I'm Writing a Treasure Island Setting Guide

Thomas Denmark at Night Owl Workshop was soliciting for a writer for a campaign guide for his OSR game Freebooters, a pirate-themed retro-clone intended to be compatible with the original fantasy RPG. Night Owl appears to like formatting their OSR games in the original 0e format, fondly known as the Little Brown Books. Raiders, Guardians, Colonial Troopers, and Warriors of the Red Planet are some of the company's previous releases.

Specifically a Treasure Island campaign guide/adventure/setting book. Ridiculously long 25,000 word document for the usual pittance found in the indie ttrpg publishing world. Sign me up I said. For the love of all things degenerate the blind fools recruited me to pen a red tide of pirate intrigue and adventure on the Spanish Main!

So VTP is happy to announce are first freelance gig with a written contract and everything! Seriously, I pounced on this cold solicitation because of the subject matter. While the Clockwork & Cthulhu campaign I ran online is well in the rearview mirror of life I still have all the material I generated when the PCs hit the high seas for the New World and got involved in their own fucked up pirate action. Not so much in ship to ship combat, but got involved in the despicable slave trade on the Gold Coast and a Spanish raid on the island of Roatan before they plunged into the Central American jungle to battle evil Mayan necromancers. 

I did a stupid amount of research on late seventeenth century sailing and colonial exploitation for the game run, but it was easy to do because the subject material was fascinating and I had stumbled on some first source memoirs of sailors who experience the pirate trade up close and personal. 

On top of this Treasure Island still remains one of my all time favorite adventure yarns ever writ. Give me Billy-Bones swinging a cutlass at Black Dog's head any day over Bilbo sweating out a riddle contest against Gollum any day! It is not hard to recall the heart palpitations I suffered when Jim faced off against ruthless pirates in the rigging of the Hispaniola off the shores of Skeleton Island. The anxiety I felt while the good guys hashed out desperate strategy under musket fire in the block house. Stevenson displayed a mastery of pace in his famous book and made me wonder how much REH owes to RLS's for his adaptation of brisk pacing when he set out to write his pulp fiction. I read this book, and Howard's yarns, before I ever got ahold of Basic D&D and though as a kid I could not use the technique all that well, pace of adventure has remained an all important ingredient in the games I run.

There are some exciting and unique challenges inherent in turning a pirate adventure story into a full blown campaign setting and adventure and this is what I am really in it for. Doesn't hurt in trying to get some street cred outside of my own self published stuff too! 

Crooks in the Hobby

 An interesting as well as sad post was put up on the rpg subreddit today and highlighted another bad actor in the TTRPG industry walking away with $100,000 in Kickstarter funds and delivering no tangible product. 

I suggested, as this list gets longer every year, pinning a message at the top of the subreddit listing bad actors in the TTRPG industry cause these punks never go away. They ghost the gaming world for a few years and then pop back up. And I'm not thinking so much of the consumer, when it comes to Kickstarters backers seem all to willing to let failure slide, no I'm thinking of the freelance folks. The artists and writers who sign on and eventually get stiffed when the jig is up and the money is gone. This where the real shit lies. Stiffing subcontractors is a matter of course in any industry which operates this way. Sure there are disagreements on whether a sub has met obligations for full payment or not, but the TTRPG industry smells of one of the places where it is part of the "business" model. The person handling the cash flow has little to fear when they pay themselves first, even if it means failing on the project and hired help. 

A freelancer has little recourse but to know as much about the people they intend to do business with and make a judgement call. But this kind of information is not easily found. 

So if you have dreams of making it big in the shallow pool of TTRPG's add Jim McLure and Emily Reinhart to your list of poisoned pills.

Circling Back to Online Campaign Manager

 In an earlier post I talked about my use of an online campaign manager for my games. At the time I was running a fantasy game and a supers game. I also set up three others for my solo roleplaying. My reason for liking them was a permanent record available as long as I have an internet connection.

For the fantasy game the campaign was coming to a conclusion so my entries were more of a way to clean out some three ring binders and touch the history one more time before shelving. The supers game I need to have a place for stats and rules I needed to access quick because I was using Champions and there are to many rules for me to effectively adjudicate and maintain interesting banter. The solo stuff is perfect for the online campaign manager. I play at these so seldomly it saves space on my shelves and if I pick one up in three months all the details of what was going on are at my fingertips. Once again I can play these games on the road.

My current game, my only game I am running, is a continuation of my supers campaign but with the DC Heroes rules. Specifically the Blood of Heroes Special Edition rule book. 

As this has been going on I have been using three ring binders less and less. Has nothing to do with the use of a campaign manager though. I believe I have just settled into my "minimalist" approach to world building and game notes. 

I love these compact, hardbound notebooks for all my brainstorming and upcoming adventure building. The one in this photo has the Rom'Myr fantasy campaign from the time the PCs arrived in Zeu Orb to the finish and the Champions campaign which has now morphed into a MEGS campaign. The other book is a blank drawing pad. I have soft cover and hard cover books of these drawing pads and here I put down my drawings of the games action when inspired to do so. And this is all I'm using except having a hard copy of a games rulebook nearby. I'm not even writing things up on my computer anymore. My file folders for games are now just a repository for pictures I scanned, pics from the internet and character sheets so I can print out a villain's profile I need before a game. I sometimes write a session report, but I would rather draw some pictures of the action then write down the action. Besides I record all my game sessions so I have an audio record which is the best session report you are ever going to get. 

When I got back into gaming in 2012 I started with my USR Sword & Sorcery campaign and I have three to four thick three ring binders of the whole damn affair. Same for my second campaign Clockwork and Cthulhu. My shift to a minimalist approach began when I stumbled on means to record game sessions. And it has steadily refined into a not-time-consuming means of game prep and organization behind the scenes of my other overt attempts at taming the beast which is DM'ing. 

The point of all this is I don't use an online campaign manager. I take that back, I have a MeWe group for the game but this is just to post when the next game is and a quick way for anyone to get a hold of anyone else. I look at this as a continuous refining of an artistic process. I love to put pen to paper, to sketch, write and think. Compact size of notebook restrains going on and on with text. I hesitate to put anything down which isn't immediately relevant. A good way to stay in the meditative state of "the action is where the players are!"

I have come to the conclusion I have no use for online campaign managers, go figure.

How to find out if you are cut out to be a GM

 I know, sounds like I'm being a blowhard asshole. We are all good Game Masters if we have been at it enough and are willing to learn from our mistakes and you remember everyone else is there to play a roleplaying game also and don't want to be railroaded.

No, I'm talking about reaching back in time and figuring why when I first heard someone describe a roleplaying game to me (1976?) I had no idea what they were talking about and at the same time I knew I had to get down on this roleplaying game stuff. And why did I go straight to Game Master without considering being a player? What is burnt into my synapsis which makes me think about gaming and the games I'm involved with ALL THE FUCKING TIME? Even when I wasn't gaming from 1993 till 2012 I had a Elric! always by my side and I would rather speculate on what adventure to write as opposed to reading all my fantasy books again? Like for realzies. Not, "oh I'm a creative person, that's why". Everyone is a creative person. Even the ones who say they are not. 

This past weekend I was at a dinner party and the four of us, and this was not my idea, completed the Briggs-Myers personality test. A coupley thing to do with your coupley friends. I'm sure this has been done as a party game like a bagillion times and I was familiar with this test in a pop-culture sort of way. Never took it though. I did take an ADHD test years ago, but I knew what the results were going to be before I took it. Off the charts (passing?) grade! So the test is supposed to identify what of 16 different personality types you are. That is all I knew about it, don't know what the types are, don't know what the definitions of each type are. I was intrigued immediately. You mean I have a class? I love classes. I'm even fine with race as class. Except I don't want to be pigeon holed. I got to be free man, I'm not one thing. This has got to be a crock of shit. 

I landed on ENTP, the debater. Per the game rules, once you came up with your personality from completing the test you turn the laptop over to someone else and they read it out loud. Then you talk about why you think so and so are together. Lot of oohs, awws and of course laughs. 

If you are looking for someone to be game master you might want to ask them if they are ENTP because there is a shit-ton packed into this type which make for excellent traits in a Game Master. It also answered for me my speculations on why there are far to few Game Masters out there compared to players. Or why there are more folks looking to be players as opposed to being a Game Master. One, it is a never ending thankless task of staying in genre and put forth interesting and original ideas for people to dig into, give back and complete the circle. Second the ENTP represents only 3% of the population! We are rare birds indeed. 

I also found out why my wife will never be interested in playing rpg's. She landed on ISFJ, Defender. Protective, warm and caring is not what you want in a Game Master.