Bolthaven Folio #2 Is Available

On DriveThru and Itch.

Yes, I actually finished and released another zine! I wanted to get one published per quarter, and I squeaked this one out at the tail end of September. But I did it, art and everything.

Bolthaven Folio #2: Bard Bands (available at DriveThru and Itch) provides guidelines to let your bard characters collaborate and allow anyone with Performance training to help make their magic more powerful. If you really want to go crazy, you can run an all-bard campaign where your PCs can compose and rehearse Singles and play for a minute or more to make some epic musical magic.

All this magic happens in the same 4-page digest format of other Bolthaven Folio titles, so don't expect a fully-developed treatise on the nature of bardic magic or anything. It lays out a system and leaves plenty of interpretation room, especially with multiple bards blending and joining spells through writing Singles. If you want to power up your bard characters, give this one a read.

NanoRegent, a Tiny Game of Countries

Here's the second game I wrote for the 200 Word RPG Challenge. You can download it (50K PDF) or run it directly from the text below.

This design springs from my love of Birthright and roleplaying a country using domain turns. It's roughly Fate-based, though in NanoRegent you burn Stats like Advantages. This could use a few playtests, as I think it would support episodic campaign play. I'm not sure the renewal rate for Cities is quite right - I originally had a City give +1 every 3 turns, but that could make early turns into more of a death spiral.

I bet it'll take another 20-50 words to explain some concepts more fully, but even that should still fit on both sides of an index card.

Feedback welcome!

Provenance, a Nano RPG

I blame +David Schirduan for making me aware of the 200 Word RPG Challenge he's running until Friday, 01 May 2015. If you're interested, write something and submit it, and go read the dozens of entries so far.

You can download a PDF of Provenance here (335KB PDF), or from the challenge page when it's up. I'll work on making a more useful/pretty PDF version and make it available, possibly pay what you want on DriveThru. Stay tuned for details.

The funny thing is, this game interrupted the one I actually spent time working on. It demanded to be let out first. So be it.

If you play, please let me know how it goes. I love to hear stories.

And yes, the section names are intentionally alliterative. Because I find language fun.

I blame Lovejoy.

[Toolbox] On the Business of Tabletop RPGs

It's long past time to close some browser tabs. I've managed to collect a pile of links on the business of RPGs, whether sales numbers, potential printing services, or tips for running your tabletop game business. I've filled the ranks with a few older gems and categorized the whole mess.

Most of the posts are geared toward or about Tabletop RPG publishers, so if you're a freelancer like me you can definitely use those articles as market research.

Please pardon the wall of text - this thing took a while to compile. Enjoy, and feel free to share anything you've read that helps you in your RPG-based business.

(Warning, this post got long. Buckle up.)

On Product Sales
Moebius Adventures publishes their sales numbers fairly religiously, and also ties that together with their blog traffic for a comprehensive view inside a small RPG publishing business. The January 2015 Report talks about the holiday slump and focuses on recovering momentum.

Martin Ralya at Engine Publishing worked up the year-end sales numbers and found they sold over 21,000 units between 2010 and 2014. Releasing one solid product per year over the past 5 years seems to be a solid business plan, but it also requires constant promotion. The industry awards don't hurt either.

Evil Hat Productions compiles and publishes their sales numbers quarterly in terms of units, not dollars. Here are their numbers for Q4 2014.

Lumpley Games gave us a look at 10 years of RPG sales as of 2/28/13. The graphs, analysis of the customer's first purchase, and hard numbers are well worth a look.

Checking In, Autumn 2013

Hi. It's been a while, but I thought I'd check in. This summer has been busy. Unnecessarily so, since I managed to volunteer at church and walk into the middle of a firestorm of competing opinions. I'm disentangling myself from that soon, and I hope to finish an article on toxic groups which relates my experience over the past year to dealing with unhealthy gaming groups.

Coming in December.

As for gaming work, I haven't put in the effort to drum up new business lately. I had a handful of small projects that hit all at once, and I've dabbled with flash fiction and fictional ads to keep from going totally off the deep end, but mostly I coasted through this summer and fall. A few things happened this week that brought me back to my senses.

1) Covert Ops
I'm editing Covert Ops for DwD Studios. I edited BareBones Fantasy for them last year. I had fun doing it, and I like the system. Bill emailed me out of the blue to ask if I had the bandwidth to work on Covert Ops, and a few hours later I had the manuscript in hand and an agreement in place. I love it when good things happen at the speed of the Internet.

I'm still getting into it, but I like what I see so far. The playtest document already has artwork and layout, which rocks. I'll be posting more about this in the next few weeks, but for now check out the briefest taste of the excellent artwork from Khairul Hisham:

Snipers Rock.

2) You Need an Editor
I've got a guest post up at Troll in the Corner entitled Three Reasons You Need an Editor for Your Game. Yes, it's a list article to GRAB YOUR EYEBALLS, and it weighs in at over a thousand words, but I think it's worth forwarding to your game designer and author friends who refuse to hire an editor. Then again, I'm totally biased.

I'd love to hear what you think about it. What feels right to you? What did I miss?

3) Kobolds Rock
I was updating my RPG editor CV when I discovered that Dark Fey had been released. That means I currently have no projects in the hopper from Kobold Press, and I find I miss that structure and the challenge of proofing and formatting Pathfinder stat blocks. I didn't push it over the summer because it sounded like the Deep Magic Kickstarter ate all the kobold brains it could find, which is totally understandable. I'll see if I can get back on Wolfgang's "editors looking for work" list before the end of the year.

4) RailSchroding as Extra Reading
I totally tripped across a link to Schrödinger's Gun GMing over at The Warehouse of Trinkets. The article's main idea involves giving your players enough rope to create and then hang themselves on the main arc of the campaign. I like that idea, and it's one of the things I love to do. Letting the world grow in response to the PC's actions makes a game come alive more than a series of canned dungeon crawls. Sometimes the GM needs to provide a push, but most gamers get themselves in trouble no matter what the GM does.

In Closing: Thank You!
I am extremely thankful that clients are starting to find me instead of me finding them. It feels really good to have unexpected work to do, and it tells me that I'm on the right track. I'd love to support myself and my family through writing and editing one day, but that'll only happen if good gigs keep finding me. After 2 years of editing professionally, we're off to a great start.

If you've been reading what I write either here or on Google+, thank you. It's all well and good to write, but writing is only half of the communication equation. If you read something I wrote and want to engage, feel free to comment or ask questions; I'll be happy to answer. Feel free to track me down using any of these methods.

As always, thanks for reading!

So I Wrote a Kickstarter Bonus...

If you haven't looked at the Deck of Legends Kickstarter, please do so now. It's being created by an artist I featured in a previous Art Spotlight article and fellow member of the Gamer Assembly Kaitlynn Peavler (aka @thedandmom).

You've got about 2 weeks left to pledge and get a kickass tarot-sized deck or two. It's only $15 for one deck, but there are still opportunities to design jokers. As of this writing, we're spitting distance from releasing all the art under a Creative Commons license. So become a backer and tell your friends, as we're still a ways off from opening the poker deck option. If 300 people pledge there will be a 5th suit (Cosmic) added to all decks at no extra cost.

Here's a look at the different deck options.

I wrote up a list of effects, one for each card in a manner strikingly similar to a certain Minor Artifact, and called it the Deck of Many Legends. It's available for backers to download for free; check out Update #16 for the download link. I'll make sure it's available to non-Kickstarter folks at some point after the deck comes out. You can use it with a regular deck of cards while waiting for your Deck of Legends, but the art and the effects have started feeding off of each other in a very cool symbiosis.

Here's a sample of some of the art.
More cards are finished every week.

I wanted to keep the effects vague so the Deck of Many Legends could be used in a variety of systems. It obviously has D&D roots, as it mentions bonuses to ability scores, but the effects are open to a wide variety of interpretations.

The Star suit will add science fiction flavored effects and art.

Some of the effects could seriously change or even kill a campaign, but hopefully the built-in vagueness will prevent any cataclysmic effects. I encourage you to talk through any potentially game-damaging effects with everyone at the table so your campaign survives.

The Coven will answer
one vexing question.

Like the Deck of Legends itself, the Deck of Many Legends is meant to inspire creativity. I welcome feedback, as it'll help improve the list when I go back and edit it before general release. If you use it in your game, please let me know how it goes.

I invite you to go pledge if you haven't already.

Thanks for reading!

Gamer Assembly Worlbuilding 101 Panel, Capitalist RPGGeek Version

I was on a couple of panels at PAX East 2013 with my fellow Gamer Assembly members (join us in the webchat if you have any questions or comments). We filmed both panels and they're up on YouTube!

All of the games mentioned in this panel are linked in the video description on YouTube, but I thought I'd link to ways to purchase these games directly (Full Disclosure: These are affiliate links where possible - please consider kicking a few cents my way if you're going to purchase them anyway). And if you want a standard resource, I'm adding a link to that system's page on RPGGeek as well.

Worldbuilding 101
Filmed at PAX East 2013 in the Tabletop Theatre Friday 3/22/13 at 3:30PM.



Panelists (left to right):

• Casey Peavler (thedanddaddy)
• Kait Peavler (thedandmom)
• Brent Newhall (Brent)
• Jim White (twwombat)
• Art Vaccarino (AVacc)
• Brian Liberge (Brian)

We talked about a whole lot of things…

Game Systems and Other Products

Pulp!	RPGGeek	Download It Here!	N/A
Risus	RPGGeek	Free Download!	N/A
Microscope	RPGGeek	Download It Here!	Buy It Here!
Dungeon World	RPGGeek	Download It Here!	Buy It Here!
13th Age	RPGGeek	N/A	Buy It Here!
Trinity	N/A	N/A	N/A
Gods of the New Age	N/A	N/A	N/A
Kobold's Guide to Worldbuilding	RPGGeek	Download It Here!	Buy It Here!
Midgard Bestiary	RPGGeek	Download It Here!	Buy It Here!
Dragon Age / AGE	RPGGeek	Download It Here!	Buy It Here!
D&D 3.5	RPGGeek	Download It Here!	Buy It Here!
D&D 4e	RPGGeek	Download It Here!	Buy It Here!
Pathfinder	RPGGeek	Download It Here!	Buy It Here!
Numenera	RPGGeek	Download It Here!	Buy It Here!
Rifts	RPGGeek	Download It Here!	Buy It Here!
Dark Sun	RPGGeek	N/A	Buy It Here!
Forgotten Realms	RPGGeek	Download It Here!	Buy It Here!
3GATE	RPGGeek	Download It Here!	N/A
Neverwinter Campaign Setting	RPGGeek	N/A	Buy It Here!
Fractal Mapper	RPGGeek	Download It Here!	Buy It Here!

Art & Map Resources

J Sloane

deviantArt

Google Maps

WotC's Map-A-Week Archive

Cartographers Guild

Fantastic Maps

GM Tools and Tips

Obsidian Portal

Schrödinger's Gun GMing

Ray Winninger's Dungeoncraft Articles

Setting Inspirations

Monsters of the Shattered World	N/A
Experiment 073	Buy Stuff Here!
Tolkien's Middle Earth	Buy It Here!
Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time Series	Buy It Here!
Star Wars	Buy It Here!

Game Designers and Publishers

Vincent Baker	RPGGeek
Ben McFarland	RPGGeek
Wolfgang Baur	RPGGeek
Monte Cook	RPGGeek
Wizards of the Coast	RPGGeek

I think that's about as many links as I can fit in a single post, though I may do lists of links around a theme again in the future.

Please let me know if this list helps. If you see a broken link, please drop me a comment or an email and I'll fix it.

A Morning Spent Staring

I want to write something, but I keep staring out the window of the train this morning. This happens fairly often lately. So I decided to write about it.

I'm starting a column called Wombat's Window over at The Gamer Effect. I only have the intro post up at the moment, but I've got 2 articles in the works and another half dozen ideas for topics. I'll be writing about what I see while staring out the window of the train. Exciting, yes?

My usual morning view in context.

Specifically I'll explore ideas based on what I see from the train, and I'll expand them into hooks for games in four genres: Fantasy, Steampunk, Cyberpunk, and Interstellar. I plan to include at least one photo with every article so you can see what I see. I don't know how often articles will appear, but I'll keep you updated.

Yes, this effort is inspired by Reality Makes the Best Fantasy over at Troll In The Corner. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I can't say enough good things about that series. Taking everyday ideas to expand fantasy worlds adds depth to storytelling. If I can make you ask yourself questions that will improve your game, then I'm happy.

In unrelated news, I'm working through another round of links covering what we talked about during the Gamer Assembly PAX East Panel videos. I'll publish those as articles here in the Gaming Den of Iniquity, probably next week at this rate. In the meantime, you can watch the Worldbuilding 101 and Tabletop System Wars videos on YouTube. Don't forget to check out the list of links in both doobly-doos, and feel free to Like them if you, y'know, actually like them. And, as always, come join us in the Gamer Assembly webchat.

Please stay tuned and let me know what you think. Thanks!

Teach Your Kids to Game Week

We're smack dab in the middle of this year's Teach Your Kids to Game Week, which runs December 3-10, 2012. I'm not sure a week is enough, since I think we should teach gaming whenever we can, but it might jog a few parents into action who otherwise wouldn't think of it.

Why Teach Gaming?
My wife recently shared an article listing the Top 10 Skills Children Learn from the Arts. When I read it, I realized that the same list neatly covers skills learned from Gaming as well. Patience, focus, creative problem-solving, perseverance - all of these spring just as easily from the gaming table.

I think Fitz's article about Cultivating a Beginner's Mind over at Game Knight Reviews hits another benefit squarely on the head. When you teach, a part of you recalls the limitless possibilities you had when you first learned. Before the limits and even defining what "failure" was in a gaming sense, you were free to explore and define your reality without fear. You were p'u, the uncarved block who had no preconceived limits on what was possible, and a piece of that mindset rekindles when you play RPGs and other games with your kids. I don't know about you, but tapping into that feeling helps keep me young.

Communication Is Key
In my mind, RPGs teach communication skills most of all. I've never heard anyone request less communication, unless they're trying to limit spam messages. But limiting face to face communications? I've only heard pleas for brevity, not less communication.

"It looks just like the GM described it!"

RPGs center around communication. It's a game where you create a new reality out of nothing but words: describing locations and items and actions and speaking in character. More thoughts on this in an upcoming post, so stay tuned.

No matter what work you or your kids end up doing in life, role playing games train communication skills and make habitual players more more rounded people, and thus more valuable workers. RPGs encourage speaking up around the table. They encourage taking action and describing that action in a way that everyone else around the table understands. Players come up with unorthodox ideas to solve problems. Players learn how to look at a situation from differing viewpoints and prioritize what to do next. Persevering through a quest rewards you with loot or character improvement. RPGs encourage working in a group and finding ways to get along with others to accomplish goals.

Do I sound like a business-based motivational speaker yet?

How Do I Start?
Don't overwhelm your kids with rules. Telling the story and controlling a character are key to getting kids jazzed about RPGs. I suggest using something lightweight, like RPG Kids or Argyle & Crew. I know people playing with something as light as the Clay-O-Rama rules from Dragon Magazine #125, and as crunchy as straight AD&D, so whatever rules you're comfortable with can work for kids, if you can explain them in small enough chunks for everyone at the table to understand. Or you can take all the math bits behind the GM screen and just have your younger players roll dice and decide what their character does next.

Drive Thru RPG has some other suggestions for RPGs for kids. And they're promoting Teach Your Kids to Game Week with resources like this banner:



I'm using Warrior, Rogue & Mage in my RPG for kids since it's all d6+bonus vs. target number. I've posted some lessons learned from my first RPG for kids run which you may find helpful. I'm also excited to get my hands on Sidekick Quests when the rules are released. Definitely read the Sidekick Quests webcomic if you haven't yet. James Stowe's character sheets and monster sheets are very accessible and irrepressibly fun.

What Am I Doing This Week?
Sadly, not much, though I've talked with my daughter about finishing up the story of Princess Ruth that we've been creating occasionally at bedtime. I'm flat out between work and homeschool and cleaning and being dad and shopping and adjusting to 2 new cats and getting back to writing The Tao of Gaming. But I am scheduling the next RPG for kids session for January or February. I can't wait to see what happens in Dragonville next.

Game on. And involve your kids this time.

Plugging a Couple of Lightweight RPGs

I just wanted to get out a couple of quick plugs for those of you looking for lightweight RPGs. I hear there's some call for them. There are several out there to choose from, but I've had my head in these two systems quite a bit lately.

1. Warrior, Rogue & Mage
I just completed the first in what I hope to be a series of RPG Sessions for Kids. For the rules, I used Warrior, Rogue & Mage. I hacked WyRM a bit, adding multiple levels of skills, the +5 instead of +6 for an exploding die, and the damage rules from Resolute, Adventurer & Genius (pulp action WyRM, and definitely worth a look if you're into that genre). I changed some of the skills and weapons, adding a little variety to both. I hacked the fantasy racial bonuses and changed them into a pick list of advantages and disadvantages. I think that'll add some flexibility in character creation.

I extended the talent list quite a bit. I dug up the old idea of a Summoner, a spellcaster who can do nothing but summon imps and sprites to do his bidding, so I added that idea in. I've always loved the idea of spells being cast through weapons as part of an attack, so I added the Mageblade talent. I added the Shield Expert and Shield Master talents, and I added Weak Attributes, for when your character is really, not even a little bit, really not a Warrior.

The system is Attribute + Skill + 1d6 compared with a target number. The exploding dice (top-ending rolls of 6) makes life interesting and tremendously unpredictable. The three title attributes lets me scribble down usable stats for a mook in 2 lines and an NPC in 3. I had a reference sheet all printed out for my first run, but the system was so intuitive that I never even looked at it during play.

If you're interested, grab a copy of the published rules from the links above. You can also download my Excel 2007 WyRM reference sheet with all my hacks that I pulled together for quick reference during play. I didn't do anything for spells, but I'll either add that as a separate sheet or cram it in with Equipment. I printed the reference sheet landscape 2-up and 2-sided so it fits on one piece of Letter-sized paper, but your mileage may vary. You can also download the blank character sheet I made (you'll need the Hingham Text font and Excel 07), and the pre-generated characters I made (10 of them).

2. BareBones Fantasy
I got hired as the editor for BareBones Fantasy a few months back. There have been many revisions along the way, but the finished system just released this morning on DriveThruRPG. I may be biased, but I think it gives you everything you could ask for in an RPG: solid rules, great systems to fiddle with, a sketch of a setting to build on, and good-looking art throughout.

It's percentile-based system, where you roll under your attribute or skill to succeed. It's very much like the Chaosium Call of Cthulhu rules, but with only 7 very broad skills. Anything not covered by a skill goes against one of the 4 attributes in the same manner. Critical success or failure happens on doubles, which I think is an elegant way to factor skill into the crit equation.

There's a short spell list, but each entry pares down the spell to its base function. It's up to the caster and the GM to give each spell the effects and character to bring it to life. For example, Offensive Strike lets you cause damage, but you get to decide if it's a fireball, or falling rocks, or a summoned swarm of locusts with razor-sharp legs.

The random generation section really stands out. There are tables for adventure ideas encompassing objectives and obstacles for each scene (recover the maguffin and save the princess while bringing the guilty to justice before time runs out, for example), random dungeon maps (take that, AD&D DMG!), traps, creatures, treasure, and non-standard adventure rewards. These systems and tables provide a pile of ideas and little bits you can inject into any fantasy game. To me, those 10 pages alone are worth the price, and you get the rest of the system for free!

Both rule systems are really easy to internalize so you're not looking things up every 5 minutes, and neither suffers from supplement creep. BBF is designed as a single-volume ruleset, so I don't think too much will be added outside of setting description and adventures. WyRM does have a handful of short supplements to extend the rules with options, but they're not needed at all. People are hacking WyRM into their own self-contained system books, and I can't wait to read the SF-flavored hack when it comes out.

So if you're in the market for light fantasy RPGs, I suggest you look at these two systems.