A New Beginning
It's been eight months since I post here... better now than never.
Over the past week I've been thinking a lot, specifically about Atomic Age.
In case you don't know, Atomic Age is my post-apocalyptic treatment of the Archmage Engine, which powers 13th Age. It came to be because I wanted Gamma World, and I wasn't allowed to create Gamma World content for fear that WotC would sue me into non-existence (they had threatened to do so already). But, during its development, it became something different... It's still post-apocalyptic, but not as zany and off the wall as Gamma World is known to be. I think of it as somewhat of a cross between Gamma World, Mad Max and what the future would be like in a Terminator film that didn't time travel.
But here's the thing... when you choose a system to develop your campaign setting around, most of the time you're stuck with the nuances of that system. The Archmage Engine is a great system, don't get me wrong, but there are some aspects of it that didn't feel right or I couldn't get to work with what I wanted to do. For example, how would mutations work in a 13th Age system? What about radiation poisoning? And there are some thing that came with it that I didn't want at all... like magic item "quirks", which are good by design in a fantasy game like 13th Age but just don't fit in my campaign setting.
Since I wrote most of Atomic Age, Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition made its appearance and the landscape changed. As is the case with the Archmage Engine, I have some issued with 5E in that, although it does some things really well, other things not so much. For example, creating monsters and encounters in 13th Age is stupid easy... in 5E, not so much. And 5E doesn't even come close to the background/icon system that Archmage provides.
So I had a crazy idea... why bind myself to a single system? DMs do it all the time... cherry pick bits and pieces from multiple systems, campaign settings, and other source material and create a virtual Frankenstein's Monster of an RPG system to use in their homebrew campaigns. Only I want to take that Monster and publish it.
So I decided to try and write my own RPG system, picking and choosing the features that I want from multiple systems and melding it all into one amorphous blob that will power Atomic Age.
I'm insane, aren't I? Seriously, I have no idea how this is going to go... mainly because it's a daunting task and I'm not exactly sure I know what I'm doing in this regard.
But I can't do it alone.
So I've done something crazy: I've reworked my Patreon to be aimed specifically towards the creation of this new engine. And I'm going to do something even crazier: try to stick to a regular schedule in which I dicuss what this engine is going to be, which means this blog will hopefully see activity it hasn't seen in ages.
Will this become a reality? Who knows... but I have to try. A lot of work has been done for the Archmage Engine version of Atomic Age, but I don't see that ever being cobbled together in such a way that I will be happy with all aspects of it. Hopefully, this way I will actually be happy with it because it'll be wrapped around something I myself put together for the specific purpose of powering the campaign setting.
I hope you all will join me on this crazy ride. My Patreon is open to your support! If you sign up now, you will get my latest published adventure, Witness Protection, absolutely free!
Ever forward...
A New Year
Holy hell, has it really been ten months since I've posted on this site? I gotta start remembering this thing exists.
Well it has finally come and gone... 2018 has been the longest decade in my life, and I think I can say the same for many of you out there.
Looking Back
There have been a few people posting about what their highlights for the past year were. Well, here are mine:
- Published Festival of Magic on the DM's Guild, which - in comparison to everything I've published - is one of my personal favorites.
- Funded the Kickstarter for the 5th Edition conversion of A Night in Seyvoth Manor, and delivered the product before Halloween. It has since become my one and only "Copper seller" on DriveThruRPG.
- Had my craptastic Bahamut, The Platinum Dragon - which is literally nothing but a stat block, a shoddy one at that, and contains no lore or art - become a "Copper seller" on the DM's Guild. I mention this only because, so far, it is the only Copper product I've done on my own in the DMG.
- Collaborated on Storm King's Barrows: Tombs and Crypts of the North, which has since become a "Silver seller" on the DM's Guild. Not my best work, but arguably my most revenue-producing thing all year.
- Released The Absent-Minded Alchemist, which was a bit of a "meh" product to start but was easy to convert from 4E.
- Funded another Kickstarter for my social adventure Uninvited Guests, which has since been renamed to Party Crashers. This Kickstarter was a "proof of concept" - to see if I can do quick and dirty one-offs with a low funding goal - and it worked, so expect me to do more of this in the coming year.
- Launched a Patreon! And the TWO backers I have so far are getting lonely, so...
That's pretty much it. It's not a lot... At a personal level, 2018 has been somewhat difficult in terms of my home life and my financial situation, and those situations are, by nature, not conducive to creativity, so I've been in a bit of a rut. But, all in all, it went better than 2017 in some regards, so there's that.
Looking Forward
So what does 2019 have in store? Honestly, I don't know yet... But here are some goals.
- Finish
Uninvited GuestsParty Crashers in the near future. - Do several more Kickstarters like
Uninvited GuestsParty Crashers over the course of the year. - See what the hell I'm finally going to do with the complete The Coming Dark campaign as well as Atomic Age. There's a lot to be done on those, and I question whether the effort is worth it right now.
- Cater to my Patreon backers more, in that I'll be creating more "behind the scenes" posts and videos (maybe). In the meantime, hope to get more than... well... two... Patreon backers.
- Hopefully set up a regular game with... somebody...
- Maybe go to GenCon. I don't know yet... I need to see if the expense really is worth it.
- Sort out my personal and financial situations so that I can do this kind of stuff more readily and with less guilt.
If you're reading this, you're one of the reasons I press on. Thank you for your support, and I hope to show you a lot more cool things in 2019.
Ever forward.
Ken Whitman Responds to KODTLAS Release
This may seem like an odd thing to appear here, so I think it requires a bit of an explanation...
If you're a reader of this blog or a follower of mine, odds are you know who Ken Whitman is. Let's just say that he is one of the most talked about people in the industry, and the news coverage of him hasn't been exactly balanced.
Let me be clear before I proceed: I have no stake in this game. I barely know who Ken is myself, I have never backed or even followed any of his projects, and have not followed the details on how he has acquired the reputation he apparently has. I'm am as impartial as they come on this topic.
Suffice to say, Ken's been talked about on numerous websites and blogs, some of which are dedicated almost entirely to him, and the general narrative has been - I must admit - overwhelmingly one-sided. As a result, he admittedly hasn't had a much a chance to respond himself on a venue that isn't against him in every possible way. One reasonably well known blog offered him the opportunity to post his side of the story over all this, to which Ken declined because he didn't want to drive traffic towards that site.
My offer to Ken, as posted on another blog
So that's where I came in... I offered my site as a sort of "neutral ground". Like I said above, I have no opinion of this matter, and as such agreed to post anything Ken wishes to say without commentary or counterpoint, just to get his side of the story out without any bias. And, if possible (I'm not sure how; I've never done it before), I will prevent comments from being posted because I don't want to be a full time moderator and I want to let his statement stand as it is.
So, hopefully, this will be the first of many responses... I have no idea how this is going to go, but here goes.
-=O=-
Before we continue, a little background. Yesterday, the Knights of the Dinner Table: The Live Action Series - one of the Kickstarters that Ken was involved with a while back - was apparently released to backers without Ken's involvement. The post detailing that release can be found on Jolly Blackburn's Facebook feed. As is stated in that post, "D20 Entertainment did not participate or help in this development".
I'll say again: I know little about this project. I was not a backer, and barely even know what the project is or what has been involved in it. And, in an effort to remain impartial, I have not gone out looking for such information because, as I've stated above, the information that's out there is apparently very one-sided.
In any event, Later in the day yesterday Ken contacted me through Facebook Messenger to post his response to that.
Here it is, as I received it and edited for grammar (it's the least I could do)...
About 2 years ago, I turned over the KODTLAS footage to Z.O.E. and today, both ZOE and Jolly Blackburn, announced are releasing all three Episodes of KODTLAS.
Now matter how much I may not enjoys Jolly's company personally, I can not belittle his amazing talent. Jolly is a true genius when it comes to storytelling and everyone at Kenzer was top notch to work with.
It was never my intention to take this long for people to see all three episodes, but due to a turn of events in my life, it did not allow me to financially keep working on the project. I messed up ran out of funds, and had a hard time paying for the project to continue out of my own pocket.
I could talk about the online slander/libel posed many times over the past two years about never turning over the footage, but why open old wounds, they fact is I did turn it over to ZOE.
I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I enjoyed directing them. I will continue to work on this project in my free time, hopefully finishing up the project in the near future.
To Jolly, Kenzer, the actors, the crew. It was an honor working with you.
- Ken Whitman
ETA: After confirming with Ken, he has agreed to let me turn on comments for today only, and he has agreed to respond to them through this site (whether he'll do that in the comments or post separately, I don't know yet). I am not going to be moderating the comments until late in the day (I don't have time for that during working hours), so please be civil.
-=O=-
ADDENDUM 2/14/18 @ 1:22PM:
Ben Dobyns of Zombie Orpheus Entertainment has provided a response to this. To keep everything together, I'm adding it here.
Hi, this is Ben from ZOE with a few facts regarding the KODT situation.
Several years ago Ken mailed me a hard drive that included a) all of the raw footage from Episode 1, b) some raw footage from episode 2, and c) ZERO raw footage from episode 3, along with a Final Cut X file of his work on the edit. The plan was to complete post-production for him and return the completed project for distribution to backers.
Despite repeated requests over several years, Ken did not provide the remaining footage. His reasons (on the record) have changed several times.
Ken's rights to the KODT IP and the live action series footage contractually expired on December 31st of 2017. Following that date, by mutual agreement with Kenzer ZOE set out to release the "rescued" edition to the original Kickstarter backers.
What was released to backers yesterday was cobbled together from the hard drive that Ken originally sent, SD assembly cuts from Jolly's dropbox, and so on. It is a "rescued" edition in every sense of the word.
Unfortunately, I've lost thousands and thousands of dollars to this mess. But because my name and reputation were used by Ken in order to secure the KODT film rights (yes, I have the paper trail to prove this claim), I felt a personal responsibility to get this project released: for Kenzer, Jolly, and all of the KODT fans who pledged to support the original project.
I wish Ken the best, but my efforts to rescue this project are now complete.
Zoinks!
"A Night in Seyvoth Manor" for 5E
In case you are not aware, we're running a Kickstarter for the 5th Edition conversion of our ENnie-nominated adventure A Night in Seyvoth Manor that is already 300% funded!
We continue to be overwhelmed... Over 300% funded?!? Never imagined we would get that far, and we're eternally grateful for that!
The only stretch goal we've had so far is the creation of pre-generated characters, and we had a bit of a crazy idea with that that we're wondering if we can make it work: create two groups of characters...
- The original Scooby Gang - Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby
- The "new" Scooby Gang from Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles and Cordelia
This of course brought up some questions... like what would the races and classes be? So far this is what we've come up with:
ORIGINAL Scooby Gang:
Fred: Human Paladin
Daphne: Elven rogue
Velma: Lore-heavy mage, either a halfling or a gnome
Shaggy and Scooby: ... Oh boy... Let me come back to this one later.
NEW Scooby Gang:
Buffy: Human monk
Willow: Half-elf warlock
Xander: Halfling bard
Giles: Elf or maybe human... and I'm debating either a cleric or a lore-heavy mage
Cordelia: Human or elf, sorceress (wild magic), heavy on Charisma
Now, let's get back to Shaggy and Scooby... Neither of these are "characters" in the D&D sense of the world, so we'll have to take some liberties. I've asked this question on Twitter and I've come up with two possibilities:
Shaggy and Scooby are the SAME CHARACTER: As above, Shaggy is a Druid with wild-shape that can only convert to one type of animal... a Great Dane (we can go with the Mastiff stat block).
Scooby is the main character, and Shaggy is the animal companion: Let's face it... Shaggy is not worthy of being a PC, and if anything he's Scooby's sidekick. So make Scooby a class capable of either an animal companion (ranger?) or a familiar (mage?), and make Shaggy that semi-useless familiar.
Personally I'm leaning towards the first option, but that introduces another problem: there are only four characters, when we kinda need five. So who should the fifth character be? None other than Scrappy as, you guessed it, a gnome barbarian!
So, since we've gotten this far without mentioning stretch goals, I'm going to see about stylizing these character sheets as best I can and including a portrait for each character by the lovely and talented Val "Kick Girl" Hochberg! We're also going to see about working them in to a cover in such a way that doesn't get us sued by Hanna-Barbara.
We've considered creating other types of characters, some that are more down to Earth and fitting the theme like Van Helsing, Blade, etc... but the above somehow feels most appropriate.
Anwyay... We keep trudging foward! Five days left! Tell your friends!
D&D Beyond – First Impressions
So the day has come... D&D Beyond open beta has begun, so I decided to take a look.
First off, I'm looking at this strictly as (1) a software developer and architect, and as (2) someone who would actually use this thing. Without any mention of possible pricing, I can't say yet whether it's worth it or not, so I'll treat it for now as if it was free.
Some general comments...
- The website is hosted on CloudFlare, which is a pretty decent hosting service that is designed to handle excessive load and usage. Let me put it in simple terms: the D&D Beyond site can likely handle more users, more bandwidth and more activity than WotC's own website.
- The core of the site is built around Cobalt, which is a framework designed to support "hybrid" apps (both native and HTML-based app), which not only answers the question about support on multiple devices... but it does seem to hint how this whole thing will work offline. On devices, the HTML and Javascript pages that drive the app are physically on the device, not on a webserver, so it doesn't have to be online to function as a website would. Where the data physically is is another matter... I would venture to guess that the compendium wouldn't be available offline, but character creation and character content can be saved on the local device through Cobalt's integration between the HTML app and native services.
- The server runs the website using "nginx", which is a web service similar to Apache. Although I can't confirm it, my going theory is that the server side is written in Python (which would have been my personal choice), although PHP and other languages is surely possible. Whatever it may be, it's safe to say that they're officially a Linux shop... a big departure from WotC's history of being obsessively Microsoft-centric.
- Looking at the client-side code that I can see (and I admit there isn't a lot of it since only the Compendium is available), it looks well put together and fairly clean. In layman terms, it seems to suggest that the developer that wrote it knows what they're doing and isn't a total idiot. But, like I said, there isn't much there... we should have a better impression of their abilities once the next beta phases go live.
- The app works really well, better than I expected actually. This goes along with my opinion that a company like Curse has done this sort of thing before and isn't making stuff up as they go along.
- The app is visually appealing. Although it only contains SRD content right now, everything looks good. It even has pictures for all the monsters (well, most of them anyway... didn't go through all of them). The bugs I have seen are trivial and don't prevent you from using it (if you remember Dungeonscape/Morningstar, the bugs there made it unusable).
- The app works out of the box on desktop and mobile, which was as could be expected with the Cobalt framework.
All in all, I'm fairly impressed. It's better than I expected, and it shows that there's a serious company with experience doing this sort of thing behind it.
The Unexpected Reveal
The D&D Beyond beta did reveal something interesting... and I'm guessing it wasn't intentional.
If you look at the beta site, the logo on the top left doesn't go to dndbeyond.com... it goes to the domain tabletophero.com, which in turn redirects to dndbeyond.com.
So what is tabletophero.com? We don't know, but doing a WHOIS on the domains reveals something even more interesting: tabletophero.com existed OVER SIX MONTHS BEFORE dndbeyond.com did.
dndbeyond.com ... Registered Feb 2017
tabletophero.com ... Registered July 2016
So... that being said... I have a new theory.
At first I thought that WotC likely asked Curse to create the app, but I don't think that any more. I think that Curse was already creating an app of this nature, called tabletophero.com at the time, and only after was it pitched to WotC. WotC saw the working app and went with it, rebranding it to be dndbeyond.com.
This approach differs wildly from what Trapdoor tried to do with WotC; when they pitched to WotC, Trapdoor didn't have an actual working app to show... at least not on three platforms (Android, iOS and desktop). They had what they thought it would look like, but I'm guessing that Curse was much farther along in their development, and the fact they can show a working app on every target platform was likely a big plus. This would also explain how Curse can take D&D Beyond from announcement to open beta in like a week; they've been working on it for a long time now.
This is all wild speculation, but if you think about it... it sure does look probable. We will likely never know the truth, though.
The Elephant In the Room
All the above is based on me looking at the app as a developer and as a user... but there's going to be one big problem with it and everyone knows it's coming: pricing.
As has been mentioned many a time, WotC has a tendency to price these sort of things at an absurd amount, making them impractical to afford or making people unwilling to pay for. Many are hesitant to pay for books they already own, but many indicators seem so show that will likely be the case here (see Fantasy Grounds).
We can only hope that WotC will snap out of their archaic mindset and get with modern times, but that's a big thing to ask.
More to Come
All in all, the app does show promise... But there isn't much to the Compendium, to be honest. What will make or break the application, at least from an application perspective, are the next two phases: Phase Two being character creation, and Phase Three being homebrew support and campaign management. Personally, I'm particularly curious about Phase Three.