In our final episode of 2012, Ken and I talk book hauls, play-by-post, the Affair of the Poisons, and of course, today’s apocalypse.
December 21, 2012
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Twentieth Century Eccentrics
December 14, 2012
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Live from Dragonmeet 2012
Before a live Dragonmeet audience, Ken and I, ably assisted by Pelgrane Press publisher Simon Rogers, talk digital tools, dino-riding samurai, and crowdfunded exhumations.
December 13, 2012
Let’s You and Him Fight
Earlier I discussed the perhaps not immediately evident fact that your favorite creators aren’t looking, in any social situation, for unsolicited notes on their work.
Here’s another peek into the writerly mind—an online corollary, if you will. Unless you have been specifically asked to act as someone’s bad PR clipping service, they also don’t want you to point them to negative reviews of their stuff. We all know the general odor in which bearers of bad news are held, right?
Creators all follow their own strategies for dealing with poor or contentious notices. Some thrive on them, deriving creative energy from the mental dissonance. Others use them to self-destructively feed the furnaces of self-doubt. Another school of thought treats a certain degree of blissful ignorance as integral to the thick skin creators must shroud themselves in to move forward. A rare few creators might, with lofty detachment, sift bad reviews for useful insights. Whatever their strategies, however they harness, repurpose or ignore the brickbats that come their way, creators have them well in place. Whenever they develop a yen for bad reviews, they can find them with ease, on their timetables and on their terms.
Social networking gives you more tools than ever to commit this unwitting faux pas. Don’t be the “let’s you and him fight” guy. Not by email, on a wall, or in a forum message. Likewise, you don’t need to use the @ function on Facebook or Twitter or the + in Google+ to summon us into discussions where we are being slagged. Like Hastur, we respond to unsought summoning rituals with something other than equanimity.
This goes triple if you’re prompting the creator to rebut the review. This is always a hideously poor choice. When an author does this, the only question is how big a fool he’ll make of himself. Poking a bear with a stick is bad enough. Handing a bear a stick and urging him to poke someone else with it rises to the level of spiritual negligence.
Critics have every right to consider creative work fairly, or to tendentiously haul it to the pillory. They write not for creators, but for the public, and themselves. But a third party taking that bundle of emotional static and slipping it in an envelope under the writer’s office door has, shall we say, missed an elementary point of etiquette.
December 11, 2012
December 10, 2012
An Early Wave of Hillfolk Series Pitches Rolls In
Although the stellar roster of writers and designers drafted to create Series Pitches for Hillfolk and Blood on the Snow have until the end of January to get their drafts in, an early bird brigade has already begun to submit their pieces. I’m happy to report that they all live up to the promise of their loglines—the only frustration being that, perhaps like me, you’ll want to play them all.
Jason Morningstar does the brilliant job you would expect from him with “Hollywoodland”, infusing his saga of Tinseltown’s silent-cinema infancy with glitz, corruption, and a battle between money old and new.
Cédric Ferrand splendidly evokes 1866 New York in “Grave New World,” finding a fresh angle on vampire intrigue by making it a metaphor for the immigrant experience.
Andrew Peregrine’s “Vice and Virtue” gives Jane Austen fans all they need to launch a whirlwind of lunches, balls, and passion within the tightest of social constraints.
With expertise honed in the creation of actual TV series, John Rogers zeroes in on the many clashing societies and factions of “Shanghai 1930.” This is one of history’s richest settings, and John shows you how to cut to the meat of it.
James L. Sutter’s “The Throne” draws on Milton, Blake, and Vertigo comics with his war in heaven, triggered by the sudden disappearance of the big boss. Come for the angelpunk, stay for the chance to remake the cosmos.
Allen Varney’s “Bots” delightfully realizes its hardscrabble, post-organic premise in a piece that could only be described as Fox Animation’s Robots as rewritten by Upton Sinclair. It’s been a long time since anyone lured Allen back to straight-up RPG writing, and I can report that he hasn’t lost a bit of his satirical edge.
Both of our revisionist superhero pieces are in, as well.
Michelle Nephew’s “Mad Scientists Anonymous” lets you choose between Dr. Horrible-style humor or a darker spin on pulp mythology as its titular characters struggle together to stay sane and institutionalized—but what about the strange machinery humming away down in the basement?
Gene Ha and Art Lyon (concept by Lowell Francis) tackle matters from the opposite end of the genre food chain in “Henchmen,” in which no-powered criminals crewing for a costumed madwoman try to survive in her absence, in a city swarming with masks who hopelessly outmatch them. They wound up taking a straighter, crime-drama inspired approach than originally envisioned. This loses the wonderful original title, “Witless Minions”, but will result in a much richer game experience.
Gene has also turned in his illustration for the piece, the awesomeness of which speaks for itself:
Meg Baker has finished “Under Hollow Hills”; likewise Jason L. Blair with “Inhuman Desires.” I look forward to reading them.
Art assignments for all of the Series Pitches have been made already, and we’re starting to get sketches and preliminaries in. So all is on schedule on that front as well.
The on-time delivery of these pieces represents the main scheduling question mark, so I’m taking these early arrivals as a positive omen. I’ll continue to update Kickstarter backers and punterdom at large as the books continue to take shape.
November 29, 2012
Call for Submissions: DramaSystem Master Class
Now that Hillfolk Kickstarter backers have had time to digest and play the game, it’s time to solicit submissions for the Master Class section of the Blood on the Snow Companion book. This is an opportunity for the emerging game writers among you to gain some experience and see your name in print.
The Brief
We’re looking for contributions of approximately 300-1000 words in length that will help readers understand, play, and expand DramaSystem.
The theme: challenges you encountered during play, and how you overcame them.
If you wish to submit a piece taking another angle on DramaSystem play or design, feel free to do so, with the understanding that pieces adhering to the theme are more likely to be accepted.
Whatever your subject matter, all pieces must show that you have actually played the game. Armchair ruminations will have to seek other homes.
The Context
These submissions will appear in a 20,000 word section of Blood on the Snow, interwoven with commentary by Robin.
The Process
This is an open call for pieces written on a spec basis. We will accept as many quality submissions as fit within the section’s word count. In the case of similar submissions, we’ll pick the one of greatest utility in DramaSystem play.
Deadline for submissions is Jan 14. Send submissions in .doc, .docx or .odt format to the address given in the About/Contact banner entry above.
You will not be asked to perform rewrites. Instead, Robin may adjust your prose for clarity, brevity, and maximum impact, allowing you the opportunity to comment on these changes.
The Deal
Authors whose pieces are accepted for publication will receive 3 cents a word US, due on acceptance, in exchange for all rights to your text. You will receive credit both as a byline and on the table of contents. Due to the brevity of these pieces our budget does not permit us to offer complimentary author’s copies. (Remember that all Hillfolk backers already receive the book in electronic form, whether you purchased the print copy or not.)
Note to Established Designers
This open call addresses new and emerging game writers. If you are an already established designer and wish to submit, contact me with a concept brief and we’ll discuss alternate terms.
November 28, 2012
The Blood on the Wall in the Fortress
New Tales of the Yellow Sign, my anthology of weird tales conjuring Robert W. Chambers’ classic King in Yellow mythos, is in print as of September from Atomic Overmind Press, and in ebook form from vendors including Amazon/Kindle, DriveThru, Nook, Smashwords, Apple iTunes, and Paizo.
This post is third in a series looking at the individual stories.
In true weird-tale tradition, the germinative image of “The Blood in the Wall in the Fortress” pressed itself on me in a dream, where I was a member of an artillery unit shelling a tower across a river, knowing there were innocent people inside. The story, of a soldier’s guilt and the madness of self-justifying war, sets itself in 1947. But it’s not our 1947, as Loyalists battle Alsatians, to the incessant clattering of a black box issuing incomprehensible orders. This is a world made, or unmade, by the destabilizing influence of the Yellow Sign.
From Kenneth Hite’s introduction: Although the war in “The Blood on the Wall in the Fortress” begins in 1947 in another history, the fortress sits in Alsace, target and symbol of the Franco-Prussian War that Chambers used in a more personal catastrophe in “The Street of the First Shell.” The plot echoes “The Yellow Sign” in its portents, its artistic protagonist, and its inevitable approach of death; the tone is post-Remarque, post-trenches, almost documentary realism approaching the unreal.
November 27, 2012
Dragonmeet Ho!
Once again, through the promotional largesse of Pelgrane Press, I’ll be doing the guest thing at Dragonmeet, this coming Saturday at London’s Kensington Town Hall.
At 3:30 I’ll be teaming with my partner in podcasting crime, Kenneth Hite, and guest star Simon Rogers, for a live edition of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff.
For the rest of the day you’ll find me at the Pelgrane stand, ready to chat, sign books, and answer any questions that would otherwise go unasked.
It’s going to be a bumper show this year:
James Wallis will be back in the saddle, demoing the new Once Upon a Time.
The Moon Design crew will be there to stoke anticipation for their increasingly titanic crowdfunded dream project, The Guide to Glorantha.
And both Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson UK will reunite at the seminar table to celebrate 30 years of Fighting Fantasy, and share Games Workshop creation stories.
In other words, this is one show no London-area gamer should even consider missing. I look forward to seeing you there.
November 23, 2012
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: As Kenya is to Running
In this week’s episode of our Golden Geek-winning podcast, Ken and I talk time and pacing in RPGs, wrap up the election, propound my theory of the one okay game store, and open up the Spycraft Hut for a Petraeus-inspired survey of sexy security scandals.
November 20, 2012
November 12, 2012
November 09, 2012
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Undetectable Notes of Irony
In the fourteenth episode of our above-named podcast, Ken and I talk Chicago film fest, DramaSystem vs. Skulduggery, gangland mapping and the burnings of the Libraries of Alexandria:
November 02, 2012
Hillfolk Kickstarter in its Final Hours
If you get your Robin Laws information only from this blog, you may wish to be reminded that the Hillfolk Kickstarter is counting down to its astounding conclusion. This offer will not be repeated, so if you haven’t grabbed your tons of electronic content for $10 or two full-color 240 page hardcovers for $41, lurch on over there before 8 pm Eastern tonight.
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: That Time We Burned Down the White House
In the latest installment of our eponymous podcast, Ken and I talk food, imagined worlds, Kenneth Grant, and the War of 1812.
November 01, 2012
Blood on the Snow Contents Description
[My Kickstarter page has reached its character limit. To give it space to breathe, I’ve moved the original contents of the Blood on the Snow: A DramaSystem sourcebook here. Blog overflow, if you will.]
Contents:
How To Write a Series Pitch: Robin shows you how to design a Series Pitch for publication—and tells you which pitches not to bother with. Approximately 2000 words.
DramaSystem Master Class: design notes and troubleshooting tips. Approximately 21,000 words. For this section we’ll be soliciting contributions from the early adopter community—yes, that means you—describing issues that confronted you in DramaSystem play and how you overcame them. Robin will then respond with his own notes and observations. Think of it as Actual Play Plus. (In addition to providing nuts and bolts troubleshooting and inspiration, it also provide an opportunity for emerging roleplaying writers to establish themselves with a paid professional credit. Stay tuned for details.)
LARPing with DramaSystem: a 5,000 word exploration of DramaSystem as a LARP engine, from designer extraordinaire Emily Care Boss.
Series Pitches: (~2,000 words each):
Pedro Ziviani (Chaosium’s Mythic Iceland) shows you how to weave an Icelandic saga in Blood on the Snow. Justice, feuding and strangeness as only the Norse can do it!
John Rogers (co-creator/producer, Leverage) brings you all the glamour, opium and intrigue of Shanghai 1930. Gangsters, spies, imperialists, revolutionaries and emigres strive to survive the 20th century's most dangerous time and place.
Scott Bennie (Testament) intones Darke and Stormy Nights: feuding aristocratic families are confronted by terror when an implacable supernatural evil awakens!
Steve Darlington (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd ed, There Is No Spoon) cries “stat!” in System Shock: Galatea General Hospital has always been on the cutting edge of cybermedicine and bionics, but now its new staff have patients wondering: can I trust a robot to save my life?
Paula Dempsey (The Book of Smoke) lays on the equestrian glam for The Chase, a soap opera set in the glossy, moneyed world of high-end horse racing.
Cedric Ferrand (Wastburg) changes your name at Ellis Island in Grave New World, as banished European vampires seek refuge in 1850s New York.
Richard Iorio II (Colonial Gothic) presents Dolphin. The Blue is threatened. The Blight and its warriors amass. The only thing standing in their way are the dolphins dedicated to dedicated to The Way. Finding Nemo meets The Lord of The Rings.
Jack Norris (Marvel Heroic Roleplaying: Civil War, DC Adventures Heroes & Villains) presents Gangs of Old York: Saxons commoners and deposed Anglo-Danish nobles plot, battle, intrigue, and turn outlaw while battling starvation and Norman conquerors and their supporters in the shadows of William the Conqueror's Harrowing of the North.
Aaron S. Rosenberg (Asylum, Spookshow) runs the Family Business: A family of crooks, con artists, and thieves has to rely on everyone's skills and loyalty when the Law closes in, trying to shut them down for good.
Plus two more Series Pitches from Robin:
Mutant City HCU: Ten years after 1% of the population acquired super-powers, the cops of the Heightened Crime Unit live, love and occasionally put away a genetically enhanced perp or two. A dramatic game set in the heretofore procedural world of Pelgrane’s Mutant City Blues.
Against Hali: Student revolutionaries mix love, ambition and revolution in a dictatorial alternate present warped by the eerie power of The King in Yellow.
The book starts at 128 pages (6 x 9 format) with room for expansion as our final-week stretch goals take us beyond Pagemageddon and into the great unknown. Creators standing by on deck to be stretched into the book include: Josh Roby, James L. Sutter, Andrew Peregrine, Lester Smith, David L. Pulver, Kevin Allen Jr., Jeff Richard, Gareth Hanrahan, Mark Diaz Truman and maybe another superstar or two we’ve yet to fully wrangle.
October 26, 2012
Open Licensing and DramaSystem (and GUMSHOE, too)
With the Hillfolk Kickstarter having funded both open licenses for DramaSystem and now GUMSHOE as well, it’s time to consult the stakeholders on just what the configuration of those licenses ought to be. Ultimately the decision will be mine (DramaSystem) and Simon’s (GUMSHOE), but we’re both on the same basic page in wanting low-hassle licenses that encourage uptake by gamers and commercial users alike.
(With GUMSHOE there’s a wrinkle concerning foreign languages. The games have been licensed to various territories, and Simon will respect the wishes of those publishers if they don’t want third-party GUMSHOE material published in their languages. That’s why the text on the Kickstarter site refers to the English language. At least some of our translation partners seem stoked about the open license, so we may be able to widen this out.)
Parentheticals aside….
Hillfolk backers made this happen, so I want to take your preferences into account.
Those of you who aren’t going to use the licenses or play the games, but are here purely out of abstract interest in open culture, will have only the steely rigor of your intellectual argument to fall back on.
The question at hand is whether to adopt an OGL, or OGL-like, approach, or to go the Creative Commons route—or a hybrid of both.
A Creative Commons attribution license that allows for mash-ups would be simplest for me. But that doesn’t require give-back the way the OGL does. Do you as Hillfolk funders want a give-back provision that requires anyone adding or modifying to the DramaSystem structure to also make their design work available on the same open basis as the core license itself? Or do you not care if someone designs a great new sub-system and then treats it as proprietary?
A CC attribution license with Share Alike doesn’t allow third-party publishers to cordon off the story elements of their products from the rules stuff, keeping their intellectual properties proprietary while letting the rules stuff enter the general use pool. When George Lucas wants to do his dramatic game of marital strife between Darth Vader and Natalie Portman, he can’t use DramaSystem under a Share Alike without backdooring Star Wars into the public domain. I’d love to see DramaSystem games based on existing properties, which requires the kind of carve-out the OGL allows for, where certain chunks are designated open content and others product identity.
Stalwart Wolf Clan member and open content maven Bryant Durrell has proposed a CC/OGL mash-up, the details of which I hope he’ll provide in a comment below.
Have at it, people, and don’t let the eternal enmity between Wolf and Lion deter you from speaking out in the name of all the badlands…
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: +4 Damage from Boat
Ken and I talk player ejection, ur-Call of Cthulhu, wrong opinions and the Cuban Missile Crisis in the latest episode of our award-seeking podcast, Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff.
October 25, 2012
Why DramaSystem Uses Cards Instead of Dice
Over on the Twitter, Jack Of Spades asked why DramaSystem uses cards instead of dice.
The answer is that as soon as you have dice in your resolution system, you have numbers on your character sheet. Since DramaSystem presents a new play style revolving around the way emotional interactions occur in fiction, I wanted to help gamers jump into it by pulling them out of familiar territory.
In the game (for those of you who have yet to sign onto the Hillfolk Kickstarter and get their playable draft copy), cards come into play only in the type of scene the game de-emphasizes. That’s the procedural, in which characters exert skills to complete external, practical tasks. In other words, the kind of scene we’re used to going to in roleplaying games. As they acclimate themselves to DramaSystem, most groups find themselves going to procedural less and less, invoking it only when it really matters.
As seen on its character sheet, DramaSystem is about the aesthetic of the word and not of the number. In fact, arithmetic plays essentially no role in game play itself. You may compare numbers but you’re never doing even simple math.
(An exception occurs in the post-play bookkeeping phase, when the GM takes a vote and tallies the results, to see which two players get bennies they can use in subsequent sessions.)
While we seasoned gamers feel comfortable seeing numbers on our character sheets—maybe even adrift without them—it’s my hope that the simplicity of the system will allow you to draw in people who are interested in story but never put the words math and fun in the same sentence. (For example, the current stretch pitch for the game, Andrew Peregrine’s Jane Austen tribute Vice and Virtue, might be the perfect vehicle to suck in your book club.)
That’s also why I simplified the already not-crunchy procedural system further after playtest groups found the initial version out of keeping with the game’s overall feel.
October 23, 2012
Join Me on #RPG.NET Chat Tonight
I’ll be typing a storm at you on #RPG.NET chat at 8 PM Eastern tonight (Tuesday Oct 23rd.) I’m sure that Hillfolk and its ongoing Kickstarter will be the topic du jour. But feel free to ask me anything within my remit, from GUMSHOE to HeroQuest, from GM advice to podcasting.
To join #rpgnet chat: go to http://www.magicstar.net/chat2/, select your nick, log in, and type "/join #rpgnet".
Thanks to Dan Davenport for the invitation.
October 19, 2012
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: When Angels Tell You To Wife-Swap
In this week’s episode, Ken and Robin talk Paris Catacombs, open licenses, John Dee ... and Ken and Robin.
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