Stephen Newton and daughter in front of DCC poster at Game Kastle in Santa Clara, CA

Hello readers,

So this weekend our FLGS, Game Kastle in Santa Clara, held another one of their Flea Markets. They hold these about three times per year and it’s always fun to see all the goodies. At these flea markets, I typically pickup old-school 1ED AD&D material to round out my “nostalgia collection”. At this particular event I picked up a boxed copy of Gygax’s World of Greyhawk game setting (although it was missing one of the big maps, so I got it cheap.) I also picked up a copy of the 3ED’s Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. The reason: my brother and I have done so much work on writing up the mythology, important NPCs, and geographies for the Princes of Kaimai modules (otherwise known as K1: Haunting of Larvik Island,  the soon to be released K2: Attack of the Frawgs and the still being written K3: “Larvik 2″) that I may actually write some sort of campaign guide for DM’s/judges that want to play as a series.) We have a wiki with all the pertinent info to maintain continuity as we write, so I ‘ll have to see how much work it is to organize for print.

I took this photo of me and my youngest daughter at Game Kastle in front of the cool DCC retro poster that they had hanging there.

But what about Attack of the Frawgs?

Frawgs is close, my friends. The lovely Catherine Harkins has started work on the layout and I’ve been busy proofreading the layout. As I mentioned earlier, we are waiting for DCC RPG to hit the shelves before we release our module–and as we can see here the pre-order books have already shipped! Cat has done a superb job as always and I’m looking forward to everyone getting a chance to read the module. It looks like it’s clocking in at 12 pages (including 1 map page, 1 OGL page and one ToC) so about 7,000 words of adventure goodness! Bring on the frawgs!

David’s latest offering has a soft spot in my heart, for here is what he had to say about it on his blog:

In the meantime, inspired by Thick Skull Adventure‘s upcoming Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure “Attack of the Frawgs!” (which I helped edit), I had an idea for a level 0 mini-adventure. I would have written it for the DCC ruleset, but all I have for now are the “beta” rules. I could have waited, I know… But I’m impatient. Once I get an idea in my head I need to get it done and out there.

 

And indeed, David did help me edit! Frawgs has actually had 4 sets of eyes look for typos during its various phases of development. And as always, because I’m constantly tweaking, any typos you find in the finished product should squarely be placed on my head.

But back to David, I recently helped him edit his recently released Items of Legend adventure supplement, and he was polite enough to make the offer of “…if there’s anything I can ever do to help!” Well, gentle readers, good proofreaders and editors are always hard to find and I know he knows his stuff.

And now for my moment of professional envy: apparently he wrote, designed the maps, performed graphic duties, and shipped A Heroe’s Journey essentially in a month! If only I had that guy’s productivity!

So, go pickup a copy of his new book(s) and when Frawgs is released (which according to Mr. Goodman we should be safe to launch in “April-ish”, make sure you pick that up too!

Wanted to give our loyal readers an update as to the fate of Attack of the Frawgs. The short of it is: as it was written for the Goodman Game’s Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game (DCCRPG), I will not be releasing the Frawgs before the DCCRPG is released to public. DCCRPG beta rules have been available for a while now–since June 2011 if memory serves–but Mr. Goodman has done a few significant updates to the rules since the beta was released. Most importantly–and I don’t believe I’m violating any NDA’s I have with GG buy saying this–the release of the product is very close. As an official licensee for DCC RPG, I’ve been receiving regular updates of the core rules manuscript, and recently I received “the final draft”. All of the text is there, all of the art is there–and the art is fabulous, the art alone will be worth the price of purchase–and now the layout is there too. I have confidence we’ll be seeing the release of DCCRPG in the April-ish timeframe.

So what about Frawgs?

The writing for Frawgs has been complete for several months now. I’ve sent the adventure to a few folks for proofreading (the most recent editor has been David Flor of Darklight Interactive!) and have been fixing typos and cleaning up text where I find it. I’ve completed the first round of the layout in Adobe InDesign, and our faithful graphic designer Ms. Catherine Harkins will be applying her magic next week. So in short, my goal has been to release Frawgs as closely as possible to the public release of DCCRPG and I think I’ll be able to meet that goal.

What is Attack of the Frawgs?

So what is Attack of the Frawgs anyway? Frawgs was actually born from the work I’d been on the sequel to The Haunting of Larvik Island (aka “Larvik 1”). One of the “things I would do differently” lessons I brought away from Larvik1 is that, if I were to do it again, I would’ve made Larvik 1 a smaller module. So when DCC RPG beta rules were announced, I was immediately intrigued and knew right away wanted to write for that system… and I thought, I should probably start small. Luckily, I had spent the previous several months writing the outline and mythology for “Larvik 2”, the second in the Princes of Kaimai series with my brother James Newton. The process for writing Larvik 2 created many new backstories and motives for the key historical characters in the series. With every location and villian we’d ask, “But why would they do that? What were their goals?”

But, of course, just because I’ve written a large backstory doesn’t mean I need to publish that into the adventure itself. I’m hoping the work James and I have done will make a tighter story for future Princes of Kaimai adventures.

So what about Frawgs?

Ultimately Frawgs is the product of judicious editing from Larvik 2 and the “start small” lessons learned from Larvik 1. I’ve been referring to it as “an alternate prequel to the sequel to Larvik 1”. The events of Frawgs take place after Larvik 1, but before the beginning of Larvik 2. Of course, all of these adventures can be played standalone, but player’s that play Frawgs will, hopefully, also be pleasantly rewarded with the continuity within Larvik 2 and/or Larvik 1.

So there you have it, friends, Frawgs is ready when DCCRPG is, it’s a bit of a prequel to Larvik2 (being written for DCC RPG) and is an all around sweet adventure! Looking forward to any and all feedback from any of the readers out there.

New advertisement for the upcoming adventure. As always, graphics by the fabulous Catherine Harkins.

Attack of the Frawgs update: My partner in crime, the lovely Ms. Catherine Harkins, is working on the one-sheet for the module for adverts. I’ve drawn 2 of the 3 maps which will be included using Campaign Cartographer 3. I’ve also done the first edit of the Adobe InDesign layout; once I do my first pass, Cat comes in and waves a magic wand and the InDesign file goes from looking like a plain-old Word doc to something magical. She’s like Cinderella’s fairy godmother that way. I’m confident all will be finished to allow us to align shipping with the Spring 2012 release of DCC RPG.

Haunting of Larvik Island (DCC Re-Master) update: as I mentioned in a previous post, I’m now re-mastering Haunting of Larvik Island (aka Larvik 1) for DCC RPG. This adventure (long ago in its infancy) started out as an AD&D adventure for my home group so going through the re-master for DCC is like slipping on a comfortable pair of jeans. I’ve converted all the monsters to DCC format, and now going through and and giving it fresh polish, and tweaking here and there as I’ve since done quite a bit more work on the mythology of this 3-1/2 module adventure arc. I’m hoping this can be complete by 3Q 2012.

“Larvik 2″: I’m still in the writing phase of this module, and it’s looking to be as big, if not a bit bigger, than Larvik 1 (so about 40 pages). The entire outline for the adventure written, and I’m about 1/2 through the writing of all the text. This one will probably be ready in 2H 2012 as well as I would still need to do all the playtesting, layout, etc.

Through it all, we continue to play DCC RPG on game night (including being lucky enough to playtest an upcoming GG adventure) and talking about what it is we like about in our favorite RPG adventures and how do we, “… do more of that!” as we write.

I’m very excited about the release DCC RPG, and I think you should be too.

In that time, I’ve had the great honor and pleasure of meeting many new fans and RPG industry folks. It’s been an exciting time and it’s the feedback and comments I get from customers, reviewers, friends, and other writers that make it all worthwhile. Each new sale, Twitter follower, article, review or blog mention fills me with a sense of pride and accomplishment, and for that I thank you all and hope that the year for you has been filled with health and happiness. I’m hoping that in 2012 I get to meet/chat/tweet/hangout with all of you again.

Again, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays my friends.

-Stephen-

Stephen is an alumni of The Old School

As I mentioned in this earlier blog post, I was very excited to read the announcement from Goodman Games when they announced DCC RPG. The golden years of my gaming experience had taken place during the late-70s through late-80s, mostly playing AD&D but with a mix of 2ED toward the later half. I DM’d with my player’s all the classic TSR modules (GDQ series, I-series, S-series, etc.) along with the classic Judges Guild modules; those adventures had a great influence on the type of module I enjoyed playing and would write myself. In the 90s and 2000s due to Real Life, moves, and marriages, or core group continued to play, but not nearly as often. I played a handful of 3ED and 3.5ED games, but never with the same frequency of the games I played in the 80s. During those lean times some of the modules that fascinated me the most were the Dungeon Crawl Classic modules–they targeted an audience that yearned for the “old-school feel” with quality writing and classic art and I was square in that demographic. As such, I garnered a respect and affinity for the GG products.

When, in 2008, I had made the decision to publish a D&D game, Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition was just being released. I spent much of 2008 and early 2009 playing and learning the 4ED rules. And while 4ED was a decidedly different game, I was committed to writing for the system because, well, I had so much of my youth tied up in the D&D brand going to any other system (e.g. Pathfinder) would have felt like abandoning an old friend. Between writing, playtesting and layout editing, I toiled for 18 months on The Haunting of Larvik Island and by the time it was released The Edition Wars was in full swing. And as someone who has now written for multiple systems, I can say with (with all due love and respect for all games) 4ED is a significantly different feeling game than previous editions. That does not make it better or worse in and of itself, but depending on what you enjoy in an RPG game it may appeal to a different set of skills. And let’s be clear that’s not a bad thing; I love Yahtzee, Chess, Risk and Stratego… they’re all different games but appeal to different moods. In the end, I just love to game.

Nice history lesson, but what does this have to do with DCC RPG?

DCC RPG appeals to me because it captures, for me, a sweet balance of rules, tone and story. It re-creates much of the traditional feel of the games I was weened on, but with the benefit of cleaning up some of the game mechanics. Magic in DCC is arcane, mysterious and most of all dangerous. DMs are encouraged to create monsters that are unique and location-specific, not common and well understood. All of these aspects of the game – the simplified rules and the tone, are well suited to the types of stories I like to write. For me, RPGs were another medium to write fantastic adventure fiction. When it came time to write for 4ED, I found I was spending quite a time working on balancing the encounters, ensuring I was adhering to game mechanics, creating spreadsheets of algorithms to track treasure parcel allocations, monster damage math, etc. When writing for DCC, the rules just seemed to get out of my way from the stories I want to tell.

And let’s not discount the support I’ve received from Goodman Games themselves! All through the the writing process, Joseph Goodman has been very supportive and interactive providing the DCC RPG third-party publishers (3PP) and the gaming community advice, support, frequent updates to the beta rules. GG has also helped to promote the 3PP products with forums and promotion on the game website. This has been a stark contrast from the GSL community which has not been updated by WotC since 2009 and who’s support comes almost exclusively from other generous community members outside of WotC.

So is it exclusively DCC RPG from now on for Thick Skull Adventures?

Unclear at this point. For certain I can say I’m going to be publishing more DCC RPG adventures. Attack of the Frawgs will obviously be released once DCC RPG is released generally to the public. I am also currently in the process of “re-mastering” The Haunting of Larvik Island for DCC RPG rules. This includes not only converting the monster, but also redefining the layout, and some of the pacing of the encounters.

The big question is for Larvik 2–which will not be its name, but we haven’t decided on a title yet. My bother, James D. Newton, and I are collaborating on this one and have been writing Larvik 2 on and off for about 6 months now. The outline for the adventure is complete as is the first ⅓ of the adventure. Before we wrote the outline for Larvik 2, we sat down for several meetings and I went through the large backstory for Larvik and the mythology I’d created for that adventure. Because we’d created such detailed backstory and mythology for Larvik 2, it made writing Frawgs much easier. Frawgs has essentially spawned (pun intended) as an “alternate prequel to the Larvik sequel” because the events that happen in Frawgs effectively happen simultaneously to the events that are happening on Larvik–trust me this will make more sense once Larvik 2 is released, but you can rest assure any of these adventures can be played standalone. Anyway, Larvik 2 was originally outlined as a 4ED adventure (in terms of encounter pacing) but given…

• how much I’m enjoying DCC RPG right now…
• the incredibly positive interaction I’ve received from GG and the other GG 3PPs and…
• that Smart Money is that D&D is currently being re-written into 5ED as we speak by Monte Cooke and others…

…means I will be switching to convert Larvik 2 straight to a DCC RPG adventure for its eventual release. As Larvik 2 is still at least 9 months away, I will re-assess the D&D landscape then and either convert to 4ED (or most likely 5ED) at that time.

Until then, thanks again for reading, and I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice or any other ritual you choose to celebrate or not celebrate.

I’m not sure if I’ve posted this before, but I effectively leapfrogged 3rd Edition D&D completely. In fact, most of the adventures I played for that rule set was using online games, specifically Atari’s Temple of Elemental Evil and Bioware’s Icewind Dale II. I bring this up to make this point: the bulk of my D&D experience was based on 1ED rules. In fact, the The Haunting of Larvik Island has its origins in a small 4-page homegrown module (entitled simply, “Larvik Island”) that Matt Murdock and I wrote for 1ED back in 2004.

I made the decision to publish a D&D adventure right when 4ED rules were released – essentially I started writing in July 2008, and the 4ED rules were released just a few months before that. I spent the first 6 months refining the “Larvik” story as well as learning the 4ED rules and best practices by reading and playing modules from Wizards of the Coast, Goodman Games, and Expeditious Retreat Press. Like many I went through a bit of a culture shock reading those modules. Many of them looked and felt very different from the modules I played and loved in my youth. But there were some that to me captured the spirit of the type of module I wanted to write. One such example was, ironically, Goodman Game’s The Isle of the Sea Drake. [Side Note: I was over halfway through writing “Haunting of Larvik Island when I purchased Sea Drake and I thought to myself, “Uh, oh, people will make comparisons” but after reading it I realized aside from them both taking place on an island that happens to have dangerous denizens I believe the similarities mostly end there.]

Still, as I wrote “The Haunting of Larvik Island” I was very nervous that the market wouldn’t feel it didn’t feel “4ED-ish” enough. The first half of the module is a big island with lots of monsters, but encounters that can be played, by design, in any order.

Well, the reviews are coming in now and I’m reading some things that give me lots of encouragement. Two reviewers in particular really got what I was going for:

“…And while the story line of the main quest in The Haunting of Larvik Island is somewhat linear, with encounters that must occur in a certain order to gain clues to the next encounter or to solve the quest, there is, thankfully, more to the adventure. The island does contain a few encounters which are not required to solve the location of the hidden treasure or the side-quests, which the player-characters can choose to divert to at a whim. This gives the adventure an overall “sand-box” feel, and certainly make exploring the island more interesting….
-Neuroglyph Games Review-

As well as…

The entire adventure is a pleasant meld of an ‘old-style’ approach to adventure design coupled with the precise detail for each encounter that the D&D 4e mechanics provide.
-Megan Robertson Review-

In addition, I have started seeing the following types of comments from D&D designers themselves, specifically the WotC’s upcoming Madness at Gardmore Abbey which blogofholding.com described as, “Coming soon: Gardmore Abbey. Many encounters have non-combat options. Getting away from linear adventures. More sandboxy. Contains Deck of Many Things. four 32 page books, 2 maps, dungeon tiles deck, monster tokens.”

This gives me encouragement. I obviously have not seen Gardmore Abbey yet, but I do like the idea that folks are interested in non-linear story paths and non-combat encounters. I look forward to seeing the format WotC uses to write up such encounters as I do think they have great production values and editing in their products.

Larvik 2

As for me, “Larvik 2” will actually go even further in the “open-ended” way that the adventure can be played. I used to describe Haunting of Larvik Island to folks as I wanted it to feel like the original TSR’s I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City. With “Larvik 2” I believe it’s going to feel structurally a bit more like H1: Village of Hommlet. or Judges Guild’s Dark Tower. It is shaping up to have two main sections Part 1 being a city-based adventure that is filled with several combat, non-combat and skill encounters and Part 2 being a traditional dungeon-crawl with he bad boss monster at the end. My co-writer and brother, Dan Newton, have also come up with a very detailed backstory which includes several fighting political factions. I’m very interested and excited to see how the player’s react during playtesting.

Beware: will monster histories, character motivation and area mythology become Too Much Plot?

I know there is a fine balance between creating rich character motives and “forcing plot” upon players. I asked on Twitter “Can an adventure ever have too much plot?” and received several colorful responses. One from @GeekyLyndsay who said, “Oh my goodness yes. When the players are punished for going off the Sacred Plot, your #dnd game has too much plot.” And @warfteiner who said, “sweet bleeding Christ on a stick, yes! The PCs should be the plot, not pursuant to it”. And, finally, @TheAngryDM colorfully added, “If the players could just learn to just followed the damned plot, maybe they wouldn’t need to be punished.” Well, spoken, sir!

I would paraphrase that these three are all providing testimony that when player’s feel like they’re being shoe-horned through a pre-arranged plot they will not enjoy the experience. The module’s “secret sauce” needs be balanced writing so the DM reading the adventure knows why everyone is doing what they’re doing, keep the writing interesting so that the DM doesn’t feel like she’s wasting her money as she reads it, and write encounters in such a way such that can be shuffled around so that the DM can use straight from the book, or improvise on game day. To me it essentially comes down to a marketing and writing/editing challenge: I know that DM’s want open-ended options, I personally believe a well-thought out and designed backstory and mythology helps to create such an adventure, and hopefully the DM who eventually interprets my writing for her players will do so in such at a way that it doesn’t feel like Too Much Plot. I’m also hoping playtesting and early previews will help us find that delicate balance.

Let’s talk!
If any readers/bloggers/tweeters have any thoughts on open-ended adventures vs. linear storytelling, favorite D&D modules that had good balance between backstory and adventure, the please feel free to comment here, on our Facebook page, or dropping me an email at snake@thickskulladventures.com

by Ed McIntosh

Impressions regarding the module “The Haunting of Larvik Island”. Review published on ThickSkullAdventures.com with Ed McIntosh’s permission.

What could be improved:

• The back cover includes giant seagulls, kinda cheesy. (Okay, they are supposed to be Albatrosses, but they don’t look heroic either way.)
• Felt back cover has better art than the front cover
• Some typos in a few places of text
• Hmmmm, so the mysterious caverns are usually waterlogged. Don’t we have spells that allow water-breathing? I don’t think 1st level characters do, so the story works.
• Biggest regret: zombie goblins were mentioned in the lore, but I never saw them in the encounters. Hopefully I missed that. Maybe we should just assume that some or all of the zombies are goblin zombies.

What I liked!

• I like the location and everything about the players handouts
• I really like the Zombie Goblin idea, very cool. Same with feral goblins.
• I really like the Lojan and the Malmo bandits story and encounters, very cool.
• I like how the Albatrosses ate the Goblin camp and left a mess, and how the Goblins set up an ambush nearby.
• Zombie Bulls: an idea whose time has come
• I like the trapped box with the ironic healing potion inside, which whoever got hit by the trap will need.
• Cool Mattor’s journal description, very usable and entertaining.
• Squidopedes are a cool idea.
• Chaos waves are cool.
• Clear maps, good encounter explanations.

Summary:
Overall, I love it. I don’t know how long it would take to run or how difficult the encounters would be, but it looks better than H2 or H3 from WoTC.