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Atomic Array -- the hottest new gaming and all around awesome podcast show -- interviewed Tim Hitchcock, lead designer on the Great City Campaign Setting and both myself and John Ling, writers on the Great City Campaign Setting. John and I re-ignited our (previously) behind-the-scenes design argument. I, of course, was right. :^)
Seriously, I think its worth checking out. Atomic Array is always a great show. Here's what they had to say for themselves about this episode:
The Great City (Atomic Array 008)
0one Games publishes some of the BEST maps you’ll find in any gaming product, from any company, anywhere. They will, we assure you, blow your mind.
About a year ago, Mario from 0one asked Tim Hitchcock to flesh out one of those maps: ‘The Great City‘. Tim grabbed five of the Cabbages and set to work creating a complete urban campaign setting. Rone was one of those designers, so this is a special episode for us. Listen in to hear Tim and Rone edumacate Ed about the fruits of their year-long labor.
Visit 0one Games: 0one Games.com
Ed’s Pick
The Memory of Earth, by Orson Scott Card.
Rone’s Rant
Rone’s broken -dar…
We wrap up our SECRET CODE CONTEST, during which we give away $25 gift certificates, good at Noble Knight Games, to ten lucky winners. And finally… we tell you how you can win a copy of The Great City.
* * * * *
There is a lot more to The Great City than we could fit into this one episode. Feel free to ask questions, or leave a comment on the site. You can also share Atomic Array with a friend, or contact us directly. In fact, we’d love to hear what you think about The Great City. Tell us what you like (or don’t), and what you’d like to see from 0one Games in the future.
10.21.2008
Poking fun at the presidential race
Poking fun at the presidential race in D&D terms. Thought y'all might find this funny.
10.09.2008
The Doldrums
I am in the doldrums these days. Or as one of my favorite old Sam's once wrote:
Day after day,
day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
And that's definitely me, sans the whole eternally cursed to undeath bit. I've no new projects launched, nothing in print, nothing to crow about. I sat down to write something keen and insightful on role playing or fiction and...nada. Ancient mariners.
On the other hand, lots of things in the works. Over at Sinister Adventures, we're waiting on art from an amazing artist (name withheld for greater, later impact). Then I'll be able to finish editing, and we'll issue Dark Horizons Indulgences -- in which you scifi fans may indulge. For those not in the know, Indulgences are short, self-contained, inexpensive PDFs that will jazz your game as they introduce you to the Sinister universe.
Also for Sinister, Nick Logue and I are still cranking away on Cold Black, and the Werecabbage powered Known Universe Gazetteer (or as we talk about it behind the curtain, the KUG) isn't far around the bend. Hang in there loyal fans. I know its been a rough ride, especially with Meister Logue translocating to UK-land, but we will deliver, and I don't think you'll be disappointed.
Simultaneously, I'm also working on two adventures for 0onegames as part of of their Road to Revolution campaign arc. I'm co-writing all 50k words with illimitable Rone Barton, my fellow Werecabbage and known to those of you in Paizo land as "The Jade". With Tim Hitchcock developing and Dave Hall editing, these adventures should kick some @#$%@#%!
Here's a link.
To celebrate 0onegames has created some free, downloadable Revolutionary wall paper, here. My two faves are the Jerusalem like shot of the Great City over water and the defaced "The Goat" proclamation.
For those of you who own the Great City Campaign Setting, don't miss Tim Hitchcock's outrageous and brutal, truly masterful intro adventure A Pound of Flesh. This one is not to be missed. Hell, even if you don't own the GCCS, Pound of Flesh rocks!
OK - this one really is for those of you who own the Great City Campaign Setting, especially Paizoans. There is a head nod to Rone in my Residential Ward section. It's a pretty obvious one if you hang on the Paizo boards, but after I made the allusion, I learned that Rone really had been both of those things. Check it out, you'll get what I mean.
Other things in the pipe include a ............ for .............., that has yet to be announced. However I'm very excited about it! And last but not least, I've been entering a ............. only RPG writing contest for ............. Haven't won one yet, but I'm still striving.
Crud. Damn censors at work again.
As with many of us, RL is kicking my butt, but I'll try to keep you all better posted. And even write up those keen insights to which I alluded earlier. Just have to get this damn Albatross off my neck!
Day after day,
day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
And that's definitely me, sans the whole eternally cursed to undeath bit. I've no new projects launched, nothing in print, nothing to crow about. I sat down to write something keen and insightful on role playing or fiction and...nada. Ancient mariners.
On the other hand, lots of things in the works. Over at Sinister Adventures, we're waiting on art from an amazing artist (name withheld for greater, later impact). Then I'll be able to finish editing, and we'll issue Dark Horizons Indulgences -- in which you scifi fans may indulge. For those not in the know, Indulgences are short, self-contained, inexpensive PDFs that will jazz your game as they introduce you to the Sinister universe.
Also for Sinister, Nick Logue and I are still cranking away on Cold Black, and the Werecabbage powered Known Universe Gazetteer (or as we talk about it behind the curtain, the KUG) isn't far around the bend. Hang in there loyal fans. I know its been a rough ride, especially with Meister Logue translocating to UK-land, but we will deliver, and I don't think you'll be disappointed.
Simultaneously, I'm also working on two adventures for 0onegames as part of of their Road to Revolution campaign arc. I'm co-writing all 50k words with illimitable Rone Barton, my fellow Werecabbage and known to those of you in Paizo land as "The Jade". With Tim Hitchcock developing and Dave Hall editing, these adventures should kick some @#$%@#%!
Here's a link.
To celebrate 0onegames has created some free, downloadable Revolutionary wall paper, here. My two faves are the Jerusalem like shot of the Great City over water and the defaced "The Goat" proclamation.
For those of you who own the Great City Campaign Setting, don't miss Tim Hitchcock's outrageous and brutal, truly masterful intro adventure A Pound of Flesh. This one is not to be missed. Hell, even if you don't own the GCCS, Pound of Flesh rocks!
OK - this one really is for those of you who own the Great City Campaign Setting, especially Paizoans. There is a head nod to Rone in my Residential Ward section. It's a pretty obvious one if you hang on the Paizo boards, but after I made the allusion, I learned that Rone really had been both of those things. Check it out, you'll get what I mean.
Other things in the pipe include a ............ for .............., that has yet to be announced. However I'm very excited about it! And last but not least, I've been entering a ............. only RPG writing contest for ............. Haven't won one yet, but I'm still striving.
Crud. Damn censors at work again.
As with many of us, RL is kicking my butt, but I'll try to keep you all better posted. And even write up those keen insights to which I alluded earlier. Just have to get this damn Albatross off my neck!
9.09.2008
Ohmigod! It's out and its beautiful!
The Great City Campaign Setting from 0onegames is out! I'm so excited! Squee!
It's available in print and pdf, and its the first time an NPC of mine has been illustrated. Made me woozy with the happys!
Definitely, definitely looking forward to feedback and opinions; so, if you got 'em please let me know. Constructive criticism is always welcome, as there is no better way to improve. Let me know!
It's available in print and pdf, and its the first time an NPC of mine has been illustrated. Made me woozy with the happys!
Definitely, definitely looking forward to feedback and opinions; so, if you got 'em please let me know. Constructive criticism is always welcome, as there is no better way to improve. Let me know!
9.08.2008
Lou's Noodle#1: Adventure Tropes
WARNING: POST MAY CONTAIN INADVERTENT SPOILERS
I'm no master of the craft, but I've picked up a trick or two by rubbing elbows with those who are, and, after all, whacking two stones together will eventually start a fire if the tinder is dry enough. Ummm...I mean, put enough monkeys on the job and Shakespeare... Gah. This is just a brief Adventure Design 101 noodle on ways to bust up tropes in D&D adventure writing that work.
What do I mean by tropes? Functionally defined, in classic Swords and Horses adventure writing, we expect swords. We expect horses. We expect monsters. Usually, we expect a BBEG or at least the metaphoric equivalent of a distressed damsel (a village to save, a morose but kindly noble to save, someone to save). We don't, for example, expect clowns.
Now I don't mean jesters, with multi-tonged hats, motley, scepters and bells. Early mentions of jesters in the west stretch back to Pliny the Elder and the Hellenistic court of Ptolemy I. In the east a jester is referenced as a member of the Vijayanagara Empire. Jesters are almost a trope of Swords and Horses adventure in themselves.
No. I mean big-shoed, white faced, wig-wearing, red nosed, 10-fit-in-a-car, Bozo the Clown clowns. Or mimes. The Marcel Marceau type. Can you picture that guy in your next D&D adventure, facing off against the Paladin? Most of us would get laughed off the table and back home.
Yet Tim Hitchcock and Nick Logue in Paizo's recent Gamemastery module, Carnival of Tears do just that. An entire carnival of clown and circus types. So as writers/designers, how do they get it to work? They use a frame. In fiction, a frame is a way of constructing a story within a story. For example, in The Princess Bride the story of the grandfather teaching his home-from-school-with-a-cold grandson about the joy of reading is the frame story that wraps around the adventures of Wesley and Buttercup.
Hitchcock and Logue (and you'll begin to see who inspires a lot of my own writing as I repeat their names ad nauseum) use the needs of the Fey as a frame wrapped around the players' story of adventuring within the carnival. It's more than a simple justification like "it's a carnival because Fey are wacky...". I see it as a frame because there's an entire other storyline implying why its a carnival. A simple justification would lack sufficient verisimilitude and lead back to getting laughed off the table.
In my own work (warning: shameless plug), I introduce mimes to 0onegames Great City Campaign Setting (developed by Tim Hitchock). Yep. The Marcel Marceau type. I made them powerful monks and gave them an aisan-ish name, "The Monks (or Mimes) of the One Jade". On the cafe strewn, mardi-gras-esque streets of the Great City's Residential Ward they show up and begin to mimic revelers. All is fun at first until the mimic turns mean and starts revealing unpleasant secrets about the mime's victims. These mimes are feared.
Whether you like this or not, none of it is why mimes work in the piece. They work in the piece because of its context. The Great City Campaign Setting chose revolutionary France as one of its historical analogs. So of course a fantasy culture imbued with other hollywood-esque French and French revolutionary elements (open air cafes, a resistance movement, wine bread and cheese, culinary experts, chamber pots, an equivalent to absinthe, rapier wielding poets of the moon), has mimes. They just don't feel out of place.
Sometimes context isn't enough. There's a feature the Mimes of the One Jade share with one of my favorite NPCs from The Great City, a bozo-the-clown clown named Fouche. Fouche is the creation of Greg Oppedisano, and Fouche is a serial killer. A clownish serial killer. By day he desperately tries to entertain a wan, disinterested and sparse populace. At night, he kills them. A performer's ultimate revenge on an indifferent audience!
I'm no master of the craft, but I've picked up a trick or two by rubbing elbows with those who are, and, after all, whacking two stones together will eventually start a fire if the tinder is dry enough. Ummm...I mean, put enough monkeys on the job and Shakespeare... Gah. This is just a brief Adventure Design 101 noodle on ways to bust up tropes in D&D adventure writing that work.What do I mean by tropes? Functionally defined, in classic Swords and Horses adventure writing, we expect swords. We expect horses. We expect monsters. Usually, we expect a BBEG or at least the metaphoric equivalent of a distressed damsel (a village to save, a morose but kindly noble to save, someone to save). We don't, for example, expect clowns.
Now I don't mean jesters, with multi-tonged hats, motley, scepters and bells. Early mentions of jesters in the west stretch back to Pliny the Elder and the Hellenistic court of Ptolemy I. In the east a jester is referenced as a member of the Vijayanagara Empire. Jesters are almost a trope of Swords and Horses adventure in themselves.
No. I mean big-shoed, white faced, wig-wearing, red nosed, 10-fit-in-a-car, Bozo the Clown clowns. Or mimes. The Marcel Marceau type. Can you picture that guy in your next D&D adventure, facing off against the Paladin? Most of us would get laughed off the table and back home.
Yet Tim Hitchcock and Nick Logue in Paizo's recent Gamemastery module, Carnival of Tears do just that. An entire carnival of clown and circus types. So as writers/designers, how do they get it to work? They use a frame. In fiction, a frame is a way of constructing a story within a story. For example, in The Princess Bride the story of the grandfather teaching his home-from-school-with-a-cold grandson about the joy of reading is the frame story that wraps around the adventures of Wesley and Buttercup.
Hitchcock and Logue (and you'll begin to see who inspires a lot of my own writing as I repeat their names ad nauseum) use the needs of the Fey as a frame wrapped around the players' story of adventuring within the carnival. It's more than a simple justification like "it's a carnival because Fey are wacky...". I see it as a frame because there's an entire other storyline implying why its a carnival. A simple justification would lack sufficient verisimilitude and lead back to getting laughed off the table.
In my own work (warning: shameless plug), I introduce mimes to 0onegames Great City Campaign Setting (developed by Tim Hitchock). Yep. The Marcel Marceau type. I made them powerful monks and gave them an aisan-ish name, "The Monks (or Mimes) of the One Jade". On the cafe strewn, mardi-gras-esque streets of the Great City's Residential Ward they show up and begin to mimic revelers. All is fun at first until the mimic turns mean and starts revealing unpleasant secrets about the mime's victims. These mimes are feared.
Whether you like this or not, none of it is why mimes work in the piece. They work in the piece because of its context. The Great City Campaign Setting chose revolutionary France as one of its historical analogs. So of course a fantasy culture imbued with other hollywood-esque French and French revolutionary elements (open air cafes, a resistance movement, wine bread and cheese, culinary experts, chamber pots, an equivalent to absinthe, rapier wielding poets of the moon), has mimes. They just don't feel out of place.
Sometimes context isn't enough. There's a feature the Mimes of the One Jade share with one of my favorite NPCs from The Great City, a bozo-the-clown clown named Fouche. Fouche is the creation of Greg Oppedisano, and Fouche is a serial killer. A clownish serial killer. By day he desperately tries to entertain a wan, disinterested and sparse populace. At night, he kills them. A performer's ultimate revenge on an indifferent audience!
Fouche, however, is not an intrinsic feature of the party-loving Residential Ward. He's a drift over from the Docks Ward. This NPC works, I think, because of narrative contrast. Clown and Killer. Night and Day. Confused visitor and deadly murderer. Performer and reviler of the audience.
The One Jade mimes have this mirroring, too, only less so. Silent, but they speak your secrets. Wimpy appearance, but deadly martial artists. Still, they rely more on the Residential Ward context for their verisimilitude. Fouche has enough built in contrast to live and work anywhere in the Great City.
In conclusion, here are three techniques I think can help you introduce outre, out of place, trope bashing differences into your adventures without breaking the suspension of disbelief:
- Frame Story
- Context
- Narrative Contrast or Mirroring
EDIT: It occurs to me that a Frame Story is a shortcut technique for creating context through mirroring. Neat.
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