Dear Mr. Ron Edwards

I was quite interested to find you had an article in the new Fight On!

Luckily I advertised in the new issue so I received one of the advance "contributor" copies earlier this evening. After checking that my ad is OK, the first (and thus far only) article I read was yours.

Your essay on the pussification of the presentation of D&D and the timidity of the Old School Renaissance in addressing that was interesting, and I agree with much of it. Just today, someone who really should know better is showing the exact signs of capitulation that you're talking about. My response there came before reading your article.

But near the end of your article, you mention me, and I wonder if you really know what you are commenting on.

Are you familiar with this blog post I wrote last year? How about this one? Or how I spent a large part of the first date I had with the woman I now live with talking about Carcosa?

But let's talk about allowing the Creature Generator to be edited by the larger publisher that I allowed to take over the project.

I released the original edition of the Random Esoteric Creature Generator for Classic Fantasy Role-Playing Games and Their Modern Simulacra on April 23, 2008. I sent copies to several publishers who also deal with old-school releases, among them Goodman Games. On May 1, Joseph Goodman contacted me about the possibility of Goodman Games re-releasing it for general retail distribution.

I had several conditions that were not part of the original offer, and on May 31, 2008 I received a contract offer I found agreeable. On June 2 I sent it back, signed.

One of my conditions, and I hope I'm not violating my contract here, is that I have final approval over the text. I didn't just allow changes to be made, I had to actively approve them. But we''ll get to that in a moment.

Let's talk artwork.

Here is the original Creature Generator cover (click for larger version):


I thought this was awesome. And Aino isn't just some random person on the internet that I recruited to do some art for me. We have been known to be seen in public together on occasion. She was cool enough to work with me for my vision for the book, which was inspired by the similarly-nude artwork in the original Monster Manual. (and let's face it, this was the only way I'm ever going to see her boobs)

I also talked about the interior artwork for the book extensively in past blog posts here.

And not a bit of it was used for the Goodman Games version.

Why?

One, Goodman Games has its own stable of artists that it uses. Two, the interior artwork in the original version wasn't exactly exemplary (I think we can all agree that Aino's piece in Death Frost Doom is superior to any of her drawings in the original Creature Generator?). Three, leaving all commercial considerations aside and not worrying what distributors or retailers would think about the above cover art... it was not suitable for a professionally printed book.

Those that have the print version can attest it doesn't look as good as the image above. It was not delivered to me at a high resolution. The various graphic elements that were pulled from who-knows-where were not hi-res, so the entire picture was not hi-res. To be suitable for professional publication, it would have had to be re-done from scratch. And it wouldn't be me commissioning it this time.

You really want to say that I pussed out in not insisting that Goodman Games use this cover art (which does not and never did exist as a whole in color) for their release? Seriously?

Now let's talk about the text. Pretty much the entire introduction was indeed rewritten. In fact, someone over there at Goodman Games took it upon themselves to rewrite that introduction themselves. There was no way I was having a book with my byline released with text I didn't write (and I thought the version submitted to me was not so great), so I rewrote it myself.

And it did need to be rewritten. The original introduction was a profanity-laced rant against Wizards of the Coast, having pretty much nothing to do with the Creature Generator itself. In my rewritten version, I was able to promote my dedication to traditional D&D without coming across as a complete asshole. What else changed?

I added a few more entries to the animal table. If you have the original version, add Caterpillar, Cockroach, Flea, Ladybug, Mosquito, and Termite to the Insect column (and roll d3 then d6 on that column).

In the Creature Motivations table, under the "Mating" entry (inspired by Alien), it originally said this: "Very important: Referees should not use this as a license or even a suggestion to rape characters in play, and the creature won’t be trying to fuck characters in the middle of combat." That last clause was removed.

Under the "Putting It All Together" section, "it’s not just a glop of thrown together shit," became, "it’s not just a glop of thrown together-together ideas."

Those are the sorts of changes that were made to the text. That's the editing.

The only change that was made that I perhaps should have stood up to was that the "Racism" section at the end was changed to "Prejudices." But the actual text about making opponents human and using racism in the game as a narrative element and not being afraid of creating objectively different strains of humans instead of mindlessly using orcs or goblins, and the line, "The game is fiction, and a referee should never allow comparisons between his real-life attitudes and how he handles orc analogues in his game," are all intact. The only difference in this section is that it talks about using "prejudice" instead of saying, "racism."

But I didn't see it, and don't see it now, as really a big deal and I don't think it waters down of the content of the book one little bit.

When Goodman Games took the book over, I had sold 19 copies of the Creature Generator (and sent off over 30 more to Insect Shrine pre-orderers as a gift). Under Goodman Games' stewardship, it has of course sold many, many times that amount. And the actual content of the book, the entire point of the book, to make new and unusual monsters, was unchanged save for the removal of profanity which had nothing to do with the aim of the project to begin with.

And that's fun and games. I took a bath on my printing of the Creature Generator and was happy (more or less) to do so because it was my project. I set it up and released it to the best of my ability at the time. When handing it over to Goodman, it's not like I was suddenly rolling in the money. Everyone here knows freelance rates in this business, especially for first-timers, don't exactly add up to a living wage.

I mention this because right now I'm having a go at doing this full-time. No safety net. Not a hobby. Attempting to make a living selling this stuff. And here are two details of one of the pieces of art (the Goblin Kitchen) to appear in my next release (Insect Shrine of Goblin Hill):



... drawn last year by a girl who was 17 at the time.

Here I am, Ron, an "obvious example" of a guy conforming to "Victorian societal values" and "dialing back" offensive material in order to "protect the hobby."

You sure nailed that one, didn't you?