The Year Ahead

The death of G+ is gonna hurt, baaaad. It's been my main RPG connection to the rest of the community since its inception, and there really isn't another social media platform quite like it.

G+ was responsible for giving me my break into the RPG industry, and has been responsible for 90% or more of my connections, work opportunities, and most importantly friendships I've made online since 2011.

I'm really, really gonna miss it.

Here's where you can contact me:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GibletBlizzard
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/giblet.blizzard
MeWe: https://mewe.com/profile/5bbbe50aa40f300c5e52f331

or drop a comment in any blogpost here.

I'm yet to find a suitable replacement for G+, and I've let this blog wallow for the last couple of years because of the amount of good stuff that went on there. So I'm gonna fire this blog up again while I work on a bunch of things that'll include:

• FERAL RPG - the big thing I'm working on
• graphic and information design commentary for RPGs
• freelance design, illustration and cartography projects I'm working on:
  - Odious Uplands for Jason Sholtis
  - Orcs! A High-Octane Adventure for Mike Evans' Hubris RPG
  - whatever else gets lined up
• The Greyhawk Gang - my weekly meatgamers' 5E D&D game that's been running since April 2016, starting at 1st level with B2 Keep on the Borderlands, now currently 11th Level at the end of G123
• My search for the best iteration of d20 D&D rules
• Star Wars D6 Rules Essentials - my ongoing pet project taking the best from all the SW games
• Random RPG material - whenever it turns up

Also gonna update this blog, starting with the RPG Graphic Design page with all the stuff I've worked on since 2011 - http://gibletblizzard.blogspot.com/p/rpg-books-ive-worked-on.html

If you want to check out Feral RPG you can download free playtest PDFs and character sheets here:

Website: https://feralrpg.com/

And I'll post updates and community stuff here:

FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/feralrpg
MeWe Group: https://mewe.com/group/5bbbeb62a40f300c5e519a79

If you want to support Feral RPG:

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FERALRPG

You can check out my Star Wars D6 Rules Essentials PDF here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10C-TU83__StikozYEsgGugdTPeFUjSrjblc783Ex07g/edit?usp=sharing

and download character sheets from here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lmoHBnUsEjBGVy6M_cAKF6Ox--5utPvd/view

So I'm not certain exactly how the year ahead's gonna pan out online, but I'll be hammer and tongs Feral and other stuff whatever happens.

Stay in touch.

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 :)

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.

The Cast of Star Wars Episode VII Playing Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game

This just wrote itself.

EDIT: dang. I wrote it based on a mis-reported Max von Sydow sitting next to Hamill, which ain't true. It's Anthony Daniels.

12 Questions from the Octopi Lord

From here:

http://elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/how-30-day-challenge-ruined-my-life.html

What is your favorite villain you ever challenged players with?

A powerful and very capable arcane inventor by the name of Gillerneine. He had his bones sucked out of his body by vengeful merfolk after he'd tried to steal away a mermaid he'd fallen in love with, and now was a meatblob in a glass-jar-helmed mechanical diversuit. He was motivated by love for this mermaid, and devoted his life to the exploration of the seas in an attempt to be reunited with her. He joined the game first as the employer of the players, inviting them to accompany him on an expedition to a lost island that only he knew the location of and the players needed to get to. But on the night before the expedition he laced their drinks with a hallucinogen that revealed visions of each characters beliefs, hopes and fears, and the players HATED him for prying so deep without their permission. I really misjudged how strong their reactions were going to be.

For the next few sessions the mistrust only worsened, with Gillerneine trying to pry a powerful artefact from the players' control while onboard a giant mechanical flying turtle that because of said artefact was slowly becoming awakened and sentient. There was an attempted mutiny by the players, an uncomfortable compromised reached, and a bruised truce made; both parties needed each other to complete their respective missions. Great tense "I hate you but need you" from both groups.

So several high seas sessions later they finally find their way to the lost jungle island, where the really important supermacguffin is being held by the bad guys. Jagged jungle terrain, difficult to negotiate— especially in a mechanical diversuit. And so it happens that while they're scaling a slimy, root covered rockface, Gillerniene fails his climb check, slips, and falls backwards down towards the rocks. 

Naturally, as a major NPC I'm thinking I better give him a close call and let the players rescue him and one-up him. Random roll indicates that Kozun the stoic rockdwarf monk is the guy who can save Gillerneine. "So Kozun— Gillerneine's horrid glass helmet echoes with his scream as he falls right past you— what do you do!?!"

There's about two seconds of consideration before Kozun's player replies: "Nothing."

Which probably would have been fine, had Gillerneine not shattered his helmet and speared his brain on a broken branch at the bottom of the cliff. Bad time to roll a crit to the head.

So yeah, Gillerneine.... or The Gaurhoth, a First Age Werewolf Demon in my Middle Earth campaign who had (the players chose all these btw):

• Tortured the Woodelf

• As a foul spirit, defiled the Shieldmaiden's ancestoral barrow and ran off in her dead mother.

• Killed the Shieldmaiden's brothers.

• Tortured and maimed and still imprisoned the Gondorian Knight's betrothed.

• Raped and sired an unborn child in the womb of the Beornlinga healer.

Kill Bill, Tolkien style.

What is your favorite organization behind wrong-doing in your setting?

The Un. Void-worshipping black hole cultists and non-entities determined to eat our Universe and shit out a new one in theirs.

What is the most interesting location you ever staged a battle in?

Recently? A blazing firefight in a University lab in a prestigious city tower built upon the back of a mountain-sized beetle that was being mounted by two other city-beetles in a state of drug-fuelled sexually frenzy. 

Yeah. No pictures of that.

What is the most interesting chase scene you ever had in a game?

I like starting new campaigns with chase scenes, especially for Star Wars games. I think the best chase I've kicked off with is the game starting with the smuggler's dropping out of hyperspace with an Imperial Star Destroyer hot on their tail, a brown smear of a junkworld and an orbital belt made out of blasted battlecruisers. Watching the players squirm as they try to deal with the TIE Fighters, the live animal cargo going berko, not flying right into a spacewreck, and working out how the hell the Empire can track them through space all at the same time has always been great fun to run.

Picture not really relevant. But still cool.

What is the most evocative scenic location you have used in a game?

It's really hard to do evocative scenic location wrong when you're playing Star Wars:

http://gibletblizzard.blogspot.co.nz/p/star-wars-malicrux-peril.html

What is the most interesting one-of-a-kind unique monster in your games?

The problem I've always had with my games is that I usually save the one-of-a-kind for the big boss at the end, and when you're as fickle a gamer as I am the players don't normally get to see them. That said, Kindred of the East lends itself to some really wild and unique eastern vampire demons. Squicky!

What is the most tantalizing artifact, relic or tech you have ever used in game?

The Malicrux Peril. Everybody wants it, no-one knows quite what it is.

What is the most world shattering thing a player has ever got up to in your settings?

Unintentionally giving away the location of the players' homeworld to a horde of bloodthirsty, worldshattering spacetoads. And they did shatter the world, split it right down the middle with their little froggy lazers.

What is the strangest death of a character in game you have run?

For NPCs, the Unfortunate Incident of the Man and the Cliff, as detailed above.

For PCs... the DCC Zero, laden with treasures exotic and wondrous, who climbed into the Well in the Keep found in Sailors of the Starless Seas. He just.... vanished. For ever.

What is the most intriguing challenge, trap, or non combat obstacle in your games?

MY MIIIIIIIIND.

Or the puzzle trap I made for Secret Santicore, p30-35.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33463820/Secret%20Santicore%202011.pdf

What is most interesting ability or character option you have added to your game?

Unless you're playing Tolkien I'm not the biggest fan of the trad fantasy races, unless you do something wicked with them like the races in Dark Sun. So normally I make new races for each setting. Nothing Amazing, just different.

What is the strangest mash up or weirdest system hack you have made in gaming?

I'm not normally one for system hacking (though I have a fantasy heartbreaker someone back there) and don't normally go for mashups unless it's in the setting, like say Rifts. Man I played a fuckton of that game back in the day.

Zak's DM Questionnaire

From here:

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?

The Hexlock Puzzle that turned up in my Secret Santicore entry. p30 I think. It's nearly 10 years old and I'd made up a decent hardcopy mounted on card and presented it to my players  once they'd stormed the wizards tower. Had them stumped, and I'd taken the bastard option and repeated the puzzle on the reverse in a different order. They'd been working hard at it for 10 minutes before someone turned one of the pieces over. Best jaw drop ever. They did solve it too.

2. When was the last time you GMed?

Just before Christmas.

3. When was the last time you played?

Mid 2010; wrapped up a Mutants & Masterminds alt-history supers campaign where Japan didn't hit Pearl Harbour so the Americans didn't get involved in the war... 50 years later, cyber Hitler is lording over the world from his base on the moon. Campaign goal? Kill Hilter. And I got the natural 20 punching him in the face. Icky.

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to. 

I'm pining for some good ol' dungeon hacks actually... the dungeon bash would be an exploration of a sunken temple-thing, summoned from the deep, inhabited by evilfishmen for centuries, but millenia ago was actually a vast magick artefact designed to grant its creator immortality in a time womb thing - only it didn't work as planned - and there's lots of time/possibility hijinks and side-effectsto screw the players over with, as they try to get the temple-machine operational again, get back to their own time and stop the big bad from emerging from stasis.

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

Engage; usually the fastest way to get them moving.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

I need brain food; carbs and sugary goodness.

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

Nope. Emotionally sometimes, and mentally draining sure. 

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?

Same Mutant and Masterminds game as above; I deliberately built a hero that was designed to support others, and with the right point-buy I made a zillionaire who owned a private army stationed on one of the islands of the coast of LA. Just having an army at your beck and call was a totally different (and interesting) style of playing.

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

Any excuse for a laugh. But that doesn't mean they don't take the campaign seriously. We just have fun while playing.

10. What do you do with goblins?

Pull teeth out of their victims and make little goblin-baby rattles out of them.

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?

That thar bowl of 13 frogs keeps getting into my brainpan. Frog season in Jez's head.

12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?

The ongoing paternity issues for our drug-addled ex-secret operative in Star Wars who fell in with a bunch of amphibious cloners. They kept presenting him with man-frog halfbreed children from his DNA as pets. Spur of the moment thing that got a lot of mileage.

13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?

3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars as inspiration for simplicity in game design.

14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?

Me of course :) Russ Nicholson... no, Miles Teeves!

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?

Not in a long while, but then I haven't run horror stuff in a long while either. I think Kindred of the East was the last time I got genuine fear, back in Vancouver '05.

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)

The Witchfire Trilogy for Iron Kingdoms. Great, great series. I added a bit of family background to the players that tied into the adventure as extra motivation, and we stuck with the game from beginning to end (and they failed to stop wassername from unleashing hell). Took about two and a bit years to play out.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?

I keep dreaming of a dedicated game room, well-lit table in a dark space, comfy seats, with a decent soundsystem and a flatscreen teev on the wall for the GM to show pics to the players on. Decent library on the walls; beers tucked away in the mini fridge. 

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?

Mouseguard and Kult.

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be? 

China Meiville is a HUGE influence on my games and creativity in general, so that's right down the geek end of the spectrum.... down the other end would be the vast collection of National Geographic magazines I grew up with as a kid. So much cool stuff out there in the real world...

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?

Fun, easygoing, enthusiastic, and can roll with the punches.

21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?

My bad guys are usually motivated by love. They just take that need one step (or three) beyond what's acceptable.

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?

MUTANTOR! 

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?

A few people, my partner mostly, she's played once or twice but won't anymore; just isn't into it but gets it. When we talk it's usually about the story development or personality issues.

I Needed a Break...

.... but breaking my ankle bushwalking this arvo wasn't quite what I had in mind.


Two weeks of me + sofa + laptop. Shit. What a holiday.


Some things I'm hoping to post up, while I'm laid out:


- a map to go with my Tomb of the Mog entry for Secret Santicore. (ran out of time and space on that one).


- a caverns version of DungeonFu.


- a wilderness hex version too.


- a few first details of MUTANTOR!


- plus I still owe you that hobbit, Simon.


 and yeah, got any blog requests, lemme know. 


Sheesh.