Sine Nomine/Kevin, I know you read these forums. I've got some demands.

How about releasing some more material for Other Dust? Wrap up the supplement treadmill for Stars Without Number - which is an Rpg that pales in comparison to OD. Call it quits on Red Tide/Labyrinth Lord. Send Spears of the Dawn out to pasture. Cease development on any undisclosed material, and...

Get back to writing some quality post-apoc material. It's criminal that you only have a core book, 1 adventure, and some promo material for what is clearly your best game line. You've got craptons of releases for SWN and LL, but you let OD lay fallow? Inconceivable!

Get to it.

(Tongue removed from cheek)

I love it when I get an e-mail notice for a new Sine Nomine release. No one else ever calls me "Munificent Patron."

Don't listen to this guy, though. Red Tide and SWN are da bomb. I don't even play SWN but I raid it for ideas to use with Traveller. And I think ACKS and Red Tide are a match made in Heaven (An Echo, Resounding notwithstanding).

More everything from Sine Nomine i say!

Quote from: Broken-Serenity;658669More everything from Sine Nomine i say!

Damn right. We are 11 sessions into an SWN campaign and its fantastic. Our DM started with his own material but now we are going through the Hard Light supplement and having a blast trying to work out what is going on with the Ushan.

I've honestly been surprised at how well Other Dust has sold, all things considered. Post-apoc is an even smaller genre than sci-fi, but the game's still managed to move respectable numbers. The main thing that's holding me back from doing more with it right now is the gated nature of additional supplements. Anything too OD-specific is only going to be all that exciting to people who've already bought OD.

One of the reason I write everything for the SWN system or Labyrinth Lord is to try and sidestep some of this gating. You can use Other Dust seamlessly with SWN and Spears of the Dawn, for example, so I can at least hope to appeal to people who like one of the three and are interested in adding chunks of a second to their game. The other thing I try to focus on is system-neutral tools and GM resources that can be easily ripped by those who don't especially care for the base system. Going too deep into a given game makes it tougher to keep this kind of broad connectedness.

But with Suns of Gold just awaiting print proofing, I think I've had enough of sci-fi for a bit. Next up is something lighter and easier to help clear my head while I work on my eventual SWN fantasy game. This next piece is going to be an SWN horror game, but one structured to support the idea of a sandbox horror campaign. Instead of locking investigators into a Masks of Nyarlathotep or Horror on the Orient Express-type adventure path, I'm interested in thinking about the kind of tools and framework a GM would need to run a sandbox setup where multiple Bad Things are going on in a region and the PCs will or will not sort them out as their investigations and choices determine.

In particular, I'm wondering what kind of tools a GM is going to need to best facilitate the creation of horror. How do you deal with multiple cults and monster infestations in an area responding to PC actions in a way that makes good adventures? How do you bring a mechanical representation of decaying sanity and mental stability to an old-school system like SWN? How do you import genre tropes like "monsters laugh at rifle rounds while PCs can die from a jackknife swipe"? And most of all, how do you all this stuff in a way that can be easily hooked into the SWN system or some other old-school game?

It's been fun playing with potential answers to these things. For the weapons trope, for example, I just use standard SWN HP and damage rules, but with the addition of a 1d6 "slaughter die" that's rolled with each damage roll. If it rolls a 6+, you quadruple the damage of the hit. Monsters are immune to slaughter dice, and the slaughter dice _they_ roll are d8s, d10s, or the occasional d20s. Are you playing a Fearless Monster Hunter style of game where PCs are supposed to be able to fight without risking an instagib, or playing classic fantasy D&D with these new monsters and campaign tools added in? Then just drop the slaughter die.

It's a fun relief after two months of turning Space Keynesian Cyborg Stimulus into playable adventure hooks. I'm giving myself two months to write it and then I'll likely throw it up to Kickstarter the art. In the meanwhile, I might well put out another freebie for Other Dust, possibly detailing another Crazed cult or some hook that can be used for an SWN campaign as well.

Quote from: SineNomine;658755The main thing that's holding me back from doing more with it right now is the gated nature of additional supplements. Anything too OD-specific is only going to be all that exciting to people who've already bought OD.

Well, that's a shame. I think that OD has been your best implementation of your SWN system to-date. And has the most evocative setting as well.

QuoteThis next piece is going to be an SWN horror game, but one structured to support the idea of a sandbox horror campaign. Instead of locking investigators into a Masks of Nyarlathotep or Horror on the Orient Express-type adventure path, I'm interested in thinking about the kind of tools and framework a GM would need to run a sandbox setup where multiple Bad Things are going on in a region and the PCs will or will not sort them out as their investigations and choices determine.

IIRC, Chaosium's line of Lovecraft Country books (Return to Dunwich, Escape from Innsmouth, Tales of the Miskatonic Valley, etc.) provided a large sandbox, in a sense. They didn't really give you explicit sandbox tools, but they detailed regions - with adventures - keying and stocking buildings from Lovecraft's infamous towns.

QuoteIn the meanwhile, I might well put out another freebie for Other Dust, possibly detailing another Crazed cult or some hook that can be used for an SWN campaign as well.

I think it would be interesting if you did continue your Codex of the New Earth series. Detail more Crazed or potentially other  mover-and-shakers in the OD setting.

Quote from: K Peterson;658761IIRC, Chaosium's line of Lovecraft Country books (Return to Dunwich, Escape from Innsmouth, Tales of the Miskatonic Valley, etc.) provided a large sandbox, in a sense. They didn't really give you explicit sandbox tools, but they detailed regions - with adventures - keying and stocking buildings from Lovecraft's infamous towns.

I think Chaosium's done a superb job with Lovecraftiana over the years- which is one of the reasons I don't want to walk over the same strangely-angled terrain. I don't want to dish up another interpretation of Cthulhu- I want to give people the tools to make their own mythos, whatever it may be. The Lovecraft Country books are great for providing a sandbox of a kind with region descriptions and adventures attached, but I want to see what I can do towards mechanically and structurally supporting a GM in creating a living, breathing ecosystem of abominations that can generate properly-themed adventure content. Part of the goal is to use this as a conceptual testbed for trying out certain ideas for my eventual fantasy SWN.

QuoteI think it would be interesting if you did continue your Codex of the New Earth series. Detail more Crazed or potentially other  mover-and-shakers in the OD setting.

I think that's most likely to be the next freebie on hand. I've got a rough sketch of the Wraith's cult in my notes right now, since I suspect some GMs would like a more defined way to introduce psychic PCs into their game.

You simply have no shame in fulfilling my OSR desires. No shame! What do you think we are? Devo? We are humans, with finite time, funds, and awesome meters!

I will defo buy a horror and fantasy iteration of your rules set.
I'm currently running OD, with SWN sort of bolted on top sometimes.

More material please!

Horror could be fun.

I still want a semi-generic set of fantasy sandbox tools ala OD or SWN.

Quote from: Piestrio;658898Horror could be fun.

I still want a semi-generic set of fantasy sandbox tools ala OD or SWN.

Red Tide is easy to genericize.

It would probably be easy for Kevin to genericize, rebind, and sell as well though

I've been working on a fantasy version of SWN for the past year, in lulls between my other projects. It's taken longer than my other work largely because I need to do something with it that hasn't already been beaten to death by 451 other retro-inspired games. If it was just a matter of blending Red Tide and SWN I could knock it out in a month plus art delays, but I want to do it up special-like.

Essentially, I'm trying to translate some of the airier theorizing about sandbox prep and operation into more concrete, specific tools and procedures. Whenever I sit down to write material, I always try to focus on the actual GM at the table and what it is he's actually supposed to do with what I've just given him. What's his creative process going to be? How exactly is he going to translate what I tell him into 5 hours of entertainment with his friends? If I give this material to someone who doesn't like sandboxing and doesn't like my system, are they still going to be able to be productive with it without granting me a particle of authorial charity? A good GM can make Middle Earth out of a bent stick and a lump of chert, but there is remarkably little reason for anyone to give me money if I can't give them something better than that.

In particular, I'm thinking about the divide between ad-hoc content creation in the middle of a session and the more leisurely creation that GMs do before and between sessions. The same tools that work just fine when you have a half-hour to play around with things are borderline worthless when your party charges in a random direction mid-session. For tools intended for use mid-game, the GM should be able to put his hands on them with no more than five or ten seconds delay and finish any process associated with using them in no more than five or ten more. I can bend a little for tools meant to frame an entire situation with the stats and any maps necessary for adjudication- call it five or ten minutes tops to generate a dungeon/town/noble court sufficient to keep the players occupied for at least a couple of hours.

So what are these at-the-table tools, what do they look like, and how are they distributed? Obviously, a conventional paper tome is going to be almost useless for this unless it's got an incredibly good layout. Just the time needed to find the relevant section would be unwieldy at the table, and if you're in need of multiple elements you're going to be flipping back and forth. And once you establish the data you need, how do you present it? Sure, if the book's full of default maps you can leave it open to that page, but then you're flipping back and forth between that and any other resources you're using in the book. The obvious solution is some kind of tablet app, but again, a conventional wiki-type thing isn't going to be able to bring together all your data cleanly without some heavy UI thinking.

Conversely, these same fast-at-the-table tools could be used just as easily by a leisurely-prep-time GM to whip up some content, possibly with greater elaboration or tweaking. I might publish them all in the core book, but have a supplementary tablet app or tiddlywiki focused on table use. It's all blisteringly complicated to get right, and I've been wrestling with it for a long time. Once I figure out exactly how I want to approach the problem, I can start populating my choice with the tools I intend to use for fantasy sandboxing.

Quote from: SineNomine;659004In particular, I'm thinking about the divide between ad-hoc content creation in the middle of a session and the more leisurely creation that GMs do before and between sessions. The same tools that work just fine when you have a half-hour to play around with things are borderline worthless when your party charges in a random direction mid-session. For tools intended for use mid-game, the GM should be able to put his hands on them with no more than five or ten seconds delay and finish any process associated with using them in no more than five or ten more. I can bend a little for tools meant to frame an entire situation with the stats and any maps necessary for adjudication- call it five or ten minutes tops to generate a dungeon/town/noble court sufficient to keep the players occupied for at least a couple of hours.

It sounds like this is going to be worth the wait, Kevin. The D&D style fantasy version of the SWN stuff is the one I'm most looking forward to as well (though in the meantime, Red Tide does well by me), and it sounds like you're giving it the care it deserves. I would say that I use a lot of different tools myself at the game table, including tablet apps, books, and so on, and I still find printed books pretty quick to use once I get used to them and have my bookmarks in place. The only thing faster that I use regularly would be some SRD apps on my phone, but those are only useful for information that is basically short format: one paragraph or so (like a spell, a feat, concise monster statblock or NPC, etc.). Anything longer and it's faster to just the printed page. Lately I have started keeping NPCs in Evernote (a friend's idea), and with the right tagging and folders, that's proven very quick and easy to use as well. It helps that I'm running the Fantasy Trip, so everything I need to know about a character (mechanics-wise) fits on my phone's screen all at once.

I still find that it's hard to beat loose leaf college ruled paper for GM notes -- something I know you mention in your books as a way of organizing notes. They're so very easy to organize, reorganize, and modify or replace when needed.

In any case, I look forward to the fantasy version of SWN.

Very interesting stuff. Also, given that right now Raiders of R'lyeh intends to be a pro-sandbox Cthulhu game.... must be something in the air.

RPGPundit

It's steamboat time for sandbox horror, evidently. But I think the two will play together well- my effort is going to be Lovecraftian, but explicitly about building your own mythos and horrific seting rather than using Lovecraft's originals, so I expect someone could use the content from both mashed into their same game with minimal fuss.