A Walk in the Dark A look in to the mind of an RPG designer

Trapdoor Technologies : They’re baaaaack!

One of the most frustrating things about freelance writing and publishing is that sometimes you're really excited about a product that you put together... and you can't tell anyone about it. This has been my torment for the last two months.

Some of you remember Trapdoor Technologies and the ups and downs they had with their product Morningstar... DungeonScape... Well, whatever it was called. I've had my share of exchanges with them and have made some commentary on their product in the past. Some of it good, some of it bad, but in either case it was necessary. They had a vision of what they wanted their product to be, and although they had high expectations in it Wizards of the Coast didn't exactly share the same vision. And, if you know anything about WotC's history, that shouldn't exactly be a surprise.

They launched a rather ambitious... Well, let's be honest here: extremely ambitious... Kickstarter in the hopes of making DungeonScape a reality, and it didn't exactly go as planned. Most people that suffer such a defeat go crawl under a rock, but not these guys. Well... actually... they kind of did crawl under a rock, but while under said rock they were actually working on the product anyway.

For months they worked in obscurity, releasing occasional tidbits of news like working with Ed Greenwood (which must have given someone in the WotC legal department an aneurysm), quietly developing their product and working towards releasing it to the world.

And now they have.

Today, Morningstar... DungeonScape... whatever it was called before is now officially called Playbook, and only minutes ago did they rebrand their Twitter account to @__Playbook__ and launched their Playbook micro site.

Now, what does this have to do with me?

Well, a long long time I ago I had an idea for an adventure called "Cavern of the Damned". At the time there wasn't much to the adventure concept... Actually, besides the first room - the cavern, filled with the damned - there wasn't much else. So it languished for a while, being sidelined by all my other projects that I've been kicking around (like the campaign I've been writing for five years now, but I digress). But I got to talking with the Trapdoor guys, and they asked me if I'd like to publish it (reminder: "it" didn't technically exist) through their platform, Playbook.

Three months ago I agreed to doing that... And I sat on my ass for a month doing absolutely nothing on it. With two weeks to go before the agreed upon deadline, I decided "you know, maybe I should write this thing." So I did.

I'm happy to say that I completed "The Cavern of the Damned", a Pathfinder Roleplaying Game adventure for a party of 1st level characters, and sent it on its merry way. Trapdoor in turn converted it - using magic, I can only assume - for use within the Playbook system. I admit I don't know what that even looks like because I haven't had any of the Apple Kool-Aid and don't own an iPhone or iPad, but it's out there somewhere.

I'm actually excited about the product for a variety of reasons.

• It's the first real Pathfinder product I've ever written. I don't exactly count The Dragon's Master because that was originally a 4E module and, quite honestly, wasn't very good.
• It's not very combat heavy. There's one big combat-like encounter right at the start, but beyond that it's designed to involve skills more than combat.
• I'm dying to see the interactivity that Playbook brings to it.
• Holy crap, I have COVER ART! And I didn't even ask for it, they just did it! That excited me more than anything!

Anywhere, so there it is... Playbook is, in some form, already available in iTunes; I'm not exactly sure what it looks like because I'm not an Apple guy, so I have to wait for the Android version.

But, be it now or in the future, go get Playbook and go get Caverns of the Damned!

In the meantime, Trapdoor is starting up their social media machine once again, and that includes the relaunch of their blog. So go read their "resurrection" blog post for more information!

-=O=-

Addendum: If you go to the main Playbook site, you can see a gallery of images from the app. Most of the images are actually from my adventure, Cavern of the Damned, and include the intro, the map, a few pages from the adventures and a monster. As far as I can tell, CotD is to be included free with the app as an introductory product. I'm cool with that... because I WROTE THAT THING!