Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG Beta: 6/8/11

Word on the street is that the Open Beta of Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG begins on Wednesday, June 8th. You can grab a PDF of the rules off of the Goodman website on that day, and then on June 18th, go down to your FLGS for Free RPG Day to pick up the DCC RPG Adventure Starter module. Then go home and see what all the fuss has been about.

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

Summer Sabbatical

After much thought and soul-searching, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Society is no longer high on my list of “Things to Be Done Now!” So, rather than painfully pretend it is, I’m effectively shuttering the place for the summer months so that I can concentrate on the projects that require the most attention. Posts may occur from time to time, but I’d rather them be unexpected surprises than disappointed my readership by having them awaiting posts that never arrive. While I’d rather be able to do everything I have planned for the summer months, it’s obvious to me that something has to go to prevent anxiety and creative log-jams, and unfortunately the Society is that thing.

Be well, have a safe and happy summer, and I see you when I see you, hopefully with a Stonehell sequel almost completed in hand.

-Mike

25% Off Stonehell Dungeon (and other fine OSR tomes)

I should mention that Lulu is having a 25% off sale through May 31st. Use the code CYBERMAY305 at checkout to save on all your Lulu purchases to help kick off the summer. Or as I like to think of it, "Buy 4 Stonehell Dungeons, Get the Fifth Free!" Use those pretty pictures over there on the right to speed up your shopping day.

School’s Out Week: 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons

We’re a day late and a dollar short on this post. Please excuse us; it’s been that sort of week.

I can think of no better way to close out the School’s Out Week than by turning our attentions towards what many consider the poster boy for “what went wrong”: 4th Edition D&D. I’ve had time to weigh the pros and cons of the latest incarnation of the venerable roleplaying title due to my recent (and highly unforeseen) involvement with the title.

A few weeks ago, one of my Labyrinth Lord players announced that he’d be orchestrating the D&D Encounters program at our FLGS and he kindly invited me to attend. He was well aware of the fact that I’m firmly in the school of “less is more” and that 4E is really not my “go to” edition for D&D (he said, understating the subject), but left the offer open. When the next Wednesday rolled around, I stopped by to make sure he had enough players to go through with the matter. Having experienced what it takes to get a group of gamers going, I wanted him to succeed and if that meant having to sit in so he’d have enough guys to run, I was willing to do so. And that’s exactly what happened due to some miscommunication with the store about scheduled start times and dates. Thus, Mike took up the role of Brandis the human paladin and set forth to defeat the darkness (literally).

My previous experience with 4th edition was the singular playtest my group ran of D&D Gamma World some months ago. This time, I’d be on the other side of the DM’s screen. Out of respect, I kept my mouth shut and my mind open and did my best to treat it as a roleplaying game and not a miniatures battle game. The results were mixed.

First off, let me say I’m not here today to tear down 4E. I realize that I have no axe to grind anymore, if ever, with WotC. I’ve developed a lot of sympathy for the guys down in the design trenches and have the sneaking suspicion that they’re not really happy with the direction things have taken and would much rather be paid to take the game in another direction. Since a steady RPG design gig is a rare bird, I don’t blame them and might do the same thing in their position.

Also, any criticism that follows is not directed to Dave, who has taken up the challenge of running the Encounters sessions (which is a really bad choice for a name because it sounds too much like the swingers’ group that meets weekly at the A-Frame). He’s running the program they sent him and is inhibited by the material. I also respect anyone who is out there running a game rather than sitting at home bitching about the fact they’re not.

After sitting through two Encounters sessions, I’m ready to speak openly about my experience with 4E. It isn’t much different from the impression I got when running D&D Gamma World and is one I’ve seen repeated in several places. Ultimately, when the books are put away and the chip bowl has been emptied, 4th Edition D&D is a decent skirmish miniatures game. When paired with the weekly, two-hour long Encounters program, it becomes even more engaging. The players have a set goal and know that they’ll be headed home once it’s finished, not unlike putting aside two hours to watch a movie. I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed the past two weeks.

The Encounters program is obviously geared toward a specific type of gamer, one with limited time and perhaps lacking the means or social skills to cultivate a group on their own. Each session starts with a little light roleplaying that is essentially a guise to determine what this week’s goal is. Are we to defend the orphanage? Kill the bandit chief? Maybe pursue the sinister gnome who ran down the alley into the obvious ambush? Once that’s out of the way, the tactical map is put down, the counters are placed, and the dice start rolling. When the last body hits the ground, you pack up and head on home.

This isn’t a bad way to approach 4E and it is much more enjoyable to me than I suspect participating in an ongoing 4E campaign would be. There is no investment needed other than a small block of time each week. My character is pre-generated and all his powers are neatly written on the back of the laminated character card, so I don’t have to drop a dime on confusing rulebooks (which one is official this week?) or power cards (I’m not spending another $10 because I want to play a warlock this time). I sit down, chuck some dice, and go home. Of course, the downfall to this is that I’m not invested in my character any more than I’d be with my race car piece in a game of Monopoly. This takes me to my real difficulty with 4E.

I cannot lose myself in the game the way I can with older editions. This is not the fault of the DM or the adventure, but the rules themselves. The rules in 4E, especially their dependency on creating unambiguous rulings, never disappear into the background for me. I can occasionally erect a thin veneer of roleplaying, but this comes crumbling down the first time I’ve got to start counting adjacent adversaries to see how big of a bonus I get to attack. The most recent WTF moment that threw me completely out of the moment came when I suggested that, rather than expend some out our limited healing surges to recoup after a fight, we return to the chapel we had just come from and ask the priests there if they could drop some of their heavenly mojo on us. That was when I was told that magical healing in 4E is tied to your character’s healing surges and even potions deduct from them. Huh?

For me, 4E simply misses the boat when it comes divorcing oneself from reality and reveling in the shared delusion of roleplaying. I’ve always been a fan of “fluff” over “crunch,” so 4E is like eating a cotton candy cone filled with nails, screws, and broken glass for me; just when I’m trying to enjoy the sweetness, I bite into something that ruins the experience. But also like cotton candy, it’s best when sampled infrequently and in small portions.

School’s Out Week: Star Was (D6)

In the world of old school D&D, popular sentiment is that the game is intended to be an open “sandbox” affair, a place where the players are free to choose their own destinies. The dice fall as they may, the death count can grow impressive, and the characters are working-class stiffs who possess the possibility of becoming heroes—so long as the dice and good fortune go their way.

West End Games’ Star Wars is about as antipodal to that school of thought as you can get. The players are heroes with a capital “H”, the adventures are laid out long before the group gathers, and the game master is instructed to regularly fudge the dice to make sure the players stay on that track so as to ensure the story reaches its intended climax. That makes the school of thought behind Star Wars “far, far away” from that which is prevalent in the OSR.

But is this necessarily a bad thing? When it comes to D&D, my mind set is similar to that of my old school mon frères. D&D is meant to be played as a wide-open game of exploration, with story coming from the events as they occur. The nascent possibility of heroic exploits and the renown that accompanies such trumps that of built-in heroism and nigh-superhuman accomplishments. But this outlook doesn’t work with all roleplaying games and can be in fact detrimental to some of them.

Star Wars is one such case. It is a game that was designed not to ape a particular genre, such as D&D was intended to do, but to recreate a very specific series of stories and the world(s) in which they occur. With an intent like that, a narrower focus is naturally needed. This is not to say that you can’t run an open sandbox campaign set in the Star Wars universe, but why pound round pegs into square holes when a more generic sci-fi rules system would work better?

Players approach the Star Wars universe with certain preconceived notions. After all, in many cases, Star Wars is as close as one gets to a lingua franca or common religion amongst gamers. No matter what our backgrounds or ages, the 20th Century Fox fanfare and those scrolling words hits a shared nerve, carrying us immediately to a specific time and place even if we couldn’t necessarily pinpoint that location on a star map or timeline. They’re going to expect to encounter Wookiees and Jawas, to shoot bounty hunters and race speeder bikes, and to swing across chasms and duel with lightsabers. Any game master who doesn’t meet those expectations is shortchanging his players (and probably shouldn't be playing Star Wars to start). And thus, there is a need for at least a narrow-gauge railroad to the campaign.

This has been on my mind a lot lately because I’m now running a Star Wars game. Some weeks ago, I realized that the Stonehell sequel will likely occupy my summer and I was not looking forward to working on the book AND running my Labyrinth Lord game at the same time. I’ve been getting close to the fantasy saturation point and I needed something to cleanse my palette. Since summer is traditionally the time for sprawling, no-brainer movie blockbusters, I figured why not spend this summer with the biggest blockbuster of them all? My players happily agreed to put Watchfires & Thrones on the backburner and to tread the myriad worlds of George Lucas’ universe. But, as an old saw goes, you can take the boy out of the old school, but you can’t take the old school out of the boy.

One of the nagging problems with Star Wars or any other licensed roleplaying game is that the players are aware that no matter what they do or accomplish, they are never really the big damn heroes of the setting. Somewhere out there are NPCs more renowned and respected than they’ll ever be, because only one person can ever blow up the Death Star (OK, maybe two people) or defeat Voldemort or be the chosen vampire slayer. The players are forever second banana to that person’s exploits. I simply couldn’t have that. I can make concessions, but not if there’s a way around them and I luckily had an idea to do so. Enter “A New New Hope.”

The premise of my summer Star Wars campaign is that the events of the first movie (and you know what I mean by “first”) didn’t happen. Rather than take up the campaign after the Battle of Yavin, which is the usual default time for most D6 Star Wars games, this story begins just prior to that first title crawl. The PCs have just stolen the Death Star plans from a secret Imperial R&D facility and must now get them safely into Alliance hands. How’s that for an opener? In just the first session I managed to squeeze in a speeder chase, a planet consisting of both icy glaciers and rivers of lava, exploding starships, Darth Vader, salvaged droids, and, as a nod to the fact that this isn’t a sandbox setting, a speeding mag-rail train (I’m so meta sometimes). But I run a loose railroad and although the players are all bound for Pittsburg (figuratively speaking); at least they get to choose what route they're going to take to get there.

Topographical Mapping Help Wanted

At the risk of biting off more than I can chew, I’ve had an idea for a project in my head now for several months. This would not be a for-profit piece, but rather a submission for one of our beloved fanzines. I’ve already talked with Iggy of Fight On! and got the go ahead to submit it, but I got sidetracked and had to put the piece on the backburner. Now, to give me an outlet from Stonehell 2 when one is needed, I’d like to continue to tinker with it for eventual submittal.


Without going to much into it, the piece really needs a map to accompany it and I have the perfect topological map for it. I’ve taken a stab at it, but I’m not satisfied with my efforts. The map I’m working from is an old U.S. Geological survey map so it is quite detailed. What I’m now looking for is a gifted mapmaker who could render such a map into one more suitable for a roleplaying aid, but retain the character and sense of realism found in the original. It would end up being a large map, roughly 11” x 17”, suitable for a two-page spread and lots of room for adventuring locales. This is not necessarily for a fantasy world, so an eye for the realistic is a plus on this. If you could give it a 1920’s feel too, that’d be even cooler. In return, I’d gladly share the byline on the eventual article with you.

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, please drop me an email at poleandrope AT gmail DOT com. If you’ve got a sample of your work or a link to some, feel free to include that as well.