#part of that ttrpg world I put in a previous post

[melancholia-ennui]

So one thing that seems to get overlooked in a lot of the discussions around the current state state of D&D, the OGL changes, etc., is why it's D&D 5e that accrued such an mass following - not Pathfinder 2e, not previous versions of D&D, not any other OGL game.

Part of it is, of course, brand recognition. Part of it is "right place, right time" for the nostalgia cycle. But imo there's more to it than that.

At least to me, 5e seems to hit a surprisingly good sweet-spot between a bunch of conflicting trends in TTRPGs.

It's crunchy enough that you can optimise and build around cool combos and synergies if you want to, but also,

It's rules-light enough that it's very easy to pick up and learn for new players and GMs.

The balancing is robust enough that it mostly feels fair and yet flexible enough that it's easy to mod with homebrew content without breaking anything (as long as you understand the basics of bounded accuracy and action economy).

It's got enough of a default setting that you can just pick up and play without needing to build a whole world of your own, but also,

It's setting-agnostic and genre-agnostic enough that you can easily world build your own settings, as long as you're happy for it to be high magic and use the D&D-style magic system.

For all the "just try another system" posts I've seen - and for all the other RPGs I've played - I'm yet to find another system that works so damn well as both an entry point to the hobby and as a fairly robust "default", in the sense that while in many cases there will be some RPG that's better suited for a particular game, it's very rarely the case that there's any kind of game you simply cannot play in 5e without a little tinkering under the hood.

I adored playing Pathfinder 2e, but the simple truth is that I played in two campaigns for the better part of 2 years and I still don't feel like I have a strong grasp on all of the rules and tags and nuances of the system, and it's so thoroughly balanced that I never felt confident doing any homebrew for it because I was worried I would accidentally break something. (I also have more fundamental issues with the play feel of the game - I dislike action economies that punish movement, and I also dislike the way that a lot of the feats and magic items seem to amount to minor "number get bigger" rather than being able to do something new - but these are more personal judgment issues and there are also many points that I feel Pathfinder 2e gets more right than 5e, and you can actually see a lot of those in the bits that WotC is shamelessly stealing for OneD&D.) I would absolutely recommend PF2e to experienced players looking to try something different, but I would never put it in front of a new player who'd never touched TTRPGs before.

On the other end, there are plenty of systems that could work as good introductions to the hobby, even ones with a lot of brand recognition - your Call of Cthulhu, your Vampire: The Masquerade, etc. - but most of these are so thoroughly embedded in their setting and/or genre that they just do not have that capacity to work as a robust default, as a system you can pick up if you're not sure which system would be best for your game and you're feeling too lazy to check (or too broke to buy new books!). They're also fairly limited to being played by people who enjoy the particular genre they are designed for, and that can also just reduce their general mass appeal.

So it's not as simple as "try another game" - while it's very true that there are players and GMs who suffer unnecessarily trying to cram their game into D&D rules when another system would work better, and it's very true that you'll get more out of the hobby in the long run if your do diversify your systems, it's equally true that 5e serves a very particular niche which no other system has managed to satisfy to the same degree.

Which brings us back to the OGL

and one thing that I think a lot of people seem to be missing in the #OpenD&D campaign: any victory we get here is only a temporary concession.

Hasbro is a big international company deeply embedded in neoliberal capitalism. It wants da money. It's primary prerogative is constant growth - a constant increase in profit. D&D - TTRPGs generally - are not good profit making machines. It is entirely possible with D&D for one person to buy three books and then run weekly sessions with a group of six people for four years without ever giving another penny to Hasbro.

From a corporate perspective, this is a Bad Thing™. From a player perspective, it is a Good Thing™.

We already knew before the OGL 1.1 announcement and leak that Hasbro were worrying about D&D being "under-monetized". The move to make D&D more "monetized" would partially mean expanding into new media forms - more books, more toys, more TV shows and movies - but it also means finding more ways to wring money out of the player base.

Given the company's clear focus on D&D Beyond, it seems likely to me that the main direction for this will be a move towards increasing amounts of subscription-only content, which everyone who wants to use the content will need to individually pay for (as they also see DMs being the main people who pay for content as a "problem" to be "solved"), likely associated with attempts to suppress alternatives - e.g. one of the OneD&D announcements seems to be an attempt to push their own VTT, which in part explains why VTTs are specifically targetted in the proposed OGL 1.1.

All that said, it seems very likely that OneD&D is being set up to be much more player-hostile than 5e was.

Through this lens, it's pretty clear that part of the point of the OGL 1.1 changes is to try and force a captive audience. The one thing which would absolutely sink WotC/Hasbro's plans for an increasingly hostile but increasingly profitable D&D space would be someone doing a Pathfinder to 5e - that is, creating an alternative system that has all of the merits of 5e, potentially with a number of improvements, but is provided without the constant profiteering and hostile environment created by WotC/Hasbro's monetization policies. The changes to the OGL are an attempt to pre-emptively prevent any such alternative.

As such,

even if we get the OGL 1.1 decision reversed in the short term, we should expect WotC/Hasbro to try and pull the exact same BS down the line.

It could be months - a revised OGL 1.1 that claims it fixes the complaints people had but doesn't. It could be a year. It could be several years. But they will try and pull this again, for one very simple reason: the popular backlash to this decision may prove that people hate it, but it also proves that for a lot of people, they don't have anywhere else to go.

If people felt like there was a viable alternative to 5e, they would've just jumped ship on mass the moment the OGL 1.1 was leaked - and sure, a lot of people did that, but a lot more people didn't. So while the player base are showing an excellent display of solidarity in face of WotC/Hasbro, they're also half-acknowledging that they do have us just a little bit cornered. We're stuck in this room together.

So what can we do?

Well, signing the #OpenDND open letter and making a fuss about the OGL 1.1 changes is a good start.

However, even if we win the fight over the OGL 1.1, this is only a temporary victory - and we need to start looking to build a serious alternative structure to take power back from WotC/Hasbro.

The smallest way to do this is to avoid using the OGL if you can - get proper legal advice on this, but from what I can tell, a lot more of the 5e system would fall under noncopyrightable material than the OGL/SRD lets on. One lawyer even went as far as to say the original OGL actually gives up rights to material you could've potentially used. If you're making third party content and it only uses noncopyrightable material from 5e, simply release it without the OGL, and then WotC will be unable to pull the rug out from under you.

Of course, the ideal would be for someone to do a Pathfinder and release an alternative to 5e - something which is largely compatible with 5e and third party 5e materiesl, which captures the main merits of 5e (as outlined above), but which is released under a Creative Commons or similar open license, something which irrevocably guarantees the rights of third party content creators far more robustly than the OGL ever did.

This would require walking a fine line - Pathfinder, after all, is an OGL system, so if you were hoping to circumvent the OGL entirely you'd have to work a lot harder to make sure your system only overlapped with 5e/OneD&D in its noncopyrightable material. And that's in addition to the actual difficulty of, y'know, building an entire new TTRPG system from the ground up (or at least from a little above the ground).

But in the long run, creating a really open alternative to D&D - one which was a genuinely community collaborative effort, and which was guaranteed for third party creators under a robust and reliable license... well, it would be an absolute game-changer. (Especially if you could get the content creators and third party authors who've really driven the 5e boom on board, though that in itself is a whole other issue!)

I am aware that Kobold Press are already talking about creating a new system which they describe as "available, open, and subscription-free" (see here), and that could be one direction to keep an eye on in this regard. That said, while I will be keeping my fungal feelers pointed at that project, I would warn that any D&D alternative developed by a corporation and not released under a sufficiently robust open license could easily run into the exact same problems a decade down the line - or worse, be bought out by WotC/Hasbro and folded into the same hellscape that D&D is becoming.

All told, the response of the wider D&D and TTRPG community to these proposed OGL 1.1 changes has been very encouraging, but I feel like our sights are still too narrow - and if we want to avoid this becoming a perpetual war of attrition between WotC/Hasbro and the fans, we really need to be willing to think bigger, and consider more drastic measures to guarantee the future of our favourite game.

#opendnd #open dnd #onednd #one dnd #dnd #ttrpg #tabletop role-playing #ogl #ogl 1.1 #ogl 1.0a #.txt #thoughts and musings #wotc #wizards of the coast

[gurglinggrout]

Embracing Randomness

This is what one might consider my first actual post here, the previous one being more or less an introduction or explanation as to my joining of this site. So I figured I should come out with something about myself: as a GM, I love randomness in TTRPGs.

What do I mean by randomness? Mostly two things.

The first - and most mechanically pure, so to speak - is the actual dice-rolling itself. The fact that the clickity-clackity math rocks create changing odds and how each system interacts with those odds is something that is deeply interesting to me. So the fact that a situation - whatever its nature may be - can hinge on the edge of the dice is a very big component of the fun for me as a GM.

This, on the other hand, leads fairly smoothly into the second aspect that I enjoy thoroughly: randomness (both in the previous sense, and in the broader use of randomness to generate content in media res) catches me off-guard. As much as I love prepping sessions, and thinkin ahead for arches and plot points, having the dice shake up whatever I have in mind almost always leads to some of the best sessions I've ever ran.

So, perhaps unsurprisingly, I have a profound appreciation for the myriad of random tables that Stars Without Number and Worlds Without Number have provided for my Sci-Fi and Fantasy randomness needs (respectively). They have been instrumental in supporting how I run my long-term games, even when running games in different systems, such as Pathfinder 2nd Ed. and Starfinder. Both of these systems have added their own mechanisms of randomness, of course. The former has particularly good resources for this in Lost Omens: Absalom and, more recently, Kingmaker, and the latter has such resources in the Deck of Many Worlds, Galaxy Exploration Manual and, also more recently, Interstellar Species.

Particularly for Starfinder, however, randomness is very dear to how I run games. My games in this system always seem to fall in the category of space opera with antics throughout the galaxy, so having chance encounters with strange and novel beings is a must. Incidentally, I ended up getting the Galaxy Exploration Manual much sooner than the Deck of Many Worlds, but despite Starfinder not being the system I default to - or run the most - these days, these two items are by far my favorite TTRPG resources: they work beautifully to build strange and varied scenarios for the players to explore in the monster-of-the-week format that my Starfinder games tend to work within.

All that being said, going off the rails can be off-putting to some players, and more than once I've had to curtail my own propensity for being permissive with side-tracking. In systems where there is an expectation of progression, for instance, I've found that some modicum of linearity can often be an unspoken expectation of a good number of players.

Similarly, games where challenges exist within ranges of applicability (such as having foes be trivial or undefeatable if you're not in the appropriate range) can also add things to consider. One such example is making sure a threat is surmountable even if direct confrontation isn't possible. This might be achieved through appeasement, avoidance, bargaining or some other ploy on the players' part. I've found that success trackers lend themselves very well for this purpose: letting the players plan an approach, and measure how well they do as a group. This takes the form of Vitory Points in Pathfinder 2nd Ed., for instance, but I've taken to using Blades in the Dark style trackers as a general-purpose solution for non-direct conflict: having the party contribute to the best of their skills and contribute to overcome something that would otherwise spell certain doom can also be very satisfying to me as a GM.

So, yeah. That's why I like randomness in my TTRPGs.

#TTRPG #pathfinder #starfinder #worlds without number #stars without number

[monse-ma-honse]

soft moment

I had a really soft moment today. For as long as I can remember, the people I've considered closest to me have described me as "cat-like"; independent, typically touch averse, warm with those I like on occasion but more often than not I'd rather be alone. This was something I almost took pride in? It was a core part of me and shaped how I presented myself to the world. Did I make it more of my personality than I should've? Probably but eh, wasn't like I was trying to meet anyone new anyways. Then of course 2020 happened, I ended up online, and I met a really lovely group through mutual friends on discord.

A group of my friends run a ttrpg on Wednesdays that I am not a part of, but I listen in and take notes for them since they rarely remember to do so themselves (the silly fools). We were chatting afterwards, just shooting the shit, and one of them brought up their kittens. They mentioned how one of them had gotten very attached and it must be because they're so much like a cat. I laughed and agreed, and brought up that I also was a lot like a cat. One of my closest friends in the group, someone that I talk to literally every night and who I would say probably knows me better than myself at this point, immediately protested; 'I disagree with that, you're way more similar to a dog'. I pushed further because I was honestly confused, how was I like a dog when everyone I'd ever known had called out cat?

Everyone agreed with them and started chiming in with ways I was similar to dogs; loyal, happy, chatty. The one that got me the most was when they pointed out I'm "always just happy to be here" because I realized that was true. In previous friendships, hanging out has always felt either like a chore or like something I wasn't allowed to participate in. Yet here I am, happy to be around these people and they're happy to be around me. I never thought I'd be compared to anything other than the more than a standoffish cat, let alone a loyal happy dog. There isn't really a moral or anything, quite frankly this is just another public journal post, but if I had to put something to this that might help other people I'd say that even though it took me 22 years to find my people, I couldn't be happier to be here now. It may take awhile, and at times it may feel like there is something wrong with you but I promise you, your people are out there. It may be people that make you comfortable in your independence or people who make you let go of that independence a bit, whatever you need is out there.

#journal shit #but genuinely folks #don't give up #your best friend could be right around the corner #for some additional flavor #these people are 3-8 years older than me #sometimes you just need to find people on your wavelength #even if it doesn't seem that you'd have much in common #but like be safe and smart about it #*thumbs up* #soft

[aisla229]

Coming across the best kind of chicken.

#deinocheirus #ornithomimosaur #theropod #dinosaur #fantasy world #fantasy #doodles #my art #part of that ttrpg world I put in a previous post #bringing egg hunting to the next level #may require time travel

[saintsofvoid]

This has been gnawing at my hand for awhile so I'm just gonna get it out there. The whole Kerry Eurodyne and Us Cracks fiasco and why he got so pissed about it. Looking at his relationship to his music in his past, it runs a lot deeper than just a group doing a cover of his song.

First thing I wanna point out is this like a wash of the timeline shown between the TTRPG and CP2077. I'm mixing them, but I'm favoring the dates of events from the TT more so because the actual history of events we get in 77 is from Johnny’s memories, which aren't exactly reliable. That being said, this is just my idea for why Kerry went 0-100 on the Us Cracks girls based on his past. Also shout out to @caffeinatedrogue for bringing up some valid points in this post.

There's a couple things to note about Kerry’s relationship with his music; he didn't do it for the money, the fall out with Johnny after 2013 incident, and what he confesses in game about the fear of being in shadows another corpo sellout.

From the top its important to know that Kerry signed away all authorship of the songs by Samurai to Johnny, meaning he wasn't credited or paid for the songs themselves, only when preforming unless they had background deals going on. So when Samurai was first starting out Kerry wasn't making anything off the songs. He had a passion for the music itself, and the message he could write into the lyrics. They all wanted to change the world, just had different ways of going about it. Kerry wrote about a number of injustices he saw and experienced, but more often than not the lyrics were just tied back to tearing down the Corpos, and that was something he had to live with. Can lead a horse to water but can't force it to drink. Didn't help that Johnny pushed his own version and agenda onto a lot of the songs, and because they were his songs by technicality, couldn't argue against it. This would lead to him having an on and off relationship with Samurai until the band's break up in 2007.

After going solo Johnny and Kerry still did tours and help each other on albums, occasionally even have the other featured on songs. However, do to Kerry having signed away authorship for the old Samurai songs those were still Johnny’s. Which brings us to April 13, 2013 - Assault on Arasaka. Johnny was the diversion for the attack, knowing the fans of Samurai he hosted the event under the bands name, playing Samurai songs. After this Kerry became more aggressively possessive over his music, Johnny knowingly abused his trust of using Samurai songs Kerry wrote and composed to lead a riot that killed 18 people and wounded over 50. Johnny denied leading the riot, or even starting saying it was all on the fans. The denial alone was enough to get the attention of Solos and Netrunners, people even like Rache Bartmoss who would claim Silverhand was a corporation all his own, playing by corpo rules.

So at this point, Kerry has no control over any of his previous music. Through the acts of Johnny, anything related to Samurai was tied to the riot. Lyrics were falling on forever deaf ears and the original stories and meanings were washed to time. He didn't just write songs, they were part of him, they were his stories, his sacrifices just as much as everyone else's. That trust was broken, and no one knew, and they would just continue to say Kerry Eurodyne was chasing after the legacy of Johnny Silverhand.

So he was going to make them eat those words. Made a name for himself that toppled over anything Johnny or Samurai ever accomplished. But it wasn't enough, always someone pointing out the flaws, the failures, the lyrics still being lost to the masses. These were things he couldn't control, things he had to work through. Then came the situation with Us Cracks and his song User Friendly, and that control he had was gone. His song, his lyrics, taken without him knowing, promoted and used. Blowing up the van, and holding the girls at gun point was just a smidgen overboard but its understandable. People have a tendency to be driven to destruction when they feel they have no control in their lives. Destruction is something they create, something they control.

Once its all explained and find out they both got duped by labels and managers, its a new start. Finds out the girls aren't to blame and they actually respect his work, they value his opinion and input on their stuff enough they send him demos. The fact that they called off the gig and the whole tour because they know what it means to Kerry, no matter the millions lost. Pushes back the shadow and doubt put on him all the way in 2013. Shadow he had been running from ends up having a light shined on it.

The music is his now, and everyone worth a damn respects that.

#kerry eurodyne #cyberpunk 2077 #cp2077 #cp77 #I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS #i swear I didnt actually read into this until my second playthrough #was like wait this is hella personal #s.screamsheets

[orestesdreams-pyladesloves]

Hey you're listening to a lot of podcasts / tabletop game things at the moment, right? Dooo you have recommendations, because I'm currently caught up on all the podcasts I listen to and I am Bereft,

My Time Has Come. I do have a few, yes!

As for TTRPGS, the ones I’ve been listening to work under the Dungeons and Dragons system.

Rusty Quill Gaming (which is actually Pathfinder but close enough) is one I highly recommend that works in a homebrew world with great characters and the world building is so fun (all the NPCS are named after historical characters!). The beginning is a little rough and slow because some people are still learning how to play (and the audio is a little rough), but I personally think it’s worth it to get past that bit.

Not Another D&D Podcast is another one I highly recommend. It’s shorter than the previous one, so it might be less daunting to start. Lovable characters, a fun world, and absolutely phenomenal storytelling. I personally found the beginning humor a little off putting, but I kept listening and they found their groove and it’s hilarious and full of goofs. But the emotional moments are really what makes this podcast stand out for me.

For an Easy To Catch Up On one, Dungeons and Daddies (Not a BDSM Podcast) is funny and easy to consume. I don’t have a full opinion formed because there’s only 15 episodes out, but I just recently listened to them all and they were pretty funny! Dad jokes, Dad issues, loose D&D rules, poking fun at fragile masculinity, what’s not to love!

For Other Podcasts, I post a lot about The Magnus Archives which I just adore. It’s a horror podcast and doesn’t shy away from that, but the creators are very specific in not doing sexual horror or like ~ohh nooo they’re actually just mentally ill and crazy~ Depending on what creeps you out, some episode are hard to get through, but as the pieces get put together to unveil a larger picture, it’s a much bigger sandbox to play in (love the characters too!!) So if you can stand horror, definitely recommend as well.

Ahhh, this got long, but a few honorable mentions!!

Badverstising, a show where they take a brand or a product and try and make it The Worst Thing they can. I haven’t listened to that much of it, but the episodes I have are Hilarious.

8-Bit Book Club which is over and done with, but they read books based on video games and talk about them and there the same people from NADDPOD and even if you don’t know the video game it’s still so funny.

Okay last one for now: Stellar Firma! A sci-fi show made by two brothers about building planets and the entire planet building part is completely improvised. The characters (who are not brothers, but a clone and an absolute lunatic) are Interesting and I find it super funny and there’s a little bit of plot happening in the background.

Sorry I wrote so much ahaha I hope at least one of them fits your fancy?

#thank you!! #ask #coelenterata

[theonyxpath]

Hi, everybody!

It’s good to be back after a week away post-Gen Con. So I’m going to tell you a little bit of what went on there, from my point-of-view, of course, but I’m also going to intersperse some quotes from some of our Onyx Path folks who were there helping us.

Of course, the first big thing we announced there was that we’re publishing Chicago By Night for Vampire 5th Edition!

We actually did feel kinda bad that we couldn’t tell you about it sooner, in that we do try and keep our inner workings pretty transparent for all of you. This was one of those times where the nature of working with White Wolf on this made it impossible to reveal it until the con. Their efforts and emphasis had to be on getting V5 out as promised, so we put our efforts towards getting V5 Chicago By Night written.

And as you see it mysteriously appear already in Redlines in the Progress Report below, you’ll realize we’ve been rolling on this for a while. Right now, we expect to have the text ready for editing in time to have a Kickstarter for it in October.

Kind of a fitting month, actually.

One of that Kickstarter’s goals will be to get this traditionally printed and into stores, where it can join V5 on the shelves. So, that’s a cool thing for us to try out with a WoD book, and we’re looking forward to how that will work out.

  “It’s so refreshing to interact with fans in person and hear about all the games that excite you! Every one of our games got some love in conversations I had with you folks, and that was awesome to see. Thanks especially to all those Changeling: The Lost fans who came to chat with me. :)” – Meghan Fitzgerald

  Like I mentioned in a previous blog, our booth was across the aisle from White Wolf‘s this year, and they, of course, were selling Vampire 5th Edition like fanged and bloody hotcakes. Or maybe just “bloodcakes”.

Besides V5 Chicago By Night, they announced several other projects from other licensing partners, including V5 Makeup, which was a huge hit with some of the folks I talked with. Others, who seemed to have missed WW‘s whole “we’re going to license all sorts of things for all sorts of fans” stated intentions, felt like this “cheapened” V5.

Back in the day at WW, we licensed out VtM zippos and license plates. Action figures. Just sayin’.

      Scion: Hero illustration by Michele Giorgi

    The gang at the WW booth were also fantastic at directing the throng buying V5 over to our booth where Mighty Matt McElroy had arranged that entire side of our booth with our 20th Anniversary WoD books on display. That worked really well, and further illustrated how the current team from WW are both gracious and fun to be next to for many, many, hours!

  “I really enjoyed talking to fans about Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Fetch Quest, and Dystopia Rising: Evolution! I love watching people have fun around a table, and this year I got to see that directly, which is always wonderful. I just wish I had more time to talk to everyone and do everything!” – Eddy Webb

  Our demo tables in the booth were really well attended, particularly on Saturday, and we were really glad to be able to walk folks through different games. I think this is even more important with games like Fetch Quest which is very much a card game, or They Came From Beneath the Sea! which adds a bunch of fun extras to the base Storypath System in order to create an “enhanced” TTRPG experience. It really helps to play through them a bit.

We’re used to getting gasps and excitement with a lot of our demos, it’s great to hear that both of these two games also had demo players laughing, as well.

    PtC Tormented illustration by Tilen Javornik

    We shared our booth with our friends from Eschaton Media, the Dystopia Rising creators, and not only were they great booth-mates who really helped make booth tear-down a breeze, but we were able to trade some fantastic ideas about rewards and stretch goals for our Dystopia Rising: Evolution RPG Kickstarter coming up next week. We think fans of our RPGs and fans of their previous DR projects like the LARP are going to find this Kickstarter pretty interesting!

We were also able to talk about the challenges of running a “franchise” business model for their LARPs, which is similar to licensing each venue out (as opposed to the “fan club” method used by old WW), and how they continue to evolve that system.

Since I am always trying to find ways for Onyx Path to evolve and improve, it is really good to be able to compare notes with folks who are also able to clearly look at how they did things in the past and actively try and improve on them. Maybe more on that at a later time.

  “It’s always wonderful to interact directly with our fans and customers. I found myself answering a whole load of questions about They Came From Beneath The Sea! and V5: Chicago By Night, but also being able to just chat away about all our other games and roleplayer experiences is a joy. I had the chance to run several games, including They Came From, Pugmire, and Wraith 20 at the booth, and even Werewolf: The Forsaken in the hotel bar! In all, I had a fantastic, busy convention.” – Matthew Dawkins

  We also announced our latest license, Legend Lore, based on the comic book world of “The Realm” and “Legend Lore” from Caliber Comics. The system is going to be D&D 5e based, and we’re sorry if an early press release said something different, but there is one key aspect of Legend Lore that we think will make it a very unique game.

The primary setting plot point is that the protagonists are people from our world transported to the fantasy world of Legend Lore. Now this is a pretty common trope in the fantasy fiction genre, but less so for TTRPGs. And pretty much the basis for that translation that I’ve seen in other games was to look at things like your Strength stat and ask how many weights you can bench press, or your real world IQ translated between 3 and 18.

We’re not doing it that way. More on how we are doing it as the book begins to be previewed. We’re also keenly aware of not minimizing anyone’s real-world challenges and disabilities. More on that too, in the months to come.

  “As always, fans are why we do this Con, whether it was meeting fans of our stuff for the first time, making new ones out of interested folks, or seeing old friends after yet another year.” – Neall Raemonn Price

  Our “What’s Up With Onyx Path?” panels went really well (although I had to miss most of the second one on Saturday), with some really excellent Q&A after the big points announcements. That was where we could delve deeper into the specific projects folks in the audience wanted to hear about. Both the “Freelancing for Onyx Path” panel and the “Developer Bootcamp” were super well attended and folks seemed really engaged.

Dixie, Matthew, and Eddy recorded both the “What’s Up With Onyx Path?” panels and edited them together into a semi-coherent whole that went up on the Onyx Pathcast last Friday. As always, you can hear them on PodBean or your favorite podcast venue.

They had to edit them, though. Even though we didn’t have whole swathes of the recording drowned out by trains like in previous years, we still had some outside noise break through, and I’m sure I talked away from the mic plenty of times!

  “It’s always such an amazing feeling to get to interact with new and old fans, as well as my peers in the gaming industry I don’t get to see often. I love how excited everyone was! Thank you to everyone who stopped by the booth to chat or say hello.” – Dixie Cochran

  Like every year, there’s never enough time to talk with everyone on a business level – nevermind all the friends and members of our community who want to chat and catch up. Like last year in particular, I think you’ll be seeing some amazing results from a bunch of the meetings and chats I did have as the year progresses. But there’s not a lot of details I can share.

In general, I talked with several translation partners about pretty much all of our game lines, sat down to hear a bunch of pitches for new games or licenses, discussed our upcoming art needs with several of the illustrators in attendance there. I had a very quick but very focused meeting with Jaunty James Bell, our Kickstarter Concierge in order to be sure that he was still loving his job. He is.

I counseled way too many creators with Imposter Syndrome, a different depressed artist, and let an old and dear friend know that I was going to be a grandparent like she has been for a few years already. “Any tips?”

I was sitting in the Indy airport finishing my last blazing shrimp cocktail and wondering how that thing we had planned for for so long could have gone by so fast. It is just so packed with sights and conversations and games and late nights and early mornings.

It’s Gen Con, baby!

    Monarchies of Mau art by Pat McEvoy

    Here’s a handy link list from Impish Ian Watson, who set up the blog last week. Thanks, Ian, and also to Matthew Dawkins who wrote the texty part.

Onyx Path’s 2018-2019 Publishing and Storypath Brochures are now available

Onyx Path is publishing Chicago by Night for Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition

Onyx Path is publishing a Legendlore RPG in partnership with Caliber Comics

Onyx Path and Pugsteady are collaborating with iThrive Games and the Bodhana Group to create the Critical Strengths Engine, a ruleset based not on physical strength, but emotional resilience, motivation, understanding, and communication. The first published adventures will be written by Eddy and will be officially licensed Pugmire products.

Check them out and see the proof of our motto:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

KICKSTARTER:

  Dystopia Rising: Evolution art by Mark Kelly

Our next Kickstarter will be for Dystopia Rising: Evolution starting on Wednesday the 22nd at 2pm EDT.

  ELECTRONIC GAMING:

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is now live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is both rolling and rocking!

Here are the links for the Apple and Android versions:

http://theappstore.site/app/1296692067/onyx-dice

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onyxpathpublishing.onyxdice&hl=en

Three different screenshots, above.

  ON AMAZON AND BARNES & NOBLE:

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue you bought it from. Reviews really, really help us with getting folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these fiction books:

Vampire: The Masquerade: The Endless Ages Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Rites of Renown: When Will You Rage II (Kindle, Nook)

Mage: The Ascension: Truth Beyond Paradox (Kindle, Nook)

Chronicles of Darkness: The God-Machine Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Mummy: The Curse: Curse of the Blue Nile (Kindle, Nook)

Beast: The Primordial: The Primordial Feast Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Masquerade: Of Predators and Prey: The Hunters Hunted II Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: The Poison Tree (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Songs of the Sun and Moon: Tales of the Changing Breeds (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Requiem: The Strix Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Forsaken: The Idigam Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Mage: The Awakening: The Fallen World Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Masquerade: The Beast Within Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: W20 Cookbook (Kindle, Nook)

Exalted: Tales from the Age of Sorrows (Kindle, Nook)

Chronicles of Darkness: Tales of the Dark Eras (Kindle, Nook)

Promethean: The Created: The Firestorm Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Demon: The Descent: Demon: Interface (Kindle, Nook)

Scarred Lands: Death in the Walled Warren (Kindle, Nook)

V20 Dark Ages: Cainite Conspiracies (Kindle, Nook)

Chronicles of Darkness: Strangeness in the Proportion (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Requiem: Silent Knife (Kindle, Nook)

Mummy: The Curse: Dawn of Heresies (Kindle, Nook)

  OUR SALES PARTNERS:

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the Screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there!

https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

    Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

Here’s the link to the press release we put out about how Onyx Path is now selling through Indie Press Revolution: http://theonyxpath.com/press-release-onyx-path-limited-editions-now-available-through-indie-press-revolution/

And you can now order Pugmire: the book, the screen, and the dice! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=296

SPECIAL W20 and M20 SALE! Huge savings on our Deluxe printing overruns until 8/31!

https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Deals-and-Specials/

    DRIVETHRURPG.COM:

  This Wednesday, we will release a series of Wraith: The Oblivion Journals on RedBubble!

    CONVENTIONS!

From Fast Eddy Webb, we have these:

Eddy will be speaking at Broadleaf Writers Conference (September 22-23) in Decatur, GA. He’ll be there to talk about writing for interactive fiction, and hanging out with other writers who have far more illustrious careers. http://broadleafwriters.com/3rd-annual-broadleaf-writers-conference/3rd-annual-broadleaf-writers-conference-speakers/

Eddy will also be a featured guest at Save Against Fear (October 12-14) in Harrisburg, PA. He’ll be running some Pugmire games, be available for autographs, and will sometimes accept free drinks. http://www.thebodhanagroup.org/about-the-convention

If you are going and want to meet up, let us know!

    And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM FAST EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

M20 Book of the Fallen (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

C20 Novel (Jackie Cassada) (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Tales of Excellent Cats (Monarchies of Mau)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Witch-Queen of the Shadowed Citadel (Cavaliers of Mars)

  Redlines

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Spilled Blood (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition)

CofD Dark Eras 2 (Chronicles of Darkness)

Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

V5 Chicago By Night (Vampire: The Masquerade)

  Second Draft

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

Aeon Aexpansion (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

C20 Players’ Guide (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)

In Media Res (Trinity Continuum: Core)

Changeling: The Lost 2nd Jumpstart (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

Wr20 Book of Oblivion (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Adventures for Curious Cats (Monarchies of Mau)

  Development

Signs of Sorcery (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Hunter: the Vigil 2e core (Hunter: the Vigil 2nd Edition)

Fetch Quest (Pugmire)

CofD Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Dystopia Rising: Evolution (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon (Werewolf: The Forsaken 2nd Edition)

  Manuscript Approval:

  Editing:

They Came From Beneath the Sea! Rulebook (TCFBtS!)

Dog and Cat Ready Made Characters (Monarchies of Mau) (With Eddy)

  Post-Editing Development:

Scion: Hero (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Core Rulebook (The Trinity Continuum)

Trinity Continuum: Aeon Rulebook (The Trinity Continuum)

Ex Novel 2 (Aaron Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Exalted 3rd Novel by Matt Forbeck (Exalted 3rd Edition)

GtS Geist 2e core (Geist: the Sin-Eaters Second Edition)

M20 Gods and Monsters (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Night Horrors: The Tormented (Promethean: The Created 2nd Edition)

Guide to the Night (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition)

  Indexing:

    ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE:

  In Art Direction

Dystopia Rising: Evolution – KS finals rolling in.

VtR: Guide to the Night

M20: Gods and Monsters 

Geist 2e

The Realm

Trinity Continuum (Aeon and Core)

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

Ex3 Dragon Blooded

  Marketing Stuff

  In Layout

Scarred Lands Trilogy Novels – Converting to PDF and PoD.

PTC: Night Horrors: The Tormented

Fetch Quest

Cav cards

  Proofing

Scion Hero 

  At Press

Changeling: The Lost 2e – incorporating errata and getting it ready for indexing.

Monarchies of Mau – Press proofs signed off… now printing.

Scion Origin – Out gathering errata.

Cavaliers of Mars – Printing.

Wraith 20th – Prepping the Deluxe files.

Monarchies of Mau Screen – Printing.

Cavaliers of Mars Screen – Printing.

Wraith 20 Screen – Printing.

Scion Dice – At fulfillment shipper.

  TODAY’S REASON TO CELEBRATE: And we’re back! A bunch of us got some down time after/during Gen Con, and we’re feeling gooood.

#Onyx Path Publishing

[scythiumdev]

Writing Reality #2

In the previous post I gave what was hopefully some helpful background for why I started this project. This post hopefully will serve to explain more importantly how I am continuing with it.

Where do you start with Game Development?

This was the question at the core of my mind. Research into examples of other developers and their story of success as independent content creators or small groups only gave motivation based on confirming for myself that my own success was indeed possible. It did not, however, help me with the question of “how”. I had to focus on one part of the process if I was going to go anywhere, so I went after how to write “the story”.

I started consuming mass quantities of RPG and TTRPG media in an effort to get inside the mental processes of the GMs and story writers. We are talking hundreds of hours of reading, listening, watching, and ultimately gaining inspiration. This led to me essentially mentally assessing the individuals responsible for the content to try and better understand what was being put into their works. The process was very helpful, leading me to numerous resources that those same GMs had found personally instrumental to their success and creative processes. Encouraging, but not actually very structurally helpful in giving me an example of an effective process of development.

While I am not a professional when it comes to communication, there’s not a lot that scares me when it comes to writing. My comma placement is atrocious due to my writing style but I have come to terms with those issues and am working to improve. Regardless of that, the exposure to countless impeccably crafted narratives and stories made my own task of creating one myself slightly daunting. If I was ever going to become someone who could create not only a theoretical world to bridge for one’s suspension of disbelief but also an interesting plot, I was going to need to start checking my ideas against outside parties.

Busy people tend to have busy friends, and that was where I was stuck. My closest friends who were also willing to listen to my project ramblings (willingly or at least with certain degrees of tolerance) were more or less either unreachable or unavailable at my times of peak inspiration. I had to do some digging about my temperament to eventually come to the conclusion that I ought to be writing out my ideas in a conversational way as an alternative to actual discourse. While not as helpful for “sanity checking” my ideas with other perspectives, giving access to these write-ups for later feedback by contacts managed to be an acceptable temporary solution.

Issue 1: Story and Plot -> Temporary Fix Achieved. Sorta. It’s good enough for now.

Issue 2: World-building and Documentation. Heaven help us. The amount of resources for existing systems’ organization is pathetic, let alone availability of an open structured network for dynamic support of multiple systems. The crazy web of how to record a literal universe-worth of details is/was not easy. It seems like locating a perfect system is impossible. 

This ongoing battle will be detailed more in the future posts.

#rpg #ttrpg #ttrpgdev #dev #writing

[puchinko]

Been a little while since I’ve posted something here, but I have been working. Over the past month or so I have been working on the ttrpg I mentioned a while back. It has a name now, Ruins of Renant. RoR is a game with a focus on world exploration and player expression. I’ve been hard at work writing and preparing, so let’s go over what’s currently done and some plans for the future.

This all started with a world concept. I felt that while we had seen many, many post-apocalyptic worlds in media, it’s still one I would like to explore and as long as I could come up with a fresh take, it could still be interesting. What I came up with was a world that had experienced a cataclysmic event around 500,000 years ago, with a mixture of past technologies and current magic. I wanted a very specific feel for this setting, this idea of have massive, concrete, brutalist cities in ruin, overrun with nature. In this location, civilization would have a head start with shelter, making society start up quicker than in some other biome. The vibe for this mixture of brutalism and nature is meant to be one of optimism and growth, taking the failures of the past and using them to create a brighter future. This is in an apocalyptic world, but it’s one that has had time to heal. It’s green and lush, both a literal and concrete jungle.

But that is just Renant. The world of Cassoth is constructed of five planes, Renant, Olia, Dension, Frane, and Myast. If you aren’t familiar with the concept of a planar system, let me give an overview. As far as I know it’s a concept that originated in ttrpgs with Dungeons and Dragons. The idea that our world is one of many planes of existence connected to each other within the planar ether. In RoR, it differs slightly from DnD, however. From my understanding, in DnD each plane represents an element, i.e. the plane of magic, plane of fire, etc. In RoR, each plane is simply another place, with it’s own species, cultures, all that. Renant is the world in ruins described in the previous paragraph.

Dension is a rocky, red desert covered in sandstorms. But nestled within this harsh environment is a busy, neon city. The city of Dension is a dense and crowded place full of the demonic nyuchi, the dominant race of the plane. It’s a bureaucratic society that looks like if you took the buildings from Bladerunner and put them in Mad Max’s Australia. 

Olia is an ancient mediterranean city in the clouds, with bright marble and the angelic Zoni, tall humanoids with wings. It is a culture of violence, however, ruled by the strongest.

Frane is home to the Fae, a mysterious species who seem to thrive on chaos. Frane itself is a thick forest that’s far too easy to get lost in. Somewhere within is the home of the Fae, a marvelous, towering castle, but few have ever come back from seeing it.

Finally, we have Myast. A desolate, orange desert of myalis. Myalis is a rare crystal that can be used to harness the flow of Myast and is the center of the magic system in Cassoth.

Myastic flow is one of the most fleshed out parts of this project, though I fear it has gotten too complex and I need to cut back on it. Tomorrows post will be a full description of this system.

#ttrpg #RoR

[kayawagner]

Getting Started on the DMs Guild – Part 2: Publishing and Marketing

Welcome back, folks! I hope you found Part 1 enlightening because we are going to take it a level deeper today. You’ve crafted your beautiful D&D work and now you’re ready to publish it. But I want to talk about some of the foibles of publishing on the DMs Guild, because it’s not quite like publishing anywhere else. This is where I think I’ve tripped up the most, so come and learn from my mistakes so you don’t have to make your own!

More Bubble-Bursting

Oh hey, remember how last time I started with the less-good stuff? I’m going to do that again. Some things on the DMs Guild don’t sell as well as other things, by a fairly wide margin. I didn’t include this in the previous article because I think it’s more important to write what you want to write than to write what you think will sell well. But since we’re going to talk about marketing, I think it’s important to bring it up now.

Player options like character classes or subclasses, character races, new spells, and new magic items sell very well in comparison to DM options like written adventures, monster and NPC stat blocks, or DM guides. It makes sense when you think about it; there’s at least a few players for every DM. Sure, a lot of players become DMs, but plenty don’t. In my experience, this can be a drastic difference in sales expectations.

 …it’s more important to write what you want to write than to write what you think will sell well. 

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To give you an example – my best-selling adventure, up until recently, had only sold about a third as many copies as my worst-selling compilation of magic items. To put that another way, my “worst” magic items still sold three times as many copies as my “best” adventure, if we were to use sales as a measure of quality (spoiler alert: sales are not a good measure of quality).

I’d like to reiterate – this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write the adventure you want to write. You very, very much should. Writing just for sales or writing only what you think will be popular is a much faster route to failure than writing what you have a passion for writing.

dmsguild.com

Pricing and Payment

One of the things I struggled with the most when I first started out was how much to sell my products for, and I think this is still confusing for a lot of newcomers. There’s three options on the DMs Guild: full paid, “pay what you want”, and free. Free is pretty self-explanatory – you aren’t getting paid for this, it’s being given away. Don’t undervalue yourself. It’s fine to do promotional items for free, but I wouldn’t do it for much else.

Full paid is the flat rate for your product. I didn’t know this when I got started, but many writers on the DMs Guild use this very simple formula: # of pages x $0.10, then round up to the nearest 0.99 or 0.95. For example, if you have a 25 page product, that puts you at $2.50, then round up to $2.99. And yes, not bringing it up to exactly $3 is surprisingly important. I dropped several smaller products from $1 to $0.99 and I saw a fairly significant jump in sales. I don’t know why the human brain is this way, but it sure is. You can charge more, you can charge less, but this is a solid baseline, I’ve found.

 Don’t undervalue yourself. You have a valuable skill and you deserve to be paid for it. 

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“Pay What You Want” is, and I’ll be blunt here, the worst of both worlds. 95% of the people who download your product just won’t pay anything or will pay a pittance. Again, this can work for promotional items, like one stat block from a larger collection that you’re advertising… but then just go with free. This is my experience; your mileage may vary. Don’t undervalue yourself. You have a valuable skill and you deserve to be paid for it.

As for what you get paid, well, you get 50% of whatever the item costs. If someone were to buy my example $2.99 adventure up there, I would get $1.50 and Wizards of the Coast and OneBookshelf would split the other $1.50 (full disclosure; I do not know what their agreed-upon split is and it probably isn’t pertinent here). This is… fine. This is part of why I mentioned going direct to DriveThruRPG way back in Part 1. When you publish on DriveThruRPG, you receive 65-70% of the item’s cost, not 50%. Again, use your best judgment.

Marketing and Social Media

dmsguild.com

So, let’s get to the really good stuff here: where and how to market your product. Yes, I do strongly recommend marketing it across social media, though which social media platforms will do well for you depends on what your product is. There’s just enough stuff being published on the DMs Guild that people aren’t so likely to just stumble across your product very often. So here’s my breakdown of the big social media platforms.

Facebook – there’s a few Facebook groups I recommend joining and promoting your products there. The first is the official “Dungeon Masters Guild” group, created recently by the new community manager, Lysa Chen. The second is the “Dungeon Masters Guild Creators Circle” group, which served as an unofficial primary group until the official one was created. The third… if you really must, is the main “Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition” group. Your posts will be buried quickly, but it does have massive reach.

Twitter – there’s no denying it, Twitter is a very useful cesspit. There’s a small handful of hashtags that I recommend using: #dmsguild #dnd5e #ttrpg are the main ones. If you use more than two or three hashtags, your tweets are more likely to get flagged as spam and hidden from people’s news feeds, which is the last thing you want. Twitter tends to serve most people well, in my experience.

Reddit – I don’t know how else to put this, but Reddit will probably only serve you well if you have free or pay-what-you-want products. Reddit likes free things. I don’t know why it’s so different from the others in this regard, but it sure is. I’ve seen massive threads turn into flamewars that have to be locked by mods because people seem to think that D&D writers shouldn’t need to be paid for what they do. r/dndnext is the biggest and most active subreddit. There is one for r/dmsguild but I hear it’s not very active at all.

Tumblr – there is a really significant D&D subculture on Tumblr, in large part thanks to The Adventure Zone, and to a lesser extent, Critical Role. If your content is the kind of humorous, even zany stuff that TAZ specializes in, you may do very well on Tumblr. The Tumblr community is also kind to works that include strong elements of social justice, like the recent “Blessed of the Traveler: Queer Gender Identity in Eberron”. It can be hard to build a following there, but once you do, you have a built-in fanbase.

Instagram – yes, Instagram! If your work includes evocative or eye-catching art, definitely use Instagram. It’s not as useful for strictly-text works, but both modern and historical art tend to do quite well there. Even moreso than Twitter, Instagram is a game of hashtags, and using many, many hashtags is encouraged by the almighty algorithm. It’s not uncommon to see a post tagged “#dnd #dnd5e #dmsguild #art #vintage #fairies #fantasy #writing #rpg #ttrpg #gaming”. Again, your mileage may vary, but since it’s so easy to cross-post to and from Instagram, you might see very big results for very little effort.

Lifecycle of a Product

There is, of course, an initial boom around the first week or two of a product’s release. The longer you stay in the “Newest DMs Guild Titles” promotional ribbon, the better. But what happens after that?

 Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. 

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Well… a long, slow drop. Or a fast, sudden drop. I’ve had products see a trickle of sales for months; I’ve had others not sell a single copy a few weeks after release. I don’t have a good way of predicting this, unfortunately. But do know that unless you see massive, breakthrough success, your product is not going to keep selling in the same kind of numbers as it does the first few days. Never expect to have massive, breakthrough success. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Sooner or later, most products outside of the top bestsellers hit a point where they’re kind of “dead”. They’re not really selling except maybe one or two spotty, inconsistent sales. That’s okay. That’s like the circle of life but for art. You can keep promoting them, but if you keep hitting up the same few sites, you’re going to reach a point of saturation, where everyone who’s going to buy a copy already has. You can stave this off to some extent by staggering your promotions. Maybe Twitter in the first week, Reddit in the second, Tumblr in the third. It’s not guaranteed by any means, but it can help.

What Next?

You may not want to hear this, but the best thing you can do is get another product out the door, and the sooner, the better. A “career” of any kind of longevity on the DMs Guild depends on regular, semi frequent releases. If you can get a product ready every few weeks without burning yourself out or sacrificing quality, go for it. Link to your other products in each new release. There’s a ribbon on every product page for “Customers who bought this title also purchased” and if you can gain a consistent following, that eventually just advertises for yourself.

dmsguild.com

If you can build a reputation for quality, the work will speak for itself. Don’t rush releases if you are feeling like burning out. It’s better to release better work less frequently than crummy work more often. This is where the Facebook groups I mentioned earlier really come in handy – a lot of people work on collaborations for the Guild. Many of the most successful products are the result of many D&D creators working together. If everyone contributes a small piece of a release, it’s easier for everyone. Six or ten or twenty heads are better than one.

If you like RPGs other than D&D, there are other community content programs, though none are quite so large as the DMs Guild. There’s also the Miskatonic Repository for the Call of Cthulhu system, and the Storyteller’s Vault for the White Wolf series of games like Vampire: The Masquerade and Mage: The Awakening. I’m sure there are more in the works, in no small part because publishers have seen the success of the DMs Guild and want that for their own games.

So, that’s what I’ve got in terms of wisdom, folks. I hope it helps you and I wish you all the best when you publish your own DMs Guild content. Don’t be nervous, you can do it!

Tell us what you’re working on in the comments!

Getting Started on the DMs Guild – Part 2: Publishing and Marketing published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com