The Paladin Queen's Forest (for D&D 5E and Pathfinder)

Locked down, but not shut down
about 4 years ago – Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 03:26:28 PM

A new, poorly-understood and potentially lethal disease is scary. So is realizing that your computer no longer recognizes your external hard drive — an SSD drive with no power cord or on/off switch, so you can't even tell if it's still working — on which you're keeping important documents that you've been too lazy to backup elsewhere. I remain confident of my chances of avoiding the former. I'm pleased to report that I just survived the latter, and that the only working copy of The Paladin Queen's Forest still exists.

We're at the halfway point of the campaign, which is always a good time to post an update. If you've been following the pledge activity, you've noticed that it has been flat for quite a while now, and that we're stuck at 84-85%. I think we can make educated guesses as to why — I noticed that the flatline started just after the big Las Vegas casinos shut down, which turned out to be the start of a cascade of events that has silenced much of our economy and left a lot of people either without a regular paycheck, or concerned that they won't have one for much longer. I live in a neighborhood with a lot of restaurants and bars; I can still order takeout, but as far as I can see the servers have all been sent home. I have to admit, if I was in that position, I wouldn't be browsing Kickstarter for campaigns to back.

For that reason, I think there is a tiny, but nonetheless real, chance that this campaign won't fund. It will very likely fund because we're so close right now, and Kickstarter's metrics suggest that there are an awful lot of people holding off on their decision as long as possible, much more than normal. But it's not unthinkable.

However, I'm not worried. We got off to a great start — lots of people putting down their markers, more than usual — before external events had their say. I take those first few days as the true indicator of interest in Places by the Way and Found by the Way, and I'm sure that we'd have funded by now under normal circumstances. I take that as much more significant in the final analysis than a temporary drop in expressed interest caused by developments beyond our control. If the worst happens and we don't fund this time, we'll just relaunch when the time seems propitious, no sweat.

In the meantime the work continues — boy, does it ever. The State of California has instructed me to stay home unless I have essential business. Even if I tried to sneak out and goof off, everywhere I would go is closed for the duration. It reminds me of a story about Alexandre Dumas (I forget which one) and how he would strip off his clothes and sit in a bare room to write. The idea being that he couldn't even distract himself by fiddling with the buttons on his vest. I'm not sitting around naked, but the upside to all of this is that there are fewer temptations to distract me from writing.

The Paladin Queen's Forest is about halfway done and forward momentum is strong. I'm working through the big random encounters section, and I think it's going well. I'm mildly annoyed when random encounter tables give you the least possible information about what you encounter: "Orcs." "What are they doing there?" "They're orcs. Deal with it." So I'm pleased that I've been able to work some context into most of the encounters, so that they feel less random and more like intentional, structured encounters.

That's how things stand right now. I'm well and writing, and Ramen Sandwich Press continues as normal; I hope that all of you stay safe and well, too. Now, excuse me while I backup The Paladin Queen's Forest on a separate drive.

All sorts of things live in forests, it seems
about 4 years ago – Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 04:34:06 PM

Week 1 is in the books, and I like our current position — 84% funded! Thank you again for your support. I'm sure that at least some of you suddenly find yourselves in a more precarious situation than perhaps you'd anticipated, so I appreciate it that you're sticking with us.

For my part, I have been working on The Paladin Queen's Forest and carrying on as normal. Like I've said before, a typical day when I'm writing bears an uncanny resemblance to "self-quarantine" and "social distancing" anyway. I'm working on the big random encounters section that will be the guts of the module — just finished poring through the Monster Manual for ideas and jotting down notes. There are lots of notes.

Not all of them will find their way into the final product. Some interesting ideas that I will pare away in the interest of conciseness will find their way into future modules. But I think the final product will serve not just as the heart of this particular product, but as a surprisingly thorough guide to forest encounters in general, something you can use elsewhere, on other occasions. I am excluding boss-type monsters; you'll have to look elsewhere for the Tarrasque. But you'll find a lot of options for creatures — and things — that just happen to cross your party's path.

This process reminds me that one of your fellow backers once suggested that I write a module composed entirely of random event tables. It's an interesting design challenge, but one to which I would have to devote a lot more thought before I could do it. In the meantime, I think this is as close as I'm going to get: Your party spends a lot of time lost in a wilderness, and until it can find its way out, keep rolling, rolling, rolling and see what turns up. I'll try to keep it interesting.

Launch angle
about 4 years ago – Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 05:08:42 PM

Wow. Maybe I should preview my campaigns more often.

A tremendous first 24 hours to this campaign: 34 backers and we're more than halfway funded! I can't recall when we've gotten off to a better start. It's good to see so many old friends returning for another Ramen Sandwich RPG party, and a hearty "Hello!" to those of you backing one of our campaigns for the first time. All are welcome!

With a strong start, I can stop worrying about funding and focus on writing as the campaign goes forward. So that's what I'll do for the next four weeks. I'll pop in with updates from time to time, as I have come to enjoy sharing progress reports with you all. Something interesting or amusing pops up during the process, it's fun to share it with people who have a stake in the work.

In the meantime, I'll share with you an episode of Harold Buchanan's excellent gaming podcast, "Harold on Games," that I recorded with him late last year. A couple of the references are a bit out of date, as we recorded when the last Kickstarter campaign, the one for Oasis of the Elementals/Path to the Mizar Oasis, was live. But we mostly talked about my journey through gaming and writing/developing for roleplaying games, and the big picture is still very much the same as it was then. It turned out quite well; Harold is a deft interviewer who kept me on the rails for a solid hour, which is no mean feat. I recommend keeping up with his podcast, because he knows some of the most interesting people in the hobby and business of boardgames — I can't think of any other reason why I might be mentioned in the same breath as Martin Wallace, Mark Herman, Cole Wehrle, Gene Billingsley and Rodger MacGowan. We've all be guests on Harold's podcast and he's got plenty more loaded on Soundcloud and more than that being edited. Stay tuned!