Quiet Days...

... compiling the source databases that I'll use for The Treatise of Ensorcelled and Occult Primeval Accoutrements for Classic Fantasy Role-Playing Games And Their Modern Simulacra. This will be slow going as there are over 3500 pages of material to mine for individual magical effects. I've gotten through 75 pages so far today. This is going to be a long month.

This project will have to end up with far more pages than the Creature Generator, although I'm hoping to keep it under 100. It won't be able to be saddle-stitched, so it'll have to be perfect bound (great, I'll have to learn rudimentary graphic design to not screw the cover and spine up). Add in the increased mailing costs for such a beast of a book, and this is probably going to be in the neighborhood of 10-13€ depending on how things turn out. Too soon to tell for sure, but it is my intention for this thing to be comprehensive, delivering both consistently "ourfavoritegamishly" flavored magic items without really duplicating any that are in the book.

The idea is that every item is unique and an artifact, no matter how minor-powered the thing is. I'm sure nobody will use it as-is for all of their campaign's magic items, but I also bet that anyone that gets it will use it sometimes.

The production costs of this thing mean there's really not going to be any art. I'm looking at maybe 500-750€ in terms of printing and mailing I need to do before this would go on sale. That's quite a healthy chunk of change for someone that's unemployed and technically (as in, I have a roof over my head but it's not my address) homeless. So I'm certainly not paying somebody to draw pictures of swords and wands and crap, and clip art is just way too chintzy.

However, with the other costs associated, for the first time putting color artwork on the cover. This thing can look professional. But... you know... there's the no money thing. Unless someone wants to offer to do it for free. :P

But we'll see how that goes. I'm giving myself this month to compile and write this thing, because after the holidays it's get a job or starve.

You bastards all better buy this magic item thing when it comes out. ;)

Undecided as to what "brand" I'll go with for release. I could just OGL it (because it's all magic and spells and such, I don't think I could get away with not doing an OGL this time), but I think doing it for OSRIC or Swords & Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord would help sales without changing a word of the product. I wonder if there's any rule keeping it from being from all three... every item in here will work just as easily with one as another. But I have a long way to go before that's ready, and a month is a long time to keep focus. With my luck the Insect Shrine stuff will all come in during this month and I'll have to break this concentration to get that out the damn door. Wouldn't that be just my luck?

I've submitted my Duvan'Ku material to Fight On! for their next issue. With all the other stuff on my plate it's just not a project I'm going to realistically develop in the near future. It's a small batch of magic spells, magic items, and an adventure. I'm still waiting to hear back as far as suitability (it's a horror theme and in places fairly explicit), but I'm hoping we can iron out any problems that may arise. Aino and Laura have agreed to contribute companion artwork so crossing fingers that there can be a healthy little section involving the whole LotFP crew coming out later in the winter under the Fight On! banner. If it gets a response maybe Duvan'Ku material can be a regular thing I submit to them.

(aren't I going to look like crap now if they come back saying that it's not such a great fit for their mag... :P)

But for right now... this damn magic item book is going to kill me. There's just no organizing it, and as I collect the raw data... ay ay ay I will end up going batshit insane.

The Impossible Task.

With The Random Esoteric Creature Generator for Classic Fantasy Role-Playing Games and Their Modern Simulacra out and in stores, and Fantasy Fucking Vietnam having been crapped out, it's time to really settle on the next serious project. Insect Shrine is in the hands of the artist, so that's not something I can actively move towards completion myself. The State of the LotFP Union post had some ideas about where next to conquer, but my mind is swirling in other directions.

The Spell Comparisons post wasn't just done because I was bored. There are two things happening there. Number one, the "simulacra" are absolutely horrible at being publishing aids and guides. That's not their focus (especially now that OSRIC 2 is out). They're complete games, real D&D but with new branding (as opposed to fake D&D with the old branding). There isn't a comprehensive publishing guide that breaks down what terms and spells and monsters are OK for you to use in your own publishing. The 4th Edition SRD is absolutely the format that an oldschool "publishing guide" should take, and it can even be broken down by edition (of course not by name, even saying "Holmes" or "Moldvay" as identifiers may or may not be too much, but saying "1974" and "1977" and "1981" and "1983" would certainly work), and then published using just the OGL as being for "First Edition" or whatever. You still can't name the game you're actually publishing for if you're using the OGL, but you can write what you mean in the meat of your product with the OGL, without muddling the "brand" waters.

We know the score, but I really wonder if the gamer on the street knows what an OSRIC or a Labyrinth Lord are and what their relationship to each other and old D&D might be. But if you publish something just for "First Edition of the Leading Fantasy RPG" or whatever (hopefully something a little more elegant than that!), there is no confusion.

Not that this is a condemnation or criticism of the simulacra as games. I run BFRPG myself, and that's a complete Frankenstein's monster of mixed up D&Disms. But as publishing guides? Fail! Fail! That's not what they're formatted to do! The products themselves mention it's allowed but don't show how. It's just "It's possible! Go do it!" And some enterprising individuals have, but there is still a lot of confusion about how it all works and I'm willing to bet there are a lot of creative people and good writers out there that would be contributing if some of these things would just show them explicitly how.

Maybe they could have separate "publisher guide" documents with the 4e SRD formatting. When publishing your own product, you just need the terms, not the details or the rules or the explanations. In fact, most of these terms are so standardized that it's just the spell descriptions that require the OGL. Hit Points, Armor Class, and many other terms became widespread in the gaming industry (look to the computer games of the 80s for many examples as well!). Monsters are easy to get around (mainly by not naming them!). I mean, there are probably a hundred ways to put a beholder (for one example) in a module without calling it a beholder or violating a copyright or the OGL - look how BFRPG has close-but-not-quite Carrion Crawlers and Displacer Beasts!

But it's the specific spell names that are difficult to identify in a precise manner this way. If you have a high level spellcaster in your product, you need to list the spells plainly without a lot of malarkey... otherwise, the spell listing is just going to be pure compacted malarkey as you duck and dodge copyrights and such over one guy's stats. And thus, my little comparison spreadsheet as a start.

The other reason I did that is because I am beginning serious work on The Treatise of Ensorcelled and Occult Primeval Accoutrements for Classic Fantasy Role-Playing Games And Their Modern Simulacra, and organizing my work really does seem like an impossible task. How to create a random magic item generator in a way that's truly open-ended, putting the different elements of a magic item together much like the creature generator did for monsters, and yet not a complete unusable mess?

I thought a good second step (the first step was making a master list of physical forms the items could take) was to list out the spells and effects for all the versions of the game with which it would be used. See where things could be simplified (Control [Thing], Anti-[Thing] Shell, Resist [Form], that sort of deal) and and get an idea whether each magical item form should have its own unique list (with a compiled section at the end listing all effects) or whether there should be one Magical Effect List and each individual section merely offering guidelines on how they tailor each effect (a ring would probably operate differently than a magic rubber ducky, even with the same effect). I'll also be going through my HERO System books for inspiration... thank you UNTIL Superpowers Databases! And all those power advantages and disadvantages... that's like crack for the imagination.

So that's where I am with that right now. Hopefully in several months you'll all be making rolls and coming up with magical paintings that trap any viewer inside them and then fireball the shit out of them, but luckily you've got fingernail polish of switching places (in cases of entrapment) so it's actually the PC to your left that gets sucked in...

... and you'll never have to look at a Sword +1 again in your life.