The Search for Plastic Toys from Our Youth

There seems to be something in the air of late. Old gamers are casting about for clues regarding the plastic fantasy toys they played with or heard about in their youth. Dan Proctors is looking for some and A Field Guide to Doomsday has had a childhood memory identified. It seems I’m no different, because I’ve had an itch that refuses to be scratched for some days now and I’m appealing to you for help.

Back in the 1980s, I had a playset of plastic figures roughly equal to scale in army men. I think they might have come with a vinyl play-mat, but I cannot be certain. The set was a mix of different fantasy creatures, with each cast in a single color. Now, from what I can recall, one of the figures was the spitting image of a shambling mound, complete with carrot nose. There was also a “magma man” figure that seemed to be living fire and molded in appropriately red plastic. There may or may not have been a dragon figure and other plastic landscaping pieces such as trees and rocks and perhaps a dragon’s den. I certain that this isn’t some fever dream remembered as truth and that I did in fact own this and perhaps other sets of the same ilk.

Does this strike anyone as familiar at all?

EDIT: Whoops! After looking for days and posting this, I stumbled upon a clue. I guess it was the lava man who looked like the shambling mound!

EDIT AGAIN: Nevermind. Answered my own question.

Why is the OSR not producing a fanzine like this?

There are many fine amateur and semi-professional publications out there in the OSR, but I sense there’s a niche that needs to be filled. We need our very own “armpit slick” fanzine complete with covers done in the style of the men’s adventure magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. Hell, most every cover blurb for the stories inside scream to be transformed into a roleplaying adventure (OK, maybe not “The Diet That Can Double Your Sexual Batting Average,” but still I make a good point).

I can’t do it. I’m booked solid and I’d make a lousy publisher anyway, but couldn’t you see a quarterly OSR fanzine done in this style and containing adventures for Call of Cthulhu, Weird Adventures, and other RPGs of that ilk? Man, I’d be all over that slick, especially if it occasionally did tell me about “The Nation-Wide Shame of Teen-Age Sin Clubs” and where I might find one in my neck of the woods.

Signs & Portents

So by now you’ve all heard that WotC’s re-releasing the trio of core 1E books for D&D. There are of course caveats to the release (limited release, available in North America only, new covers, quality and quantity yet to be determined, etc.), but on the whole this seems to be a good thing. Maybe it’s merely a publicity stunt by WotC to try and generate some goodwill amongst older gamers or a test run to see if there’s a market for similar releases in the months ahead. Frankly, I’m not privy to any inside information, so this is speculation at best.

Others more versed is such matters have undoubtedly already addressed some of the issues I’m about to mull over, but I’ve been head-down trying to catch up on projects and haven’t had much time to wander the blogosphere and the forums to see so for myself. Please forgive me if you’ve seen this hashed to pieces already.

Having mulled over this news for most of the day, I’m wondering what this means in the long term for the OSR and the retro-clones. If this is indeed a limited run, never to be repeated again, the re-issue won’t have much of an effect other than generating more interest in the “obsolete” forms of gaming we’ve all been harping on for years now. That, I think we can all agree, would be a good thing.

However, what if this is a sign that WotC is dedicating themselves to finally getting their ducks in a row and cleaning up the mess they made for themselves with the release of 4E? I’m not edition bashing, but I think we can all agree that the release of 4E was a bit of a fustercluck whose long term effect was to fracture the consumer base. The wide differences between 3.5 and 4E systems made it difficult to use material across editions, thus impacting sales. And as much as we like to harp on the fact that Paizo is now at least equal to WotC in the market, can anyone dispute that Paizo’s success was not predicated by WotC fumbling the D&D ball?

Unless you’ve been marooned on a deserted island for the last few weeks (and if that’s the case, why are you reading this blog and not out drinking your bodyweight in booze and chasing people with lax moral standards?), you know that WotC’s plan for D&D Next is to end the edition wars once and for all and bring us all back under the D&D tent. Obviously, there’s been debate as to the feasibility of this goal. I’m not going to go on record to say that WotC can’t do it, but it’s going to be a hell of a task to do so.

Continuing in this vein (and remember this is mere speculation), what happens if the 1E books sell like hotcakes at a lumberjack competition? Wouldn’t the next logical step be to see if more out-of-print editions have a place in the market? Is the OD&D bookcase set we’ve been asking for, one to put in the game closet next to Monopoly and Trivia Pursuit, an inevitability? Again, this is a good thing.

Unfortunately, if this is indeed the future of things to come, it’s going to have an impact on the OSR publishers out there, especially those individuals currently responsible for the retro clones available. The success of Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, and OSRIC is based on the fact that the rules they are reproducing are out of print and increasingly difficult to acquire. There’s already a percentage of the player base that shuns the retro clones on the grounds of “Why play this when I already have the ‘real’ books?” Admittedly, the intent of the retro publishers is to keep these types of games available in a market that had no official support, to provide a means for amateur and not-so-amateur designers to create material for the games they love, and to keep this form of gaming alive. However, I think it’s going to be hard going for these same publishers if WotC steps back into the marketplace and re-introduces the real thing. Those of us active in the OSR might continue to support the old school retro clones, but when push comes to shove, the average gamer is going to pick up Basic D&D over Labyrinth Lord. It’ll be a shame if the OSR did win the war as some posts have claimed in recent months, only to succumb to its own victory.

Now assuming that WotC continues with an OGL with their releases, the 3^rd party market will survive. We must remember that the original plan for the OGL was so that 3^rd party publishers would take up the slack and produce adventure modules for D&D that are notoriously small sellers and don’t constitute a large part of the overall profit pie. WotC could continue to concentrate on the big sellers and let the little guys nibble on the crumbs. As we know, this isn’t the way things worked out, but this might still end up being the case for the publishers currently supporting the OSR. I’m not crying that the sky is falling, but I doubt anybody with a stake in the old school market isn’t at least considering this possibility today. I sure there’s been a few closed door conferences going on over at Paizo HQ in recent days as well.

I might be reading too much into this announcement entirely and completely outside the realm of reality. Nevertheless, I think there are interesting times ahead for us all in the months to come and I’ll be watching future developments very closely. The reprints of 1E have certainly lit a fire under my own ass in regard to getting Stonehell completed and out the door on the off-chance we’re in for a very severe sea change in the hobby and the industry that supports it.

Question Authority—Especially if that Authority is Me

I’ve noticed something about my own players and several others that I’ve shared a table with over the last two years, a phenomenon that I’ve not been able to deduce the whys and wherefores of. It might be a strictly local trend, one that doesn’t occur elsewhere, but it could also be indicative of the way the game has changed after the release of the 3rd edition. Maybe you’ve seen this happen too.

My players don’t ask a lot of questions in-game. This is completely alien to me because that’s all I ever do when I’m playing. Maybe it’s because I’m a referee or a designer or simply because I play these games to temporarily lose myself in the fantasy we create and becoming invested in the shared world makes it easier to do so. Most of my players, however, and others that I’ve gamed with are seemingly content to lay back and assume a completely submissive role in the play experience. Unfortunately, this can be fatal to their characters.

Here’s a recent example: I was running a quick filler game using the material I created for my Out of the Box campaign. It got off to a good start with the players going to the tavern and one making an inquiry about any recent goings on in the area. The barkeep revealed that some settlers had been attacked on the road recently, and had been kidnapped by forces unknown. I was happy. The guys were interacting with the campaign world at large, which was a big step forward for some of them. But then old habits kicked in.

They learned that the local temple couldn’t provide any healing potions, but heard a rumor that a witch in the woods might be able to. Rather than ask any more questions, they figured they’d just stumble around in the woods for a while and run into her. Things got worse after they decided to leave the safety of the keep and go dungeon-crawling. There were three options on a map that a local had, all of which were merely names on a paper. The party picked one at random and headed for it, not even pausing to see if anyone knew anything about the site they had chosen. As it turned out, the dungeon they picked was scaled for 3rd level characters and the expedition resulted in a massacre.

The same tendency occurs during the actual adventure. In my Stonehell game, the PCs occasionally encountered phenomenon or items that they didn’t recognize. Occasionally a player might ask something like, “Does my magic-user know anything about this?” or “As a dwarf do I recognize that?” When I answer “No,” they seem to take that as “No and you never will.” The thought of seeking out an NPC expert doesn’t even occur to them.

Compare this to my approach in the Labyrinth Lord game I’m participating it. We were running through the Village of Hommlet and the party, after learning of the Moathouse, decided to head out there and loot it. Immediately. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I cried. “Let’s see if we can’t learn a thing or two before we go out there.” My magic-user asked around town and learned of the backstory behind the Battle of the Moathouse and talked to a few soldiers who had been there that day. In doing so, he got a rough sketch of the exterior and learned that there was a single known dungeon level underneath the fort. He also got Rufus to kick in some troops and offer up a bounty for exploring the place. Sometimes knowing these little facts and whether you’re bound to run into goblins instead of orcs can save lives, especially fragile, 1st level lives.

After a bad run in with the frogs, my magic-user consulted with the local druid, thinking that if anyone could offer some advice about giant frogs, he’d be the guy. This lead to us getting a magic orb that created a cloud of monstrous flies and helped draw off some of the big batrachians in our path.

Maybe I’m just an exemplary player or perhaps reading all those “advice to the players” articles in Dragon back in the day stuck in my brain. Whatever the case, I’m just not seeing this trend in the gamers I’ve been playing with and I’m wondering why. Is it merely because they are “poor” players or is this symptomatic of a larger cause? Have video games that feed the players tidbits of information at predetermined points made gamers more passive? Did including a “Gather Information” skill make players think that the only way to get important information was to make a skill check and when that skill is missing from their plate of options they believe that information is unavailable? Am I a sucky referee who runs a game that provides no impetus for the players to peer beyond the surface? I really don’t know.

This had been on my mind a lot lately, mostly because I’m re-examining what types of games I enjoy running and because of some changes in my regular group. I look at Jeff Rient’s Twenty Questions and part of me wonders if it’s even worth answering them if nobody’s going to make those inquiries in the first place. This also explains my request that folks interested in play testing not “lay back and think of England” but get excited and get involved. A great deal of my lack of enthusiasm for continuing to run Labyrinth Lord comes from this absence of investment in the shared world we’re supposed to be creating around the table.

I’m not trying to be harsh or rude to my players, but it’s something that I have noticed in the year and a half we’ve been together. Not from all of them, but enough that it affects me and my own interest in running a game. And with my plan to introduce a new setting/game that I consider to be my most personal and immersive campaign ever, these concerns make me think that this is not the right time or group to do so.

Am I alone in noticing this trend in gamers, especially younger ones? Is this a singular phenomenon or has this affected your own games as well? I’d really like to diagnose this affliction and see what might be done to address it.

I’ve Always Wondered

It’s not been a good week for blogging, but it has been a productive one for writing. I’m closing in on the end of one manuscript and hoping that I have enough time to tackle a short piece of my own before I move on to the next project. I’m also doing a rundown of the various gods and goddesses of Stonehell Dungeon for an inquisitive fan (Be done soon, Mike). I’ve got some more Dragontale posts coming and some assorted other bits in the pipe. Look for them next week. Until then, let me leave you with this observation:

Today, while out and about, the familiar strains of The Pretender’s “Back on the Chain Gang” came strutting out of my car speakers. As I listened to the song, bopping along to Ms. Hynde, I again wondered about the provenance of one of the song’s lyrics.

Ever since I learned of the existence of Robert E. Howard's tale “Pigeons from Hell”, I’ve wondered if Chrissie Hynde is alluding to Howard’s work with the line “Got in the house like a pigeon from hell.” If that is the case, it officially makes Chrissie Hynde the coolest rock n’ roll goddess the world has ever seen.

Dream Casting and Sacred Cows

Now that At the Mountains of Madness is reportedly dead, it won’t be too long before the Hollywood McNugget machine starts looking for their next franchise with a built-in fan base to exploit. I’m honestly glad that Mountains met its demise. While del Toro is a fan of Lovecraft and has the chops to pull off a Mythos film, I remain skeptical that At the Mountains of Madness needs to see a big screen treatment—especially one featuring Tom Cruise. If I want Antarctic horror, I’ll watch The Thing.

Although it’s been popular to say that Hollywood is creatively bankrupt, recent trends do more to support this statement than dismiss it. In tough economic times, the movie industry is looking for sure bets, which often means doing sequels, reboots, or developing properties that have an audience already attached, such as comic books and popular fiction. This is, for fans, often more curse than blessing.

Back during my own time in the Hollywood salt mines, I was involved with a project to develop Michael Moorcock’s Elric saga for a TV miniseries. In retrospect, I’m relieved that that project never saw the light of day. And although Elric, like other properties, is one which constantly drifts through Hollywood in various stages of production, I think the world can grind along without the need to see the White Wolf battling CGI monsters. I’d actually prefer an Elric rock opera before a big screen blockbuster. Nevertheless, the possibility of an Elric movie remains a constant threat.

This speculation led to some intriguing ruminations on my part, mostly because I’m currently revisiting Moorcock’s creation. Taking a page from Grognardia’s Open Friday and Cyclopeatron’s recent revelation that blog readers prefer posts they can say “Me too!” to, I present these two conundrums to my loyal readers: “What genre series/stories would you like to NEVER see adapted into film?” and “If you had to see a movie based on a story or character you didn’t want adapted, who would you accept in that role?”

For the last question, I’ll break the laws of time and space and allow you to choose any actor, person, or personality, living or dead. For example, if I had to see an Elric film, I would love it to star Iggy Pop circa 1975 as the White Wolf.

As for adapted stories, my own answers are both Elric and the Fahfrd and Mouser tales. I can’t even speculate on who I would like to see take on the latter roles in a worst case scenario as I’ve already created the perfect version of the Twain in my own head and no living actor could compete with my own creation.

How about you?

An Evaluation of Watchfires & Thrones: Year One

Please forgive the cross-posting as this article appears on both Archive of the Rotten Moon and The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope. It appears on the former since it concerns the Watchfires & Thrones campaign and has been repeated on the latter as it deals with old school roleplaying campaigns in general and may be instructive to those thinking of starting or at the beginning of a classic D&D game.

This Sunday marked the one-year anniversary of our Labyrinth Lord campaign. In the past twelve months, we’ve met thirty-nine times for a rough total of 150+ hours of gaming. The original intent was to have a game schedule of three weeks on/one week off, making for forty meetings a year. As you can see, we came very close to hitting that mark.

The Hard Numbers and Mechanics of the Campaign

When the campaign began, each player created two characters to help them survive the very lethal first two levels of campaigning. Many of those characters have come and gone, and with the exception of one player, no one has an original PC left on their roster. The largest experience point total for a single character is 14,848; the lowest is 2,500. We’ve had two players leave the group due to real life issues and a third player who had to take two extended leaves of absence for the same reason. Of the original three players from the first session, two remain active.

Player character deaths were rife in the early months of the campaign, but stabilized as the survivors advanced in level, a change was made to the critical hit house rule, and the players themselves learned from the mistakes of the past. There have been a total of twenty-two PC deaths (two of which were later raised from the dead) and three NPC deaths (including two dogs). The most PCs lost by a single player is nine.

The campaign itself has spanned two worlds: the original pulp sword & sorcery venue largely centered in and around the city of Rhuun and my traditional D&D campaign world of R’Nis. Between those two worlds the party has explored a dead sorcerer’s tomb, a temple dedicated to the Black Goat, a megadungeon that was built by aliens, Stonehell Dungeon, the ruined cellars of a wizard, a series of insect-infested caves, a ruined monastery holding the blood of a goddess, and (tentatively) a crumbling temple inhabited by hobgoblins. They’ve also participated in a street fair gone amok and defended a frontier homestead against an army of goblin raiders. Although many of the adventures have been homebrewed, other material has come from “The Ruined Monastery” by James Maliszewski, Night’s Dark Terror by Jim Bambra, Graeme Morris, and Phil Gallagher, The Horror on the Hill by Douglas Niles, Temple of the Ghoul by H. John Martin, The Veiled Society by David “Zeb” Cook, and “The Pits of Bendal Dolum” by Doug Lyons.

There have been many rule selections and changes over the past year, and some have worked better than others. The campaign began using the Original Edition Characters rules for Labyrinth Lord, but changed to straight Labyrinth Lord minus thieves after two sessions, mostly due to the fact that I wanted to have monsters with variable damage dice. Character generation was 3d6 in order and two rolls allowed for starting hit points. Once the PCs left the pulp campaign world, Advanced Edition Companion rules were added to the game and starting attributes changed to 4d6 arranged where desired. Thieves also became available to players at that time. Critical hits were initially handled as a “20” results in double damage. This rule changed around the middle of the campaign to a roll of “20” meaning full damage. This resulted in less PC casualties. Clerics cannot cast spells at 1st level and must wait until reaching 2nd level to access their first daily prayer.

My intention was to run an open sandbox campaign where the players could choose what adventure seeds to pursue against a backdrop of a vibrant, constantly changing, living world. The plan was that the PCs would build their fame and fortune and eventually acquire or build a stronghold of their own. This endgame would effectively bring this portion of the campaign to a close.

Evaluation of the Campaign and its Progress

In my eyes, the Watchfires & Thrones campaign has been a successful one. I approached the game with an equal mixture of excitement and trepidation. This was to be my first time in the referee’s chair for more than session or two in almost a decade. I was confident with my decision to use Labyrinth Lord as the ruleset, but simply knowing the rules cold is by no means a guarantee of success. There are too many X factors that can scuttle a campaign before it hits its stride and I was out of practice in how to handle them. To my relief, the rust came off quickly and I’ve been able to handle most of the in and out of game issues with aplomb.

It is the rare campaign that is 100% successful, however, and Watchfires & Thrones is no exception. Looking back on the past year, I can see several missteps that I wish I had avoided and paths I should have taken. These might not have always been noticeable to my players, but they were glaringly apparent to me.

My first mistake was succumbing to gamer A.D.D. on the cusp of the campaign’s start date. Although I had been preparing to run things in my longtime campaign world of R’Nis, I decided at the last minute to switch gears and do a more hardcore pulp swords & sorcery setting instead. This meant that I effectively put myself back to square one in regards to prep work, which would continue to haunt me during the early sessions. I felt that the setting never really came to life for the players as I myself had no clear understanding of the campaign world outside of a handful of idle thoughts stung together on the flimsiest of frameworks. I was constantly trying to do work on the campaign world and was barely a step ahead of the players at any given time, which if you’re trying to use your roleplaying game as a recreational escape is not the best route to take.

That constant scramble led to my making the decision to transport the entire party to my regular campaign world via a magical portal. This allowed me to keep the campaign moving with the established characters while giving me access to all the work I had already done. But there were unforeseen, long-lasting ramifications to that decision.

The swapping of campaign worlds also occurred not long after the release of Advanced Edition Companion for Labyrinth Lord. Since the world of R’Nis had been forged in my days of playing AD&D and its inhabitants skewed in the direction of those rules, I threw open the floodgates of character generation for all subsequent PCs starting play in the new world. This meant that formerly verboten classes like thief, assassin, monk, and others were now playable. It also affected the manner in which attributes were rolled. Rather than using the 3d6 in a row method, I allowed “roll 4d6, drop one and arrange.”

While this decision didn’t result in a gross unbalancing of the game, I personally feel that it didn’t add anything to the campaign either. I had been concerned that the campaign was missing something by reducing the probability of someone rolling scores good enough to play a ranger or paladin and I wanted to allow those classes to be played. But after representatives of those classes entered the game, I discovered that they really don’t bring all that much to the table and, like I discovered with thieves, a campaign can roll merrily along without their presence. After having seen both methods of character generation in play to compare and contrast, I’ve come to the conclusion that 3d6 in order is the superior method for classic style play and I will likely be sticking to that system of character creation from now on. I’ll also be limiting other material from AEC in future games as well, preferring to rely on homebrewed materials that make the campaign world more uniquely my own over “stock fantasy D&D.”

My other major issue was my failure to take the desires of the players into account when working on the campaign. I should have questioned the players more often and earlier to better determine what they wanted out of the campaign. The problem, to my eyes anyway, was that I had anticipated running this wide-open sandbox world, one where the players would be free to chose from any number of adventure seeds. I did a lot of preparation to allow for this once we swapped worlds, only to discover that the group was pretty enamored with Stonehell and would happily continue delving there until they reached name level, uncovered all its secrets, or the campaign collapsed—depending on which came first. As the old line states: “Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight…and don’t bring the whole sandbox when the guys just want to play in a hole in the ground.” It’s not a game-breaking issue by any means, but it does mean that I could have used my energies in a more productive manner by concentrating on my campaign tent-pole instead of the surrounding, never-to-be-visited locales.

There were (and remain) a few minor quibbles and reevaluations, but since this campaign was intended to get me back up to fighting weight, referee-wise, I’ve looked at these as lessons rather than problems. Amongst them are whether I will have future starting players roll up two characters and run them off and on. There are benefits to this, especially at starting level, but the dividing of experience amongst multiple characters makes for a slower level progression, which in turn limits me in regards to what fun monsters and magic I can throw at the party. I may allow a player to run multiple PCs in the future, but this would be by player choice rather than campaign design.

Somewhat connected to this issue is the use of training to advance in level, resulting in a time and money cost. I’m currently using training in my game, but I’ve come to the conclusion that this is baggage from AD&D that doesn’t have a place in original or basic D&D and their retro-clones. I’ve got a simpler system in mind, one that allows for more player choice when it comes to advancement, and I think my next and subsequent campaigns will do away with training completely if this other system works as intended.

One final problem bears mentioning as it is something every referee who runs a game long enough encounters: burnout. A few weeks ago, I was feeling this to great effect. My energy levels were running low and there was even one session that I really didn’t feel like having because I was at the end of my creative tether. I thought the campaign might be overdue for a temporary sabbatical as I recouped and regained my energy. However, I’ve continued to push through these feelings and it seems that I’m getting back into the groove of the game. The last two sessions have done wonders for my attitude, and although other real-life concerns remain to plague me and I have a tendency to want to do anything but sit inside and play once spring arrives, I’m hopeful that by continuing to work through the slack times the campaign will continue until it reaches its natural ending. My advice to other struggling referees: Keep pushing until you break on through the wall. It’s worth it.

Despite all these concerns, which may be more apparent to myself than my players, the Watchfires & Thrones campaign has been a great source of fun for the guys who come to the table each week. Some have stated on more than one occasion that this campaign is simply the best one they’ve ever played in. I’m prone to be modest in the face of such praise, but so long as everyone else is having a good time and keeps coming back for more, I’ll accept those compliments as intended.

Minutes from the Society of Torch, Pole and Rope – February Edition

I suppose I should make one more post before February becomes a memory and the winds of March begin to wail. My latest silence is the result of a mixture of intense activity and general malaise which is never the best of combinations. Let me bring you up to date before I dive back into the mess I have wrought.

I’m currently working on finishing up another book, one that’s been being honed for the better part of a year. With each refinement, the book comes closer and closer to what I envisioned when I originally pitched it, and I’m pleased with its growth. I’m nevertheless looking forward to when the final words are written and it moves off my desk and on down the line. I’m certain that if you’ve liked what I’ve done in the past, this next book will tickle you in all the right (and sometimes wrong) places.

As soon as this book is finished and I get the OK to move on to other things, I’ll be starting on the Stonehell sequel—no bullshitting around on that. As much as I love my megadungeon, knowing that I still owe the final book to you fine folks has been weighing on me like a quarrel-pierced seabird. I need to make sure that I have enough time to not only write the best book I can, but to deliver it before year’s end. Having been down this path once before, I’m fully aware of the detours and outright catastrophes that can cripple a book’s chances odds of meeting a deadline. The sooner started, the sooner finished, and that’s best for everyone.

Once Stonehell 2: Wrath of Kobolds is completed I will emphatically state that it is unlikely that I’ll be returning to the world of self-publishing any time soon. The occasional PDF or 32 p. module, maybe, but no more full length books—at least not ones that I have to do every damn thing to make happen. I enjoy writing them; I like better it when someone else works the magic to turn the manuscript into a book.

On the home front, I’m running out of steam on my Labyrinth Lord campaign. I wish I had better news, but between finishing the new book and looking at doing the Stonehell sequel, I just can’t muster up the gumption to get excited about my own fantasy world. A sea change is most definitely in the air, and I’ve already apprised my players that a sabbatical from "Watchfires & Thrones" may be in order for a time. Potential candidates have been discussed with no consensus on a replacement. We will be helping playtest a certain unnamed RPG in the weeks ahead, and if that proves to be to everyone’s satisfaction, the prospect of running a regular game of said unnamed RPG before it sees actual publication has an allure I find difficult in resisting, especially since I’m pretty impressed by what I’ve read so far.

To completely contradict the last paragraph, I’m doing work on another fantasy setting for another group, a world that’s been tremendously entertaining and inspiring. I get together with friends every two months or so for a night of board and card games, and these sessions have been a lot of fun. We manage to try out at least one new game each time we meet and the results have been 95% positive. One of the regulars at these sessions expressed an interest in trying out a fantasy roleplaying game (she’s never played before, but has an interest in the genre) back around Christmas time and I agreed to put one together. The book has slowed down my progress in assembling the introductory adventure, but that’s changed in recent weeks. I finally found a hook and system that works best for the mostly inexperienced players attending and also scratches all the itches that are being left untouched by the Labyrinth Lord campaign. It may just be the greatest setting I’ve ever developed.

What I like best about the setting is that it is personal. I’m crafting a game world that is not intended to see publication in a book or be blogged about here. I’m not writing it with one eye trained on commercial consumption concerns, but instead on the entertainment of just myself and a close circle of friends. After having spent so much time over the past two-and-a-half years writing with the public in mind, it’s nice to have that freedom again. I may talk about the setting some day, but for now it’s most definitely a case of “You have to be there” to enjoy it.

And that, my friends, is that. See you when I see you again.

A Cup of Tea, a Cookie, and Some Graph Paper

I'm feeling both exhasuted and elated as I write this, so excuse me if we take the long way 'round.

The past several weeks have seen me hard at work at on my campaign sandbox. There has been a growing interest in the world outside the boundaries of the PCs’ home base of Blackpool and beyond the night-haunted halls of Stonehell Dungeon. This is a good thing, in my opinion, for there is a lot to be found just over the next hill or past the deep, dark forest. These are all very Interesting things that I want to explore along with the characters. As such, my focus has been on the world at large and away from the dungeon.

And then we had a session like yesterday’s, one that saw the party return to the depths of Stonehell in search of money ASAP. The raising of one of their number has left them very, very poor and they knew that beasties with treasure were just waiting to be slain in the ancient prison.

We had a tremendous amount of fun prowling the halls of Stonehell and accomplished so much in that session that I very much fell back in love with my megadungeon. Normally, when I get home after a Sunday session, my main goals are to eat dinner, decompress, and enjoy a nice cup of tea and a cookie in my jammies, for I tend to be mentally and physically wiped out after playing judge, jester, and sometimes executioner all afternoon. Not yesterday, no sir. Instead I cracked open my big tablet of graph paper and got back to work expanding, changing, and breathing more life into my dungeon.

Other projects have kept me away from Stonehell for the summer and I am forced to look at what I have accomplished with a realistic gaze. It is with a heavy heart that I must admit to both myself and to you patient souls that it is extremely unlikely that I’m going to meet my self-imposed deadline of year’s end for the Stonehell sequel. Not unless I suddenly hit the lottery and can devote all my time to single-mindedly writing the manuscript and creating the maps in Photoshop. That’s the bad news, and you have my sincere apologies. Hopefully, once the things I have been working on see daylight—if they see daylight—you’ll forgive me for my neglect because they are some pretty cool projects in my own humble opinion.

The good news is that my players’ adventures in the old prison serve as constant inspiration for new and unusual ideas. Their weekly dungeon crawls, both in and out of Stonehell provide me with more than just ideas—they also give me the energy I need to turn those vague concepts into actual words on paper. That’s energy that I simply didn’t have the first time ‘round on Stonehell and I am greatly indebted to Dave, Jack, Jud, Matt, Pete, Rob, and Tom (and possibly Joe too, but he’s just joining the fun so we’ll have to see) for putting up with my nonsense week after week with grins on their faces.

It’s after a session like yesterday’s that I sit back with my cup of tea, replay the game’s events, and realize that I’d be perfectly happy running a whole campaign set entirely within the confines of my megadungeon, no matter how much I want to explore other vistas within the game world. I must simply be a contradictory referee at heart. I can go off and paint every little corner of the campaign world in delicate details, but part of me—the beer & pretzels, “let's talk in funny voices,” and chuck some dice while moving little guys around the table part of me—is perfectly at home with the simple pleasures of the dungeon crawl. And if that’s wrong, I don’t care about being right.

When things go as they did yesterday and the vibe around the table is pitch perfect, I remember what drew me to this pastime in the first place. And, as I work away joyfully on my very own megadungeon, I imagine that I feel what Dave and Gary must have felt all those years ago as they created this pastime to give to us. That’s a magic that can't be scribed into a spellbook and memorized no matter how hard one tries.

That I have been lucky enough to not only create a giant dungeon playground of my own but to have other people take it up and make it their own continues to astound me. I dreamed, as I imagine most referees have at one point or another, that one day people outside my own players would be able to take part in my creations and gain some pleasure from doing so. I consider myself very fortunate that I’ve been able to do exactly that, and I am grateful to all of you for embracing my creation for yourselves or for simply expressing an interest in reading what I have written. When I finished Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls, I had what I believed was a realistic goal of selling fifty copies of the book in either hard copy or PDF. As of last night, almost 375 copies have been purchased. The book also played a very minor part in a seminar on megadungeons at this year’s North Texas RPG Convention—something I would have loved to have witnessed.

I’m a very happy referee right now and I owe that happiness to you folks, my players, my fellow creative members of this thing of ours, and my own long-avoided acceptance of the simple philosophy which had led me here: “Stop worrying and love the dungeon.”

Let’s roll for some wandering monsters…

...And Things Are Good

The day's game session is over and everyone had a good time. The recap has already been finished and the pictures have been posted. Next week, the game is taking the weekend off so I'm free to not think about the campaign for a day or three and enjoy a well-deserved break.

I found The Chronicles of Amber Vols. I & II for sale at my local library for a buck apiece. Having never read any of the Amber novels despite an extensive fantasy background, I look forward to tackling them when their appointed slots in the reading schedule come up.

I've received the cover piece for my unnamed book this week and I'm very pleased.

Tonight, very faintly, you can smell the first hint of autumn drifting in the evening air.

I hope all is well with you.