Missions & Mayhem Cover Art is Done

 My artist, Lee Hyunjung, has finished the cover art for the Missions & Mayhem core rulebook. I'm still playing around with fonts and layout for the title, so I'm not revealing the picture now, but I'll build a bit of anticipation. 

I've shown it to quite a few friends and family, and everyone is impressed by it. Solid details, vivid colors, and it fits the 70s through 90s action movie vibe that inspired the game. Actually, it's also a bit reminiscent of modern video game cover art as well. Not that games technically have covers anymore, since they're just digital downloads for the most part. But you know what I mean.  

And two hours ago, I commissioned Hyunjung to start work on a cover for Cryptids & Conspiracy. 

Now I need to secure some interior art. There's a guy up in Seoul, Jeff Witty, who's doing a lot of work for Dungeon Crawl Classics these days. He likes the general idea I pitched for interior pictures, but he's too busy. So maybe I'll see if Hyunjung could do some black & white interior art (yeah, I'm going old school RPG style with this one). I've also scouted out a few potential artists on Fiver that I plan to contact. 

Oh, and I've gotten some art from Jeremy of course (that's Jeremy Hart, or JHIllos) for monsters/aliens/mutants in the various campaign books. 

There's also some decent free to use (Creative Commons) character art I've found out there that I can use for a few filler illustrations. 

So, time to start re-writing the rules in a way that will be easy for folks besides me to understand and run. I've been trying to keep everything as brief as possible for the play test, so I don't need to reprint a huge document every time I make major changes. I'll revise things and not worry quite so much about the space they're taking up. Unlike Chanbara, this is NOT going to be a mere 64 pages. Although I also don't expect I'll go over the 128 pages of Flying Swordsmen. At least not for the core rules. 

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In other M&M news, Sunday was another play test. Bughunts & Bedlam, we tried out giving everyone power armor and a lot of big guns, and throwing a bunch of bugs at them as they defend a colony complex. Getting everyone's power armor loadout/setup took longer than expected, so the colony defense will continue next session. And it showed me that I need to make a special character sheet addition for power armor management. 

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In other other news, print copies of the Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins Ruby Players Rules book arrived on Friday. On Saturday, I ordered small print runs (10 copies each) of the rest of the line, so I will have copies to sell at the upcoming book fair at Gwangan Beach (next month). The Korean PoD service I found is cheap and quick, so I expect to have the books this Saturday, or next Monday at the latest. 

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Oh, and one final note back to Missions & Mayhem: I'm working on the Urban Fantasy supplement, Hellspawn & Horror. Unlike d20 Modern's Urban Arcana, which had the conceit of D&D monsters living among us, this is more like Stephen King/Clive Barker/Jim Butcher/Anne Rice, Blade, Ultraviolet, Friday the 13th The Series (anyone else remember that one?), From Dusk til Dawn, or whatever modern monster-hunter (horror) fantasy you want to play out. So no bugbears working the register at 7-11. Just vampires, werewolves, fae, nasty demons, and the occasional dragon that you need to track down and shoot with your M-16 or battle with a holy sword you recovered from a ruin in Antioch. 

Another trip 'round the Sun

 Another blog-versary is here. Nothing big to say at the moment. I'm too busy. The semester has stared, I'm working on another academic paper, painting minis, working on the Hellspawn & Horror module for Missions & Mayhem (modern urban fantasy/horror), the artist is finishing up the cover art for M&M, and Justin and I are considering doing a board game/war games focused event this fall rather than an RPG one. 

Oh, yeah. And my son is working on a short film (comedic zombie apocalypse story) and wants me to play the redneck bartender. Should be fun. 

Anyway, I'll try to knock out posts here on the blog when I can. For at least one more year. Hopefully more. 

Selling Physical Books

 Because of the SummerCon and the start of the semester, I've been pretty busy the past two weeks. I was going to post about a recent YouTube video from the Mystic Arts channel where he seemed to not quite get what OSR is (or, as I was thinking, maybe OSR has moved on from what it once was and he's right and I'm stuck in the past). But Ben from Questing Beast made a response video with Dađi that addressed most of what I was thinking of writing about. 

So we move on. A few days ago, Richard was asking if I was ever planning to release a PoD version of Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins. Honestly, formatting Chanbara for DriveThru was a bit of a chore, and the books are just Pay-What-You-Want anyway, so I never planned to. But he said he'd like copies if I ever did. 

A little earlier, Justin had mentioned that he's going to be involved in a book fair again in October.  He asked if I wanted to sell some copies of Chanbara or some adventures or whatnot. I ordered some copies of Chanbara from DriveThru. They arrived two days ago. 

Anyway, Justin and Richard got me thinking again about Korean PoD options. I looked at a couple of sites, and found one that looked simple and easy. Especially since they said they could accept PDFs created in Word, not just ones made InDesign or Scribus or whatever.  I'm using LibreOffice, but that should work, right? We'll see!

As implied there, I have re-formatted the TS&R line (well, not the rules reference books, but very few people download those anyway). I still have a little work do do on the covers for some of the books, but I'm almost there. Last night, I ordered copies of the Ruby Players Rules. 

The service can print 2 copies, or multiples of 10 only. I should have played it safe and ordered two, but went ahead and ordered 10. I know Richard will buy one. If Justin can sell two more at his book fair, that will reimburse me for the printing costs. It was 50,000 won (40 page softback, with single-side cover printing) including shipping (3,500 won), which at the current exchange rate is about $37. 

The website estimated they'd ship on Wednesday so I should have them by the end of the week. If they're good enough quality, I'll order the other TS&R line of books to be printed. I know Justin won't sell them all, but I can sell one set to Richard, keep one set for myself, and what Justin can't sell this time I can try to sell at a future book fair or game event. Some of my regular players might be interested in getting their own copies as well.  

SummerCon Experiences

 The TTRPG in Korea Discord group had another online con this weekend. 

 On Friday evening, I played in a Shadowdark game, set in I6 Ravenloft. This was my first experience with Shadwodark, but of course I know Ravenloft pretty well. This game was really fun. I was playing an elf wizard who had the "ranger" background. And I had both magic missile and acid arrow on my spell list. So with the DM's permission, I had an energy bow like Hank from the D&D cartoon that I fired my spells from. 

We explored the castle, managed to find the history book and sun sword, just before the GM's timer ran out and Strahd appeared. We were down in the crypts. The sun sword did so much damage that Strahd died in two rounds. Of course, our fighter was charmed by Strahd, but with advantage on rolls from our Seer and Cleric, and a dispel magic from me, the fighter broke the charm and put down Strahd. And just before the time limit for the session, too! 

Saturday morning, I ran a Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins Ruby game. I had two players, so they each got to run 2 PCs. They also had money to hire plenty of hirelings, so they took advantage of that. They were searching an ancient elven tomb for treasure, encountering lots of traps, some bugs, some undead. They avoided the gelatinous cube. They avoided some traps, fell into a few, and solved several puzzles/challenges to get the treasure at the end. Only one halfling man-at-arms died. 

Saturday afternoon, I was a player in a game of Free League's Alien RPG. The GM had asked us all who our favorite characters were (besides Ripley or Jonesy), or at least who we'd like to play. I was Hudson from Aliens. Riley was Kane from Alien. Oz was Hermit from Alien Earth, and W1ng was Rusten Quinn from Alien vs Predator. This was also my first time playing FL's Alien game. 

Hudson was the only one to die, getting firebombed by Kane while the alien was dragging him away.  

It was really fun, but while the general task resolution mechanic is solid, the whole stress/freakout/losing control/panic system seemed a bit clunky and kinda slowed down the game. 

I think I mentioned that my Saturday evening workshop on exploration-focued play was canceled from lack of interest. When I canceled, there was a DCC game at that time in need of players so I said I would play. But yesterday morning, my wife got upset that I was going to be gaming all day on the computer and ignoring the family. So I bowed out of that game. Luckily, others had also joined, so the game went on without me. 

Finally, this afternoon (Sunday), I was a player in a Mothership game. This was maybe my fourth or fifth time to play Mothership, and I have to say I really like this game. It's got the similar vibe to Alien, of course. And while the general mechanic (percentage checks) is fine, Alien's die pool system is maybe a bit more fun. But the stress/freakout mechanics in Mothership are a lot simpler than Alien, at least from my experience as a player only. 

We were up against a cold, uncaring computer AI, who wanted to eliminate us to complete the ship's mission. I was playing an android, and towards the end of the session, the AI took over my body. Scott (the GM for this game) fed me some lines here and there and let me continue on as the corrupted android, while the players thought they'd reset me but weren't quite sure. It was pretty fun, but in the end the AI made my android body end its existence. So it goes. 

The final Sunday evening session is going on right now, but obviously I'm not in any of those games. It was a pretty fun con, but I had lots of technical issues this time, so I may take a back seat next WinterCon. Playing face-to-face is more fun anyway. 

Font Testing

I've been using a title font for my drafts of Missions & Mayhem since the beginning (more or less), but talking to Jeremy about using some of his monster art last night, he asked if I had a logo for the game yet. I didn't. So I made up a simple logo in GIMP. 

Today, I figured I'd test a few other font options to see if I liked any of these others better. I think I'll stick with my initial font, called Gunplay/Gunplay 3D. But I figure I might as well stick the tests up here to see what people think. 

If you've got any preference, or suggestions for the logo as a whole, please let me know what you think. 

 

 

Gunplay font, no border

Gunplay font, border

Jeremy suggested TTRPG instead of just RPG

 

And then the ones I made today: 

Action Force

HP PSG

MisterEarl

Weathered Solid

 

IM FELL English

Edit/Update: After discussing designs and swapping ides with Jeremy a bit more, I came up with this: 

Along with an inverted color version for the inside title page: 

 Pretty sure this is what I'll go with. Gunplay 3D for the main title, Gunplay for the subtitle. 

Thanks to Jeremy, PatrickW, Anzon, and my son Steven for the feedback. If anyone else has some feedback though, please let me know!

Blog Readers, Satisfy My Curiosity Please

 Today, I was chatting with Richard (who runs CoC). He will be in my TS&R Ruby con game in a week and a half. He said he was thinking of running a TS&R Ruby campaign himself. He asked me if I knew anyone who was running TS&R (Ruby or Jade) besides myself. 

I told him I know a fair number of people have downloaded the books, but I haven't heard of anyone running it besides myself. 

Will Richard be the first person to run it besides its creator? If any of you have run it, or know someone who has, please let me know.  

"Universes Beyond" Seriously?

 So the big announcement from WotC was that they're rolling out "universes beyond" content for 5.5e. 

I think most of my blog readers know this. They also probably know I'm not WotC's target demographic. But here's my thoughts on this anyway. 

First off, is anyone surprised? Since the days of 2E, when TSR was cranking out the setting products, they realized that people love these. People want books of lore that they can dive into and study, and use as the base for their campaign. And every major edition has seen re-releases, with updated stat blocks/content, for many of these settings. 

So we're getting a new 5.5e Dark Sun, and Dragonlance, and there's probably already Forgotten Realms since that's their main setting anymore. But they're also doing World of Warcraft (like someone did back in the d20/SRD/OGL days) and Star Wars (like they did back in the d20/SRD/OGL days AND the 4E days) and probably some Final Fantasy or Diablo (again, they did that back in the day) or Marvel Supers tie in content. Just like with Magic: the Gathering. 

I'm aware of the MtG tie in sets, with Marvel, Final Fantasy, etc. I haven't bought Magic cards in around 20 years now. Maybe a bit longer. So I don't really care what they're doing with the game. It's always been more about milking the random pack dollar than about the game itself, but I got out and haven't looked back. And now, with D&D (official D&D anyway), I'm also out. 

So I really don't care if WotC is going back to try again with the old campaign settings and with brand tie-ins. They're trying to make a buck, and from what I hear the "Universes Beyond" thing is making them a ton of money through MtG. So it makes sense from a business standpoint to try it with D&D. 

From a player/fan perspective, I think this is a bad idea. They tried to make D&D the be-all-end-all of RPGs, not just the 800lb gorilla of them. We had all these official, licensed, and unofficial nerd media tie-ins 25 years ago. And a lot of them sucked. 

A lot of those old tie-ins (Wheel of Time, Star Wars, Warcraft, Diablo, various superhero properties, various non-supers comics, all sorts of video games, and just about every fantasy/sci-fi book or movie franchise) needed to either twist the rules of the game to fit the media property, or else needed to twist the media property's "canon" to fit the game mechanics. 

Sure, a few instances, things worked out pretty well. The Diablo stuff fits right in with D&D, because those games were heavily inspired by D&D to begin with. The d20 Star Wars games were pretty poor representations of the media, to be honest. The WEG d6 is of course my favorite, but I've heard good things about FFG's current game. I don't know many who look back fondly on d20 Star Wars (there are some, but not many). And does anyone seriously think 5E D&D will be a better fit? 

Anyway, I'm gonna keep doing my thing. WotC will keep doing theirs. And they'll probably make a ton of money making sub-standard game products with big franchise tie-ins. I'll make a pittance making substandard game products without the big franchise tie-ins (but with enough references to them, wink-wink). And I'll be happy. 

Because why do I need WotC to do any more of my imagining for me?