Heroes of the Jade Oath Preview #5: Introduction

Rite Publishing has release another 14 page preview of their wuxia fantasy patronage project. This preview covers the central section of the Lands of the Jade Oath. The project is currently in proofreading and the BETA is expected to be released Sept 09.

Gencon 2009 Day 1

Special Note: Due to Tales of Zobeck winning an ENnie award it will soon be available for purchase.

Thursday: Bill Collin’s ran a Jade Oath adventure called 10,000 Demons of Demon Mountain. The quick and dirty version of the plot is our heroes are hunting down the 8^th and Last Son of The Demon, who has fled to his mother’s bastion of power: Demon Mountain and the 8 Infernal Valleys (some highlights include the river of blood that the demon’s mother spits out, and a land where obsidian shards fall upwards). This land is surrounded by a wall and a number of fortresses that encircle the valleys, and are manned by desperate but valiant guardian troops of the empire.

We had a great group of folks including Monte Cook, “Contraserrene”, amongst many other fine folks. I got to show off our print proof of Jade Oath which many folks joking spoke of stealing, along with a lot of praise on how lovely it turned out; I presented Bill and Monte with their Jade Oath t-shirts. I also had Bill sign his ENnie award winning design in Tales of Zobeck (before it won the silver).

Cute story in the middle of the game a fan recognized Monte, and was talking to him and thanking him for all the great games he has designed. Monte was patient, kind and courteous and as always was a shining example of how you wish every person you are a fan of would act when you meet them. This fan then started talking to Monte about Rite Publishing and praising our work. Please excuse me as it was very proud geek moment for me that someone was praising our work to Monte Cook, most days I do this due to my love for Arcana Evolved, but at that moment it was nice to see our hard work appreciated. I was sitting two seats over with my back to him when Miranda who was sitting next to Monte taps me on the shoulder and introduces me too him.

Turns out it was Ben McFarland one of Bill’s Co-Designer’s on the ENnie award winning Tales of Zobeck (soon you too can buy it in PDF or Print, I own a copy you should too). So I had him sign it too, now remember that is all before it had won the award J

I don’t want to go to nuts with this in case you ever play in this demo, but highlights included a Contraserrene’s negotiation to get us past the entrance, super jumps from mantis warrior on to slave barges in the river of blood, me breathing fire with the help ch’i, a hero point, and some sake; The Crowning Moment of Awesome: one fight before the climactic battle Monte realizes we need to hurry up because its almost 5 the point where the game was supposed to end, so a big nasty Poison Dragon rises up out of the river of blood and Monte says “We don’t have time for you.” casts vivification and turns it into glass.

Our next game that day was “Trolls at Large” again run by Bill Collins this one in Zobeck; we play really dumb trolls who are going to town in search of mom. It really was one of the best comedy games I have played in. Some of the highlights from this was Miranda’s troll having ADD, bad things always happening to the two smart trolls which led to the saying “Look what smart gets you.”, PCs grabbing hapless humans and saying in their best gruff troll voice. “Where’s Mom?!” Turning a darkmantle into a balloon, and us tearing down the clock tower of Zobeck and one of the great cathedrals, and the ultimate fate of Mom (again no spoilers).

By this time it was 9 pm and the quest for food began, a day just chucked full of awesome more tomorrow.

Heroes of the Jade Oath BETA (proof)

The Heroes of the Jade Oath Beta (Proof) is now available to patrons (check the HotJO patron forum)

Rite Publishing releases Evocative City Sites: The Next Inn

With Evocative City Sites: The Next Inn, Rite Publishing continues bringing easy-to-use, quality urban locations to your game, no matter what system you use.

Evocative City Sites: The Next Inn gives you everything for a drop-and-play inn location, but with five adventure seeds and detailed floorplans, The Next Inn offers hours of immersive play in that most classic urban location of them all: The inn.

Get yours now for only $1.75 at Drivethrurpg

Interview with Clinton J. Boomer (part 4)

Welcome to Part 4 of a 5 part interview with the designer of Coliseum Morpheuon The Damnation Epoch, Clinton J. Boomer; You can start with part 1 HERE


31. What is your feeling about the Rite Publishing's newest release Evocative City Sites? (Publisher’s shameless plug)
Oh, huge fan! I just snagged & read through the Rogue's Gallery Tavern .pdf, and it's exactly the sort of thing that I think a GM like myself can make a lot of use of: system-neutral, fun, detailed and flexible enough to be of use to me immediately. Of course, as a professional bartender the last several years, I love a good fantasy-universe alehouse - and the Fu Manchu reference particularly tickled me!What really got me, though, was the price - less than two bucks? And patrons get, like, a discount on top of THAT? Dude. How could you afford NOT to pick it up?

32. What is your home game like?
Characterized by lovingly-detailed, highly cinematic combat, rife with plenty of over-the-top moments of anime-inspired super-awesome, and accented with exceptionally convoluted back-stories involving intricate conspiracies & ancient cults. As a GM, I'm often drawn to non-"traditional fantasy" sources for my in-game inspiration; while I have a deep & abiding love for Arthurian legend & Lord of the Rings, I've probably ripped off Michael Mann's Heat, Warren Ellis's Planetary and Yoshiaki Kawajiri's Ninja Scroll more times than I've ever used elves or dragons.

33. What is the Pathfinder product you want to buy?
Oh, good question!Let's be honest - I love, love, LOVE the Pathfinder universe. I was honored & flattered to get lucky enough to help build part of their core world with my work on the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting, and I really admire what they've done with it: from the simple "you can find your favorite culture/campaign-setting here!" incorporation of real-world and classic fantasy analogues into the universe (you like gothic horror? Well, here's Ustalav! You dig dark Russian folklore? Enjoy the Irrisen! 1800's Congo-tales more to your tastes? We've got Mwangi! Big fan of pulp-era flying cities? Yeah, we have those, too!) to the creation of super-original stuff like the bloatmages and the accompanying "hemotheurgy" (check out pg. 218 of the PCCS!). I know, from my quick peeks behind the scenes, that the intention was to build the best "classic" campaign setting of all time. And I think they knocked it out of the park.So what do I want to buy from them? Anything. Seriously. Especially if I get to work on it.Now, my dream project with them would be an exploration of Numeria - Savage Land of Super-Science! While at PaizoCon, a very good friend of mine (artist Ashton Sperry, known better as N'Wah from the Paizo boards) pitched some really cool things at me for that project, which has been a dream of his for some time - collaborating with him on an adventure set in the harsh, sky-tainted lands of the Black Sovereign Kevoth-Kul and his awful Gearsmen would be awesome!

34. Can you name for us a class or prestige class that would be cool but you have never seen?
One of the coolest things about the OGL movement and the reprecussions of having an entire generation of writers & designers all playing with the same super-flexible rule-set has been the creation of some REALLY varied and original character options; you could build a party of six adventurers, all multi-classed and prestiged, without ever seeing rules taken from the core books of the world's most popular role-playing game - like the Artificer/Blood Mage or the Soulknife/Ninja/Occult Slayer or the Warlock/Chaos Monk/Frenzied Berzerker/War Hulk.What I'm all about, though, is re-exploration - can we re-look at the monk, or the sorcerer, or any of these core classes, in a new way? That's one of the things I really dig about the new Pathfinder RPG, by the by: those who've been following the game since the Alpha playtest already know some of the cool stuff that has been done to re-invigorate barbarians & druids, for example, and Jason Bulhman has revealed some of the other changes to paladins and others on the Paizo.com website.I think that with the new options of the final Pathfinder RPG, the fun will come from tinkering with rules to build something new & different inside the box ... before shattering it open and building a bard-variant with illusion (shadow) spells & magical-pistol focus!

35. What kind of player experience do you hope to create with your game? Have your goals changed during the design process?
Since getting into the build of this adventure, my goal has shifted from simply finding a cool way to get the players into interesting & exotic fights to, now, giving them the most interesting and exotic fights of all time. I hope to create a player experience that re-looks at the basic structure of combat and sees it as a perfect system for infinite mini-games and unique challenges.To that end, I've spent a good deal of time researching my favorite fight scenes & challenges of all time: in movies, comics, video games, and novels, taking what I can & re-imagining the rest; the concern of "will it just be arena-combat grind?" is one that I'm acutely aware of and I'm doing everything in my power to laser in on.

36. What does Pathfinder Rpg need more of?
Still in the midst of learning the rules, and without taking them out for much of a spin at the table (a problem that I intend to rectify shortly!), the only thing I can sense missing from the new game is, well ... ME! It's already a player-oriented game, designed to address the concerns of long-time gamers who already love the setting and the core rules; the sheer number of options for how to, for example, play a sorcerer or barbarian, may not quite match the later years of 3.X in size, but the scope of what CAN be done with the new rules without even poking & prodding and going "yeah, but what about a new feat that lets druids choose a different XXX?" is amazing.I think that the Pathfinder RPG will grow really organically, as more players and GMs (with nearly a decade already spent tinkering with the base rules) start stamping out new & unexplored regions.

37. What advice would you give to fans of Pathfinder?
Write something! This is the same company that used to publish Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine - they've got a real love of fan-created content, and one of the friendliest Community Use policies ever designed! Yes, it's only for non-commercial activity (meaning that you can't make cash off of it), but this isn't the industry to get into to make huge bank; this is an opportunity to tell new stories, with your friends, about an amazing shared world that we all love.Heck, I know for a fact that the Paizo crew read the Wayfinder fanzine with glee; you can download it here for nothing:... and then get your OWN fiiction published at the Pathfinder Chronicler While company-sponsored events like RPG Superstar! or the Pathfinder Society Open Calls are still the primary ways to get noticed by the Paizo staff & get work in print, the best writers I know are always working on something - even free, easily-downloadable content! If you love the Pathfinder, add something to the universe - and then share it with us!

38. What do you think the future is for Pathfinder Rpg?
I think that the Pathfinder RPG, by its nature as a "final" version of the SRD/OGL rules, will immediately appeal to a huge number of gamers who still own a whole crap-load of 3.5/3.X content and who aren't looking to make a shift to another system; I think that the setting is innovative (and yet cohesive) enough to make gaming in their universe appealing to gamers of about any stripe or style (the aforementioned "we've got Ravenloft, Ebberon & Darksun - all in the same setting!" selling point), and I think that it has plenty of room for growth over the next few years - we started in Sandpoint in Rise of the Runelords #1 back in '07, and now we've got a nearly-full map of two continents!By the time 2012 rolls around, I think that an AP set in the mysterious, jungle-ruin-regions of southern Arcadia, retaking Vallenhall and then researching ancient Lergeni end-of-the-world prophecies & eventually teleporting to the charred surface of Aucturn the Stranger might be in order, and I'm excited to be a part of that - or anything else, including a hypothetical 300-page Casmaron book, a Test of the Starstone mega-adventure or anything else. The next few years promise to be golden.In the longer-term: the game itself, over the next decade, will have to grow and evolve - I understand that. That's what games do: they change, because they're dynamic. Getting younger players into the game is important, but I don't think that doing so will require much tweaking of the system - heck, I got into gaming at the age of 13, jumping into the strangest and most complex version of the game that has ever existed: late 2nd-edition, with the launch of Planescape in 1994. Table-top gaming isn't World of Warcraft or even Magic: the Gathering - but it can attract new players & keep the old ones by doing something that neither of those can do. Pathfinder, in my opinion, cuts a lot of the stuff that makes gaming inaccessible to new players while retaining all of the things that old-skool gamers love.What I'd really like to see, and what I know is on the horizon (although, admittedly, not in what incarnation), is novels - there are a lot of people who got into the Forgotten Realms because of Drizzt Do'Urden, and plenty of people who've never actually picked up a 20-sided die who can tell you who Tanis Half-Elven is. If we start seeing some really amazing Pathfinder universe fiction (and the core of that already exists, in both the ongoing APs and the fine people at Pathfinder Chronicler!), I think that the setting and the game have a real, long-term viablity. And by long-term, I mean DECADES.

39. How do you feel about Coliseum Mopheuon The Damnation Epoch as a patronage project rather than a traditional model?
There's a reason that patronage works - a reason that, as Wikipedia notes, "Artists as diverse and important as Chrétien de Troyes, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson all sought and enjoyed the support of noble or ecclesiastical patrons. Figures as late as Mozart and Beethoven also participated in the system to some degree..."; yet, what this sort of 3rd-millennium, post-digital-revolution patronage system is doing isn't exactly what the Medicis were doing in Florence, trying to 'cleanse' their dirty money. This system is actually, in my opinion, a sort of perfect synthesis of Renaissance-era patronage, rise-of-the-middle-class consumer-driven capitalism, and the unique niche-market strategy called the Long Tail - the theory, in short, that the the primary value of the internet to consumers comes not from lower prices but from providing access to products otherwise unavailable; in this instance, user-oriented, buyer-dictated professional content.I'm thrilled to be a part of this system, because I think that we're right now on the cutting egde of what we probably couldn't do even 5 years ago - and sure as hell couldn't do 10 years ago. We're going to be seeing a lot more companies trying exactly what we're doing here - to use a video-game analogy, this is the downloadable content of the table-top era.I think that my work will be better because of the input of my patrons and their support, and I think that my patrons will get more of exactly what they want because of our interactions, as well. It's a win-win.

40. How did your relationship with Rite Publishing start? How would you characterize it now?
In the beginning, there was darkness - and then there was an email! From what I'm given to understand, I was approached by RiP because a patron or two out there was familiar with my work; a quick chat with Wolfgang Baur (which flatters me immensely!) then confirmed that I would be a good choice to take on a project like this.I got an email from Steve Russell through my CreativeJuices fansite, I jumped at the chance to work on something like this, and the rest is history!Nowadays, I'm the new kid on the RiP team - a freelancer asking a lot of silly questions and just excited as hell to be a part of what I think is going to be a wonderful, fun, awesome project!

Continue to part 5 HERE

Erick Mona quotes.

Two quotes from Eric Mona that in mind promote patronage projects.

"If your potential audience is fewer than 1000... going for some sort of "deluxe" high-end approach that more reasonably charges gamers for the time, effort, and resources put into your product."

"People producing niche products for a niche market ... are never going to make much money at it, and success is going to come (if it comes at all) from spending more time building the audience than writing the products Or from realizing that the older market you serve is probably willing to pay more for a product (PDF or otherwise) that caters directly to their interests. The good news is that fans who are familiar with Judge's Guild and want to see it continue probably have a lot more disposable income than fans interested in, say, an anime game or something, so the potential for a supporting cadre of essentially patrons is much more likely in your case than in most."

Thanks Eric

Now go out and by some Pathfinder Products! Wohoooooooooo!

Interview with Clinton J. Boomer (part 3)

Welcome to Part 3 of a 5 part interview with the designer of Coliseum Morpheuon The Damnation Epoch, Clinton J. Boomer; You can find part 1 HERE, part 2 HERE and part 4 HERE

21. What makes a good Pathfinder product?
Pathfinder is its own thing, as far as I'm concerned - there's simply no other beast quite like it. Flipping through the books, you get the very real & palpable feeling that dozens of deeply dedicated authors and designers have worked their butts off to make this the best version of the game that they can make it. Pathfinder is a culmination of combined decades worth of work on Dragon & Dungeon magazines; the best Pathfinder products, to me, really capture the feel of those publications.

What's especially interesting to me, from the new rulebook, is a little section in the VERY back of the book (it's Appendix 3!) called "Inspiring Reading". A little bit was said about it at the PaizoCon banquet by Jason Bulmahn, and I don't want to give too much away, but to me it's really cool to see something like this pop up - a list of authors & works from which the Pathfinder designers have drawn inspiration.

There are some really surprising selections on there, and I think that this game might open up new avenues of approach to the fantasy-adventure genre for some fans. And, to me, that's what Pathfinder is - new avenues of approach to an old and venerable game.

22. What is your favorite Pathfinder product (besides yours and the core book)?
There are a LOT of adventures & supplements in the running on this one! In fact, whenever I get my new issue of any AP, whatever I've got in my hands is my new favorite Pathfinder product. But if I had to choose, well .... this is going to sound SO ridiculous, but it's D2: Seven Swords of Sin - the crazy dungeon-delve that Paizo put together for GenCon 2007. Now, I'm obviously part of a minority on that: the module itself has only a 3.3 star rating on the Paizo site, and a lot of the concerns (it's a meat-grinder, the ecology of the dungeon seems strung together, it's more 'delve' than 'adventure') are totally valid.

But I love it.

What's great, to me, about Seven Swords of Sin, is that it's the product of an in-house "Deadliest Room Contest" run for (and by!) Paizo employees. Here are a bunch of amazing designers and writers, just hooking together a series of uber-lethal trap & monster rooms to transform parties of heroes into bone-&-meat jelly the Old-Skool way; to me, that's what I want from a classic crawl. While I've never used the entire adventure as-written, I've used more parts & pieces from that work than from any other adventure or publication with the exceptions of the core rulebooks.

I want Coliseum Morpheon to have that feel, too, while rerouting around some of the pitfalls that I think Seven Swords fell into: a mix of unbelievably cool set-pieces, all totally usable either as part of the greater adventure or as their own, separate entities.

23. (Patron Question) How do you plan to avoid it just being the grind of just arena fighting? (A grind)
That's a darn good question, and one that's I've been approaching from as many angles as possible during design. I think that Pathfinder, especially as its presented in the final RPG incarnation, is a very flexible and dynamic system that will allow for some different sorts of challenges that haven't been seen at the gaming table in a while ... if ever. Obviously, I can't say a whole lot about the final rules because of the NDA that I signed, but fans of the Beta from the open play-test will remember some very distinct changes to the core rules regarding things like poisons, polymorphing effects & traps, which are all-too-often underused in games.

There are certainly some straight-up arena battles, which are like the PvP elements of a good first-person shooter (I've found that most people who grew up playing GoldenEye on the N64 remember it & love it most of all for the head-to-head fights); but there are also classic puzzle-solving/race sections which I think fans of Zelda or Shadow of the Collossus will dig on, and I'm doing my best to mix up the challenges in such a way as to never have a single empty-room/"you two - fight!" section without other challenges. My favorite games also have a sandbox element to them (think Grand Theft Auto), which I hope to replicate with plenty of flavor and side-stuff, all augmented with intrigue & story-driven parts that lead to a bigger story.

24. What is your favorite Boomer product and why?
Oh, that is undoubtedly the toughest question you've asked me so far! The answer, after much deliberation, is definitely the Kobold Ecologies (Vol. 1) book from Wolfgang Baur's Open Design; the reason, after even MORE deliberation, is that I think that it, above all the other work I've done, best shows off what I can do.

All told, I'm not a rules-junkie - I'm an idea man, and one who can flex his crunch-muscles when he needs to. The thing about game writing (as opposed to purely speculative fiction) is that I have to make all of my crazy ideas USABLE in-game. Really talented writers like Stephen King or Neil Gaiman don't have to make their crazy ideas table-ready; for all the hoops she has to jump through, J. K. Rowling doesn't have to worry if the magical powers in her universe are "balanced".

What I admire about ecology books is that they're 99% pure gaming fluff - work that just makes a game COOLER for being incorporated into your universe. But that extra stat-stuff, the instantly usable crunch presented for the monsters (either as PC races or GM adversaries) makes it solid gold.

The difference between Dungeon Denizens Revisited (which is also awesome, and of which I am also very proud!) and Kobold Ecologies, of course, is that I have two articles in the latter - they're of two very different flavors, one of them a collaborative piece with my long-time friend Matt Banach. To me, it's like having a solo & a duet on the same great mix-tape, along with songs by all these other amazing artists.

25. What has been your best moment playing with a Pathfinder product?
The coolest moment for me, and the most giggle-inducing, was getting to play as a PC through a convention-game of my Pathfinder Society scenario Hands of the Muted God; the GM was wonderful, and it was a real treat to play through my own adventure on the other side of the screen. That's something that I never could have imagined getting to do, and it was an absolute blast!

Otherwise, it's all a tie - how do I compare the first time that one of my players says "Oh, you put my old PC in this book! Also, I'm going to take this Prestige Class that your friend Jason Nelson created! Sweet" to the first time a guy walks up to you at a con and says "I loved that one adventure you wrote." - it's all gravy!

26. What has been your most memorable fan response to Coliseum Morpheuon?
Getting past the 50% mark, and without having to call my mom and have her buy a few dozen patronage levels through proxies.

Honestly, all of the fan response has been great - especially getting to field design questions! Send more!

Edit: as of this writing we are at 64% to goal and Boomer's mom only bought one Bronze patronage

27. What role do you think Coiseum Morpheuon will play in the Pathfinder gaming community?
As one of the first products that will be released right after the Pathfinder RPG rules are made available, I'm hopeful that this adventure will be a cool introduction to an awesome new era in role-playing for a core group of players. What I'm planning to do is going to be different enough and wild enough that it simply CAN'T be everyone's cup of tea - the people who dig it, however, I think are going to really, REALLY dig it.

I love those moments at a convention when someone walks up and just says "I dig your work". And I think that I'm going to be getting more of that, because of this amazing opportunity to set down the Damnation Epoch.

28. Any plans on running a Coliseum Morpheuon game using Fantasy Grounds or Maptool?
I don't ... really know what those are, sadly. A quick Google search reveals that they're designed to run virtual pen-&-paper games, which sounds cool.

I'm kind of an e-idiot, to be perfectly honest; everyone else I know is running around with iPhones that are a step away from digital telepathy, and I've got a flippy little brick of a cell phone that can barely take blurry, thumb-sized pictures & send scrambled bits of text.

I would be MORE than happy to run a game or two using this new-fangled "internets", if someone was there to kind of hold my hand and guide me through the process, but for the most part I'm still a "be here now" kind of GM - I like to stand up when I run combats, and yell things and make sound effects and occasionally throw dice. Can you do that with Maptool?

29. Could you tell us a little about the differences between professional game design and designing for play?
When I design for my own play, I'm pretty loose - I run my games fast and furious, for lack of a better term. I re-roll initiative every round, because it's more chaotic, I rarely use maps except when the action really demands it, and I'm very free-form with my implementation of the rules; I like rules, but magic is called magic because it's "magical", and cinematic combat trumps rules-lawyering every day. As they say, there's no wrong way to play a role-playing game ... unless you're not having fun. When I sit down at a convention or a pick-up game at a FLGS to run, I always quote Winston Wolfe from Pulp Fiction: "I think fast, I talk fast and I need you guys to act fast if you wanna get out of this." So far, people seem to like it.

Professional design is a whole different animal - it's writing a novel, not telling a story over a beer. What a GM or a player picking up a copy of something I've written should expect is a fully finished, fully-realized world - where I've done all the calculations & all the math, and they can use it right away.

Two different skill-sets, both equally challenging.

30. Why not do an "Obvious Book" (racial and class books, or sorcerous bloodlines) instead of Coliseum Morpheuon?
Why not, indeed? I'd absolutely LOVE to get my hands on a project like any of those - and as a GM, I've probably bought more books full of new rules and character options than I have adventures. I'm really aching to do something like the Book of Vile Darkness or Heroes of Horror or even a full campaign setting, at some point. The real reason that I'm doing Coliseum Morpheon right now is, well ... it came up first!

Right now, I have this story to tell, and I'd love for you guys to help me tell it. That's about it.

You can find Part 4 of the interview HERE