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? 

Hitch a Ride to Arcturus

 This weekend, I wrote up a more detailed description of my (very silly, not likely possible, but plausible enough) faster than light travel system for Bughunts & Bedlam. In addition, I came up with some technobabble to explain FTL communication as well, cribbing a bit from Star Frontiers. 

Star Frontiers has FTL at a speed of 1 light year per day, so I went with that for military or "elite" ships, and one light year per week for freighters, colony ships, or other pleb options. The one light year per week rate was suggestive of Alien, where they had a 10 month trip from Zeta Reticuli (40ish light years from Earth) to get home. 

And of course, FTL can warp your brain unless you're in hypersleep. There are now rules for space madness and how to treat it. 

 I had already made a blurb about the setting, where humans have 23 active colonies and 5 failed attempts, and had explored out about 100 light years from Earth. A bit of Google/Wikipedia work gave me a bunch of potential systems with exoplanets that could be colonized. Plus, I remembered that I had a couple of alien species in Cryptids & Conspiracy that have nearby home worlds. 

So I made a big chart of about 30 systems and the distance in light years (rounded up if a decimal of 0.1 or more due to the way the FTL drive works in 1 light year-ish jumps). This took some time. After a lot of slow Googling and math, and a webpage that said it had distances that most turned out to be inaccurate, I gave in and turned to AI. I asked it to generate distances from one target system to all of the other systems. I found discrepancies with that webpage. Then I found discrepancies within the AI output. 

Eventually, I asked AI to make me a spreadsheet with all of the systems. Then I found a game on Steam called SpaceEngine that shows distances from system to system. I went in and did a bit of random checks, and found the final AI numbers to be close enough of a match. So assuming the SpaceEngine people know what they're doing, and that the AI did the math more or less correctly, I've got my travel/communication chart. 

A subspace message (one way only) takes 1 hour per light year. 

A military or high end ship crosses 1 light year per day (no relativity effects for reasons, but you're probably in cryosleep anyway). 

A blue collar working ship crosses 1 light year per week. The chart just has rounded up light year numbers, so it works for all three purposes. 

I'm not proud that I turned to AI for help. I'm usually against it. But it did save me MANY hours of boring labor. And I am NOT using it for text (rules or flavor), or art. 

 Now that the FTL rules are done, I'll add a few options for GMs that want warp drive, hyperdrive, orbital jump gates, or terrestrial stargates in their games.  

 ________

Oh, and an update on the cover art. The artist sent me the first sketch of the two characters that will be front and center on the cover. It looks really good. No notes. I'd given her pretty specific art direction and reference pictures of what I wanted. Now, we wait to see how she fills in the background!  

 

Combat Math in Missions & Mayhem

Yeah, another math post about the mechanics of Missions & Mayhem. These (here, here, here, and here) get a lot of reads, but rarely much comment. I assume either that means people don't want to comment on something they're just reading about but haven't played, or else everything I'm posting seems alright to them so they have not much to say. Either way, there seem to be no egregious math that would elicit corrections so that's encouraging. 

I was reading Eric's thoughts on a single saving throw (Swords & Wizardry style). It got me thinking about the math behind my saving throw system, and the combat mechanics more broadly. 

Following d20 Modern, M&M has Fortitude (modified by Constitution), Reflex (modified by Dexterity), and Will (modified by Wisdom) saving throws. Originally, I gave each class lowering target numbers for each save, the way classic and advanced D&D do it. If you multiclassed among the various Heroic Classes, you took the best value. But then when I started adding Advanced Classes in the campaign modules, I had wonky math going on. 

So, I've changed it to be more like the original. Now, each class provides bonuses to the die roll, along with ability modifiers. If you multiclass, you just add the new modifiers to your save values. 

Unlike the original D&D saves with different target numbers depending on the type of save and your class/level, or the d20 system that I'm riffing on which had varying target DCs for different types of saving throw, there is one constant and unchanging save target number: 16. 

This gives someone with no bonus (average ability score and no class modifier) a 25% chance to succeed on any saving throw. 

Combat, for comparison, uses ascending AC with the base AC as 11. So rolling a flat d20 with no bonus to hit, and the target has no armor or Dexterity adjustments, and no situational modifiers, you have a 50% chance to hit. 

These numbers seem like a good base to work from for me. 

It also means that area of effect attacks (spray autofire, grenades, etc.) need to hit AC 11 to affect the appropriate area. There's a "grenade bounce" check to see where the effect actually lands on a miss, which still might affect some of the intended targets. And then the targets get saving throws to avoid or mitigate the effects. 

Again, the math works well, giving I think, fair odds for combats in the game.