Star Wars Force Awakens: A new Era for Adventure?

[FORCE AWAKENS SPOILERS!]

So for the last few weeks I've been thinking "hey when Force Awakens is out I should really run some D6 SW rpg again, and won't it be cool to use the new era as a springboard for adventures cause it's so hot right now".

Only... now that I've seen Force Awakens... I'm not thaaaaaat inspired by it as an rpg setting, at least not more than I am by the Star Wars Classic Era games. And I've been mulling this over for the last day or so.

Why is it that I'm not champing at the bit now I've seen it? There's lots of cool non-time specific era stuff to yoink into any Star Wars game:

• The concept of Jakku - scavengers ekking out a living in the shadows of ruined battlecruisers - is great (I have a Junk World in my homebrew Star Wars Malicrux sector where scavengers pull apart beached warcruisers, stealing from the tanker strippers you get on the beaches in India)

• Tons of new races glimpsed, just waiting to be detailed, oh and droids too.

• Hints at the criminal gangs like the Kanjiklub and the Gauvian Death Enforcers

• Those Space-Otyugh (Rathars, I think?) that Solo's transporting - the best space critter seen in any of the SW movies

• Mas Kanata's smugglers den... she's been around for a thousand years (sold pot to Yoda during his college years, I hear) and according to Lupito N'yongo has run the place for a hundred years, so there's no reason it wouldn't exist during Classic or Clone Wars games. "Ya'll meet in a bar..."

• Lord Snoke... (hear me out on this) could possibly be a giant, or he could just be doing the Wizard of Oz trick and just be a little guy behind smoke and mirrors. But if not, and that hologram of him was 1 for 1 scale.... well now we have giants in Star Wars. Cool.

• The First Jedi Temple. Well that's got to have been a round for a few thousand years. So yeah, suitable for any era (I totally reckon they shot scenes from SW VIII while they were there, btw)

• Some excellent new Force Powers for the rare Jedi character out there (Boltholder, Force Paralysis, Seize Memory), plus an excellent demonstration of a latent Force Sensitive awakening.

• Some highly dodgy hyperspace hijinx your desperate smuggler can try and pull off.

... and so on. Bound to be tons more stuff in there that I'm forgetting that can be ripped out and dumped into your game.

But as for playing during the new First Order Era?

One of the few complaints I have about Force Awakens is how thin on the ground it is with its locations and the greater galactic scope. It really highlights one of the strengths of the prequels: Lucas' world building and expanding of his galaxy was really great, and Force Awakens was comparatively really dull. A desert world (been there way too many times already), a world of lakes and forests (been there), a world of snow and ice (been there, too), an urban world (briefly!) and an Imperial military complex (been there, lots). Say what you want about the prequels, but boy did Lucas take us to some really interesting places (same goes for the Clone Wars series, and for the new Rebels series). Even the planets and locations in the Nu Trek films are way more interesting than Force Awakens.

And the complaints aren't just about physical locations. The set up— there's a new Republic, which seems to have a democratic government going down, and there's the First Order trying to tear them down but they're only soso powerful, and they're being thwarted by the Resistance (who's relationship with the Republic is... weird to say the least, why not just be the New Republic Armed Forces or whatever) — the set up ain't very clear, and it's very cursory.

Compare that with say the set up of New Hope: there's a tyrannical galactic empire that's grinding everyone under its boots, the remnants of the Old Republic being swept away, criminality is flourishing under draconian rule, and there's a fledgeling Rebellion trying to fix this crapsack setting. There's more impetus to adventure implicit in the Empire's domination of the galaxy. There's a much grander sense of scale too, even if we don't see Coruscant, the Senate, the Emperor the Imperial Academy. "If there's a bright center to the galaxy you're on the planet that it's farthest from." "I've been from one side of the galaxy to the other and seen a lot of strange stuff." There's an awareness of how small these players feel they are in the grand scheme of things (only they aren't small, after all).

The galaxy in Force Awakens feels small. And incomplete.

Maybe we'll just have to hang out for the next two films to fill in those gaps before we go galavanting around this new galaxy. Maybe I can just make my own shit up to fill in the gaps. But if I have to run a Star Wars game... the new First Order era isn't calling to me, yet. There is little in the new era that makes it stand out from the previous eras (whether it's KOTOR era, or Clone Wars era, or Classic era). There is nothing unique about it that would make the gaming experience much different to those other times. All you'd be doing was changing names.

So how do you fix it?

When they were during production one of the early snippets I caught about Force Awakens was that the galactic war was far from over despite the destruction of the second Death Star, and that the war dragged on across the galaxy for decades. And that really sounded fascinating to me. Imagine a protracted civil war between government forces, numerous anti-government factions, meddling by external powers, and throw in a bunch of wild and crazy experimental game-changing technological weapons. Basically... take your cues from what's going on in say Syria. 

Now take Syria, and make it Syria.... IN SPPPPAAAAACE. A galaxy wide civil war. And then make that war play out over three decades across the stars.

What a horrible, terrible place the galaxy would be.

What I hoped we were going to get was two major players - the New Republic and the remains of the Empire - utterly exhausted by the war, having to deal with interference by vested interests — say a Hutt mercenary army or other criminal enterprise trying to capitalise on the chaos and expand their territory by invading wartorn worlds and offering new security. Imagine the state of the galaxy: everything's shot to pieces, or been consumed by the warmachine, or completely disrupted and malfunctioning, of crumbling edifices, ruined starports, and countless bodies everywhere, a scavenger galaxy where dysfunctional governments are usurped by gangs and warlords and everyone lives under the rule of the gun. And suddenly two fleets appear in the skies overhead, and for days the locals live in terror first of wreckage raining down on their world, and then the takeover by the victors above as they strip the world bare of any fuel and parts and food and munitions and people to continue their idealogical genocide.

And maybe that's what the galaxy of the new First Order era is like. A small pocket of civilization at the heart of the Republic, where things are goodish, and several pockets of draconian rule under the Empire.... and everywhere else is utter shit. A points of light campaign on a galactic scale.

Jakku seems a bit like that at least. 

Anyway... that's what I'd do to the rest of the galaxy, what I'd do to make it stand apart from the other eras. There would be a lot more scavenging, kludging, cobbling, and starving; a lot more desperation, despair, and cruelty on all sides, a miserable place where all hope for the return of the Jedi. 

SWORDS OF NORDHEIM #01 : THE ISLAND OF EERIKA'S DOOM

So finally after months of pussyfooting round I finally got to run the first session of Swords of Nordheim using D&D 5th and a bunch of houserules (modified races and classes, mainly, plus the use of futhark runes as character inspiration).

Two old mates of mine: Steg (also in Sydney) and Wes (currently working in Tokyo), who I've known and gamed with for twenty years or so, ran using Google Hangouts (man their "downgrade" is making it hard to stick around on G+.... sigh). Hopefully a couple more players will be join us soon.

And to push myself with the arty stuff and with the writey stuff I'm going to keep a session recap, complete with quick illustrations (I need to work on being faster with the pen). Lessee how long I can stick this out.

THE CHARACTERS:

GUNVOR KIRBYSON (Steg)
Nordheimer Warrior of Noble blood, drew the rune of Eihwaz merkstave, and favours the god Heimdall above all others. A master of games (few are his equal at shatranj) and a likeable son of the local lord. The broadsword and round shield are his weapons and he wears a fine chain shirt into battle.

TORRAD GAMILSON (Wes)
Trollblood Berzerker who trained as a Weaponsmith, drew the rune of Isa merkstave, and favours the goddess Sif above all others. His trollblood manifests as hideous claws that he must sever each morning before he goes to work in his smithy, where he hammers out the finest swords in his town. The sword and round shield are his weapons, but he eschews armour in his berzerker rage.

DRIFA ODDLEIFDOTTIR (me)
Jotunblood Huntress who sails the coast hunting whales, drew the rune of Nauthiz merstave, and favours the god Uller above all others. She is descended from Sea Giants. The Harpoon is her weapon, and the hide of her kills protects her. (I like having a DMPC in my games, especially if there's only a couple of players, and they're almost always heavy hitters just to help the PCs stay alive. And no, they're not snowflakes. They die very well, thank you).

(Merkstave means the rune has negative connotations, and the choice of favoured god from the Norse pantheon confers a minor blessing on each character)

The names are all from here: Viking Fantasy Name Generator

THE SETUP:

Steg punched a bunch of storyhooks into his brief character background, and here it is verbatim:

His father, a devout man, was famous for his own adventures twenty years gone. But last summer some old friends of his father's, some familiar to Gunvor and some not, turned up late one evening. The last trace of his father was a hastily scribbled note: “Eerika Bergljotdottir stirs in the Doom where we trapped her. We journ to Helmsborg to seek answers. Godsmun Bjornen Triggson gave oath this could not happen unless Strength in Life, Strength in Battle.”

So the player characters are the sons and daughters of Kirby's friends who have gone missing for several months, and I threw them straight into rowing their faering boat across the frigid waters to where their parents were last known to be heading: the island of Eerika's Doom.

The Island awaits...

THE ADVENTURE:

We started late and there was the usual first session muckaround to begin with, so we didn't get terribly far into it (which is good, cause I was underprepped and I can bang some stuff out in time for next week's game).

The three adventurers made it to the island and dragged their faering up over the rocky shores and into the tussocks beyond, then headed to the headland promontory away to the east to get a better view of the island. Through the slowly parting mists they saw a large rocky hill rising from the centre of the island, granite and barren, and were about to head off there when Torrad spied a wooden dragonprow poking up from the forest near the harbour on the far side of the headland.

They investigated, and found a small knarr fit for a dozen people had been pulled ashore and covered over with tarp and hidden by branches. They searched the ship, found no-one, but guessed from the rotting food stores that the crew had intended to stay for some time but had not returned to their ship. At best guess it had been hidden for several months; a small campfire was found but had been partially grown over. The three adventurers also found a couple of odds and ends (I'd forgotten to roll on the trinkets table and got them to do so in game). Then headed off to the rocky hill and found it soon enough.

As they scrambled about the hill, they found the rock was exceptionally cold to the touch, akin to touching bare flesh on frozen steel, and that there were no signs of animal life. Again Torrad's keen eyes spotted the flight of rough hewn stairs running up the side of the hill, and ascending it they came to a wide landing and a low stone cliff, into which some masterful hands had carved a wide opening that descended down into darkness.

At the bottom of there were two heavy stone doors, shut tight; but with a hefty push the doors parted to reveal a long hall lined with statues of excellent craftmanship, dark passages descending between each pair of figures. It appeared to be a burial mound, but the funereal boat was not lying along the floor. Instead it had somehow been inverted, so that the tip of the mast touched the stone ground, and the ceiling lay many feet deep in the thickest grip of ice. Only the prows emerged from the glacial grasp, and the ice ran down along the walls to smoother the upper halves of the statues.

The hall was incredibly cold, the air hurt to breathe, and touching anything froze the flesh.

Torrad persevered though, and using a torch and dagger managed to chip the ice away from one of the statues, that (serendipitously?) revealed the statue was a goddess, and was indeed his patron Sif, the goddess of War (have an inspiration point for that). The others went looking for their gods. Drifa found and freed Uller, the god of Hunting, but none of the statues were of Gunvor's patron Heimdall.

Instead Gunvor found Heimdall's face carved into the massive stone doors at the far end of the hall. Fitting, that the god of guardians would be found protecting the inner sanctum of the burial mound. Gunvor gave it his best to open the innder doors, but Heimdall was having none of it.

A quick investigation of the six other passageways leading out of the main hall reveal each descended to yet more stone doors. One was open, but at Torrad's insistence they chose the door guarded by Sif.

With a bit of effort (the ice that gripped the ceiling ran down each passage and partially covered the doors) they managed to open the passage and found a tomb inside. The walls were again lined with statues, this time of nobility, looking down on a massive sarcophagus. Gunvor and Torrad were about to push the lid off it when Drifa spotted a secret door up in the passageway, but they pressed on with the task and with a massive crash the stone lid fell away.

Inside was the fully armed and armoured skeleton of a Jotunblood warrior, easily over nine feet tall. Long dead, Torrad decided to bequeath his armour to Drifa, and the warrior's fine looking sword to himself; he snapped the Jotunskel's head right round as he was removing the helm.... only to see the head turn slowly back and the horror rise up out of its resting place.

The Jotunskel (reskinned Minotaur Skeleton p273MM, increased AC to 14, decreased damage to 1d8+6).

It mouthed breathless words as it snapped Drifa's harpoon in half, swatted away the first sword blows, and then attacked. Maybe because Torrad was the one who defiled his tomb it concentrated its wrath on him and brought its own sword down on the trollblood hardest. The first blow to hit dropped him two thirds of his hit points, but the combination of Gunvor's swift swordwork, Drifa's horns and Torrad's rage wore the creature down, and it was finally felled by Gunvor's sword to the neck. As the decapitated head rolled away, its still mouthed its silent words. "You shall bear these arms at Ragnorok," was what it appeared to say, watching as the victors looted its fallen body.

We called it a night there. Midnight; tired Jez, more prep needed.

THE MAP:

I didn't get anywhere near enough prep time as I would have liked, so grabbed the old crypt map I'd made a few years back to showcase the DungeonFu GoogleDocs I'd made... so far this is what they've explored:

TREASURE:

Trinkets from the boat:
- a brass king from a shatranj game (Gunvor)
- a mysterious iron holy symbol of an unknown god (Torrad)
- a large scale from a Vaengrwyrm (Drifa)

From the Jotunskel:
- one suit of chain mail and warhelm (fit for a Jotunblood)
- one fine heavy broadsword (+1 damage)
- one fine dagger
- a magnificent bejeweled belt
- one wooden round shield marked with a doubleheaded orca
- a fine silver necklace bearing an amulet of Thor's hammer Mjolnir

EXPERIENCE:

Exploring the Island: 150XP
Defeating the Jotunskel: 450XP

TOTAL: 600XP/3 = 200XP each

SWORDS OF NORDHEIM: Campaign Map

Something I knocked up over the weekend for Swords of Nordheim. 

My sincerest apologies for the manglesmash of Old Norse.

Goreball Playtests

Ready to Roll....

Been a little quiet here, but only cause I've been busy hammer and tongs on Goreball!

Took the game for its first public playtests last weekend at the inaugural BezerkaCon in Sydney, which was a great motivator for getting the prototype up and ready and the rules refined enough for proper play. Also managed to get a few games in with my gamer crew in the lead up, so all up it's had about 10 playtests with others now.

A big thanks to everyone who took it for a spin, your feedback has been invaluable and I've spent the last few days tweaking and refining. I'm really happy with where it's heading.

What I've learned from the playtests:

• I suck at playing my own game. I haven't won once.
• Everyone really digs the look of the board and figures. Phew.
• Gameplay comes in a wide variety of styles, which is great. Working out which tactics are best is going to be fun.
• The playtests were only using teams of Kludgers — the allrounder position with the same amount of dice in every ability. That made it easier to teach the basics. I look forward to trying it with the full roster of positions available.
• I had a guy with fairly poor eyesight look over the board and the designs of all the positions and could separately identify everything. Good.
• People reaaaaaaally like hurting their opponent's players. This game runs on schadenfreude.
• People reaaaaaaally like picking up their own Goreballers with their Mauljaws and throwing them around the arena. Even when they splat.
• The Gore tokens are a winner. Ain't called Goreball for nothing.
• There's a lot of love for the Mauljaws. The moveable goal aspect is really popular.
• Mauljaws are really really hard to take down. But not impossible; once you get them on their back it's possible to pile on and with everyone and hurt them bad.
• I need to differentiate the two special Mauljaw attacks of ripping Goreballers limb from limb and just eating them whole. Mechanically and results wise they're too similar.
• It's taken a while to get the lethality levels right. Originally I had it so that injuring the Mauljaw, or injuring all the active Goreballers so there's noone in the Arena was a means of winning the game. That led to some heavy slugfests while the goreballer with the Gob hung out down the back,and once one team gains the upper hand numberswise its a death spiral. That's been changed now so that instead of winning you just score a point, which means that a passing game ends up being a more effective means of point scoring which is what I wanted.
• Falling off a pylon and critically injuring yourself as your opening move is hilarious.
• When the Gob explodes, it's a little less dangerous than I originally hoped for, and might need bolstering.
• It's possible for one team to have multiple turns in a row. There was one game where my opponent got three full turns before I could act. It didn't bother me in the slightest — I might have been to caught up in the playtest — but it could prove frustrating for certain players. I'll need to work that out.
• The biggest recurring issue was the bases for the Mauljaws. Currently I'm using the Pathfinder Pawns medium and huge sized bases. No real probs with the Goreballers (minor issues with bases being ever so slightly larger than the hexes but barely commented on) whereas the huge circular base placed over multiple hexes was confusing when it came to moving the Mauljaw around. In a perfect world the bases would be hex shaped to best fit on the hex board, and the Mauljaw bases would cover a 7 hex shape with its edge matching the outline of the 7 hexes. But no one to my knowledge makes them, and I really want to avoid going do the path of manufacturing unique plastic pieces for this game. Conundrum.
• The amount of dicerolling.... was a lot, but no one complained about it.
• The core rules seemed to be picked up by everyone pretty quickly.
• Teaching people how to play Goreball is exhausting!
• Teaching people how to play Goreball is awesome!

All in all, the playtests were great.

So from here:

• revise the rules with all the feedback and playtest again.
• finish designing the female Goreballers (I had the Kludgers as 50/50 guys/gals. These things are important).
• finish the mutation tables for the Goreballers and Mauljaws, as well as work out more interesting equipment to be picked up from the stash drops.
• test the rules at higher levels of ability. Currently all the positions have abilities ranging between 1 to 3 (that's the number of dice you get to roll and your result is the highest die). I need to see how it plays when Goreballers have abilities between 4 to 6, and the Mauljaws (who currently attack and defend with 4 to 6 dice) need to be tested with 7 to 10 dice.
• once that's all done, and I'm 100% happy with how the core game runs, I need to work out rules for tournaments and league play.
• playtest the league rules.

and once that's done, I can start to look at production and distribution.

can't wait!

Death don't care what color you are. Or if you're packing or racking.

Circle of Hands Illustrations

Two pieces from Ron Edward's recently released Circle of Hands RPG.

That last one is pretty much me on a bad day.

And Now a Few Words from our Monster

to everyone who has voted thus far to get Man Rider in the new Dungeons & Dragon movie!!!

Fuck Yeah!!!

A bit late with this, but a bunch of things happened last week:

GenCon went down on the far side of the world.

So I ran this:

for the rest of the poor suckers like me who couldn't go cause geographic handicaps and reasons.

And fun was had.

I even got to play this time, taking a very dusty Man Rider for a much needed spin.

And then in the middle of all that, this little baby:

went and picked up this:

for best art, with some lovely words by Ramanan over here:

http://save.vs.totalpartykill.ca/blog/awards-2014/

and then while AntigenCon rolled on, this other little baby:

went and picked up 4 ENnie Awards at GenCon:

Gold for Best Writing

Gold for Best Setting

Silver for Best Adventure

Silver for Product of the Year

Those first three wins are all Zak's glory. The writing, the setting, the adventure(s) really are good.

But it's the last one that makes me supremely happy, cause that's the part I was involved in. Product of the Year, for a three man team coming in second behind the gargantuan behemoth that is the D&D Player's Handbook. If you're gonna lose to someone, it's ok to lose to those guys. (And given how much love it's getting from my local crew, you can see why it took gold.)

But they had the advantage of a production team of 60 people (I counted) not including the 62 interior artists and the acknowledgements to the 27 original creators and major players in previous editions, backed by a major corporation.

You'd be pissed if they didn't win.

And we were 3.

On the 21st of November 2011 I wrote the first entry on this blog, something weird about the Children of Nabraxu. It was the first step in ending a year long battle with depression. Within a week I'd offered to run the first Secret Santicore for Christmas 2011, and that was an awesome opportunity to get involved with the DIY gaming community; out of all the connections I made with the community and the rpg industry from Secret Santicore I've been able to spend the last three years working in rpg art and design. That's my fucking dream job.

And then to have a hand in Red and Pleasant Land... I'll be honest, it's the biggest single project I've ever worked on in 23 years of commercial graphic design, and it sure was no easy thing either. I know I'm not the author or the artist, but I think few people truly comprehend just how much time, love, and suffering was poured into designing that beast. I'm mighty proud of what Zak, James and I made.

To have those efforts acknowledged by everyone who voted for it? To have everyone say that we made the second best roleplaying game product in a year of awesome releases?

Mind blown.

Thank you.

And then some people said some shitty things about other people, so this happened:

which was originally meant to be about awesome things that gamers where doing, but generally devolved into just how awesome various gamers were in various other gamers lives.

Which was very sweet.

AND THEN... for some stupid reason, I was compelled to make this:

 which is so stupid that it cannot possibly fail.

GO AND SIGN THE PETITION HERE

All in all, it's been a good week :)

MAN RIDER TEESHES!!!!!

Cause who doesn't want the little guy all over their chest.

Go get'em here!

D&D 5E : SWORDS OF NORDHEIM

Announcing Swords of Nordheim, my new game setting for D&D 5th Edition.

The Sad Story of Tik Tok the Half Human

My favorite orc pic. She's beautiful. By Jang Keun-Chul

S:19 D:14 C:18 I:5 W:11 Ch: 14
5th Level Half Orc Fightress

She don't remember much. 

She's a Gal-Aktar Gal. Mountains. Orcs. Hollering. Bloodshed. Was good with bloodshed. Knows enough to know that she doesn't know much, and that's how they got her. That other orc tribe. Killed her people, all the rest. Tricked them. Enslaved her. Tortured her, too. "Tik Tok" they mocked, like Time was running out. She didn't understand. Time has legs? Too many things in her head.

But she knows this: she's the Last One. Which is why she's King. Just a King with out a tribe. But one day there will be a new tribe. It's just up to her to make it. So she's here for fame, fortune, and family. First you get the money. Then you get the power. Then you get the woman. Man. Whatever. She misses Gwynn. He made everything make sense. Would have been a good Queen.

But Gwynn has gone. Now everything bad is now worse. Found a tribe. Lost it. Hard being King! Too hard for Tik Tok. So much thinking. Tik Tok no good at thinking. Tik Tok no good at kinging either. Stupid crown. Tik Tok throw stupid crown in the sea. Stupid Sea. Stupid Tik Tok.

There was a dragon. There is a war. Tik Tok not sure who's fighting. Tik Tok not sure who she's fighting for. Tik Tok so.... Tik Tok not sure what Tik Tok is any more. Tik Tok thought she was King. Stupid Tik Tok.

Tik Tok like this beer though. Beer good. Tik Tok drink lots of beer. Tik Tok feel better. Tik Tok can't hear them any more. Humans nasty. Just as nasty as orcs. Half-orc they shout. Go away Half-orc.

Tik Tok half-human too. But no-one ever calls her that.

Tik Tok wonder what halflings really are. Tik Tok wonder what lings are.

Tik Tok wonder. Why life so shit? Life shit on Tik Tok from great height ever since she remember, which is at least three weeks ago. Maybe ever four.

Tik Tok have great axe though. Life not all shit. Axe make Tik Tok happy. Can't Tik Tok just be happy? Axe make Tik Tok very happy. Maybe Tik Tok swing Axe all the time. Make Tik Tok always happy.

Rules say Tik Tok not allowed to swing axe all the time.

Tik Tok mad. Stupid rules. Gwynn make Tik Tok happy too. Tik Tok swing Gwynn all the time! Only... Gwynn gone.

Tik Tok sad again. Beer not working anymore.

Stupid beer.

Stupid Tik Tok.

A World Without Magic: 5th Ed D&D without the sparkly bits

As much as I love the 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons, one of the few issues I have with it is the prevalence of magic in so many of its classes and in the base setting.

I find the overabundance of magic in the 5th Edition makes magic far less magical and far more mundane.

Forgotten Realms doesn’t really do it for me; I’m more of a fan of worlds where magic is very rare, such as Game of Thrones, or non-existent, such as historical games in our world.

Hopefully this document provides enough variety of gameplay untouched by the arcane.

[Click to open Google Doc]

Adventure Module Survey Results

Yeah so this isn't scientific by any means.

1) Preferred Game System

Labyrinth Lord / BX : 25%

Lamentations of the Flame Princess: 12.5%

Dungeon Crawl Classics: 10%

Agnostic: 10%

5E D&D: 7.5%

OD&D: 7.5%

Swords & Wizardry: 5%

Dungeon World: 5%

Other 5%

Basic Fantasy: 2.5%
Warhammer FRP: 2.5%

Castles & Crusades: 2.5%
Adventurer Conquerer King: 2.5%

AD&D: 2.5%

The complete lack of Pathfinder tells you I didn't ask over at the Paizo Forums. But basically for indie press it seems that LL/BX is the way to go, especially when you roll in LotFP which is like its evil sister. And if you think I'm echo chambering with this, the only game I'm playing on here with any regularity is D&D 5E.

2) Preferred Module Dimensions:
A5/Half Letter Size: 41.9%

A4/Letter Size: 41.9%

6x9/Digest: 6.4%

Don't Care: 9.7%

Take your pick: A5 or A4. Your production costs on an A5 are going to be higher (it's 7c/A5 page down here vs 10c/A4 page at the local print shop). A4 is good for bigger maps, legibility; not so good for postage.

3) Preferred Module Length (in time to play... longer = bigger = more $):
One Session: 31%

Two Sessions: 41.4%

Three Sessions: 13.8%

Four Sessions or more: 13.8%

4) Encounters per Session:
3.7 was the average respondents' answers.

So with the majority preferring a two session module you're looking at 7 to 8 encounters per adventure module.

5) Main Map Location:
Inside Loose Cover: 72%
Opposite Page to Encounter: 20%
Back of Book: 4%
Other (gatefold map that pops out the side, like Qelong): 4%

Pretty obvious really, the D&D classic loose cover is the fave.

6) Adventure Requirements:
Here's a whole bunch of insight:

"Interesting NPCs atmospheric design"

"Either intriguing concept that makes me want to run it (and is something I wouldn't've come up with) or very strong utility/replay/expansion possibilities that save me work or act as the spine of a whole mini-campaign."

"A premise that will pique the players' interests"

"non-linearity is a must."

"Good art"

"Good layout and art."

"Somewhat plausible storyline!"

"Gonzo rules!"

"A simple concept done well"

"Good map, non-linear"

"Not be a railroad; not be a loosely tied together bunch of blanks that I have to fill in myself; not be boring (not a high bar to clear, I'll happily buy and run your goblin-infested abandoned dwarven mine if it's well executed. Gonzo and weirdness by itself are not selling points for me)."

"An interesting hook and, hopefully, competent writing and editing. Actual player choice is always great."

"Interesting hook that I feel I genuinely couldn't think of myself within the confines of 10 - 20 minutes long trip to the toilet"

"Either intriguing concept that makes me want to run it (and is something I wouldn't've come up with) or very strong utility/replay/expansion possibilities that save me work or act as the spine of a whole mini-campaign."

"map with keyed locations that have enough description I can run this more easily than making something up myself."

"Something interesting, a lack of the mundane, something unique, some freedom from a linear plot and a nice chunk of player choice - also traps and puzzles are the hardest thing to think up on the fly, so make sure those are good - I can steal them even if the rest of the module is dull.
Also just follow these suggestions and you should be okay:
http://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?page_id=1201"

"It can't be a railroad. And it has to have some idea I wouldn't have thought of."

"Give me a reason to buy it. Awesome artwork. A review of someone I usually trust raving about it. An idea that makes me say "that's neat." Something I haven't seen before--and by now, I've seen a LOT of fantasy RPGing. Make a cheapish PDF available with some way for me to get a couple bucks off the print version if I decide to buy the print version. Unless you're publishing The Excellent Travelling Companion you'd better make a PDF available. First, that's the thing I'm more likely to actually use at the table, and second, if I like the way it looks I'm pretty likely to buy the hardcopy."

"Interesting concept, but not so off-the-wall that it'll be a campaign-breaker or only good as a one-shot. Needs to present something I couldn't easily throw together myself. Needs to be adaptable to my campaign setting. Decent art is a plus, and good layout/graphic design will get me to pick it up in the first place. There's a lot of junk on DriveThruRPG to sift through, so it could be well-written, but if it looks like amateur crap, I'll skip it unless it has a lot of recommendations."

"Flexibility. Guidelines. No railroading."

"Non-linear, site based. Doesn't screw over the players (so basically not LoftP)."

"A sense of humour."


7) Generic Monster Stats:
Complete Monster Stats in Module: 45%
Abridged Monster Stats in Module: 30%
Reference to Monster Stats in Core Book: 15%

Whole hog please.


8) Preferred Price Point for an 8 page Module (black and white w/ maps+illos):
less than $5: 33%
$5-$10: 67%
$10+: —

So that averages out to be $5.85 for an 8 page Module. 73c per page.

9) Preferred Price Point for a 16 page Module (black and white w/ maps+illos):
less than $5: 5%
$5-$10: 80%
$10-$15: 15%
$15+: —

And that averages out to be about $8.00 for a 16 page module. or 50c per page.

10) Preferred Price Point for an 32 page Module (black and white w/ maps+illos):
less than $5: —
$5-$10: 47.8%
$10-$15: 34.8%

$15-$20: 17.4%

Averages out to be about $14.57 for a 32 page module. or 46c per page.

11) If you could name one adventure module as the benchmark (big publishers, indie module or homepress, doesn't matter) what would it be and why?
Whole bunch of different suggestions here:

"The Haunted Halls of Eveningstar"

"I really like the old TSR modules for the amount of information they pack into a low page-count, frankly."

"B5 Horror on the Hill or U1 Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. They have good maps, keyed locations, and let you quickly run a game instead of having to read the entire thing in advance of running it."

"RPL and Vornheim are still my gold standards in terms of organization and content. I'm also a big fan of Keep on the Shadowfell from the 4e days. Big maps, a big folder to hold two stapled books. If you're going for an A4 sized book, that's my preferred way of doing it." 

"No Salvation for Witches, and J Waltons Planarch Codex for Dungeon World"

"A Red & Pleasant Land."

"Sailors on the Starless Sea Because - 16 pages, 10$, great art through out including pictorial handouts, awesome hand drawn isometric maps, The Players can go numerous ways and still end up at the climax. It is crammed full of all sorts of weirdness and roleplaying inspiring moments."

"B4 was an excellent introduction to "how to be a DM" (as is "The Lost Mines of Phandelver"). R&PL is awesome, but much more than a module as you're defining it. So's Qelong, but again, same thing. X1 is how you do a wilderness adventure right. D1-2 might be a good touchstone for more straightforward dungeon crawling."

"Qelong and Forgive Us."

"Sailors on the Starless Sea, short but comprehensive (had everything) and also emphasizes that you can have BIG ADVENTURES with 1st-level characters."

"Anomalous Subsurface Environment 1 by +Patrick Wetmore because it got me back into old school gaming and it has such great gonzo content that can be expanded upon by the user. The Orbital Gods are pure genius!"

"One-Page Dungeons (or, at least, the best of them), because they look good, they have all the info I really need right there, they're easy to insert into my game, and since the authors are forced to conserve space, there's no useless bloat like game fiction or boxed text. Also, stuff that Zak Smith does, because even if his ideas end up being too out-there for my relatively vanilla pseudo-Tolkien game, they inspire a ton of ideas and get me thinking along lines I might not have when left to my own devices. Flavor and setting conveyed via random tables is a brilliant idea. Finally, +Dyson Logos' maps are luvverly, and make me want to run dungeon crawls."

"I think U1 Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh was great and I really enjoyed L2, forgot its name Assassin's Knot? and I got a lot of use out of A2 separate from the Slaver series."

"Oh, and good god I forgot City-State of the Invincible Overlord!"

"Tegel Manor by judges guild. Most fun ever both as a player and then running it as a GM
the original I6(?) Ravenloft, because it had a fun card-based "fortune-telling" mechanic that determined important details like the villain's motivation and weakness. Also, isometric maps!"

"A Thousand Dead Babies by Zzarchov Kowolski - it's small, it is complex yet simple to run, it is awesome."

"Anomalous Subsurface Environment is tits, both in content and in the way it's all presented."

"Necessary Evil for Savage Worlds. Best purchased campaign I've ever ran. For something a little more D&D, though, I'll go with Night Below. For something more standalone, Small Niche Games kills it about every time out. Inn of Lost Heroes is a favorite."

"Lichemaster"

"Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes."

"Advanced Adventures #26 - The Witch Mounds by Keith Sloan. Not the best looking module, true, but manages to fit a 4 sessions dungeon in 12 pages (and with several new monsters)."

"Servants of the Cinder Queen"

"Servants of the Cinder Queen by Jason Lutes. Interesting location, enemies, plot, beautiful presentation."

"Ravenloft (I6) is probably the one I've run most often (as one-offs) because it is very easy to grasp for newbies to roleplaying, but I only run it with superficial adherence to the actual module as written. So no. One of the most exciting and interesting adventures I've run wasThe Grey Knight for Pendragon. In fact many of the Pendragon adventures have a lot to recommend them as a template (coming from the time when Chaosium was writing stuff decades in advance of everyone else). Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues for Paranoia was difficult to run because I was laughing so hard at the jokes inside of it. I do like how the old Ironclawadventures were presented (in a sourcebook, so that it introduced players to the material in the sourcebook). I've always had a soft spot for Paul Jacquays's stuff so Caverns of Thracia is probably my choice."

"Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. It's full of iconic locations, it's a run in a wizards dungeon that has been squatted by another wizard that has then been vanquished but it's still full of weird, so it's very DND in its framing. It links deeply to its setting but without letting you know or forcing you. It's full of awesome and comes with a 16 pages sourcebook. It has a big wilderness to explore, and politics, albeit simple. Most importantly, it's a fun exploration module that is full of wonders."
Got some reading to do here...

SO........

Looks like my first first foray into indie publishing will be a 16 page A5 (or maybe A4, unsure now) black and white module with a loose color cover, black and white map on the inside with essential info on the map, and if space permits, smaller map sections on the relevant page with the 8 or so encounter details. Which is good, cause that's what I'd planned to do anyhoo. So thanks for confirming that for me, and taking the time to lemme know what you want.

Only real decision is what system... LL/BX is clearly the most popular, even moreso as it's easily portable into LotFP and DCC, but I never run it. Hmmm...

Next.... what kind of adventure?

Adventure Module Survey

Adventure Module Survey Time!
So I'm curious about the following as I'm looking at publishing a few adventures. I've put this survey up on G+, rpg.net and therpgsite.com forums, hopefully will get a decent slab of responses which I'll post in a couple of days. If you want to answer the survey in the comments below that'd be great too. Bewdy!

1) Preferred Game System:
System Agnostic / d20 Compatible: D&D (please list which flavor: OD&D, AD&D, 3.X/PF, 5E, etc.) / DCC / LotFP / LL/BX, etc.) / Other System

2) Preferred Module Size:
A5/half-letter sized, A4/letter sized, something else (lemme know).

3) Preferred Module Length (in time to play... longer = bigger = more $):
1 Session/2 Session/3 Session/ 4+ Sessions.

4) Encounters per Session:
How many do you think you get through on average?

5) Main Map Location:
Inside of loose cover (like old D&D Modules) / centerspread in middle of book / on page opposite map entries / somewhere else (lemme know).

6) Adventure Requirements:
What must the adventure have for you to consider purchasing it?

7) Generic Monster Stats:
Are you a) happy if an adventure refers you to a page ref in the Monster Manual for typical monsters or b) do you have to have all the stats in the module?

8) Preferred Price Point for an 8 page Module (black and white w/ maps+illos):
$5 / $5-$10 / $10-$15 / $15-$20 / $20+

9) Preferred Price Point for a 16 page Module (black and white w/ maps+illos):
$5 / $5-$10 / $10-$15 / $15-$20 / $20+

10) Preferred Price Point for a 32 page Module (black and white w/ maps+illos):
$5 / $5-$10 / $10-$15 / $15-$20 / $20+

11) If you could name one adventure module as the benchmark (big publishers, indie module or homepress, doesn't matter) what would it be and why?

Thanks heaps folks, very much appreciated.