RPG Interest Remains High

Late last summer, I threw up a post noting that the recently released Dungeons and Dragons 5E Player's Handbook had shot into the top 10 sellers at amazon.com.  I'm a pretty prolific Kickstarter backer and had been really impressed with the way people were queuing up to throw money at a lot of projects, specifically Legendary Games' Mythic Mania and Kobold Press' Southlands projects.

But, lately I'd noticed the Kickstarter projects are losing steam.  Kobold Press' Advanced Race Compendium didn't raise nearly as much as I'd expected and Legendary Games' current Legendary Planets Kickstarter, though quickly funded, hadn't picked up as many people as I'd thought that they might.

Title	Date Closed	Total Raised	# of Backers	Funding per Backer
Mythic Mania	May 6, 2014	$69,362	461	$150.46
Southlands	October 18, 2014	$97,728	1,044	$93.61
Advanced Races Compendium	May 17, 2015	$51,040	797	$64.04
Legendary Planets (as of 7/14/2015)	Ongoing	$35,938	275	$130.68

Similarly, I've felt a little more gaming fatigue myself lately.  I mainly focus on Pathfinder and 13th Age.  In the Pathfinder world, the RPG line is moving into more and more niche products with this month's Occult Adventures and next spring's Ultimate Intrigue.  I'm enthused about both of those releases, but they don't have the wide appeal of something like an Advanced Race Guide, Ultimate Combat, or Advanced Player's Guide.

13th Age remains something I love, but right now we have only the core book, 13 True Ways, and their Bestiary (which is up for an Ennie--vote for it!)  There's a lot of room to expand in the 13th Age universe, they've got Glorantha and Midgard-related products from Kobold Press, among others.  But, there's not a lot of space to really expand on the 13th Age default setting simply because it's designed to be so free form.  Fire Opal and Pelgrane Press have put together something awesome, but pinning things down in their world means that it loses some of it's freeform power.  That said, my reviews of the their 13th Age Monthly releases this year show that there's endless space to expand, if not necessarily in a large, hardcover release.

I'm considering picking up Eyes of the Stone Thief at GenCon this year (gotta use that discount for GMing 13th Age at GenCon on something fun!)--especially if the group of test gamers I've lined up for this weekend decides that they really like playing 13th Age!  But, it just doesn't seem like there's a lot coming out right now.

So, today's notice from ENWorld that voting for the Ennies is up over 18% this year came as a wonderful surprise!  There's still a whole day left and they've already received 19,000 votes, which is 3,000 more than they received last year.  We could see an increase of up to 25% if heavy voting happens on the last day.

So, it seems like people are interested, but might also just be spending less money.  What does everyone else think?

Product Review: Kobold Press' Demon Cults #5: Servants of the White Ape

Kobold Press is out with their latest Demon Cult book, Servants of the White Ape.  I backed Kobold's Southlands Kickstarter, so I've been receiving these as they come out.  I did a review of Demon Cults #1, The Emerald Order, which was a fantastic little sourcebook. I'm even more excited about this book than I was after reading The Emerald Order.

First of all, the background here takes place in the "southern jungles."  That's a part of the Southlands that we haven't heard much about or explored as of yet.  Since this gets dropped in there basically tabula rasa, the most fantastic options that I can dream of get to populate the rest of the jungle.  Also, because there's not a lot of detail here, it's easily ported away from it's intended Midgard setting to wherever else I might like to take the Servants of the White Ape.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book.  It's short (less than 15 pages) but it does have some very strong art.  In fact, when you find out what the giant white ape on the cover actually is, you'll want to use this even more!

Also, our climactic bad guy is a summoner.  In general, I hate the summoner class.  But, I love this character.  The fact that Kobold Press has designed a summoner that I not only like but actively want to use in my game is mind blowing.  They have completely revisioned the way the class can work and I'm pumped--I actually want to use a summoner at the table.  Admittedly, our villain here has some pretty vanilla motivations and back story, but there's a lot that can be done with where he is aiming.

The Servants of the White Ape is not a highly detailed organization.  Unlike some of the other Demon Cults, there's really only NPC who is detailed and who plays a roll.  This can be helpful for setting up a climactic battle, but it means that there aren't as many pre-generated middle of the story.  There are other monsters of course--we have the stats for a CR 5 White Ape Warrior, which is a modified dire ape.  The cult also has some allied tribes.  There are seeds for making up a larger organization to oppose here, they're just planed deeper than normal.  But, when they germinate...wow, this group has some potential!

I like the White Ape Warrior.  Since they are the addition of class levels and a few other things to a dire ape, you have to do a little bit of deconstruction to get down to some base level stats, well beyond the dire ape part.  But, once you do that, there are options for an endless number of white apes to fill any NPC role that you'd like them to.  I like this--it means that you can also customize the CRs on white apes very easily.

There are a couple of magic items in the book.  The Father's Staff is a necessary addition of mechanics to some flavor.  But, honestly, there's nothing that makes the Father's Staff anything more than a run of the mill spell in a can staff.  That's a shame because there was another quarter of a page on the magic items page that could have been used with something to make the Father's Staff unique.  So, it's not that the mechanics that make this thing unique got cut, they just never existed in the first place.  Fortunately, the White Ape Hide Armor completely makes up for this.  This magical armor has both cool mechanics and is tied into the overall story with some great fluff about how, exactly, the armor gets made and who it's given to.  I'd take it one step further--I'd add a requirement that the first time a PC tries to don it without the blessing of the [creature whose blessing would be necessary redacted for awesomeness], the PC would have to save or contact spellscourge fever.  That lets the item be amazing, but ups its risk and its flavor.

Finally, let's talk about spellscourge fever itself.  If you ever want to play in this, stop reading RIGHT NOW.  This is awesome--we have a disease that only targets spellcasters and which is particularly deadly against them.  The DCs to save against it are high--especially if it's contracted directly from a white ape.

And if you die from spellscourge fever?  You might come back as a spellscourged creature, which is, frankly, a terrifying template.  Avoiding spoilers, they've chosen a fantastic weakness for these creatures.  I would probably nerf their touch attack a bit--a former seventh level caster picking up a 7d6 touch attack is pretty powerful.  The template is new and weird enough that tying it to a monster will make for a great encounter the first time the PCs cross swords with a spellscourged creature.  One of these would make a fantastic boss to a major arc as the PCs make their way to find out what's really going on with the leaders of the Cult...

Overall, fantastic product with some great innovative ideas and seeds for other developments.  Unfortunately, the seeds are buried pretty deep and will require spending a lot of time creating your own material to support the ideas that are here.  Since I'm pressed for time (hello full time job and night school), I prefer that my books have a little more crunch to them.  The ideas here are really interesting though and all of the improvements that I've suggested are really just how I'd want to customize this product for my own table.  For $3, I recommend checking this out.

Three out of five stars.

6-10 seconds to decide

Kobold Press' Howling Tower has a suggestion for making games faster and more enjoyable: give players 6-10 seconds to make decisions about what to do in combat.  The idea is that you're divorced from feeling like you need to make the "best" choice.  Obviously, characters only need to make the basic choice.  But, it helps the characters feel more like they are immersed in combat, rather than sitting around a table pretending to be.  Howling Tower suggests that, at it's most basic:

That doesn’t mean your turn can’t take more than 10 seconds. It means you should answer the basic question, “what am I going to do this turn?,” in 10 seconds or less. Figuring out specifically how your character performs the chosen action within the allowances and restrictions of the rules can take substantially longer than that, especially if a fancy maneuver, an unusual weapon, or a complex magic spell is involved. But the basic question—”What am I going to do this turn?”—should be made quickly.

One other hint:

All the infinite combat options really boil down to just six broad choices: stab something, shoot something, cast a spell, interact with the environment, go on defense, or run away. If you find yourself struggling to make quick decisions, then limit yourself to thinking only in those general terms before considering any details.

So, maybe I should try this when I'm running my next table...

Thoughts on other's thoughts on Gaymers

Yesterday, Kobold Press republished an updated version of a 2004 article by Evtan Bernstein called "The Many Faces of Gaming-Gaymers." (Article runs in two parts.  Link is to part 1.  Part 2 is here.).  Bernstein has written a nice piece examining some of the main issues related to LGBTQ issues in the gaming community.  Overall, I find his piece enlightening.  In fact, I'm tempted to go back and read the original 2004 piece that appeared in The Silven Trumpeter to see what's been changed in the update.  Unfortunately, it's out of circulation now and I'm not feeling terribly compelled to go and find it.  While some of the changes are obvious (references to gay marriage would have been a lot different in 2004), I'd be interested in seeing how his answers to his article's four main questions came out.

For those who are interested, those questions are:

1) Why is the presence of gay gamers significant? 

Ultimately, the answers are what you'd hope for.  Gays are significant because we inject something new (and often uncomfortable) into games with strangers.  Social discomfort is the bane of all good roleplaying.  So, we need to deal with this issue to better the roleplaying experience (and often, the roleplaying itself) of both the LGBTQ individual and of parties that might be uncomfortable with him/her/[insert pronoun for an asexual person that is less offensive than "it" here].  I agree with this statement immediately.

I try and approach every table by subtly letting other parties know they are playing with a gay man.  After I've put it out there, if there are concerns, we can deal with them.  Perhaps I ought to try and be more accomodating (at least at Pathfinder Society games, with home games there is a good gay-straight mix and it's rare to meet anyone with concerns about socializing with gays.  In fact, I'd say that there's more of a stigma (from both straight and gay acquaintances) about being a gamer than about being a gay.  Then again, I live in Washington, DC known for it's abnormally large population of homosexuals and it's unfathomable per capita alcohol consumption.

2) What is the current gaming tabletop landscape like for LGBTQ individuals?

The current state of gaming diversity is good.  We have gay designers along with female designers, etc.

3) Should gamers make more of an effort to include LGBTQ characters in their games?

Each individual is welcome to make their own choices about including LGBTQ characters in their game.  (Kudos for noting that it's the issue about including LGBTQ characters.  LGBTQ players are here to stay).

4) How can gamers—regardless of sexual identity—portray more convincing and more realistic LGBTQ characters in their games?

First of all, I generally play straight, male characters at the table.  Part of that is that it's MY fantasy.  Part of that is because I generally play at an asexual level.  GMing is another matter, entirely, I'm afraid.  In fact, my first character to really develop any sexual mores, Rhyss Ravenwind, Number One Bard in the Fallben Kingdoms, plays his Lothario-like sexuality more as a farce than as a true sexual gambit.

The article gives us the expected lines about avoiding stereotypes, while encouraging us to lean in a little to them to find something that develops a character.  May I interject a suggestion?  Try and treat playing a character of another sexual orientation or gender identity the same as you'd treat playing a character of a different ethnicity or a different assigned gender.

This probably resonates well if you have any players in your group who are girls or who are non-white.  If a man decides to play a female PC in a group with a female player, I'll bet he's going to play her much differently than he would in a room full of the boys.  Look, any male can fall victim to the boys will be boys insensitivity vacuum if he's left in...well, a vacuum.  Be mindful and you won't be offensive.  Great if there's a member of that group present.  If not, how would you play them in front of one?

Now, my three issues with the article...

Issue 1: Gaymer's tend to be seen foremost as video gaymers.  I'm aware this is an article about gaymers in the RPG world.  But, gaymers tend to be viewed as video gamers more than as tabletop players.  In fact, at a GenCon 2014 screening of gaming in color, a documentary about gaymers, director Phillip Jones admitted that he was shocked at how large GenCon's attendance was and that he was very aware that he focused almost solely on the video gaming experience at the expense of tabletop.  Locally, you can take a look at the DC Gaymers meetup group and see they are focused solely on video games.

So, we need to start working to make sure that people understand that Gaymer is a term that applies to LGBTQ players of all types of games.  Partially, that's good for diversity.  Partially, that's good for expanding the hobby's visibility to an entirely new audience--people that know LGBTQ individuals who game, but don't know anything about tabletop RPGs!

Issue 2: Lead character in a novel.  This is really just a quibble.  How could you skip over Ringil Eskiath from Richard Morgan's A Land Fit For Heroes series?  What's awesome about Ringil?  Well, he's a total badass.  He also fucks dudes and FUCKS THEM HARD.  There are only a few sex scenes in the series, but they are both physically and emotionally explicit.  Finally, Ringil has a lot of the neuroses that the rest of the LGBTQ community shares from growing up in a world that in many ways didn't want us.

[By the way, the last book in the series, The Dark Defiles, is out for sale.  Those of you who don't like to wait between books should jump into this!]

Issue 3: Should you include LGBTQ players v. playing LGBTQ characters.  This isn't a quibble or an issue at all.  I am so happy that this distinction was drawn I can't say so enough!

Gaymer out.

Product Review: Kobold Press' Demon Cults #1: The Emerald Order

Full disclosure: Even though I love it, I find the large Midgard Campaign Setting difficult to navigate.  I know the point of creating a large 3PP campaign setting is to have all the fun with all of your fun subsystems, but it can be a little difficult for me to keep track.  That said, it didn't stop me from contributing to the Southland's Kickstarter.

And that’s one of the reasons that I really like the way Kobold Press has developed Jeff Lee’s Demon Cults #1: The Emerald Order.  It’s got 14 pages (9.5 of actual content when you take out the front and back cover, TOC, a full-page art piece (good art though!), and ¾ page of OGL).  Of that 9.5 pages, .5 is dedicated to anchoring the Emerald Order in Midgard.  The other 9 pages are chock full of great ways to take this evil order and incorporate it into any campaign setting.

The Emerald Order begins with a three-page spread that covers the organization’s goals.  We know that they derive a lot of power from an Emerald Tablet and that they like to work behind the scenes.  Jeff Lee has done a good job of being vague enough to make the organization slottable into any campaign while providing concrete examples of how the Order works to achieve its goals.  We also get stats on the organization’s leader and a full-color, full-page piece of art illustrating him.  Finally, we learn how members of the organization interact with each other and with outsiders. 

I love the next two pages.  The kids at Kobold have created sections for APLs 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, and 10-12 and provided us with three plot hooks for each category that show how an adventuring party might cross paths with the Emerald Order.  These reinforce that the Emerald Order is a secret society and some of them sent some shivers up my spine just reading them.

We’ve then got two pages describing the Disciple of the Emerald Esoterica prestige class.  It’s a bit overpowered compared to normal prestige classes, but I’m willing to ignore it for a couple of reasons.  First of all, it’s a 3PP prestige class, and I feel like they are normally stronger, more in line with 3.5 prestige classes rather than with Paizo-produced Pathfinder prestige classes.  Secondly, it’s highly unlikely a PC is ever going to use this prestige class—it’s really just for villains.  Next we have the Emerald Tablet itself, along with examples of what happens when people experiment with shards of it and the emerald deposit from whence it came.  These include new emerald shard ioun stones and smaragdine golem.

Overall, I really liked this product.  I especially liked the organization.  I have a pet peeve for organization.  It can be maddening to have a plot detail hidden away in a specialized monster’s bestiary entry, for instance.  The Emerald Order admirably avoids this.  Overall, I’m very pleased with this and look forward to the rest of the Kobold material in development to support their Southlands expansion.

Kobold Press' Southlands Kickstarter

"If you're riding a camel, you are headed somewhere perilous.  And, you know, going somewhere perilous reminds me how I got into the business...Assassin Mountain, early days of the Arabian Nights..." - Wolfgang Baur

According to dndclassics.com, "After a few years of working as a magazine editor for TSR, [Wolfgang] Baur was eager to write a standalone book for the company. He was eventually handed the job of creating "Assassin Mountain" for the Al-Qadim line. With just the title and topic, he was told to write a sourcebook and connected adventures.  Baur read up on assassins, including Rashid ad-Din Sinan, the Old Man of the Mountain, then gave it all a fantasy spin. When writing Assassin Mountain, Baur also did his best to put in "poetry and sentiment" — because the rich Arabian lore of Al-Qadim could be more magical and musical than the typical D&D setting...Baur has more than once said that Assassin Mountain is one of his favorite designs. However, he's also admitted that it has flaws (probably because it was his first major design)."  Baur also went on to pen another al-Qadim title, Secrets of the Lamp, focusing on the ecology of the elemental genies derived from traditional Arab and Persian folklore.

Flash forward 20 years.  Baur now runs one of the most successful third-party publishers in the fantasy RPG business: Kobold Press.  His Midgard Campaign setting was funded through a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign.  Kobold Press describes it as, "a dark world of deep magic, with seven regions flavored by the folklore of Central and Eastern Europe plus a heady dose of weird fantasy."  He's billing the scorching Southlands as the last mysterious place left in the Midgard setting.  Isn't this the perfect time to revisit his roots and to perfect the product that started everything for him?

I certainly hope so.

Why Deserts and Nomads and Genies?

I've had an obsession with Middle Eastern history since college.  After an into class that covered the region's history through 1500, I was hooked and took the class finishing its history to the present, a religion class on Islam, and two semesters of Arabic language.  I was all excited to go into Middle Eastern Studies, but then 9/11 happened and what seemed like a joyful scholarly inquiry got increasingly politicized...but I digress.  Middle Eastern history and folklore, both pre- and post-Islamic, brings so many fascinating tales to us.  There are treasures from the Abbasid caliphate like the 1,001 (or just 8) Arabian Nights with stories like Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves and Sinbad's Seven Journeys.  Persian folklore gives us less well known stories through the Shahnameh epic poem.  

When playing fantasy RPGs, we all get boring of medieval fantasy pretty quickly.  Everyone has their favorite genre and mine is inspired by the Middle East.  After I first got turned on to Pathfinder, my first full adventure purchase was Legacy of Fire, where "the heroes stop a wish-maddened warlord from raising one of the infamous Spawn of Rovagug, a living holocaust cast down millennia before? In order to do so, they'll need to brave sand, flame, and the terrors of the Outer Planes—yet the forces at work against them are limited only by the reach of their imagination. And the enemy has had thousands of years to prepare..."  I don't care that it was written for 3.5 and that I'd have to convert everything to Pathfinder to play it today.  It's a beautiful adventure path if you love the Middle East like I do.

And Golarion's Katapesh is the same way.  Unlike Osirion, which is a little more pulp Egypt or Qadira, which always seems to be forgotten as the stub of their version of the Persian Empire, Katapesh is pure, mercantile, Silk Road ancient Arabia.  And it's awesome.  In fact, Dark Markets--A Guide to Katapesh is without a doubt my favorite campaign setting sourcebook to date.  So, the Southlands Kickstarter has a lot of competition to live up to already.

Midgard Campaign Setting: Southlands Kickstarter

Let's take a look at what the folks at Kobold Press are offering us with their Southlands Kickstarter.  It's running through October 18th.  Full disclosure: I'm already all in and getting copies of the core book, the adventures, and the bestiary (when it makes.  I know it will!).  Therefore, I have a very strong vested interest in you getting in on the action too!

Fortunately, even before you look at what's included in the Kickstarter, take a look at the vast amount of material that Kobold Press is leaking as teaser articles.  Most importantly, they've released a major preview document on paizo.com.  They also have a piece about the sentient jungle of Kush and the cities of the Southlands, They've also thrown up a few Southlands-focused of their collections of curiosities articles for things found at the oasis and things under a pile of bones.  Finally, they've given us some idea-piquing trinkets on a couple different pages.

The Loot

First, they are promising a full-color sourcebook that features both campaign setting gazetteer materials like information on the titan-ruled land of Omphaya and the sorceress who rules Ligna.  There are also player options like new classes & archetypes such as the blind archer, the lotus magician, and the weret hekau.  There's also info about deities/masks of deities.  There will also be traits related to various locations and various races native to the Southlands.  They aren't mentioned, but I'm sure the usual cadre of feats, spells, and magic items will appear as well.

The core book will also include a Bestiary, which will contain all the newest desert and Middle Eastern monsters to be had!  It will be made into a standalone book if they attract 600 or more backers.  (Bonus: They are at 568 at the time I'm writing this with 14 days to go, so I think it's a safe bet they'll make it).  They are also taking submissions from backers at a certain level (though paying to submit your design work for publication feels a little bit backwards).

They are also updating a collection of old adventures, Eight Arabian Nights.  They are also adding new adventure content as certain stretch goals, including an adventure by one of my favorite authors, Amber Scott as their next stretch goal  (Amber is one of my favorites first because I think her adventures read like her also fun to read fiction and also because she uses Excel tables when designing adventures to ensure that there is just the right amount of XP in her adventure to level up the party at proper points.  She talks about this in an episode of Know Direction).  

There will also be leatherbound editions of the books for those who are interested and they are going to strike some commemorative coins.  

More interesting (though prohibitively costly at $2,000) is Through the Red Portal, "a lorebook that addresses the history and lost magic of the first wizards and god-kings, describe some of their peculiar talents, and offers a glimpse behind the masks of the gods of Midgard. It makes great reading for anyone looking for an undead necromancer-king, a mummy struck by divine madness, or the curse of the eldest theurge."  Alas, they will not be making a PDF either.  GMs will have to dream up our own miraculous acts performed by the powerful first wizards and god-kings that ruled the Southlands millenia ago.

Strech Goals?  Boy do they have 'em!

The project funded at $16,000 within five hours or so.  So now it's on to extra content!  Not source material, but there are forums unlocked where fans will be able to comment on content as its being developed.  Right now they are only for high-level donors, but the more that sign on, the more widely the forums will be opened.  What else do we have so far?  

• Campaign setting material
• Bastet, the Goddess-Huntress and her cult
• The Emerald Order, some apparently naughty people that have made off with some fantastically powerful emerald tablets
• A Floating Village, delivered by Paizo's Adam Daigle
• Full descriptions of gods and goddesses in the Southlands' pantheon
• The Hand of Nakresh, dedicated to fulfilling the commands of "the simian god of wizards and thieves."
• The Lost City of the Serpent Crown
• Lotus Magic: A new magic system native to the Southlands
• Mardas Vhula-Gai, a lost city infested with gnolls and goblins
• Per-Bestet, the City of Cats
• Ramag, a kingdom full of dangerous portals
• Adventures
• Tomb of the Elephant God, by Mike Shel, added to the Eight Arabian Nights
• Setting-neutral material
• Advanced Races: Aasimar
• Advanced Races: Gnolls (we all knew this was coming eventually, Kickstarter or no, because they are, as Wolfgang says, "Badass.")
• Advanced Races: Jinnborn (though it appears with much Midgard-specific info as well)
• Hero Lab files (Yay!)

I'm sure there will be more added over the next two weeks and I'll try to update this page if work and law school demands make that possible.  But, either way, I'll be keeping track of the Southlands Kickstarter page and hoping to see it hit as many stretch goals as it can.

Did I miss any of the articles anywhere about the Kickstarter?  Have some been added since this post went up?  Did you like or hate this teaser?  Leave a comment and let me know!