All right, it’s well past time to start writing newsletters again. I’ll discuss the big picture in this one, and then we’ll start doing the usual mix of philosophy, slice of life and game design starting in next issue.
My hiatus project, damn Muster
So I didn’t write the newsletter for the last six months because I got frustrated with the slow pace I was on in finishing my book, Muster. Long-time readers are no doubt well familiar with the project. In the spring I basically had the book manuscript finished, but as we can plainly see in hindsight, it still took half a year after that for me to be happy enough with it to publish. I imagine it’d have been even longer if I was writing the newsletter over that time as well.
Anyway, here’s Muster; it’s been up for digital download for a couple of weeks not. As per the plan, it’s CC licensed and free. I’m distributing it at DrivethruRPG myself to dodge server expenses, but feel free to put it up for download elsewhere if you’d like. And of course, check it out if you haven’t yet.
I’m fairly happy with the book now at the far end of the project, and the initial reviews have been encouraging. For some it’s old news (it’s a beginner primer!), but most readers I’ve heard back from have apparently liked the ideas and perspectives. There’s already been a thousand downloads (free product, yeah yeah — but I think some of them will read it, too!), so I guess we could say that the admittedly humble publicity goals of the project have already been achieved. Muster was always intended to be primarily a crystallized summa of my perspectives on old school D&D, released without expectations to the world; insofar as the book’s going to do anything, we’ll see the actual impact in a few years more than a few weeks.
I’m still waiting for the proof copy from Drivethru’s POD printer to get print copies going; those will be available at cost to those wanting the book on paper, once I make sure that the proof’s good. Aside from that, I’m fairly close to getting to wash my hands from the project.
So what’s next on the docket
All readers might not know this, but I have been keeping a sort of “project board” on the front page of this very blog for the last few years. I don’t update it constantly over every little thing, but I seem to manage keeping it up to date on the deep movements of my creative work. So if you start wandering about what I’m doing at a given time, you can just go there and see for yourself as to what I should be doing next. I feel like this has some real utility; I have friends, but I don’t really do social media, or like call or write letters or whatever it is that non-hermits do, so sometimes it can seem a bit like I’ve just disappeared off the edge of the Earth. Well, look at my project board to see where I fell off.
Reaffirm the Newsletter commitment
First, though, before continuing with the project board clearance, I need to get back into the saddle with this newsletter business. A half year of hiatus is serious business, it casts doubt upon the fundamental premise: do I actually need to keep writing the newsletter at all? Seems like I got by pretty well without it over the last six months, even published a book. Is the newsletter a pointless burden?
I pretty much concluded that I’m not seriously going to entertain stopping with the newsletter now; the hiatus is the wrong reason to quit. If I’m going to, it’ll be consciously because the institution no longer serves, not because of an incidental crisis situation. In the meantime I still hope that regular newslettering will keep me in writing tune and thinking more consciously, and ultimately producing more than if I didn’t do it.
Because I’m “late” on the newsletter, I’m going to be going double-time for some time on it, with two weekly issues. As long-time readers might remember, I’ve been struggling with making the newsletter shorter and snappier, more like 2k words than 10k words per issue; this will hopefully be easier at double-pace. If everything goes well, by the spring I’ll have mastered the art of just dashing out some quick notes instead of spending an entire day crafting an overly ambitious essay masquerading as simple diary entry.
Newsletter content will continue basically the same, albeit with particular emphasis on play reporting: we’ve been playing Coup de Main in Greyhawk through the last half year, which means that I have scores of old sessions to cover here. I don’t really expect the occasional reader to pore over those, but I feel that a consistent campaign log is useful for the actually continuing campaign; we use these reports for reference.
So yeah, expect a lot of rambling session-by-session rundown of what’s going on in Coup. Other topics insofar as they occur. I guess the double-time pace will continue until I’ve gotten through the backlog of campaign documentation.
Coup de Main in Greyhawk
I’ll keep up the habit of discussing the campaign schedule here in the newsletter as well. Never know if somebody interested in trying out the game might stumble on the blog. As reminder, Coup is an open campaign, you can come try it out with us if you’d like. We play on the “RPG Theory” Discord server, ask for an invite if you’re not there already. No skill thresholds or anything, just come in and try it out; we’re perfectly capable of having the talk if somebody isn’t compatible with the game.
Sunday Basic session #6 is a spinoff campaign fork that plays next on Sunday 13.11., starting around 16:00 UTC. Teemu currently GMs the time-slot and offers a dungeoneering-focused “Basic” style game set in the Duchy of Urnst. Rules and character stables and so on are basically compatible with the “main” game.
Monday Coup session #108 is scheduled for Monday 14.11., starting around 16:00 UTC. I’m currently GMing, and we’re doing the usual, strategic full panoply sandbox around the Selintan Valley region of Flanaess.
As you can see from the above, the game’s been chugging along during my hiatus. It’ll take me some time to catch up in after action reports, but I’ll get there.
Coup de Main #84
Back in the spring, the Monday game was solidly toiling away at the involved array of adventures in the Gnarley Forest, with the adventuring party of the Knights Temp. The autumn had arrived in the campaign calendar, but winter was still a ways away. I’d conducted the last session (the Easter Special I discussed in an earlier newsletter) with an unrelated party of adventurers at Castle Greyhawk on account of Tuomas’s schedule, but now it was again time to return to the main course. As usual, I have a diligent and verbose report on this from Tuomas, so I’ll just let him continue from here:
Knights Temp enjoy some well-earned rest and plan their next adventure. It is almost Brewfest and Stone seems more interested in beer than adventuring at the moment (player absent), so planned griffon mountain expedition has to wait. Rest of the Knights are itching for something to do so they decide to go poke around nearby logging camp and review rumors about fishmen in the lake.
The camp foreman Rigdorf, over seven-foot-tall giant of a man, confirms the rumors. Fishmen have been seen lurking about their camp and even attacking the loggers on occasion. He pays 1000 gp if someone can make sure that the attacks stop. Knights Temp are interested.
A thing about running adventure modules: they have damn ridiculous economic ideas, what with the authors running with a fairly loose mutual understanding of what the value of a gold piece is. I suppose this is either a) a fairly high level adventure, b) the fishmen don’t have any treasure, or c) the author is a horrible munchkin. Whichever is the case, that’s the richest logger I’ve ever seen… Wait no, duh: he’s just making promises here, the Knights actually believing the fucker confused me for a bit. Obviously there’s no thousand gold pieces involved here.
Rigdorf shows the Knights the last place the fishmen had been seen observing the logging camp few days ago; Kermit picks up the tracks. Knights follow them to Misty Lake shore couple of miles away from the logging camp and also just south of Illmire. The tracks lead into the water.
Knights set up camp and watch post at the forest edge to keep an eye on the lake during night. During the first night they manage to see couple of fishy faces peeking out of the lake amidst reeds.
Next morning Knights start to plan what to do. They haven’t found obvious fishman lair at the shore and all tracks lead to water, so they must be underwater? Next an ambush is planned, lay trap and ambush a fishman patrol when they are on the shore and possibly question one. Maybe try to search the woods nearby if there is some holy site of the fishmen that the locals have disturbed causing the aggression? In general, Knights ponder why the fishmen have started attacking all of a sudden since their attacks are a recent development.
Next few days are spent planning ambushes and scouring the woods. Ambushes produce nothing; Knights don’t see any fishmen on dry land, though they see more tracks of them moving elsewhere in the forest. Magnus uses his mystic senses and manages to spot an unusual aura on Rigdorf when they are in the logging camp one day.
Darn, the logger foreman is a fairy! Still not believing in the thousand GP, but at least he’ll have fairy gold to confuse the adventurers.
They take a small break and have beer with Rigdorf. They learn lots of interesting things, both from Rigdorf and from Aelfstain who also uses his mystic senses. Rigdorf is over hundred years old! Apparently, his axe has divine power of some long forgotten rural deity that grants him immortality while he stays in the logging camp. He has become a father figure for all the loggers, but he has grown tired of his long life and wishes to die but he first wants to make sure that the loggers are safe. He doesn’t really know anything about the fishmen or any holy sites of theirs in the forest they could have disturbed with their woodcutting. All he can speculate is that many miners turned to logging recently when the mine was closed, and logging activity increased after that.
So what we learned here is that I am bad at predicting fantasy conceits in adventure modules. That’s just weird, I didn’t expect a Favoured Soul just whiling away the days as a camp warden for some loggers. I guess he could conceivably have a thousand GP tucked away, albeit surely from sources unrelated to the logging stuff.
In the forest, more fishmen tracks. Kermit determines that the fishmen have been picking mushrooms and other bounty of the forest. This gives the Knights an idea that they could build a signal pyre on the shore and present offerings for the fishmen in hopes of attracting them out of the water so they could communicate with them. Pyre and offering is prepared and Aelfstain assumes lotus position close by with rest of Knights waiting in the forest just in case the fishmen get aggressive. First night doesn’t lure the fishmen out of water, only peeking out to check the situation. Knight persevere and continue burning their pyre next day even though most of them are really tired after staying up whole previous night. They even meet few fishermen from Illmire and chat a bit, but the fishers don’t know anything more about the elusive fishmen.
Finally more fishmen appear to check out the situation; Aelfstain actively shows them the offerings and they finally come out of the water to pick them up. Aelfstain and the fishmen try to talk to each other but neither understand each other. Peaceful contact was made, and the Knights return to Illmire tired but with new information on the situation.
State of the Productive Facilities
I did take a bit of a break after finishing Muster. It was mostly because I contracted the darn Covid super-flu and spent like three weeks running through a wondrous set of symptoms, but admittedly finishing with Muster and taking a bit of a break was also a factor. Now I’m apparently gearing up to continue working/writing/whatever again, seeing this newsletter.
As discussed earlier, I’ll probably just focus on getting the newsletter on track for the next week or so. Hopefully build just a bit of a reserve to keep with the planned twice-weekly schedule. After that, we’ll see if anything else might occur.
Good to see you continuing the newsletter. I look forward to it, not least because it doesn’t disappear into the aether like Discord discussions do
I have considered on occasion that maybe I should start doing the “this is what we talked about in Discord this week” thing in the newsletter. I did that for our Finnish saloon for the first year of the newsletter, but stopped doing it as more of our chatting moved to the English-language Discord server. It has some merit, just takes the effort to make notes about topics as they come and go.