Point out where it's ineffective or poorly organized, and basically argue with me about what I'm doing so I have to defend it and maybe think of better ways.

Can't pay, but you'll get a free copy of the box.

Interested?

• Adventures are very low margin product, and distributor cuts chop chop chops even deeper into that margin.

• However, as a sustainable business model, "Just get a few internet vendors to sell the stuff" doesn't seem to be pulling in the big bucks.

• Going into distribution with adventures means depending on Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry to get to the distribution destinations first, else I'll be sitting on shelves as a support product for a game that's not there.

One solution stands out: Make my own game. Which would of course be a retro-clone. But this would give me a higher-margin item (since full games seem to sell much more than adventures do) and a proprietary brand, which is good for business, and it would solve the problem of relying on other companies to be present in markets I want to be. If people carry my modules, chances are they'll be carrying my game, too.

The Paizo plan, basically.

Three problems with this:

• The world needs another clone game like it needs a hole in the head.

• It seems skeezy to make product decisions based on business need, instead of treating the creative and the financial portions of the business separately. I'll be "selling out."

• I'd then be in competition with Swords & Wizardry and Labyrinth Lord, and the scene doesn't need further fragmentation of that sort, nor do I want to cause any friction with either Finch or Proctor.

So if this is going to be done (and I have other priorities for some months yet), the product would have to be justifiable on a level beyond "It helps Jim's business." It would need to be a product that would be awesome on its own merits.

I'd talked about this some time back, but I always hoped it would be someone else that would actually do it.

But my idea would be to make an all-in-one box set. Rules, tutorials, dice, even a friggin pencil and graph paper. Everything you need to game, right there in the box, and accessible even to someone that's never played RPGs before and doesn't have anyone to show them how.

The present plan for the box:

• 1 Tutorial Booklet, introducing the rules and concepts, doing a "choose your own adventure" solo adventure, and basically using the Mentzer Basic intro as a guide to format

• 1 Rules Booklet. Character creation, combat and adventuring rules, spell descriptions, etc.

• 1 Referee Booklet, including monsters, treasure, adventure design

• 1 Beginner (for referees and players) Dungeon Adventure

• 1 Beginner Wilderness Adventure

• 1 Inspirational Reading Booklet

• Dice

• Reference Sheets

• Pencil + Pad of Graph Paper

It probably won't be cheap, but I won't go for extravagant either. I'll do saddle-stitched booklets, color covers for the booklets and adventures but black and white interior art. A5 sized box.

I'm putting this here instead of on the blog because right now this is just an idea, and not anything actually happening. And I'm looking for feedback and ideas about how to move forward. The priority for the next long while will still be adventures, with the full game idea being something that gets constructed little by little over time.

Thoughts?

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

That's probably unnecessary as I'm guessing most here either own the module or intend on buying it for themselves, but better to be safe than sorry.

The party were too nervous about the statue, so they went and checked out the buildings instead. I was disappointed to see them take little or no interest in the obvious clues. To my great delight though, they all decided to go up into the attic. The whole party went up through the trap door, stayed close to it until they were all up there, then moved outwards to explore the room. Needless to say it was a TPK. I read to them James' comment about it being a "mercy killing", but they failed to see the humour.

New party arrives (miraculously identical to the first party in all respects), manages to find most of the clues, sets up base in the chapel and decides to burn the inn to the ground as a way of dealing with the stirges. They tackled the door at the statue's base by dropping a great big rock in the doorway, preventing it closing.

Down in the dungeon they decided to attack first, ask questions later and killed two of the NPC party hiding down there. The third felt he had no choice but to join up, which wasn't bad as I ended up with an extra player and the party could really benefit from a second thief. When it came to the room with the three pits, while the party was in one section, the new thief took off on his own and decided to poke a 10' pole down into the black pudding pit. That was the end of him and another character (cleric) who foolishly ran to his aid.

I allowed the party to send someone back to civilisation and hire another couple of party members - a thief and a cleric. Back at the dungeon they pressed on. Down in level two, one was lost to a green slime, another to the poisonous bite of a wandering monster. Alternating between near-paralysing terror at each new suspicious set-up and an almost insane determination to press on forward no matter what, they managed to get themselves sealed into the final bit of the dungeon. One player decided to play the sheet music on the organ, with the result that yet another character died, from a rot grub attack. They then, to my complete amazement, with a bit of luck, made it through the questions and answers passageway to the tomb itself - seems they paid a lot more attention than they had appeared to.

Once in the tomb they failed to find the secret door in the sarcophagus and suddenly learned the importance of nurturing their dwindling light sources. In the end, after a couple of days down there comtemplating their fate, they chiselled and smashed their way through the floor of the sarcophagus (I ruled that this opened the two exits), having previously found a faint glow in that spot with a detect magic spell. They found the second secret door and made off with the treasure, which neither I nor they thought would happen. In truth they had come to the conclusion that there was no treasure.

Afterwards the players were buzzing. I had wondered whether or not they would've enjoyed this adventure, which is basically a death trap dungeon for the unthinking. But they loved it and thorougly enjoyed the experience, even those players who lost characters.

Thanks James, first for making my players think and second for the enjoyment we all got as a group. I'm going to run them through DFD soon, but I might give them something a bit lighter first.  :-)

I haven't bought Grinding Gear but I understand it's low level. Is that the better option? I don't have to stick with Jim's stuff, but DFD struck me as an ideal foil to the 4e sessions I've been running recently and you can't beat the tone.

Sorry for the naive questions but I'm pretty rusty.

Thanks,

Jeff

Tell!

Me, I'm 34 now, I lived in the US (Connecticut, Georgia, Florida) before moving to Finland. I started gaming either in December 1983 or 1984, can't remember which it was, with the Mentzer red box. After moving to Atlanta to go to school in 1992, I drifted out of gaming since it just seemed everyone wanted to play Vampire or Magic and I wasn't interested.

In the early 00s I wanted to get back into gaming, but nothing at the local game store caught my interest. So I thought I'd make my own RPG. After most of the writing was done, I got online to find that, well, there were websites and forums dedicated to RPGs. Surprise! This was 2003, I think? Maybe 2004?

When I moved to Finland, I decided I was going to play old school D&D, so I re-bought the books and got a group. Aside from a 4-5 month HERO System game, I've been playing the old D&D versions, or one of the clones, since March/April 2006.

Also since that time, I've toyed around with amateur publishing projects, some to good effect, some which were ill-considered disasters. In July 2009 I decided getting a normal job wasn't for me so I started my own publishing company, hoping that I've learned from my earlier mistakes.

Things are looking pretty good so far.

You?

If you have any sort of sanity or fright mechanic that applies to player characters, your idea is already very bad. Throw it away and start over.

Jim, in this context, what's your opinion of special fear attacks, like that of a mummy, or result 61 on the Special Abilities table of your creature generator?

Can you draw a line, distinct or fuzzy, between fear attacks and fright mechanics?

To be clear, I'm in general agreement with your post, and not trying to "gotcha" or anything. Just sincerely interested in your perspective.

In reference to James's latest blog post ( http://lotfp.blogspot.com/2010/01/what- … es-in.html ), I suggest to anyone who thinks depictions of nudity should be stamped-out or shouted-down, that he start at the top and complain to the Pope about the Vatican's interior decorating.

James, do whatever is right for LotFP Weird Fantasy Role-Playing Game. Let those more chaste than the Pope fly to Rome and explain to him the error of his ways. Millions of children see the nudity in the Sistine Chapel. We should be so lucky if millions of children see the nudity in the LotFP Weird Fantasy Role-Playing Game.

While on the topic; I've recently gotten hold of a few gigabytes of old, scanned TSR books. I'm currently in the process of sifting through it for stuff I'd want to use in my own games. Any pointers there? Which ones are top notch, and which ones should I definitely avoid as a complete waste of time to even read?

James,
I did a review of your game. Thought you might want to know. Thanks!

Some systems are far more generous in their monster XP awards than others; for example, C&C compared to BECMI D&D. I actually like the idea of 100XP per hit die for monsters, provided that monsters that are not a significant threat to the party give no XP. The XP gained would be more significant to low level characters than high-level ones, which feels right, because it's the characters with low hit points that are risking the most by tackling monsters.

I like Jeff Rients' idea of XP for spending treasure, rather than getting treasure. I think this idea was in the First Fantasy Campaign supplement too, which listed different things characters could choose to waste their money on.

GAZ3: The Principalities of Glantri gives a variable XP system for MUs, under which they would probably get most of their XP from studying arcane tomes. Of course, this means they have to get hold of such tomes first. Adventures which include libraries would be popular with MUs under this system! In general, I like the idea of different character classes getting XP for different things, but I don't think XP should be awarded for things that are too easy (e.g. casting spells) or that already provide in-game benefits (e.g. magic items). I was thinking Fighter types might get full XP for monsters and treasure, Rogues no XP for monsters and double XP for gold, MUs 1/2 xp for monsters and gold, but 500xp for each tome studied and retained in their library (so they have to have a residence with a library too . . . they are going to need a lot of gold!).

The Dying Earth RPG allows players to select their own goals before or during a game session. XP is then awarded if the player made significant progress towards their goal in the face of adversity, or if they tried hard to achieve their goal but were thwarted by circumstances. I quite like the idea of this as an alternative to "story" awards. Maybe allow PCs the option to change their goal once per session, to take into account new circumstances arising during the adventure.

Add in an extra note in the opening hallway that it travels toward the north, not the east.

Add a note to location #3 that "fresh tooth" means "tooth that has not previously been in a basin" rather than "immediately out of a living mouth."

Add a note to location #22 clarifying/revising what awakens the thing in the pit.

What else is needed? Have you spotted any typos?

Another aspect of what makes the game is the actual nuts-and-bolts of the game session, so I'm wondering if people have any references that they think are a really accurate example of play. Not a description of what the characters did, but a description of what the players at the table did, that you can read and say "Yes! That is exactly what it's like when we're playing and everyone is having a great time."  Even better if it's a description of play for a module like Death Frost Doom where (as I understand it) much of the play is outside the combat-simulator meat-grinder.

I wanted to chime in with my agreement on this point, for The Grinding Gear and also for other publications.

As documented in the Death Frost Doom Experiences thread, I struggled with adjudicating the secret door in the High Priest's Temple. The characters suspected a secret door was present, rolled to find it, and failed. We've been using Moldvay Basic as the rules foundation for the campaign, and reference to page B21 provided: "Each character has only one chance to find each secret door." I readily made it an interactive challenge after that, but I hit a mental block and couldn't think of a mechanism for the secret door. Thankfully the player came up with a good idea on his own and I went with that.

As a result, when I first opened The Grinding Gear and looked at the dungeon map, I saw all those secret doors and thought, "Oh hell, I hope Jim describes how those work."

Stating in the module that the dungeon has been designed with the assumption of allowing re-tries to find secret doors would help some. However, if that requires a mysterious change in the rules of a given campaign, it may be an unwanted signal to the players that important secret doors lie ahead.

I would suggest a better solution would be to specify a default mechanism for secret doors in the module. Or, a small table of random secret door mechanisms. Having the nature of the secret door provided allows it to work in both campaigns that do and don't allow re-tries, and also campaigns that omit rolling for secret doors at all in favor of interactive exploration.

It was rather unremarkable in every way, but for two. The map was drawn to be a mapper's nightmare, with lots of odd angles and asymmetrical rooms. I am still going to keep that idea locked away in my brain, but it's got to mean something in the end. Making mapping hard just for the purpose of making mapping hard would have fit the theme of this dungeon perfectly, but aside from the map and one room, the level was meaningless.

In that one room, I put a weird monster in it each time I ran it. My idea, when I had this adventure in my folder before I started publishing "for real," was to release the adventure and generate a different monster (using the Creature Generator) in that room for each individual copy sold. Then I'd sit back and see how long it took people to figure out that nobody had an identical module.

It seemed like a cool idea when I was releasing things that sold a couple dozen copies... but it's just not feasible now.