel scheduled right after “Expect the Unexpected.” I’d be kicking myself for this a little later.

My belly filled and my scenario, pre-gens, and accoutrements together, I slipped back to the Longhorn Room in time for the NTRPGCon Auction and—more importantly—the announcement of the winner of the 2012 Three Castles Award. Regular readers already know I won in absentia last year for The Dungeon Alphabet and was a co-nominee this year for Realms of Crawling Chaos with Dan Proctor. 

Unfortunately, I was tipped early that Realms was probably not going to win when Doug asked me to present the award since I was in town. Disappointing, but I expected my name in the mix again was unlikely to result in another award.

Jim Ward runs Dragonlairds on Sunday morning

Doug and Mike introduced me prior to the auction and I threatened the audience with reading the hour-long acceptance speech I wasn’t able to deliver last year and got some laughs. I then pointed out that if I neglected to announce this year’s winner, the award was technically still mine. All laughter aside, it was an honor to finally be able to thank some of the judges in attendance and those of you who’ve supported The Dungeon Alphabet with your dollars and glowing reviews. It was with a mixture of pride and sadness that I passed the torch on to Kevin Crawford for Stars Without Number. Congratulations, Kevin!

Having already blown most of my budget (or so I told myself), I slipped out after the award announcement and finished up the last little details of preparing for my DCC session of “The Fane of St. Toad” scheduled immediately after the auction concluded. I had my Brave Halfling Old School Game Box (the Erol cover, natch, and now signed after “Emirikol”) stuffed to the gills with DCC notes and was ready to roll.

Saturday night games at cons are always dicey (and not in the good way). Exhaustion and drinks take their tolls and not everyone makes it to the table. My game had seven players registered, but only three from the list turned up. Luckily for me, I had three other eager players accost me before the game and beg seats, which the low turnout allowed me to grant them. Unlike “Emirikol,” whose players were largely unfamiliar with DCC, five of the six players at “St. Toad” had copies of the rulebook with them and at least passing acquaintance with the rules. After a quick rules overview, we hit the ground running.

“The Fane of St. Toad” is the first full-length adventure I wrote after getting involved with the OSR and it is dedicated to Dave Arneson. I hadn’t looked at it since I started working on Stonehell, and I always get a little nervous revisiting old work. Surprisingly, it still worked for me. I updated it to DCC, smoothed out a couple of rough edges, and made some changes so that it wouldn’t be completely predictable to someone who had read the original. In my own opinion, it turned out great.

Those red words: all toads

The players spent very little time exploring the upper level of the Fane (but enough time for them to soak up the ambiance), heading down the Undercroft where they rightly concluded the good treasure was. Down there, they encounter really, really crappy mummies (my Zocchis were again rolling cold and I couldn’t strangle a poor sap to death to save my life), tore up a creepy orgy chamber (and inadvertently discovered a cache of vials when they struck off a particular protrusion from a statue), and then faced down a big honking cavern of toads. The battle was pitched against the hopping menace, but with a lot of spellburning and sleep spells, and charm spells, they overcame the toads—but not before the halfling in the party found the “sleeping” avatar of St. Toad and decided to battle it hobbito a toado.

In an eerie repeat of “Emirikol,” the elf in the party called down the power of his patron and the party was near indestructible for many, many rounds and enjoyed a healthy bonus to their rolls to boot. I did manage to get the cleric swallowed by the avatar, but out-of-the-box thinking with a Word of Command (“vomit!”) got him out of its belly and the Toad was slain, leaving the party very rich and the session at an end. Alas, I didn’t get to sic the giant Toad idol on them as they tried to leave with their booty.

The Not-Be by Jennell Jaquays

During a break in “St. Toad” I ran into Tim again and he started talking to me about something called a “Not-Be” and I honestly had no clue what he was going on about. Finally, the penny dropped. A couple months before the convention, Bad Mike sent the word out that the con was looking for funky, unique monster submissions to present to the artists during the Artists’ Panel for them to draw. The end results would eventually be judged, featured in an adventure, and the winner would have a miniature sculpted of the monster. When I read the call for monsters, I drafted up a quick entry: “The Upside-Down, Inside-Out Thing That Should Not Be” or “Not-Be” for short. It turned out that Jennell Jaquays brought the “Not-Be” to grisly, two-dimensional life at the Artists’ Panel and it was a big hit. And I missed the whole thing.

The rest of the evening, although late, was a lot of fun. I talked up my upcoming releases from Goodman Games with the DCC players and signed a few books before heading back to the ballroom. There I talked about Stonehell with Bad Mike, editing with Tim, and got the lowdown on Jennell’s next professional leap (and got to see the “Not-Be” for myself). The hour was late and after collecting my winnings from the silent auction (Call of Cthulhu 5.6.1 autographed by Sandy Petersen, Secret of San Fransico, and Cthulhu Dark Ages—what can I say? I love me some Call of Cthulhu and spent less than I would have at the store), I called it a night.

Erol, a gorilla, and I wait for the shuttle to the airport

Sunday was all about saying hello and saying goodbye. Frank Mentzer introduced me to Peter Kerestan of Palace of the Vampire Queen and Wee Warriors fame. I had breakfast with Steve Winter and my favorite fan from Gary Con, Zach Glazer (after chatting with Erol Otus and Jeff Dee while waiting for my breakfast to arrive). Allan Grohe introduced me to Chris Holmes, son of J. Eric Holmes, who turned out was one of my fellow cavemen in “Expect the Unexpected” and we got to playtest Chris’ board game of “Pirates vs. Ninjas vs. Zombies vs. Monkeys” (or something like that). The Ninjas won, but not before proving that if you really want to playtest the beejezus out of a game, Allan and I will put it through its paces.

There were of course many people I didn’t get to say good-bye to or spend enough time talking to during the con, but hopefully 2013 will correct all that. I’m going to try like hell to make it down again next year. Writing this close to three weeks after the events of the convention, there are many events, people, and good conversations I’m forgetting, but I do want to thank all my fellow attendees for welcoming this New Yorker down to Texas. The fact that so many of you took the time to introduce yourself and compliment me on my work (and demand autographs!) means a lot to me. For those of you who don’t do it as a vocation, writing is an extremely lonely pursuit and it’s usually just me vs. the computer screen. Getting out and meeting people who my work has brought some entertainment to means the world to me and so long as you keep wanting more, I’ll keep writing it.

Thank you all!

Mike.

Three Castles Award Finalists Announced

Over on the NTRPG Convention website, the finalists for the 2012 Three Castles Award have been announced. This year’s contenders, in alphabetical order, are:

• ASE1 - Anomalous Subsurface Environment by Patrick Wetmore
• Realms of Crawling Chaos by Daniel Proctor
• Stars Without Number by Kevin Crawford
• Tome of Adventure Design by Matt Finch

The finalists now move on to this year’s judging committee consisting of Dennis Sustare, Sandy Peterson, Steve Marsh, Zeb Cook and Rob Kuntz. Congratulations to this year’s nominees!

One Hell of a Bookend

Again, let me extend my thanks to everyone who helped me get to this point. I remain honored and very much humbled by your support.




In case you're wondering, the award has an encumbrance of 80 cn.

Thank You All Very Much

As reported over at Grognardia, The Dungeon Alphabet received the first Three Castles Award last night at the North Texas RPG convention, culminating a process that began back in October of last year. I am immensely honored and humbled that the judges, all of whom have many years of experience in the game industry, chose my debut book as worthy of the award. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the convention this year to accept the award, so I’ll have to present my acceptance speech here.

I was honestly surprised to discover that the book had won. After the final nominees had been announced, I was certain that Jim Raggi’s the Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Roleplaying was going to take the award and I sent him an email to wish him luck and to say that I thought LOTFP: WRPG was the title to beat this year. Jim replied that he was certain the Dungeon Alphabet was a shoe-in, which goes to show that not only does Mr. Raggi have a better sense of prophecy than I do, but that writers are wracked with self-doubt about the quality of their own work. In this case, I am pleased to have been proven wrong.

This is not to slight the other nominees. I own a copy of Rob Conley’s Majestic Wilderlands and found it to be a great book. Plus, as a fellow Goodman Games alumnus, I simply have to support his efforts and wish him well. Jonathan Becker’s B/X Companion has garnered its own fair share of acclaim and he too came out of nowhere to produce a book that was welcomed and respected by the old school roleplaying community. It was an honor to be included amongst them and I certainly hope they continue their efforts and submit their follow-up work for adjudication next year. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for them.

Winning this award is a fitting coda for a very strange and unexpected chapter of my life. I don’t speak much about my personal life on this blog, preferring to keep such matters to myself outside of the occasional game-related anecdote or observation. But in this case, a revelation is in order. A little over three years ago, I was quite literally homeless, living in my car and in skeazy motels when I could afford it. My life was in shambles and I was trying to follow a wildly-spinning compass that provided no direction. Luckily, before things could get any worse, I managed to find new guidance and started putting my life back in order.

Part of that process involved rediscovering what I enjoyed doing, which led me back to my earlier love of roleplaying games. That rediscovery guided me to the then burgeoning old school renaissance and then to this blog, a venue where I hoped to record my efforts to return to the hobby I had enjoyed and to give something back to the online community that had welcomed me. I expected nothing more.

Then, in November of 2008, what I considered a throwaway series of posts intended to buy me some relaxation time away from the blog caught the attention of the gaming blogosphere and catapulted me into the upper echelon of old school game blogs. This resulted in my getting noticed by Joseph Goodman, who approached me with the opportunity to expand those essays into a book. As a native New Yorker, I was skeptical (“What sort of scam is this?” was my first impression upon reading his email if I remember correctly), but some research allayed my fears and I started down a most unexpected path.

Like a lot of gamers, I remember wanting so badly to grow up and work at TSR. I read the TSR profiles in Dragon magazine with great interest, imagining how cool it would be to work with what appeared to be the most diverse and zaniest crew my young mind could comprehend. And while my interests shifted as I grew older and began worrying about making a living that could pay the bills and/or allow me to create art, I never truly lost my desire to maybe make games for a living. Joseph Goodman was kind enough to take a chance on an untried writer and designer to give me that opportunity—something which I will always be grateful for.

The Dungeon Alphabet continued to grow after I submitted my draft, nurtured by Joseph Goodman’s efforts. The occasional emails I received on its status staggered the mind as Joseph gave me progress reports on who was signed up for the art: Easley, Holloway, Roslof. Only Dee escaped the drag net due to other obligations. When the email that Erol Otus was doing the cover arrived, I knew that there must be some mistake. This was all intended for somebody else and an oversight at the Karmic Bureau had obviously occurred. I waited patiently for celestial agents to arrive on my doorstep and inform me that I’d be going back to sleeping in my car down by the river now. But that never came. The book, however, did and you fine, discerning folks embraced it and praised it. It remains (probably for only a short while longer) the most successful book Goodman Games has produced.

The success of the book and its suitability for winning this award does not rest solely on my shoulders and I’d be a fool and hypocrite to suggest otherwise. My writing merely served as a framework that Joseph Goodman provided the land for. Jeff Easley, Jim Holloway, Doug Kovacs, William McAusland, Brad McDevitt, Jesse Mohn, Peter Mullen, Erol Otus, Stefan Poag, Jim Roslof, Chad Sergesketter, Chuck Whelon, and Mike Wilson made that frame aesthetically appealing. Peter Bradley made sure the beams were lined up and the concrete had settled. Elizabeth Bauman ensured that the floors were level and free of typos to trip over. And David “Zeb” Cook, one of those people covered in Dragon’s TSR Profiles which I had read with great interest decades ago, stepped in to cut the ribbon and welcome visitors across the threshold. Without their efforts, The Dungeon Alphabet would still be a moderately successful, three-year old post series and nothing more. They are as worthy of this award as I am. For simplicity, I’ll keep it at my place, but they are all welcome to stop by to see it any time.

The Dungeon Alphabet led to other opportunities, the first being my other nominated book, Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls. I’d like to think that that book had something to do with my receiving the Three Castles Award as well, allowing me to demonstrate my design talents above and beyond the construction of interesting tables and instructive essays. Stonehell Dungeon would never had occurred had it not been for the work of David Bowman and Michael Shorten, both of whom I’m very grateful to and who I hope continue to produce and share their own creations with a wider audience. You guys both have talent you’re keeping under the bushel basket. Stonehell also owes a debt to Dan Proctor of Goblinoid Games who assisted me with my questions and was impressed enough to ask me to play with his Lovecraft action figures in that horrific sandbox know as the Realms of Crawling Chaos.

Despite these successes, it’s not been an easy year. Like a lot of Americans, I was hit by the downturn in the economy. My career is always somewhat dicey at best, being largely dependent on grant monies and other financial windfalls that can blow away all too easy in the financial breeze. I’ve been out of full time work for over two years now, making end meet with frugal living and by the occasional royalty check my game design work earns. Needless to say, any opportunity to do paid design work and writing is a welcome one, and I find it impossible to say no to those opportunities. (If you’re reading this and are looking to hire a new and now award-winning designer and writer, feel free to contact me. I can be there in a week if it’s a full time gig.) This award came at a time when I’ve been feeling especially low. It was a welcome respite from the doubts that have been plaguing me. Now, I’m filled with all new ones, the kinds experienced by the winner of “Best New Artist” each year in the record industry. Do I share the ultimate fate of Hanson, now? I shudder at the thought.

I think that I’ve carried on long enough. I’d like to close by offering my sincerest and deepest thanks to my friends who’ve supported and encouraged me during the last few years and to those designers who’ve welcomed me across the line between gamer and professional and offered me their own insights and wisdom in the process. And of course, I give my complete and utter gratitude to my family for being there for me even when I wasn’t. I love you all.

Michael Curtis
June 5th, 2011

Miscellaneous is the Largest Category

Here’s a few bits and pieces that I wanted to touch upon before I forget. Look for real posts tomorrow and the weeks to come.

1) RPGNow and DriveThruRPG are having a Game Master’s Day Sale from now until next week (somewhere around Tuesday or Wednesday). Enjoy 25% off or more from a slew of publishers including old school favorites like Brave Halfling Publishing, Fat Dragon Games, GM Games, Goblinoid Games, Goodman Games, Rogue Games, and more (apologies to those I missed). If you haven’t picked up a PDF copy of say The Dungeon Alphabet (let’s get it to a Popular Electrum Pick, people!) or Realms of Crawling Chaos for that shiny new iPad, now is the time to do so. It’s also the perfect opportunity to buy something nice for your own poor, beleaguered game master who puts up with your antics week after week with no thought of himself…

2) Obfuscate and Deny: Remember that thing I said about starting the Stonehell sequel as soon as I finish my current manuscript? Well, forget it. Another gig stepped in to take its place in the queue. The good news is that it’s not only a funky fresh opportunity, but it’s something that any old school gamer would be a fool to not be a part of. The turnaround time is short so there will still be plenty of time for me to finish Stonehell before year’s end (crossed fingers knocking wood).

3) Local Gamers Take Note: To anyone in the tri-state area looking for something to do on the weekend of April 15-17, turn your browsers to the homepage of ICON-30, Long Island’s biggest science fiction convention. This year’s gaming guest of honor is Mr. Frank Mentzer.

4) All the finalists’ entries for the Three Castles Award have been sent to their doom the judges for adjudication. Quote one unnamed judge: "The package arrived today, in good condition. Since there were no gold coins hidden inside, I doubt any of them will win... In fact, I was astonished by the excellent quality and professional appearance! I was afraid I would be judging amateurish entries hand-written on legal pads (well, maybe not that bad). What a great group of products for the first award. I hope all five get good recognition from this. Looking forward to judging them." I knew I forgot to put something in my parcel…

Five Books, Four Authors, Three Castles, Two Months, and One Long Wait

In case you missed these posts here, the finalists for the first Three Castles Award have been publicly announced over at the NTRPGCon forums. The five works going on to the final adjudication by Paul Jaquays, Tim Kask, Robert Kuntz, Dennis Sustare, and Steve Winter are:

B/X Companion by Jonathan Becker
LotFP Weird Fantasy Role-Playing by James Raggi
Stonehell Dungeon by Michael Curtis
The Dungeon Alphabet by Michael Curtis
The Majestic Wilderlands by Robert Conley

At the risk of sounding full of myself, I was confident that one of my two entries would make it to the final round, but having both of them accepted was quite unexpected. They are in astounding company and I wish James, Jonathan, and Robert the best of luck. No matter who wins, we all benefit—and I don’t just mean we four authors. Hopefully this award and the names attached to it will draw more attention to this thing of ours and encourage others to continue (or start) writing, designing, and illustrating classic role-playing game supplements that support the style of gaming we prefer.