The Loss and Curse of Relevance

I was born way, way, way too late. 1954 would have been a good birth year. That's right. I'm complaining that I am way too young. I missed so much, as the prime opportunities involving my interests passed decades ago.I get depressed easily when reading about the future of things I enjoy.

Here is a thread on RPG.net about gaming and e-readers. I don't doubt this is where the future lies.

But I like books. Shit, I just went almost two months with no phone service. I have a pre-paid plan, and 10€ covered me from January through the beginning of September. I just put 25€ more on it and I expect that to last me most of the next year. The last time I made an actual phone call was back in May I think, to schedule a dentist appointment.

Mainly, I use the thing as a watch when I bother to take it off the bookshelf at all. Oh, and as an alarm clock because my actual alarm clock's alarm is broken. The last thing I want is an electronic doohickey that reads my books, plays my music, and blows me on command.

But some clever person is going to be cutting edge and put video and music into their electronic RPG releases, and publishers will be expected to keep up. Not just writing and layout anymore, but video and audio production. For a role-playing game. And keeping up on the latest handheld reading technology that will change every few years, because it's easier to re-sell that than those uneconomical books that can occupy a shelf (and be swapped and re-sold!) for years and years without generating ongoing revenue.

Of course the big RPG "properties" aren't even the core businesses of the companies making them anymore. While this shows the realities of business on a corporate scale, I think this distorts the possibilities on more human scales. D&D is just a portion of Wizard of the Coast's business, and not the largest portion (and Wizards of the Coast, in turn, is a nearly not-worth-mentioning portion of Hasbro's business). Any normal human being would look at the revenue D&D produces and go, "Oh wow holy shit!" But through the eyes of big corporate scale, it's minuscule. And which scale do gamers seem to pay attention to?

Both!

"D&D is ohmygod wow the biggest thing there can ever be it's the monolith!"

"D&D is probably underperforming so badly for Hasbro that they're probably going to cancel it. They just keep it for the IP anyway."

That D&D has taken big steps towards the electronic subscription model, which, by many accounts (and despite the horrid missteps of their "Digital Initiative" early on), does enhance the playability of the 4e game design. This is the future. Which conceals a message: "Are you actually working out your game with a pencil and paper? How quaint!"

Which undoubtedly will drive publishers with resources to do the same.

Or maybe it'll be something different.

Fantasy Flight Games is doing that Warhammer 3rd Edition monstrosity. Here is a promotional video for it. I know people are going crazy waiting for this, but the manipulative intent of this video makes my skin crawl. The slick, scripted manner in which the "interviews" are done (their word choices here are not spontaneous, they are very deliberate; listen), while the "game components" (read: elements which will ensure that you can't just buy a book and be done with it) are showcased using dramatic filming techniques (and music!) to make it look like their box is a major cinematic experience... all to sell you a game that's been done, and done well, twice already without all the extras.

Quite an impressive, and epic, piece of advertising trying to convince you how down and dirty their game is.

Some of it sounds neat in theory. But you need their cards, their dice, their prepackaged sets in order to play the darn thing. And to achieve all these interesting concepts, it seems the game is awfully rules-heavy with half a million condition flags. As I understand it, they have something of a feat system which will only exist on these cards. Not in the rules. It's like the character sheets they sell are already filled in. Wonderful. McRolePlaying.

Both the "physical goodies" and the "electronic presence" elements squeeze the idea of a traditional role-playing game into "obsolescence." No longer are games powered by your imagination, they're powered by a computer, or a ton of cards and interlocking pieces.

Don't have one of those? Left behind!

Compare these to Labyrinth Lord or Swords & Wizardry, which both offer unlimited adventure in a single book.

But things go in the other direction as well. The One Page Dungeon is of no use to me. It's a sparse presentation, but to me the difficulty in preparation is not a map or a key, it's the detail. How do things fit together, what's the relationship between setting element A and B? To me, what makes an adventure good is that after you've done your exploration, fought the monsters, and collected the treasure, there was something unique and intriguing about the location. It becomes a character of its own.

And then there's something like this:

In studying the needs of DMs who all have specific campaigns with real histories, characters and plots of their own, it became apparent that the idea of mainstay adventure modules, such as many based upon TSR’s old model of assumed expediency, has shifted greatly with the contraction of that market and an ever present need over the years for specific game material created by each DM.

That from Rob Kuntz, who is now promoting his new Dungeon Sets line. He's also promoting a Dungeon Trappings line. No complaints about these by themselves, as Dungeon Trappings sounds not dissimilar to Green Devil Face, and unkeyed geomorphs have been with us as a product for 30 years. These will look great, as they're being designed by Ramsey Dow, who I've mentioned before as having done the maps for the next few LotFP releases.

My problem is that this sounds like Kuntz is stepping away from creating complete adventures entirely in favor of these fragments. He writes great adventures, and if they're not selling, I think the problem is somewhere other than the fact that people supposedly don't use adventures.

I have a vested interest in all of this. Yes, I am a publisher, but even as just a simple fan and patron of particular publishers' work I was driven nuts about the things I wanted not being available in forms I could buy. I don't want to skip from game to game, I don't want my game to change, I don't want game elements I can't use and play with on a pad of paper, and I don't want an ever-increasing amount of rules and "character options."

I want adventures. Adventures to spice up my game with something different, adventures I can fit into my campaign without rewriting half of it, adventures that make me think of things I never would have thought of on my own.

That's what I want, and that's what I do.

Enough reflection and prognostication and other luxurious uses of leisure time. In four hours, I have a group of people coming over to enjoy outdated and archaic game play. On Wednesday I will do that again. Yesterday I gave a pile of money to Ramsey and Laura, and did layouts so that tomorrow I can give a shitload of money to Valopaino.

The Grinding Gear is coming, you see. Soon. It'll be a cruel and challenging and perhaps rewarding experience for your players. It'll fit nicely between your own adventures in your own campaign. It'll look nice. It'll feel nice. But it'll be nothing but paper (or even less than that if you get the PDF). It won't have audio or video, it won't sing or dance, it won't include minis or custom dice or cards. It'll take a human being applying judgment and effort to make it come to life and be what it's supposed to be. It has one room that I fear will be seen as so goofy as to belong in this thread, but I couldn't help myself. You'll like it (the adventure... maybe not the room). And it'll cost, shipping included, about the same as a single movie ticket and a bucket of popcorn at your local cineplex, or less than a new-release DVD, while taking longer than 90-150 minutes to use.

How's that for blatantly manipulative and rehearsed marketing language?

Oh, Babelfish, You Rascal!

So the German Labyrinth Lord forum is here.

The game is called Herr der Labyrinthe in German.

Babelfish doesn't translate that consistently. So in the same line, the game is called both "Mr. the Labyrinths," and "Gentleman of the Labyrinths."

I want to play "Gentleman of the Labyrinths."

Oh Yeah, There Was a Green Devil Face Deadline, Wasn't There?

With everything else going on, I forgot to post a reminder before the 31st, and then afterward I just had other things to do.

So. We've got several cool submissions already, but we need more. We always need more! And this is the TARGA benefit issue.

What is Green Devil Face and what can you contribute and how? Read about that here.

End of day Saturday the 14th, firm deadline.

RLB had some kind words to say about Green Devil Face today. Read those here.

Somebody at Wizards of the Coast is Impressed with Death Frost Doom

Wizards' news update here links Grognardia's recent Dwimmermount session notes.

... the adventure being played is Death Frost Doom.

Updates and Commentary and Blathering

'allo!

I know I've been in "business man shill mode" more than "interesting blogger mode" for quite awhile now, but I've been busy working with publicity, distribution, tax issues, and in between all that stuff, sneaking in actual for-product writing. This in addition to having a bit of a life. I can't apologize for it, as trying to build a full-time business selling old-school adventures kind of requires full-time attention if there is even the smallest chance for it to not be a suicide mission in the first place, and beyond the writing I hardly know what the hell I'm doing. But I learn.

It's been almost three months since the last release. However, releases are on their way. Next up is The Grinding Gear, and I just received the first proof for the last map this morning. There are some changes to be made but I'm told by tomorrow I should have the final versions delivered. Laura has finished all of the major art pieces, and has gotten final approval for the filler sketch. This should be able to go to press at the beginning of the week... but the question is if I should release it that quickly since it's questionable whether my new British vendor will even have received their first shipment yet.

Another question will be how many to print. Death Frost Doom is my big seller so far, having recently hit the 200 sales mark (and is a Copper pick on RPGNow!). That's print and PDF combined. But to make a go of this as a business, I'm going to have to reach about 350 sales on average of my releases. I don't think this is impossible, I think our scene is still growing, and there is no reason that places like Germany and the UK can't be every bit as successful for me as the US - or even more successful if the dollar keeps losing value.

But I'm looking at quotes from the printer for Grinding Gear, and the difference between 250 copies (what I did for NDiD + PoP) and 500 copies means over $2 difference in final retail price (and more every day, with exchange rates - the dollar's decline has been my primary business concern for the past few months and people are probably sick of me worrying about it and talking about worrying about it) for you guys. 250 is safer, but it'll be more expensive, and to be successful I'd need to do a reprint anyway. 500 gets the price down to a more reasonable level (and means each promotional copy sent out is less of a financial bite!), and would cover what I'd need to sell altogether per project, but is it wise to risk that much up front?

Insect Shrine you know about, and I just posted a playtest report this morning. The maps are all done, the art is all done, all that remains is this playtesting, then rewrites based on playtesting, then proofreading and general editing, then layout, then printing and then selling the darn thing. I've given up trying to predict when this will be out, and I'm half convinced the world will end before all these steps are complete.

I am about one-third done with the first draft of a project with the working title The Old Miner's Shame. I'm not entirely happy with the title, but I haven't yet thought of anything better. The for-publication map should be finished quite soon, but I'm waiting until I see the final word count and some layout experimentation before I even commission the artwork. I'm not even sure what I want for the cover yet, although I'll get Laura working on one particular symbol after she turns in the final Grinding Gear art.

I'd also like to say a public Good Luck to Ramsey Dow. He's got some major projects coming up, including several with Pied Piper Publishing, so he won't be able to work with LotFP for awhile. It feels a bit bizarre doing a send-off when none of his work for me has yet been published (aside from this blog post preview), but he's responsible for all the maps for The Grinding Gear, Insect Shrine, and Old Miner's Shame and I've been in constant contact with him for the past two-plus months.

After these releases, I'm looking at the jungle/cannibal followup to Death Frost Doom (smart business says capitalize on it NOW, creative impulse says give it time to percolate and be natural rather than exploitative about it), the Sanitarium adventure, and I'm looking at doing a Knights of Science class/adventure supplement. Or maybe something else, and who knows what order.

I still believe that an introductory set of rules with tutorial-heavy content in the Mentzer tradition, in a box, is needed, and I'd love to do it, but I fear I'd be diluting the scene with yet another generic rules set. But doing the tutorial with the full rules wouldn't make sense, and certainly not by itself in a box. And how would I reach those that it is intended to serve? Doesn't do much good to go through all that effort and produce an introductory set that will be applauded by 25-year veterans and never reach the hands of a new player. hrrmm.

I'd like to take a few words to speak about Edition Warring. Not the way you think. I'm talking about why I don't publish for any specific game, and instead use a "big tent" approach.

There are some that are specifically publishing for early editions of D&D. While that's probably the most pure way to do things, I don't like the idea of completely tying my future to a trademark that I have to dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge to mention.

OSRIC is getting left behind. It's odd, because 1e was the big one, but it's Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry which are getting the promotional pushes. They're also getting the variants and are the much more open systems. OSRIC, between its multiple contributors and much less open format, isn't going into distribution, isn't getting tinkered with nearly as extensively, isn't having the loving grassroots fan community that it could have had. In 2006 OSRIC looked like the future. Funny how that goes.

And while games such as Swords & Wizardry and Labyrinth Lord have a far greater support and collaborator network than I do (being a cranky old hermit has its "privileges"), and they are both going to be in stores very soon, and they will be the driving forces for recruiting new blood into our segment of the hobby, I don't get the feeling that either Finch or Proctor are necessarily much better businessmen than I am, nor do I have the impression that if things grew too big to be part-time they'd give up whatever their other lives are in order to run a middling-level RPG publishing company (no delusions of grandeur that the OSR will rule the roost) and all the headaches and poverty that go with that. So hitching my horse to one of them exclusively seems unwise.

I hope I am proven wrong. It's not like either discuss much with me (although both have been very easy to work with when I've needed to deal with them), and I'm just going by web-presence impressions. I hope they're both plotting their world domination, stockpiling their war chests and counting down until it's time. I hope both Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry do very well, gain many players and rake in a ton of cash. I hope I can sit here someday soon and say, "You know, I should have just published my stuff for [specific game], and I've missed a great opportunity because I didn't." That will mean the old rules are wildly successful and our community is successful, even if it costs me a bit in the process.

But it's too early to tell, and I always get in the slowest line at the supermarket, so this isn't something to risk. I'll tell you what though, if one takes off in distribution and achieves real popularity (I don't think both would at the same time because they're so similar, and which would be the more likely to do so is a question I can't answer because my personal preference won't decide it), I'll be pursuing a distribution deal and whoring myself out with the [Popular System] Compatible! graphic design.

Because there is the fact that I really don't see the difference between the systems. I was one of those people who played 1e way back when but unwittingly was really using a ton of "Basic" rules for actual play. The difference between "Basic" and "1e" and "0e" to me are academic, and not an issue of game play. I don't believe that tone of the rules dictates the tone of adventures. People houserule their 1e games as readily as their 0e games, and the level of detail in a setting or adventure depends more on the referee (or author) than the system used.

I don't agree that my releases are "essentially systemless" as some claim (People of Pembrooktonshire aside). All it requires is that you know what "leather + shield" or the speed of an unencumbered human means in the system you are using to play the game. There's no conversion involved. However, people have been telling me they have run, or will run, my games with all sorts of systems: Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer RPG (pre-3e, naturally), Dark Heresy, Castles & Crusades (which I consider now to be considerably different than LL/OSRIC/S&W/etc due to the Siege Engine - I think that changes everything) and probably another system or two I can't recall right now.

I love that this is possible, and I love that some people consider my work worth the effort to make the conversions to those systems, but those conversions are indeed necessary to use these other systems. My adventures aren't generic. But, as things have turned out, neither are they really for any one specific game.

So a big tenter I remain.

And with that, I will go back to work. I leave you with this: The Grinding Gear won't just be a cool adventure, it won't just be impressive, it will be fucking impressive.

Insect Shrine Playtest Session 2

hmmm. Mixed feelings about this one. After doing an all-night Night Visions film festival on Saturday-Sunday (first movie started 6:45pm Saturday evening, and we left the theater at about 11:30am Sunday morning... Orphan, The Box, The Road, Dead Snow, Descent 2, Nightmare, Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl, and Super Typhoon if you're wondering... also caught The Forbidden Door and Tetsuo: Bullet Man at the fest Thursday night - reviews after the game report!), I've been kind of wiped out. I think it showed in my performance refereeing the game last night.

On the other hand the material performed well, even though absolutely nothing went the way I had envisioned it. The sandboxy nature of the area combined with some good decision making on the PCs' part made everything less tense than it could have been, and in my fatigued condition I didn't seem to have the snap to liven it up.

The party pretty much did two things: Investigated the old village, specifically the abandoned farmhouse, and went into the halfling mound.

The farmhouse bit was "narratively" odd, as the plot hook I'd planned was unnecessary to convince them to go there, but also made the trip more casual. The tension unwound rather than built up, but I was proud that using information that I'd previously written, it was easy to devise a resolution that allowed the vital information here to pass to the players' hands while being 100% consistent with the setting and who all these people are.

The halfling mound was a bit odd. I'd already posted the map here on the blog (not that the thing is complex anyway), one of the players had already gone through it in an earlier incarnation (and events, by coincidence, conspired to make the circumstances surrounding the approach identical... what are the chances?), and one of the players really had to go home in the middle of the "climactic" fight. I could have skipped this part completely, but there's good opportunity for experience and I want to see how the new fluffy bits work with a live audience.

I think I gave a bit of short shrift to the role-playing back at the Inn, but the character of some of the residents there was able to come out a bit more.

Next week, same time, and hopefully a bit more peppy, lively, and dangerous. Both me and the adventure. ;)

And now... movie reviews!

The Forbidden Door This Indonesian movie is about an artist who sculpts images of very pregnant women in unusual poses. The secret to his artistic inspiration is that he puts aborted fetuses into the bellies of his sculptures. This has nothing to do with the actual plot of the movie. It really is disturbing at some points, but at other times it tries too hard and crosses the line into the comedic. I found that the ending unraveled the build-up and mystery rather than paid it off.

Tetsuo: The Bullet Man This is a Japanese movie starring Westerners who can't act. The script is horrendously bad. It's about a man that transforms into a human gun. Unfortunately due to budget and artistic decisions, I didn't figure that out until quite a ways into the movie and thought the guy just had a big turd on his head. The movie just stops at certain points and turns into an industrial music video. The battle scenes are pretty much the cameraman having an epileptic fit, so nothing can actually be seen. Half the movie takes place in a basement. Apparently this is the third in the series of Tetsuo movies (Iron Man and Body Hammer being the earlier ones), but I just didn't get it. At all.

Orphan I thought this was almost really great. That actress had me thinking "Christina Ricci in Addams Family" the whole way through - I think she's going to be a huge star. If you accept the twist as plausible (and I did), then the movie rocks. It is only let down by having a truckload of false suspense (camera imitating a point-of-view shot creeping up on someone with the music going... and then switching angles and there was never anything there and we're watching a guy shave, for instance) that were unnecessary.

The Box This is a grand, grand piece of shit. It's about Martians. This isn't a spoiler - the opening shot of the film gives that much away. The use the Arthur C. Clarke "Any sufficiently advanced technology..." quote to take license to make no sense and just have shit randomly happen just because. It's also a 70s period movie, and I giggle at the lengths filmmakers go to in order to avoid cell phones wrecking their plots. This is the kind of movie that is so bad that anyone claiming to like it loses all credibility when talking about anything, ever.

The Road Depressing, agonizing, slow, excellent. The trailers make it seem like it's an action movie. It isn't. Not even close. Apocalyptic.

Dead Snow Very self-aware (maybe too much so) Norwegian movie about Nazi zombies way up in the mountains (no cell phone reception!). Includes the horror movie geek for the audience to identify with! The Raimi montage homage got the theater cheering. It's a fun-without-being-insulting kind of zombie action movie. It's in Norwegian, but don't let that scare you off if you're into these kind of movies. Unlike some of the other movies we watched during the festival, the subtitling here is very good.

Descent 2 More of the same. Takes place in a cave (no cell phone reception!). It literally is the exact same plot as the first one, although how they'll reconcile this beginning with the editing they did on the American version of the first film's ending, I don't know. Luckily, no such problems this side of the pond. From the advance hype I thought this would be more in the line of Aliens ("This time, they're prepared! Or so they think!"), but it's just a bunch of unprepared schlubs showing up in a cave to be eaten. Again.

Nightmare 1981 "cult" "classic." This movie sucked ass, and we had a really shitty print to watch. Everything was rather orange. I think the only reason this movie continues to be seen is that it caused a bit of a media furor in Finland when it was first released (this country banned Dirty Harry for years and years...) according to the festival organizers, and the guy responsible for distributing the movie within the UK was jailed for it. Unconvincing, unsuspenseful, the gore wasn't even all that. We laughed and laughed at the advanced 1981 computer criminal tracking system. The graphics were shit but that thing was more advanced than the computer in Alien! Just a crap movie.

Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl And now for something completely different. The blood shoots by the gallon in the Japanese high school drama. Watching the school nurse chasing a drop of vampire blood with a mop as the blood runs away from her is probably the most normal thing in this movie. The school includes a wrist-cutting club that's preparing for a competition, and the club of Japanese girls wanting to be black would surely be terribly offensive if one single other thing in this movie was to be taken seriously. It's a shame that the zaniness just kept coming like water from a showerhead, because by the time the woman with the eyeballs for nipples shows up, it's kind of just, "ehhh." Still, quite a unique experience.

Super Typhoon You'd think that a patriotic Chinese disaster movie wouldn't be the best choice to close out a festival when everyone's already been there for 15 hours. You'd be wrong. The mayor of this endangered Chinese town is the baddest ass ever in the history of film. He will not allow one single Chinese citizen to be endangered by the fiercest typhoon in history! When the nurse not qualified to do much of anything has to deal with an after-hours birth that's going badly on an outlaying island, you know these people don't know how to make a serious movie. When the mayor is down on his knees begging the fishermen to not take their boats out to sea while 50' waves are crashing behind him while inspiring music plays, you know you've got an absolute classic on your hands. Also featuring a pickpocket who can't stay out of trouble, the meteorological expert that also happens to have been the mayor's grade school teacher ("Top marks!"), an American storm-chasing photographer who can't seem to say more than "Typhoon OK!", and an entire oldschool miniature cityscape - which gets hilarious when real actors are seamlessly inserted, fleeing through the streets amidst all the toy cars.

Worth a week of being a zombie, for sure. ;)

We did miss other parts of the fest, as we weren't available to go Wednesday night (was the first Insect Shrine game) or Friday night (we went over to a friend's house for an early Halloween and watched... movies! The Mist and Carpenter's Halloween!). Crispin Glover did some sort of live performance or something, not clear what he was there for, plus of course some other movies. I can't believe I skipped a black metal documentary to watch The Box. :P

It was torturous having to watch the sponsors' advertisements before just about every movie. And the trailers for the new Holmes and Avatar movies make them look worse than The Box. I will avoid both with extreme prejudice. However, they were promoting a movie about Swedish feminist porn at the festival, so everyone got condoms and the trailer for the movie included actual porn. And I don't think there was an age limit on the fest. Not that a couple of mid-30s people had a reason to find out. And I still don't much know what the difference is between feminist porn and regular porn.

Oh, and last night during the game it started SNOWING! The first sticking snow of the year! And it's still SNOWING 12+ hours later!

I love this country!

A Death Frost Doom review in Portuguese!

It's here.

Babelfish can handle it if you want to read it. :)

Figures I'm looking for reviewers in all sorts of languages and then an unsolicited review in Portuguese shows up. Ah well. I wonder if I can get some Brazilian or Portuguese distribution...

A Call For Reviewers (UK, Germany, France, Finland)

The Grinding Gear is nearing completion. Laura has had her final sketches approved so those will be done in the next few days. There is but one more map to be completed by Ramsey, and once those are done this thing goes to press. Writing is done and proofed and laid out and is just waiting for the graphics to be set in.

As of right now, I have 1 French, 3 German, 1 British, and 0 Finnish reviewers on my promo mailing list. I'd like to get that up to 5 each.

Reviewers will get a physical book for review, not a PDF. What I'd expect in return is a review on your blog, website, submitted to forums you frequent, and/or posted on the vendor sites... wherever you already visit- I'm not asking anyone to invade message boards they're not on and spam reviews.

This is a commitment to review, but not a commitment to review favorably. What I hope for is a thorough and honest analysis. Pundit's staying on my mailing list (assuming he reviews any of the other books with the same in-depth approach as he did GDF), for example. Reviewers who review will remain on the mailing list for future releases.

If you're interested or if you have any questions, email me (address is on the sidebar to the right). For budget reasons I am keeping a firm "5 reviewers/territory" policy so please understand I will be making selections based on visibility and personal opinions of writing styles.

So get in touch already. :)

(Update: As expected, I have more North American reviewer requests than I know what to do with. If you're a reviewer with Big Huge Website, feel free to get in touch, otherwise, I think I'm good sifting through what I've got so far. For other territories, I'm still looking!)

All LotFP Titles now Available From Sphärenmeisters Spiele

Here! Buy buy buy! ;)

The Rusty Battle Axe reviews (and plays) Death Frost Doom!

Review here!

Actual Play here!