Interview with Clinton J. Boomer (part 2)

Welcome to Part 2 of a 5 part interview with the designer of Coliseum Morpheuon The Damnation Epoch, Clinton J. Boomer; You can find part 1 HERE.

11. Living and breathing the Rituals of Choice adventure path I know how close one gets to one’s work, how do you handle input for something like as Coliseum Morpheuon? How do you plan to handle patron criticism?
So far, all of the input has been slap-my-head-awesome "why-didn't-I-think-of that?" coolness; working with the RiP folks has really brought out the best and cut the dross on my work. As to working directly with patrons (something that I'm itching to get to do!) I'm going to treat it just like working with my players when I'm building up a new campaign: it's their game & my setting, and the more info they can give me on what they want to play, the better I can work it into the adventure.

Some of my favorite moments in gaming have been those weird times when a player INSISTS that they want to play a grimlock paladin of freedom, a half-air elemental drow soulknife or a resurrected/reincarnated 1000-year-old saint with Halfling rules subbed in for playing a six-year old kid. I never would have thought of it, but it always ends up being an awesome part of the campaign!

12. Describe your best moment so far working on Coliseum Morpheuon?
The coolest stuff so far, still deep in the initial planning stages, has been brainstorming-up the feel and the reality of the Khan of Nightmares and the various Tests of the Coliseum; I want every mystery & challenge of this adventure (physical or social) to be memorable and unique, like something out of Neil Gaiman'sSandman crossed with Tim Schafer's Psychonauts. I'm really proud of the Well of Star-Chasing test, and the Capture the Mast game is, I hope, going to be legendary.

13. What do you feel was the most ingenious part of Coliseum Morpheuon that you have devised so far?
Ha-ha! Well, I don't want to reveal too much, but I've put a lot of work into making the Khan of Nightmares a dynamic and interesting villain - I don't want him to be another BBEG, designed just to be steam-rolled in the last encounter by the PCs and forgotten. I mean, obviously, he's evil. But he's the sort of evil a party can work with, I think. As to the sprawling Chimeric Amphitheatre where the adventure takes place, I'm really proud of the side-stuff: the wandering characters and the bars & brothels and the sub-plot stories of travelers in the realms of Dream. Of course, I'm also very pleased with the Khan's servitor race, the shifting Hounds of Ill-Tidings; I can't wait to get them a few pages of interesting descriptive text!

14. What specific design choice are you most happy with, and why?
Good question! Honestly, the choice to place the adventure in the realm of Dream has been both the coolest & most nail-biting decision that I've made so far; I've fielded more than a few concerns from fans & potential patrons that the ending of the adventure would be "And then you wake up!"

Rest assured: your characters will actually physically go to the realm of Dreams, and you can actually die there; the rules are more open-ended, however, for a lot of what I'm allowed to do in designing encounters and challenges.

15. Which design element was the hardest to figure out, and why?
One thing that I really wanted to do, from the beginning, was make this game very divergent from traditional, Tolkien-style fantasy; I'm a real sucker for Asian-themed work (like Jade Oath) and for Arabian Nights-flavored adventures (as those who've read my Half-Giants article from Kobold Ecologies or my Hell of Eternal Thirst set-piece from Legacy of Fire can attest), and I could have gone steam-punk or all-anime crazy, but I want to make this game accessible to folks who've fallen in love with Forgotten Realms or similar European-themed games. At the end of the day, balancing the gonzo with the gritty is always a challenge for me, and I'm proud to say that I think we've struck a balance.

16. What have you learned about design and especially designing for patronage projects so far?
I've always said that I'm not really an adventure-designer, down at the core of my being. I'm not even really a "writer", in the hard-core grammar-nerd sense - I'm just a storyteller, like a thousand storytellers before me, stretching back to long, long before we had writing or dice. Now, I'm getting better at design, and it's fascinating to see where I am now, as a creator, vs. where I was a year ago. If there's one thing I've learned about design from this experience, it's to trust my people: the wonderful folks at RiP, the patrons, and all the folks who'll have a hand in helping me to make a really, really awesome adventure.

17. (Patron question) Do you have any intial thoughts on new races, dream creature templates, or sorcerer bloodlines?
Oh, definitely! While I can't say too much about them because of the NDA, I'm a huge fan of the sorcerer bloodlines as they appear in the final version of the Pathfinder RPG rules; just from flipping through the Wayfinder Fanzine from PaizoCon, it's obvious that I'm not the only one looking to poke at the system and maybe design something new. Of course, I want to put some new races & templates into play. As they say, part of what made Planescape so interesting was tieflings and aasimar and other unusual races; I can't wait to work with some of the patrons to build a few new playable critters for this!

18. What are the initial obstacles that Coliseum Morpheuon must overcome? How did you surmount them?
The first is just getting the new rules down pat. As was revealed at PaizoCon, the new rulebook is over 570 pages, and there are big changes even from the Beta of the rules - check out the Game Previews on the Paizo Blog HERE: and you'll see that they've made EVERYTHING a little cooler! I've made combing the Pathfinder rules my full-time job at this point, making scratched-in notes about what sorts of things I can use & what I want to add - new feats, new bloodlines, new ... well, new all-sorts-of-stuff! When patrons sit down with hard-cover copies of the Pathfinder RPG & Coliseum Morpheuon, I want them to be able to game with the least amount of total prep time - and that's an obstacle that I'm determined to overcome.

19. We have a long history of extradimensional fantasy in the RPG industry how do you decided what has become cliché and what is a valuable trope to explore?
That's probably the hardest question of all, honestly. What I want to re-create is the wonder and grandeur that I felt the first time that I cracked open the Planescape boxed set & breathed in the fumes of alien wind racing across forgotten ruins beneath unknown stars. That was a heady moment for me, and one that I think generations of gamers have sought again and again. Giving the PCs a new and wild universe to kick around in - but one that's usable, as a GM - is the ultimate challenge. To me, it's the little story-driven contradictions that make an otherwise infinite realm fun, whether it's adding a post-modern element to a stone-age society or a weirdly gregarious streak to a creature made out of cosmic horror. There's an old line that people look up into the sky at night, and what they see is the stars - not the infinite, unfathomable blackness between, but the tiny incongruities that speckle it. A villain who is all darkness, or a dimension made of all chaos ... that's uninteresting. In an extra-dimensional fantasy game, people remember (and respond to) the things that surprise them - but without breaking their suspension of disbelief. I think that there IS a "wrong" way to do it, after all. Never one to point fingers, I'll just note that adventures involving all-knowing, all-powerful good-guy NPCs or unstoppably-evil villains trapped just outside of reality are growing stale in anything but the hands of masters. My goal is to keep the story personal and player-focused while making the universe expansive enough to feel new even when the adventure is over.

20. Are you happy with the progress of Coliseum Morpheuon so far?
I'm overjoyed - we hit 32% of our goal within 5 days, and we're now (as of press time!) right at the 46% mark. This thing will be rocking and rolling before you know it! As to the adventure itself, well ... I wish that there were more hours in the day, to be perfectly honest. We're kicking along at an impressive pace, but I don't want this adventure to be anything less than the best darn project that we (that's me, the amazing RiP team and my beloved patrons!) can build!

You can find Part 3 of the interview HERE

Interview with Clinton J. Boomer

Welcome to Part 1 of a 5 part interview with the designer of Coliseum Morpheuon The Damnation Epoch, Clinton J. Boomer.

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself
Clinton J. Boomer, known to his friends as “Booms,” resides in the quaint, idyllic, leafy paradise of Macomb, Illinois, where he attended school from the 4th grade through college. He began playing D&D with the 1993 release of Planescape, and currently devotes a full 99.9% of his waking hours to thinking about RPGs. Boomer is a writer, filmmaker, gamer, bartender and janitor.
Although he cannot find enough hours in the day to do even half of what he wants, Boomer is insanely prolific on the topics of ninjas, comedy, D&D, vampires, Lovecraftian gods, …, super-villains, … the human condition, …l and a number of other things he thinks are pretty darn cool.
... and I think, honestly, that that pretty much covers it. I got started writing before I can really remember: my mother loves to tell the stories of when I would walk up to her while she was working at the computer and ask her to "write down this story" - those early works involved a lot of monsters made out of magical fire & people being thrown into garbage-cans. What can I say? I was, like, six.

My professional writing career has really taken off in the last year, starting with my publication in the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting (which followed directly from placing in the Top 4 in Paizo LLC's inaugural RPG Superstar! competition); since then, I've been given the opportunity to work on a ton of cool projects which I don't want to bore you to death with here; for those with a truly freakish and obsessive interest in that topic (hi, mom!), I'll direct you to my resume, located HERE.

I try to game twice a week - running a game on Sunday or Monday night, and playing on the other. When I run, I'm interested in weird, gonzo, epic stuff, obviously: Book of Nine Swords-inspired Planescape, high-level Dark Sun, a home-brew Iron Kingdoms/SpellJammer mash-up, or even Metal Gear Solid-infused high-psionic d20 Modern with Cthulhu elements. But I'll play just about anything, including classic sword-&-board, low-magic historical fantasy; in fact, some of my favorite game-moments are the very, very human ones.


2. What attracted you as a designer to this project?

It was a single, wonderful line: "Pitch me something that Paizo would never, ever let you do." Now, considering that Paizo hired Nick Logue, James Jacobs and Richard Pett, there obviously isn't much that they won't allow if the concept is good; this is a company for whom the words "new & cool" are sort of a credo. I really had to bring my A-game to find something wild enough to go beyond Paizo's normal limits but also awesome enough to make a good game.

Plus, of course, the company has quite the pedigree!

3. Why do you think patronage projects are expanding? (What is Patronage?)

I'm not much of a business-theorist, and you'd probably get a much better answer from someone with a degree in Marketing - or even Art. But I'll give you my raw and unfettered response, which has to do with the do-it-yourself movement and the nature of Open Gaming.

Since the beginning of table-top role-playing, there's been a strong 'home-brew' element - heck, the game wouldn't even exist if it were not for the crazy-making brain-power of amazing guys like Arneson & Gygax who said, basically, "This whole miniature war-gaming thing is fun, but it would be even MORE fun if we got to really play as heroes & go stomping around in crypts, killing monsters!" It's a game about telling stories with your friends. Even before the appearance of the OGL, people were making their own rules for the game, and even selling them to fellow fans - like Role-Aids back in the day.

All the OGL really did was put an official stamp on the practice, exploding the market into the hands of a thousand, thousand gamers with a story to tell, all looking to share their unique visions & unique rules with fellow fans. Some of the work was stellar, some of it was amateur, but all of it had that exciting, infectious "do-it-yourself" feel. Because that's what gaming is: it's DIY fun. It's "hot" media - it won't come to your house and tell you a story. It's not a novel or a DVD or a television show or a sports team, where it exists with or without your input - it's a "build your own awesome" kit.

When the hobby itself is treated like the dynamic media it is, I think that you get really incredible work, which is why I'm so excited to get my hands on the Pathfinder RPG - it's a game that was built from the core of the world's most popular role-playing game, incorporating rules from some of the best writers & designers on the planet (pretty much the entire editorial team from the Paizo-years of Dungeon & Dragon magazine, with constant design-consultation from Monte Cook) and then handed off for a world-wide open playtest for a YEAR. That's amazing, and the end result is killer.

Which brings us to the patronage system, which is the hottest of the hot media: YOU tell the designer what you want out of your adventure, and the feedback loop starts building as a ton of creative minds pass the ball back and forth. What you've got, when you're done, is something BY fans, FOR fans, that meets the specific needs and desires of the core audience who helped make it happen.

How could that NOT attract us 3rd millennium bards?


4. Could you please sum up "Coliseum Morpheuon" in a sentence or three?

Ooooh, good question! Let's find out! The core design behind the Coliseum Morpheuon is that it's a plug-&-play addition to YOUR game-world: an involved and intrigue-laden demi-reality ready to become a part of your campaign as a hidden dimension, a living dungeon, or even the centerpiece of a new series of adventures. As a bubble-plane drifting the borders of Dream, Shadow and the Ethereal, it's a highly morphic place made of equal parts surreal substance and gnostic nightmare, where blood and battle are bartered for power, prestige and profit.


5. Could you please sum up "The Damnation Epoch" in a sentence or three?

It's a winner-take all fight for 101 wish spells, drawn over the course of a century from a crucified pit-fiend, held by the powerful and enigmatic Khan of Nightmares in his shifting, forbidding lair. I'm a sucker for martial-arts epics, especially the classic Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon - everything else fell in to place with that concept. To my mind, it's significant that even parodies and homages to that film (the "Fistful of Yen" super-sketch from Kentucky Fried Movie, the original Mortal Kombat, and even the Christopher Walken/ping-pong comedy Balls of Fury) are exciting and fun. I'd never seen something like that pulled off at the gaming table, so the idea of a team-tournament, sponsored by a mysterious villain and attended by powerful and self-serving beings (including angels, efreet, vampires and demons), really gets me excited.


6. How did you feel, when you discovered someone has signed up for the Patronage Project? For the Gold Level?

I crapped myself. I mean, there's no other way to put it - I freaked out! I've been writing professionally for less than a year, now, so I felt like a Pulitzer prize winner when I learned that people were actually THIS interested in taking a wild ride with me.


7. Could you list some of your major influences in your initial thoughts on Coliseum Morpheuon The Damnation Epoch?

Besides the aforementioned Enter the Dragon, I'm an old-skool Planescape junkie; my desire is to revive that otherworldly dynamic for the new Pathfinder RPG rules, which I think have a very exciting and cinematic feel while still being designed to play more human-centric fantasy. I'm inspired by anime, Warren Ellis comics, Quentin Tarentino, kung-fu and late-80's video games (especially Ninja Gaiden!) as much as by Tolkien or Robert E. Howard, and I'd love for this specific adventure to feel like a natural culmination of all the things I love about gaming - a sort of "you got your chocolate in my peanut-butter!" moment for elements as disparate as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Steven Brust's Jhereg books.


8. What are the strengths of CMTDE being compatible with the Pathfinder RolePlaying Game ?

It's a great system, and it's built "hot" - many minds, many fans, many voices, all working to make the best version of the rules that could possibly be built. Having gone over the new rules with a pretty fine-toothed comb, and having spent some chatting time with Lead Designer Jason Bulmahn at PaizoCon, I think that what the fans are going to see is a really amazing final product. Of course, I'm excited to get to poke at the complex web-work that is such a tight and fluid system and see what it can do.


9. Can you tell me about your experience so far of working with Rite Publishing Vs. Other publishers you have worked with?

Not to just sit here and babble about how great RiP is, but it's been amazing to work with everyone at Rite; seeing the ad for my work get built one step at a time and then appear in the Wayfinder Fanzine for PaizoCon was surreal and joyous and really blew my mind. I've worked on a few projects over the years that have just never gotten off the ground (due to any number of factors), so I'm well aware of the harsh & unforgiving conditions of the publishing world; in short, I'm blown away by the level of commitment and dedication that the Rite folks have for putting out a great product.


10. Can you tell me how you felt when you first saw the portfolio of CMTDE's cover and interior artist Jason Rainville?

Probably not - at least not without using some "adult" words, and I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to curse for this interview. We've got kids at home reading this, right? If I take out all the expletives, it would be something like: "Holy! Oh my! I can't believe it! This guy is awesome!"

My girlfriend is quite the art-junkie, and she loves his stuff; I'm just stunned and amazed to be working with someone so talented!

You can find Part 2 of the interview HERE

Feats of the Jade Oath Preview #1

Da-Chen a peasant farmer has trouble dealing with his Ancestral Possession feat. His revered ancestor Kwan Lyan-Ran the Ghost Witch has no trouble dealing with her White Hair of the Deadly Lotus feat. You can download a full preview HERE Ancestral Possession (Ceremonial) The spirit of one of your ancestors possessed you during a previous ceremony that invoked your ancestor’s name. The ceremony brought forth the attentions of that ancestor’s spirit, despite no intention to do so. The ancestral ghost occasionally takes control of your body to pursue certain goals at the DM’s discretion. When the ghost takes possession, his personality is in complete control, but your body does not change. He has a task to complete and he might or might not even know what that task is. When he completes that task, the ghost will leave you to your life. But, probably not until he meddles enough to set you on what he perceives as the right path. Prerequisites: Truename, any other ceremonial feat. Benefit: Whenever you roll a natural 1 on a d20 for any skill check, ability check, attack roll, or saving throw, the ancestral ghost dwelling within you takes control of your body. There is a 50% chance that the disoriented ancestor does not know what is going on and will lose his action until next turn, and is therefore flatfooted. Likewise, whenever the ancestral ghost possessing you rolls a natural 1 on a d20 check, attack, or save, you take control of your body back. If the ancestral ghost goes to sleep in your body, you regain control again upon awakening. Even though it is a ghost, it still inhabits your body and feels the body’s need for sleep. If the ghost tries to deny sleep, it will begin to feel the effects from lack of sleep as normal. When playing this ancestral ghost character, generate a new set of mental statistics (Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma) as per your campaign’s character generation rules. Choose a class for your ancestral ghost character. He may be any class, except oathsworn; for some reason unknown to mystics and scholars of the arcane, members of that class cannot possess or be possessed by their ancestors. The ancestral ghost is the same character level as you and progresses when you do. Select the ancestral ghost’s skills and spend his skill points accordingly. New feats should be selected, if needed; however, if a feat of yours is a racial feat or is representative of a physical trait, it should remain as a feat for the ancestral ghost character as well. Saving throws need to be adjusted, but hit points remain the same as yours for the ancestral ghost character. Hero points are also a shared commodity. If you are both spellcasters, you can only cast a given number of spells equal to your maximum listed for your class and exceptional ability scores. Since both of you draw from the same pool of mystical energy you cannot cast any extra spells per day that the ancestral ghost may have and vice versa. For example, if you can cast 1 2nd level spell per day and you have already done so and your ancestral ghost character can cast 2 2nd level spells per day, he must count one of those spell slots as having been used even though he did not use it. Conversely, if he can cast 2 2nd level spells per day and has already cast 1 or more today and you can cast only 1 per day, then you cannot cast any more today, even though you, technically, did not cast any 2nd level spells today. Both you and your ancestor may determine spells readied differently based on your individual classes and feats. White Hair of the Deadly Lotus (Chakra) You can animate your extraordinarily long hair with your ch’i, treating it as a chakra, making it like another limb to you. It can even provide you with a longer than normal Reach as you learn to magically stretch your hair to reach a short distance away and make attacks, eventually even learning to manipulate objects with it. Prerequisites: Con 11, Wis 13, Dex 13, Cha 11, Concentration 4, Long Hair, Ch’i Awakened, and one of the following: Defensive Unarmed Strike, Improved Unarmed Strike, or Mighty Unarmed Strike. Benefit: You can animate your hair to extend the Reach of your attacks. While ch’i focused, you gain an extra 5 foot of Reach for your unarmed attacks per point of ch’i invested, though you don’t threaten the area into which you can make an attack beyond the 5 foot area closest to you as a result of this feat. You are proficient with using your hair as an unarmed attack in combat. Unless your hair is bound, you are always considered armed while ch’i focused (your hair is considered a light weapon). Your attacks with your hair may only deal non-lethal damage. For every attack, you suffer a cumulative -2 penalty to Strength- and Dexterity-based checks and attack rolls targeting creatures or objects up to 10 ft. or more away from you. You can use your hair to grasp and retrieve items, grapple, or to perform trip or disarm attempts, but you cannot wield weapons with the hair. You can use the Weapon Finesse feat to apply your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier to attack rolls with this feat. You can use the Weapon Finesse feat in conjunction with this feat to use your Dexterity instead of Strength for initiating a grapple when grappling at reach. You suffer a -4 circumstance penalty when grappling with just your hair no matter which modifier is used. When you fail to make a successful trip attack at reach with your hair, you cannot avoid being tripped by your target. You get a +2 bonus on opposed attack rolls made to disarm an opponent (including the roll to keep from being disarmed if the attack fails should there be a weapon held by your hair with the improved version of this feat). Using this feat provokes an attack of opportunity, just as if you had used a ranged weapon. Expend your ch’i focus to attack many foes at once with your hair. When you perform the full-attack action, you can give up all regular attacks and instead make one melee attack at your full base attack bonus against each opponent within reach. It requires at least 1 point of ch’i just to expend your ch’i focus, but an additional 2 points of ch’i for each additional 5 ft. in Reach. For example, you can attack all foes within 5 ft. after expending your ch’i focus with 1 point of ch’i in this chakra, all foes within 10 ft. for 3 ch’i points, all foes within 15 ft. for 5 ch’i points, and all foes within 20 ft. for 7 ch’i points. You gain one point of ch’i. Special: The Hands as Weapons feat cannot be used with this feat. This feat does not replace the Multiweapon Fighting or Multiattack feats. To make additional attacks utilizing your hair, either one of those feats must be acquired separately. For the prerequisites of Multiweapon Fighting, your hair may be considered to be an extra hand. To make multiple unarmed strikes using your hair, you must have Multiattack. Improved: By taking this feat a second time, you can use your hair to attack with a light weapon as if it was one of your hands (only light weapons, anything heavier incurs the -4 nonproficiency penalty to attack even if the character is proficient with the weapon) or to manipulate objects. You do so with with less dexterity (-4 penalty to use Alchemy, Craft, Disable Device, Escape Artist, Forgery, Open Lock, Sleight of Hand, and Use Rope checks). You inflict lethal damage with unarmed strikes made by your hair and can now use the Hands as Weapons feat in conjunction with this feat. To make multiple attacks with weapons using your hair, you must have Multiweapon Fighting. You gain one point of ch’i. Ch'i Feats Ch'i feats are available only to characters and creatures with a ch'i point reservoir and the ability to gain ch'i focus. Ch’i feats are supernatural abilities that cannot be disrupted in combat (as spells can be) and do not provoke attacks of opportunity (except as noted in their descriptions). Supernatural abilities are not subject to spell resistance and cannot be dispelled; however, they do not function in areas where magic or ch’i is suppressed. Leaving such an area immediately allows ch’i feats to be used. Any ch'i feat that allows the investment of ch'i points is considered to be a chakra feat. Ch’i feats and chakra feats can be selected at 1st level in the place of a general feat or talent. Chakra Feats Chakra feats are ch'i feats and work in all ways like ch'i feats, except as follows. Often, chakra feats can be used only when you are ch’i focused, others require you to expend your ch’i focus to gain their benefit, and some provide a benefit in both circumstances. Expending your ch’i focus does not require an action; it is part of another action (such as using a chakra feat). You may only expend your ch’i focus as part of one action.