Of Patience and the Lack Thereof

-"Aaaaalright peeps, if you remember, your are in the ice maze, you are in a room in is forty wide it is thirty north south there is an exit to the north there is a door to the south, you came from the north, there is a statue, you got attacked earlier by an ice lamprey (eeew) there is a pool, in the pool is bluish water and some viking skeleton people, you were chased here by monkeys, what are we doing?"

I have a cup of coffee, because it is cold, and I have a cup of Dr Pepper because I am hopelessly dependent on it. I am alternating. I am also playing Schoenberg's Farben for its Ice Labyrinthy and rising mix of cinematic sublimity and teeth-putting-on-edge tinkiness.

My players are looking at each other. The veterans and the tenderfeet. Very quietly. What do we do?

Who is the leader?

Not the most intelligent, not the most experienced, not the one who remembers what's going on best, not even the most charismatic. Not the most anything.

The least patient.

-Local example:

If I (Lord Impatient Imperial Entirely) am DMing and not playing, then the impatience goes like this:

If Mandy has a plan, we're doing Mandy's plan.

If Mandy is absent or feeling too sick to have a plan, Connie does something impulsive from which the party is about to have to rescue her.*

If Connie is absent, Kimberly says "Well fine!" and then hits something. Or throws a switch. Or
solves the puzzle. She's is often a lot like "Ok, well if none of you people are going to step up then so I'm going to do something--as like punishment--and I'm sure it's the wrong thing to do and you'll all be sorry" and then she does it and it's the right thing. Is there a compound German word for that?

If none of them are around, it all becomes very strange. Unless like McCormick is around.

-If the patience equations aren't clear (and they become unclear around the mid-2os each month) you get exchanges like this:

"We go forward!"
"Forward is, regrettably, not a map direction"
"What? I gotta look at the map?...ok...." (shuffle grumble)
"It is indeed a terrible burden, I know"
(shuffle shuffle) "...ok, fine, we go East!"

-I have noticed when I play in G+ games I am real fucking impatient.

-I wonder what goes on in the mind of the patient player when nothing is going on: is it "Whatever, man, it's allllllll gooood" or "Fuck I'm bored but I'm too shy to say anything" or "Fuck I'm bored but I'm not confident enough to say anything and don't want to be the one responsible for killing us all" or "Man it's fun watching Mr Impatient over here tie himself in knots figuring which statue to kick..."








__________
*I recall saying Connie never died last week. I remember now I was wrong, she died in a pit trap I'm remembering now. I think it was a gnome.

It Came From White Dwarf!

Random notes from lying in bed reading the World's Once Greatest Hobby Magazine...

-First, here's a half-finished dungeon using only pictures from White Dwarf 1-9 or pictures of (disturbing) minis that I tracked down from them being advertised in 1-9...
(Click to enlarge.)
(Note walktopus.)

-Magazines. Your blog--wait, statistically speaking, if you're reading this you don't have a blog. anyway, blogs--are magazines. Like this here you're reading is the opening editorial. Then over on the right there we have my departments. The only difference is: lots of things you can probably figure out without my help. Point is you can see all the brains that will be making the next generation of RPGs here in the magazine's bylines. Steve Jackson, Ian Livingstone, John Blanche...

-Quote I just got in the mail from A Certain Game Development Professional Who Reads D&DWPS:

Just read your follow-up to the pay thing. You are 100% right.

You could argue that the entire business history of D&D has been an ongoing, losing fight between a company trying to treat D&D like a publishing business and a fan base that wants to treat it like a hobby.

-Discuss?

-Speaking of White Dwarfs, has anyone seen the new Ricky Gervais show with Warwick Davis? Is it any good?

-Hot.

-Judging from the reviews and ads, the number of kinda wargame/kinda boardgames (like Divine Right) from this era is staggering. I wonder if the current resurgence of this kind of game (Small World, Carcassone, etc.) coincides with the re-interest in old school D&D? I mean, I wonder enough to post on the internet about it, not enough to actually, y'know, do the research.

-White Dwarf #13 contains an Houri character class all about creepy what-lonely-'70s-GM-dreamed-this-up sex magic. In a game it would just go to terrible and tedious places, but it's actually a decent character idea for a story. Or a tentacle porn. Brian Asbury you were working in the wrong medium.

You could also profitably pull a spell like Kiss of Disfigurement off the houri list on a scroll to add optional hilariousness to an intrigue-heavy setting.

-Holy fuck! How much of the '70s does this explain:
?

Time To D.I.Y.

So what was that question all about?

It was about this...

Everybody who has vague dreams of making an RPG thing: it is time to publish your book.

No, not because it's National Game Design Month. (Though it is.)

Because I heard from the people you saw in the comments from yesterday and I heard, via email from a few more RPG professionals (including a couple heavies) and they all gave me basically the same numbers.

And here's the bottom line on those numbers...

Let's say, just hypothetically, my publisher--James Edward Raggi--decided to take all the money he still owes me plus all the projected future profits from the rest of the print run from my book, Vornheim, and go off to Tahiti to sit on the beach and spend his ill-gotten loot sipping mudslides and forcing homeless dwarfs to dance to Formulas Fatal To The Flesh for pennies and none of us ever heard from him again.

Even if he did that and I had only the money I already got for Vornheim, I would still have made more off of it than had I written a thing of equal length for any big publisher you care to mention. When the first printing sells out, Vornheim will have made as much money for me as a top-tier freelancer would've gotten for a gangbusters-selling book of equal length from WOTC or the Wolf at its height--and that's after splitting it with James.

You know how many copies Vornheim sold--in the scheme of things, compared to the regular not-RPG books I've been involved in? Compared to how WOTC books sell? Fuck all is how many. You know how many copies Geoffrey McKinney sold of the original--pictureless--Carcosa? Even less than fuck all. And he still is doing wayyyy better than if he'd freelanced on a wildly popular splatbook.

So the moral of the story is: find a little game company willing to split the profits with you--or just self-publish. Make some insane crayoned-together folk-art niche product that only a handful of people could possibly want--but do it your way and do it without editors and make something totally fucked up.

As of late November 2011 this community will, apparently, support you in your desire to make any dumb thing, so long as it is weird enough.

So let the squareglasses sit around and worry about growing the hobby and meeting the market halfway and having sex with their own grandmothers--you can do better for us and for you by making something really different that won't get made without your own special little snowflake brain than you can helping the machine pump out one more generation of hobbits.

In the long run, are "nobody-bought-one-but-everybody-who-did-started-a-band" albums better for the health of the overall business than spending hours filing rough edges off your thing so it can achieve Crossover Profitability at or equal to the calculated Gaga Maximum? No idea. But I know which one is more fun.

And if you do have dreams of one day working on something big for Games Workshop or the 'Bro: "did this, which is awesome" on your resume is at least as good as "one of the 900 people involved in that".

So, please: you can do whatever else it is you do for eleven other months out of the year, but take one (not necessarily continuous) month's worth off work you would've put into a freelance gig and write your nutjob project. You've probably done the R&D just running your home campaign. It will be more worth it than working for the bigs. The price of publishing is cheap enough, PDFs are popular enough, the audience is still spending money and--at least right now--you have our attention.

Do it.
Now.

RPG Professionals: Rude Question, Luckily This Is A Blog So You Don't Have To Answer

So, full-time RPG professionals...

How much do you make? A month? Per project?

You don't have to answer, (obviously, since I don't even know which of you are reading) and if you want to email it zakzsmith at hawt mayle dawt calm then go ahead. Your anonymity will be preserved.

But I've been looking at old Dragons and White Dwarfs and wondering about the economics of how it all fits together.

Data provided may or may not contribute to forthcoming useful insights.

What's That? Sleigh Bells? No! It's Secret Santicore!

Come sit on my lap--and watch out for the tail spikes, they do d6 each. HO HO HO..

Have you been nice? Just kidding, I'm sure you've been nice, no-one naughty reads Playing Dungeons and Dragons With Porn Stars.

So, what do you want for Christmas?

20 Rumors About Murderonymous Castle?

20 Reasons The Goblins Are Carrying So Much Gold?

20 Side Effects of Being Healed By A Cleric of The Wrong Alignment?

20 Hacks for H3--Hall of The Mountain Grill

20 Stupid Doppleganger Combat Tricks?

6 Geese A Laying?

5 Gollllllldennnnnnn Rinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngs?????

Sorry. Anyway...

Click this link to meet a little elf named Jez and tell him you want to participate in Secret Santicore and have your holiday wishes come true!
HO HO HO!!!!

Royal Fist Monkeys Are Trying To Kill You

This is a Player Service Announcement.

Dear My Players:

Royal Fist Monkeys are trying to kill you.

They are small and white.

They have large stone-and-metal gloves on their right hands, encrusted with precious gems.

They are trying to kill you.

They hate you.

You broke into their ice house looking for fun and profit, they have decided you will never leave.

You have observed these things:

They are fearsome.

They are organized.

They are horrible.

They do not die fast.

They know how to use both fire and flaming oil.

They killed Roger's guy.

Their Royal Fists are capable of delivering one punch doing d8+8 damage. After the punch they bite for d4+4.

You know because you have seen this happen 24 times.

There are many other dangers and wonders in the Ice Labyrinth of Hakleth besides Royal Fist Monkeys.

But you will never see them if you fight Royal Fist Monkeys all day.

Tips:

-When you're in a big echoey room with a bottomless pit, and Kimberly Kane is like "Hey what's over there?" and I go "Are you yelling that across the room?" and Kimberly is like "Uh, yeah, sure" then be all "NO, NO KIMBERLY DON'T DO THAT! THE ROYAL FIST MONKEYS WILL HEAR US AND CHASE US AND THEN WE WILL BE FIGHTING ROYAL FIST MONKEYS FOREVER AND ALL DIE IN THIS HORRIBLE ICY MONKEY DUNGEON"

-Actually, that's the main tip. I can't think of any others right now.

________________

To Any Other Readers Of This Blog Who Play Google + Games Or Are Thinking About It:

If any of you have characters hanging out back at the FLAILSNAILS Cantina, you have heard the bartenders of Earth-Amalagmated-FLAILSNAILS have started a betting pool on the success of this expedition.

Here's how it works:

You chip in 100 gp.

You say who you think will survive, who will die, how successful you think it will be that week, you make any other crackpot prediction you see fit.

There are no penalties for extra incorrect predictions beyond the first, so go ahead and make as many as you like.

Whichever player is the most right gets all the gold (and associated xp). If there's a tie, you split it.

Here's the deal so far:

They are in this maze looking for an ice medusa name Moroschka--trying to capture her and bring her back alive.

The Royal Fist Monkeys make traps. They are alerted to the PCs presence. They have 6HD. The last time there was a fracas there was 17 of them.

Other hazards have included an ice lamprey and some kind of emerald ooze. One each. Neither was too much trouble so far.

The core contestants on any given day may include, but are not necessarily limited to...

Kimberly Kane as Miss Mold Pig--5th level Bloodthirsty ADD half-elf barbarian. Accompanied by her (relatively lucky) dog, Sueno #6.

Mandy Morbid as Tizane Ildiko--5th level Curious Fancy tiefling cleric of Vorn and 1st level Barbarian. Accompanied by her wolf, Ursula. She has recently been reduced to 12 wisdom and has begun hallucinating after looking at a rug.

Caroline Pierce as Smacky the Fighter--5th level Laid Back human fighter. A very experienced and careful RPGer.

Darren, who plays a 4th or 5th level Sneaky Laid Back dwarf and tends to show up an hour late, save everyone and then leave.

aaaaand...

Connie as Gypsillia--4th or 5th level Sneaky ADD Greedy half-elf thief. Like Kimberly, she is impulsive yet has never died.

There are several other players in the mix potentially, but since all of them either have erratic schedules right now or you can't really find out much about them on this blog by clicking the 'players' tag (or watching old Axe episodes) then I don't think it'd be fair to make you guess what'll happen to them. These four have been taking point lately in most of the recent games.

Metamorphosis Amber

The vessel contained complete Terran environments...Life became a struggle merely to survive for those humans that were left. In this struggle, all knowledge of the ships mission or even, in fact, that the humans were on a ship, was lost. Ship's systems were maintained in a minimum operative state by the vessel's main computer and the robots that were operating at the time of the cloud's entrance into the starship. Later generations of humans lost all sense of identity with the ship regressing into a state of savagery.
--Metamorphosis Alpha

The Ambers live magically lengthened lives, but they have seen too much and are bored. They seek anything to relieve this boredom. On top of their other traits, the Ambers possess a bizarre sense of humor. It amuses them to watch adventurers battle obstacles which the Amber family members place in their way. The Ambers are equally amused whether the adventurers succeed or fail. A good spectacle is more important to them than defeating the adventurers.

--Castle Amber

_____________

So, basically, there was:

-a prophecy of a great flood that the inhabitants of this fortress have been waiting for for a verrrry long time, or
-an actual great flood which they don't know is over yet, or
-some primordial lich or sorcerer-patriarch decided the outside world was in a Miasmatic Phase that his family and the lands they protect would have to wait out, so as to be able to begin a literal Renaissance spawned from uncorrupted lifeforms once it was all over

Anyway, point is now there's this palace--colossally imposed on the landscape like a dead stone god, hermetically--in every sense of the word--sealed, containing all the flora and all the fauna and all the items of culture and technology, because it's an ark.

Needless to say: this didn't work at all. After a few thousand years, most species were outDarwined or eaten, others simply dried up from lack of sunlight or welcoming weather. Everything that thrived was a dangerous mutant, everything that could think went insane.

It is laughably easy to get in. The locals will tell jokes about the inbred idiots that haven't seen the sun in centuries, and then they will tell you that no-one ever comes out alive.

The hobbies of the Antediluvian inhabitants include, but are not limited to:

-Breeding sharks in tiled pools.
-Alchemically modifying their own digestive juices so as to be able to chew and metabolize rock.
-Throwing babies.
-Pretending to be dead for decades at a time.
-Playing elaborate combinatoric wargames in an attempt to model what they suspect is going on in the outside world.
-Asking intruders questions and not believing the answers and then becoming very upset.
-Hiding from blasphemous deformed freak descendants of their own pets.
-Devising new and unusual ethanol-based beverages.
-Trying to renovate the architecture so as to ensure a decent and continuous supply of ice.
-Casting Speak With Dead and/or passing out behind the glass case in the All Maps Yet Devised room and waking up thinking they'd just cast Speak With Dead.
-Looking for new and exotic lifeforms to evolve so they can sacrifice them to their cruel gods.
-Puppet shows!!!!
-Making elaborate and very focused traps to protect themselves from creatures that may or may not have become extinct millennia earlier.
-Trying to murder each other through proxies. (Their complex dogma suggests outsiders are irredeemably fallen and so if they can get them to bump off their despised relatives without directly suggesting it they'll remain pure until the flood or miasma ends.)
-Polishing things in the Flatware Of All Known Nations Room.
-Composing works of taxonomy.
-Placing mystic seals across doorways after unfortunate mishaps.
-Insipid brunches that last 60 years where no-one really wants to talk to anyone else but does anyway.
-Losing maps they made of this sector that they could swear they left just over here on top that thing.
-Praying the new genus of octomantis will taste better than the previous three.
-Researching ways to build portals to dimensions that aren't more dangerous than where they already live.
-Waiting for creatures to become smart enough to hire or enslave.
-Experimenting with time compression.
-Astronomy.
-Multi-classing.
-Furniture design.
-Trying to create jesters via eugenics and controlled exposure to confidence-eroding phenomena.
-Trying to remember who got polymorphed into what and why, when, and whether this gecko might be them.
-Dress rehearsals and dry runs for internecine intrigues.
-Fox-hunting. Though what they call a "fox" and what you call a "fox" may not be exactly the same thing.
-Admiring the way the words "Invoked Devastation" just trip off the tongue.