Zine Quest Interview 4 - Ava

My interview series continues with renewed fervor now that Zine Quest has begun. If you have an active or upcoming ZQ project and would like to schedule an interview, feel free to contact me through email or Discord, both linked on the sidebar.

Archon: Would you like to introduce yourself and your project?

Ava: Yeah, sure. I'm Ava, I am barely a person, but I have spent the past 5 years noodling on a little game called Errant and it has now been unleashed upon the world. It's a pretty classic fantasy RPG, but where it differentiates itself I think is in the wide range of procedures it gives you for dealing with game situations like chases, duels, lockpicking, domain management and downtime in ways that are fast, simple, meaningful, and fun.

Archon: Do you have an example of one of these procedures that you think exemplifies the system?

Ava: I think lockpicking is a fairly good one. Instead of just rolling a skill check, players open locks by selecting one of three options (Tap, Turn, Twist). A lock requires 3 correct actions to pick; no two actions are ever used in a row. If you pick a wrong action, the lock gets Stiff, and your next wrong action will make it Jam, rendering it unopenable.

Archon: How modular are these procedures? Like for lockpicking, does Errant have advice or options on how to make more complex locks?

Ava: Yeah, it does give ways to make more complex locks. I think most of the procedures are pretty modular; the book explicitly call out adjusting or removing things based on the needs of your game. The Downtime Turn procedures though give the game a lot of its specific flavour, in my opinion, so I reckon those are worth giving a shot out of the box as is. Some things that I describe as procedures, like tracking different types of turns and rolling an Event Dice each turn to see what happens (e.g. if there's a random encounter, if you need to rest, if you use up some supplies) are pretty core to the game and changing them would have knock-on effects throughout the whole system. I go into this pretty in-depth in my last blog post, the second in my series of deep dives into the design of Errant.

Archon: It's interesting to see someone discussing the reasons and goals they have when designing a game, like you do in those blog posts. Do you think that made it easier to work on Errant?

Ava: The blog posts are largely retrospective, I don't think they've shaped the design of Errant much at all. Just describing my thought processes and specific decisions I made.

Archon: Ah, alright.

Some old RPGs that could be described as "procedure-heavy" are now often seen as overly-complex and disconnected from themselves - like a dozen minigames with no connective tissue. Does Errant do anything to address this, or was it not a worry during development?

Ava: I've tried to take some measures to unify things. There is a core mechanic in Errant which is a d20 roll equal to or under a given attribute and above a Difficulty Value. Then there are the 4 turn types: Travel Turns, Exploration Turns, Initiative Turns, and Downtime Turns. On all of these Turns except Initiative Turns you roll 1 or more Event Dice to determine what happens. So most of the procedures in Errant refer back to one or both of these foundational aspects of the game: something either takes a turn to do and/or requires a check of some kind.

Archon: That really does seem like it solves the problem to me.

Looking at your pitch, you seem to have a very large team (12 in all) for a Zine Quest project. How did you manage to get together so many people for what I think is your first Kickstarter?

Ava: I am lucky to be part of a fairly tight knit community of creators and friends who have graciously offered to help me along with the project for next to no compensation. As Nick, my layout designer put it, "small art only survives because small artists help one another."

Archon: That's wonderful. I'm happy you're getting the help your project needs to be how you want it.

And speaking of help, Exalted Funeral is running distribution for Errant. Do you have any advice for people who want to work with a publisher or distributor?

Ava: Truth be told getting to work with Exalted Funeral is entirely the results of the efforts of my publishing partner, Chris Mennell. But from what I've seen: just email people, it never hurts to try.

Archon: There's still more than a week left in your campaign, and it does look very well-run, but do you think you've learned anything important from it yet?

Ava: One thing that seems completely obvious in retrospect but I didn't realise was possible was to partner with multiple distributors to better serve international customers. Going forward that's definitely going to be my M.O.; it hurts seeing how high non-U.S. shipping prices are.

Archon: Errant has already gone far past your goal - will this motivate you to aim higher with your next project?

Ava: I have very lofty ambitions for Errant volumes 3 and 4, which will likely have to be brought down to reality at some point, but yes. I'm aiming to take whatever money from this that doesn't go into the hands of artists, editors, designers, and consultants on this project and put it towards making future Errant products as crassly and absurdly gorgeous as they can be.

Archon: That's all the questions I have - is there anything else you'd like to talk about?

Ava: There may or may not be a bonus Errant adventure involving a Goose dragon in the works...

If you want to hear more, come down and chat in our community discord!

Archon: Thanks for your time, have a good evening.

Zine Quest Interview 3 - kahva

My interview series continues with renewed fervor now that Zine Quest has begun. If you have an active or upcoming ZQ project and would like to schedule an interview, feel free to contact me through email or Discord, both linked on the sidebar.

A: Good afternoon! Would you like to introduce yourself and your project?

K: Sure! I'm kahva. I've been playing OSR games since about 2018, particularly GLOG and Into the Odd - or something in between the two. My project is Boots Full of Mud, an overland travel procedure accompanied by two topographic maps.

A: What are the basics of that travel procedure, and what do you think it gives a game that a standard crawl doesn't?

K: The foundation of the procedure is the watch - a unit of time roughly equal to four hours. Each watch has three phases: weather, planning, and resolution. The party can accomplish one activity per watch - think things like trekking, resting, or delving into a dungeon. My focus has been on creating rules that are simple, easy to remember, and easy to reference when that's necessary; while still taking advantage of all the information afforded by topographic maps.

Compared to other travel procedures the most obvious difference is the ability to take advantage of all that information. I've always been fascinated by maps, to the point of approaching them like art pieces - displaying them on my walls like you would a painting. Hexcrawls and pointcrawls have never scratched the same itch that examining a detailed map of a region and plotting your course does.

A: Speaking of those maps - if you aren't using hexes or points, how does your system track distance?

K: All the maps include a scale - 1 centimeter is equal to 5 kilometers, for example. When using physical maps I like to get a piece of string and mark it in appropriate increments. If playing online, the best solution is to use a VTT that has a measuring tool (roll20 does, as do many others). 

I don't sweat the details much, though. Especially when playing online winding paths can be a difficult to measure accurately, so I'll usually just get a quick estimate and call it good.

A: Your KS has a tier with example maps, but is there anything in the zine itself to help people make their own?

K: No. There are some tools to aid in creating dynamic weather and encounter generation, but nothing for map creation.

It is worth mentioning, though, that the rules can be used with basically any map you pick up - be it a real world US Geological Survey map of your area, an atlas-style map of a region, or even a quick sketch you threw together 10 minutes before the game. 

You can even use this procedure with a standard hex- or pointcrawl with just a few tweaks.

Interior mockup not final and subject to change

A: That seems like it may be more helpful anyway.

About these maps - they're more of an endeavor than a lot of ZQ projects (where you're just mailing the zine and you're done). What made you decide you needed to release physical maps?

K: The maps are really the core of the project for me - I created the rules to support the maps, not the other way around. I love the experience of rolling out a big map of an unfamiliar place and making sense of it, plotting your course, making decisions. I wanted to bring that to my RPGs, so the maps came first. Then I needed to create rules to support them. The big challenge there was making the rules smooth enough they wouldn't bog down play, while still making use of all the detail a topographic map provides.

A: In that case, let's keep talking about the maps.

Unless you reach your stretch goal, you're making 2 to release with the Kickstarter - what are they?

K: The first is a sparsely-populated subarctic island. I imagine it could exist somewhere between the Faroe Islands and Iceland in our world.  It's got a spine of tall mountains, lots of rivers, and a few mostly disconnected settlements. It's pretty close to final - I'll rename things, tweak some topography here and there, maybe adjust some colors - but nothing too major.

The second is a humid equatorial island. I imagine it could exist somewhere in the Indian Ocean or off the coast of Central America. It's got broad river valleys carved into the mountains, dense cloud forests, and a smattering of settlements. This one is still being drafted - the topography is there but will be changed up a bit, as will the rivers, and the color scheme might be revamped.

Map not final and subject to change

A: These both also come with brochures, but your Kickstarter pitch says the maps are unkeyed. In that case, what's actually inside the brochures?

K: The contents of the brochures fall into 3 categories:

1. Weather and encounter generation tools tuned to the environment and ecosystem of the map.

2. Descriptions of a selection of landscapes found on the map.

3. Descriptions of the towns and villages found on the map. These are meant as a jumping-off point for referees, they're not fully detailed adventure locations. Slotting in locations from your favorite modules would be a great way to flesh them out a bit more.

A: And those brochures are being partially written by Jojiro - did you always intend to work with him, or was this a recent change?

K: The weather and encounter tools will be done by me, but yeah, all the descriptions will be written by Jojiro. It is a pretty recent development, and one I'm happy about. I enjoy writing mechanics and procedures, but the closer something gets to prose, the more difficulty I have. I'm happy to focus on the maps and mechanics and let Jojiro handle the text in the brochures.

A: I think it'll be great.

Before we wrap up, is there anything else you'd like to talk about?

K: Nothing comes to mind! If anyone wants to chat with me about the project - or anything else - they can find me on the OSR discord.

A: Alright! Thanks for your time.

Zine Quest Interviews 2 - Philippe Ricard

My interview series continues with renewed fervor now that Zine Quest has begun. If you have an active or upcoming ZQ project and would like to schedule an interview, feel free to contact me through email or Discord, both linked on the sidebar.

A: So, would you like to introduce yourself and your project?

P: Yeah, for sure! I'm Philippe Ricard, I'm an illustrator/comics artist/tabletop RPG designer (whew!) from Santa Barbara, California. My Zine Quest project, Lethal Fauna Bric-a-Brac, is a zine with 16+ new monsters for OSR games. Each monster gets a lovely full-page ink illustration by me, as well as the usual stats and description. So, it's a monster book. Pretty simple pitch! But I think it's gonna be pretty dang cool!

A: 16+ monsters - so some of them are stretch goals, I assume? How did you decide which ones had to be in the book, and which could be optional?

P: Good question! So, the main goal of the campaign is to do a 24-page zine. Most monsters get a full-page spread and then there are a couple that get crammed in 3 to a page. I did the math, and the total number of monsters for the 24-page zine would be 16. I guess this is a spoiler, but yes, if we reach certain stretch goals, there will be more pages and thus more monsters in the book. The first two stretch goals aren't for additional pages though, because I recognize that promising extra content sometimes bites people in the ass. As for which ones I included in the book, it was pretty much whichever ones excited me the most?

As I said, I call myself an illustrator, I'm illustrating this entire zine myself, so most of the monsters started as drawings in my sketchbook. That's how I think a lot of the time. So picking the monsters for the book was mainly going through my sketchbook, picking previous doodles to riff on, and then some of them just seemed more conducive to an interesting monster/story than others.

Iterative thinking!

A: Which part do you prefer - the art, or the writing?

P: I really like both. The processes are super different but I love doing both. I guess I would say art, because if I had to choose between this being a no-text or a no-art zine, I would choose no-text.

There's that adventure that Evelyn Moreau did a while back? Gourmand's Larder, I think was what it was called. Not sure how well it worked in practice, but the idea was to be an adventure with all art no text. I think a similar approach could work for a monster book.

A: I think it would, especially with how simple OSR stats tend to be. Speaking of stats, do these monsters tend to have quicker, more basic statblocks, or more involved ability-heavy setups?

P: They're on the quick and basic side. There's a couple examples on the project page of what a full-page spread with stats looks like for the monsters. They follow the B/X format: Hit Dice, attacks, armor class (except i use "as leather" or whatever instead of the number, for increased compatibility), morale, movement. No treasure types because I don't play with treasure types and I don't know anyone who does lol. There aren't a ton of abilities just cuz I would forget them in play, to be honest. The interesting part is mostly the stuff that happens with the monsters BEFORE initiative is rolled!

A: What sorts of thing do you mean by that, and how do your monsters support that idea?

P: So in general, the kind of games I run are ones where one hit from a monster is likely enough to kill you. So, having fat mechanics seems a little silly when combat could be over in one round anyways.

I was talking with someone about my process for writing monsters a couple months ago, and they said "huh that's basically world-building"; as in, each monster has a lot of description with it such that you could go, oh, I could build a whole adventure around that guy. They imply a setting and most are faction-like in that they have things they need and want.

For example, the False Grandfathers. They're sentient grandfather clocks. It would be boring if all I said was, "here's a big clock." So, I thought about what sort of thing they might be doing that's interesting. Oh, they're clocks, they must really like time. So they really like cyclical, repeating processes. They're quiet observers.

And then that raises the question, well, how do other people interact with them? Well, they probably have a funny utilitarian purpose. So, wizards keep them on hand for finding leaks in their castle (since leaks will go drip-drip repeatedly). And then why would you encounter these clocks in the first place? Because a clock salesman was robbed and killed, and now all the sentient clocks from his caravan are just hanging out in the woods.

It's sort of preemptively asking questions and answering them. And then that implies a whole adventure around them, most of which is not gonna be combat.

A: That's a great way to go about monster design, in my opinion. Let's talk about the operation of your Kickstarter itself: the physical copy tier for your zine is only $6 - how did you manage to sell it so cheaply?

P: I'm doing all of the art, layout and writing by myself. So the only actual cost I have to pay is printing and shipping. That's also why my project goal is pretty low compared to other ZQ projects.

Printing zines from Mixam only costs a little over a dollar a book (including the cost of getting them shipped to my house). And that's on the heaviest paper stock they have. So the material cost is very, very low.

With ZQ this year I've seen that the average price is $10-$15. I totally get why people charge that much. RPG stuff is a LOT of work. But personally, I was involved in zine scenes before I was really involved in RPG stuff. And the going price at zine fests for a 24 page black and white zine is more like $3-7 bucks.

Basically, I'm fine with only profiting a couple dollars on each zine I sell. I like that my stuff is accessible. Other people would rather be paid more for their time. It's all fair! I'm not sure if I'm doing it right!

A: I'm not sure if there is a right way to do it, honestly.

This is your second Zine Quest project - what was your first, and what did you learn from it?

P: Yeah! So my first ZQ project was last year. It's called The Beloved Underbelly, and it's a faction-based, low-level OSR adventure. It's a little undercity full of weird factions: beekeepers, feral hogs, sorcerers that really like platonic solids, taxidermists. And it's all illustrated by me, in collage.

What did I learn from it... so, I know I just talked about how I still want my zines to be cheap, but last year I learned that I was selling things maybe a bit too cheap. I did $5 for the physical and $3 for the PDF. I still made a profit, but yeah, I guess I wanted a bigger profit from it just cuz of how much time making the zine took, and because of the labor involved in shipping things. I think the difference between people who will pay $3 for a PDF and people who will pay $5 is not much. So I was making less money while also not making things much more accessible. Lesson learned. Get some self respect.

That book was also my first time laying out an entire text-based zine in inDesign. It took much longer than expected. But hey, I did the Underbelly, and then i took a typography class, and now I'm pretty proficient with inDesign. Cool.

I also learned that people like my stuff?? My online sales outside of the Kickstarter are not very good. But selling through Kickstarter, and then through some RPG distros like Exalted Funeral and Spear Witch, showed me that hey, there's an audience for my weird RPG stuff. It resonates with people! Woah! It's just a question of connecting with the right audience.

A: Now that Lethal Fauna Bric-a-Brac is funded, do you have any plans for your next project?

P: Well I've got to finish this one first! I already know  all the monsters in the book, but I still need to do 12 more final illustrations, and i need to turn my notes into something that people other than me can understand.

I'd like to do the troika sphere jam that's happening this month, but we'll see. I've been working on this project about  knights with melons for heads, originally for a jam, but i missed the deadline. Which is fair enough. I'm not sure if it's an adventure or setting or what. But I've done some art for it already, so it will turn into something eventually!

A: I'll make sure to keep an eye out for any of that. I'm out of questions - is there anything else you'd like to say before we stop?

P: Uhhh I can get gross with self promotion if you want!

A: That's the whole point, isn't it?

P: Yeah! I'm @philippericardart on insta and @thatphilippekid on twitter. Hit me up anytime to talk about RPGS or monsters or art or whatever. Oh also, I'm tryna get together a little google forms or spreadsheet for people making zines who want to trade zines by mail. So ask me about that if you want the link when I get it organized, cuz I think trading zines is really fun!

Zine Quest Interviews 1: Sam Sorensen

 My interview series continues with renewed fervor now that Zine Quest has begun. If you have an active or upcoming ZQ project and would like to schedule an interview, feel free to contact me through email or Discord, both linked on the sidebar.

A: So, to get started, would you like to introduce yourself and your project?

S: Sure. I'm Sam Sorensen, sometimes known as SquigBoss. My current project—or at least one of them—is an old-school-ish toolbox/supplement called Lowlife. It's about caves, mines, trenches, and other nasty places underground.

A: It looks very interesting, and seems like it would slot neatly into a lot of OSR games. It's also random-table focused with cave generators and that sort of thing, isn't it? How did you make sure those generators give cohesive results?

S: It is in part, yeah. The random cave/trenchwork generation tool is still somewhat in the works, but the basic gist is that it's always 2d6, and thus the results skew towards averages; so long as you can draw your data from those 2d6 (or other averaged rolls), you can predict what the "average dungeon" will look like with more accuracy.

The trickier thing, honestly, was—is—the process of retroactively adding in tunnels and passages to an already-existing dungeon. Maps-from-scratch tools are pretty straightforward, and there's a fair number of good ones that are easy to reference, but a process that needs to account for an extant dungeon is tougher.

A: That retroactive addition system one of the parts I find most interesting - it's always good to make supplements easier to add to a game. What are the basics of its process, at least in its current state?

S: It's a derivative, ish, of the ship-building process from Dead Planet, the Mothership adventure: you roll 1d6 for each room (or area, significant hallway, whatever), and any set of two dice that add to 7 have a tunnel connecting them. You use the angle of the lowest die to determine how big the tunnel is; optionally, you can use the dice as a d36 table to get some kind of variation or hazard in the room: collapsing ceilings, dangerous gases, skittering beasties, that sort of thing.

The main goal was that you roll 1d6 for every room on a floor, and can transform an otherwise-normal dungeon into a rat's nest of nastiness.

A: Does the zine include any advice on how to map these more spatially complex dungeons?

S: It does!

The basic method—which might get updated—is a lot shorthand annotation: a filled-in circle is a large passage, two concentric circles is a medium passage, a hatched circle is a narrow passage, that kind of thing. On top of that, my recommendation is that you draw a simple side-view sketch of the dungeon, maybe even two, so you can track which tunnel goes where vertically.

Mapping 3D is difficult on graph paper, and while stuff like isometric paper can make it easier, there's no substitute for good note-taking and careful diagrams.

Of course, even pretty simple dungeons can get players lost—especially in the dark—so adding even a modicum more complexity will leave them confused and afraid with just a few twists and turns.

A: 3D mapping is one of the most difficult problems to solve with more unusual movement - anything from tunnels to 0g seems to lead a lot of people to throw up their hands and give up. That system seems nice, though - certainly a lot easier to deal with than the mapping in Veins, for instance.

You referenced that the room modification tables could add monsters; are these going to be specifically monsters from Lowlife, or will it also have more standard cave-based creatures?

S: A mix, probably. I feel a little weird, as a designer not present at the table, just straight-up saying "this room now has a monster" so, it'll lean more towards "a monster has tunneled in here" or "there are gross-but-probably-not-dangerous insects crawling around in this room".

Things that influence the tone and mood and vibes of the dungeon, but are less directly influential on whatever difficulty curve it has.

A: That's helpful for the kind of GM who wants their dungeon to have a certain pacing, then.

But those generators aren't the only parts of the zine; there's also player content like items. Dungeoncrawlers tend to have a plethora of equipment already, so how did you find new things to add?

S: In terms of equipment, it's a mix of classic dungeoneering equipment in slightly higher detail and granularity (a shovel, a pickaxe, and a hammer and chisel all have very different uses, for example); riffs and variations on basic equipment, like a shovel-mechanism that can dig on its own but needs to be fed lamp oil, or dynamite that can be spread around like a sticky liquid; and straight-up oddball magic items, like a big worm kept in a bag of holding that will eat anything you hold the opening to, including earth, stone, and metal.

A: That's definitely a lot to fit into 30 pages.

Now, let's talk about some nuts and bolts: Lowlife isn't your first Kickstarter, or even your first Zine Quest project, but it is the first time you've worked on fulfillment without the help of DTRPG. Was this a choice on your part, or were you forced into it?

S: A smidgen of both?

DriveThru's great for some things, like if you're really new and don't quite know what to do and don't know how many copies you'll be selling. But this time, for Lowlife, I was both getting tired of dealing with DriveThru's nonsense (slow turnaround, odd menus, annoying formatting requirements) and am interested in selling wholesale to online retailers (your Exalted Funerals and such), which DriveThru makes significantly more difficult.

Also, LightningSource, DriveThru's printer thing, is killing zines in a month, so there's that.

A: You've decided to use Mixam instead, if I remember correctly. That's what I used for my ZQ project last year, and I found them really easy to work with.

Lowlife has hit almost all of its stretch goals at time of writing, and your earlier Kickstarters have also tended to be quite successful. Do you think you'll aim higher with your next project in terms of size and complexity?

S: Hahaha, that's nice of you to say.

My last project—a guide about running a West Marches game—was significantly larger and more complicated than Lowlife, so it's been nice to ease off a little bit and just chill with a simple zine. But yeah, the next project probably will be something more complicated. Or at least, you know, something with a bigger pagecount and a hardcover.

A: In terms of future projects, how do you decide what to Kickstart when? For example, what made you choose to expand your caving rules instead of Big Wet or Seas of Sand for ZQ?

S: Oof, that's a big question. A lot of comes down to momentum.

I get started on some project, I noodle some drafts, I run a couple of playtests, I see what sticks. If each of those is successful—i.e. the rules drafts aren't terrible and the playtest is useful and the players seem interested—then it might get to go further. But if I hit snags in any one of those, which happens all the time, it probably dies.

For the two you mentioned specifically, Seas of Sand is too big (it's probably the next big project) and the Big Wet has seen exactly zero playtesting. Not that those won't ever appear in the future, but they would've taken significantly more legwork to get ready for this year's ZQ.

A: What I find interesting is that you've moved backwards in the generic order of OSR progress (blog, zines, books) - you had already completed multiple Kickstarters before starting your blog. Do you think that's helped or hurt your ability to work on larger projects like zines?

S: Running Kickstarters and making zines definitely has made me better at running Kickstarter and making zines, if that's what you're asking.

A: I was asking if having the blog has made it easier or harder.

S: Oh, oh, oh, I'm a dingus.

But yeah, the blog. It means I can put stuff out into the open and gauge the waters a little bit ahead of time, which is very handy.

But it also adds another step to the make-game process: you come up with an idea, you draft it up, you put in your blog, then you start thinking about making it into something more real. A lot of the stuff on my blog ends up being things that I was working on anyway; making stuff "for the blog" hasn't really worked for me—other than just kicking around GLOG classes, which is basically a micro-hobby unto itself.

I also kind of doubt that the blog is helpful for marketing other than in the sense of having an extant portfolio of drafts; like, my posts average something like 50-100 viewers, which isn't going to pull any kind of engagement for a Kickstarter. Hanging out on a popular server for months and engaging with the community and running playtests, though, that does drive engagement. Chilling on the ex-McDowall OSR discord is, I think, in no small part responsible for the success of Lowlife.

A: That kind of community entanglement is really the most important thing in something as niche as the OSR.

I'm out of questions - is there anything else you'd like to talk about before we wrap up?

S: Uhhh, I didn't bring any talking points, really. Buy my games? Make cool shit? Don't be afraid to publish? I dunno.

A: All great points.

Thanks for your time, I hope you have a good night.

OSR Interviews 3 - Xenophon of Athens

 This is the continuation of a series, where I interview members of the OSR community. 

A: So, introduce yourself - name, blog, social security number, etc.

X: Well, I'm Xenophon of Athens (not the real historical one, of course... or am I?) of https://xenophonsramblings.blogspot.com/, and my social security number is 000-00-0000.

A: Huh, I thought that was mine. Must've been mistaken. 

What have you been playing and running recently? Anything you've enjoyed?

X: I've been running a GLOG campaign in my own (unfinished) GLOG hack, Carolingia. I'm running Patrick Stuart's Deep Carbon Observatory, which is a fantastic module, and it's been great fun. I'm also in a GLOG campaign of deus ex parabola's G20 hack/Unfinished World setting, which has been going for a while now. Finally, I have been playing in a "bucket list" group where we play one- to three-shots of various games we want to play but haven't yet. Vayra DMed Sailors on the Starless Sea in DCC, and next week is Esoteric Enterprises run by Erika.

A: Deep Carbon Observatory was the first RPG book I bought in print, but I've never run it - it's good to see it's gone well.

I'm excited to see Carolingia when it's finished - what's going to make it different from other GLOG hacks?

X: Well, the basics are that it's a roll vs DC system rather than roll-under, and it is very thematically/aesthetically tied to the Early Medieval period in Western Europe (specifically ~800-840 CE). It's also got some slight differences in skills, and weapons deal class-based damage with weapon-defined to-hit bonuses. I'm planning to write some fairly in-depth domain play and mass battle rules, although those might be a while in the making, and religion rules similar to the ones Arnold K and Lexi have made recently.

It's also got its fair share of classes, some of which I'm currently very happy with and some of which still need some polishing.

A: I have a feeling you'll think some of them need polishing until you're dead.

I don't think we have any GLOG hacks with domain rules - that'll be good to see. Other than Carolingia, do you have any large projects?

X: I've got three other projects that I want to make, although none of them have anything substantial put to paper as of yet. A hard sci-fi RPG about being a mercenary with a spaceship in this solar system about 2-300 years in the future, an Earthsea-inspired RPG about being wizards with some sort of freeform magic system (somewhat like Mage: The Ascension but hopefully not bad), and an OSR adventure about journeying through the wilderness to a dragon's lair beneath a mountain.

A: Back to the classics, I guess.

And speaking of back, how'd you get into RPGs?

X: I've only been into RPGs for, what is it, three years now? Something like that. A friend invited me to play D&D 5e, I happily joined with a character that is in retrospect very cringeworthy - an attempt at making Gandalf a 5e character, using the Unearthed Arcana Mystic class (which was a terrible choice for a first ever character) and literally named Olorin. 

I played 5e for a couple of years, then got linked to Goblin Punch somehow, I think from a Reddit post about the False Hydra. From there I got into some other OSR blogs, and then eventually clicked on the link to the OSR Discord on Chris McDowall's blog about 7 or 8 months ago, and here we are.

A: ... that's exactly what happened to me (minus the Gandalf)

Which other OSR blogs would you recommend?

X: That's a hard question. There are far too many good ones. Goblin Punch and Coins and Scrolls are of course the biggest and most popular GLOG blogs, and are always excellent. Every GLOG blog run by someone on the OSR server is worth recommending, but I'll give a particular shout-out to As They Must, Mad Queen's Court, Caput Caprae, and of course Archon's Court, among many others. As far as non-GLOG blogs go, there are once again so many worth reading, but BASTIONLAND, Cavegirl's Games, and Throne of Salt are ones I read often.

A: What books (RPG or otherwise) have you enjoyed recently?

X: I haven't had too much time to read recently, but as far as RPGs go I've just read a fair bit of Cavegirl's Esoteric Enterprises in preparation for an upcoming game I'm playing in. It's a really fantastic game, and even though I'm not generally a fan of urban fantasy it really captures it perfectly and compellingly. It's also got a ton of excellent random tables that could work in any game. There's Deep Carbon Observatory, of course, since I started running that, and as I said before, it's a really good adventure. 

I started reading Robert McFarlane's Underland, which is a non-fiction book about, well, everything under the ground, and specifically the human relation to the underground. I only got a couple of chapters in before school and such made me put it down, but what I did read was excellent. It definitely should be suggested reading for a Veins of the Earth campaign. 

And since rereading things takes less brainpower, a severely limited resource for me currently, than reading them for the first time, I've reread Ursula Le Guin's truly classic novel The Dispossessed and started rereading Lord of the Rings for the 27th time or so.

A: Alright! Thanks for coming, and I hope you have a good night.

X: Thank you as well! I enjoyed this a lot.

OSR Interviews 2 - Vayra

A: So, introduce yourself - name, blog, favorite color, etc.

V: HI MY NAME IS VAYRA you can find my Works (gaze upon them, and despair) at https://madqueenscourt.blogspot.com/

I live in the PNW (BC, Canada, to be exact) and my favorite color is being needlessly contrarian.

A: Ah. I'm partial to yellow, myself.

What have you been playing/running recently? Anything you've enjoyed?

V: I'm currently engaged in a (supposedly) weekly Monster of the Week game IRL, which I hate. Beyond that, I'm participating in many GLOGs online: OSR Discord user deus ex parabola's Face campaign (probably the best game I've played), Phlox's Vain the Sword play-by-post, and Xenophon of Athens' run of Deep Carbon Observatory using his own Carolingian GLOGhack rules. I also recently wrapped up a minicampaign of a novel scifi-horror game called Sunless Horizon run by someone whose name escapes me, and am hopefully going to be in an OSE run of Barrowmaze, if we can work out scheduling.

On the GMing side, I recently had to mercy-kill a 3.5e play-by-post (which went the way of most of its ilk, withered due to lack of attention) and am gearing up to run a DCC one-to-three-shot for a "RPG Bucket List" event a discord server I'm on is holding - basically a lot of people signed up to run or play one-shots and try systems they've always wanted to.

A: Hm, I wonder who could've run Sunless Horizon.

Have you run DCC before? What do you think about it?

V: Right? Who could it be?

I have not! I dug into it a bit to make pregen level 0 characters (four each) for my prospective players - it seems awfully complicated, if I'm honest. I'd thought that anything with such a focus on funnel play would have very rapid character generation, but it's a bit overwhelming and would probably remain that way until/unless I fully familiarized myself with the process. I am apprehensive about running combat with something close to 20 participants (though DCC being initiative-per-player in funnel play is a nice gesture towards usability). Besides that though, it seems like a perfectly serviceable D&D.

A: It was the first RPG I ever ran - I thought it went quite well.

And speaking of first games, you were introduced to RPGs through D&D 3.5e, if I remember correctly. How did you move from there into the OSR?

V: My first introduction was actually through Red Box Basic, in elementary school - but we only played a couple sessions (through the introductory dungeon in the box) and I don't remember anything about it except that someone rolled a 1 for their Magic-User's HP and that we got TPK'd by that fucking Carrion Crawler. I do commend that version for being able to teach myself (age about 7), an older student (somewhere in their young teens, the school was K-12) and a teacher I'd roped into it how to play, all of us with no prior experience.

But yeah, I really got into it in highschool with 3.0/3.5e. Long before I'd heard of the OSR, my favorite way to play was E6 - capped at 6th level, before the towering superstructure of 3.5 really starts collapsing in on itself under its own weight. I was also always big on homebrewing and hacking: I ended up making a classless E6 hack using bits from 3.5, d20 modern, and an entirely homebrew firearms system (which I keep meaning to clean up and post, eventually) to run a hugely successful post-apocalyptic campaign - still before getting into the OSR, but I'm sure you can see the parallels!

At some point a few years ago - maybe 2013-2014-ish? - I happened upon the blog of [DATA EXPUNGED], which was okay, and from there somehow found my way to Goblinpunch, the home of our gobfather Arnold K. (PBUH) and a pile of other blogs like Middenmurk (now defunct, here's a good post) and Straits of Anian (likewise). This was my introduction to the OSR, but I never got onto Google+ so I remained exposed to them purely through reading the blogs and immersing myself in the wonderfully Weird settings. I really got involved with the community only recently - mid-March this year (2020) - when I joined Chris Dowell's OSR Discord and started a blog to work on my own Weird Fantasy setting.

A: Let's talk about that setting - the Mountain. Where did that come from?

V: So, after playing 3.5e through highschool (and for a while after), I was pretty thoroughly tired of Generic Fantasy settings. Regardless, around 2014 I started gearing up to run an online E6 game for some pals from leftbook, and for my broken brain that meant creating a fully detailed more-or-less-generic-fantasy setting to run it in. It was roughly patterned after the world from the Belgariad/Malloreon novels (exemplary works of Generic Fantasy) - basically a pastiche of interesting historical empires all smashed into the same time period. My sole concession to Weird was: "'Human' is a generic term for vaguely humanoid species. Common 'races' are orcs, goblinoids, kobolds, lizardfolk, minotaurs, dogmen, etc."

The game never happened, but I still wrote out a whole-ass 31 page setting document for it, in the style of a 3.5e gazette. It is deeply exhausting to read and I will never link to it directly, but it lives on as the basis for the (off-screen, out-of-scope) "Civilized Lands" in the Mountain setting.

More recently, around 2018, I remembered I had all these OSR blogs bookmarked and I started reading them at work (I believe the best way to recover excess value stolen from us by our bosses is to work as little as possible, so I spend a lot of time reading things at work). This drove me to re-envision the setting: I stole the basic concepts, some elements from the history, and one thing I remembered from a short-lived highschool campaign run by my girlfriend at the time - the entire thing would be set on a single, gigantic Mountain. 

I also committed to making it much more thoroughly Weird, starting with the four elements. I had been listening to a series of witch house mixes by a duo named ∆AIMON a lot at the time, one of which was titled WATER BLOOD ASHES BONES, which I thought was an excellent set. Obviously keeping 'water' as an element wouldn't do, so I swapped it out with 'fish' and, well, here we are.

In the future, I'm hoping to slowly produce the Mountain's levels as self-contained booklets, then maybe self-publish them as a megadungeon along with a setting guide. Somewhere along the way I'll also have to actually run it, of course.

A: I hope you manage to run it sometime - megadungeons are really interesting, and it looks like this one will be more interesting than most.

Well, we've talked about playing and writing, so now we only have one of the three pillars left - reading. What have you read recently (an OSR book, an RPG book, just a book) that you'd recommend?

V: Hmm, these won't all be recent, but let's see...

David Graeber, who is probably my favorite nonfiction author, died recently. I consider his book 'Debt: The First 5,000 Years' to be essential reading for any aspiring worldbuilder, and I read it within the last year or so, so I'm gonna recommend that one first. His other books are also excellent, and I would recommend 'Bullshit Jobs' and 'The Utopia of Rules' to everyone as well despite them being less directly connected to RPGs.

A lot of RPG writing and worldbuilding focuses around war. They aren't fantasy or historical, but I would highly recommend people read 'Hammer's Slammers' by David Drake (mil-SF) and read or watch 'Generation Kill' - either the book by Evan Wright or the 7-episode HBO miniseries based on it - (nonfiction) to get a feel for that sort of setting. Both works paint an excellent - and reportedly, accurate - picture of war and the people who fight in it without falling into jingoism common to works about the topic. 

Old blogs! Dig up some old blogs! I mentioned Goblinpunch, Middenmurk and Straits of Anian earlier, but check out Udan-Adan and Richard's Dystopian Pokeverse too. Start from the beginning. I bet there's something you missed.

A: I have read Goblin Punch and Udan-Adan front to back more times than I want to admit.

We're getting close to our time limit - is there anything else you'd like to talk about?

V: Gimme a topic, anything.

A: Why did you choose the GLOG as your OSR system of choice?

V: Ah! That's easy: So as I mentioned, I really got into TTRPGs with D&D 3.5e and mostly played E6 - and as I maybe haven't mentioned yet here, I still really enjoy it. GLOG reproduces the elements of it that I like (low level cap, relatively powerful characters, lots of options) while dispensing with the elements I don't like (too many moving parts). I was briefly in a BFRPG game or two and even that kind of rubs me the wrong way now, as does anything else with uncapped (or high-capped) levelling! It's all about that juxtaposition of power and vulnerability, for me - something that GLOG and E6 do very well, and I find most other things don't.

The mood, the culture, also, is essential. I wrote a whole post more or less about that, in fact.

A: That post looks great! Thank you for your time!

OSR Interviews 1 - Erika

For a couple weeks, I'm going to be posting interviews with members of the OSR community - first is Erika, of Ice Queen's Throne. This is my first time interviewing anyone, so it has some issues; the next ones should be better. If you want to get on the list, I have contact information on my blog's sidebar.

Archon: First, let's talk about something light - have you been able to play anything recently?

Erika: The last game I ran was the final session of my Old School Essentials game set in the Forgotten Realms; we kind of got collectively frustrated at the poor design of the module and cancelled it, so not the most fun session, but onwards and upwards!

A: Ah, I'm sorry about that. I haven't played OSE - what do you think of it?

E: I like it a lot, honestly - I'm about to back the kickstarter for new rules taken from AD&D. The toolbox purity of making sure it's compatible with original B/X stuff is really appealing, as I often want to revive some older module/setting/style of play that I'm curious about. The rules are well presented and easy to run, which is really nice.

A: So, do you think you'll keep running OSE in your next campaign, or is there another system you'd like to try?

E: Honestly, I have so many games I want to try it's hard to tell! I'm running Pathfinder 2e for my other group right now and that's a blast; I'm looking at setting up some one-shots to clean out stuff that's been on my shelf for years and never been played, and I kind of want to run a new World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness game next. For old-school stuff, if I want to do something strictly revivalist, OSE is a good bet; for something more revolutionary I should really try the GLOG and Esoteric Enterprises and Knave and [goes on forever here].

A: There's always a lot to try, isn't there. I'd recommend the GLOG (because of course I would).

E: Why would you recommend the GLOG? What does the GLOG do well for you?

A: I think it does a lot of things quite well - for one thing, it's incredibly simple - one of my unreleased hacks fits all its rules onto a single page. It's also very modular; I've seen lots of different combat systems, stat systems, and settings, because of how easy it is to change the few rules it has. Most importantly to me, it's excellent at containing setting - through your class choices, you can show almost any genre through the GLOG. For example, there's a couple cyberpunk versions, and I'm currently working on an EE-like urban fantasy hack. 

And, I know this is a peripheral thing, but the culture around the game is excellent - they just keep making things, constantly, and its always something strange.

I know you have your blog, but is there anywhere else you release OSR content? A book or a zine you've written, anything like that.

E: Nothing yet really, most of what I do is specifically for the games I'm running, so I haven't had a lot to show otherwise. I was thinking about doing a hack of OSE and 2e AD&D, but put that aside with the game ending.

A: That's a shame. You were one of the originators of the PLOG movement - do you think that's had an effect on the OSR as a whole?

E: Not a lot? It was more of a personal calling card for myself and Zach about how we wanted to approach our own way of interpreting the OSR, and if it didn't go a whole bunch of anywhere, that's okay. 

Part of the idea of it being about loving your own trash was that it didn't have to be the same as everyone else's trash, and if other people didn't see the value in it, that's alright! Stuff like the GLOG is way beyond the realm of the PLOG, and if that's where people are having fun/being happy, that's what really matters. I appreciate having an idea and a mission statement for how to approach the revivalist stuff I like doing with OSE and other older D&D books.

A: It's a good guiding concept for OSR revivalists, in my opinion. The idea of tearing apart official products to scavenge good bits of them was what drew me to the community in the first place.

Speaking of that, how did you get into the OSR?

E: So for me, I straddle the line between old-school and modern D&D. I picked up D&D when I was like 9, at the very tail end of 2e, and didn't really get to play until I had the 3e starter box set a few years later. But my grandfather picked me up a used copy of the 1e DMG, and I was blown away by how incredibly lush and dense and inspiring it was. I could see that the rules were generally better in my 3.0 books, but the STORY and especially the world was so much better in that old DMG.

A: I've heard a lot of good things about the 1e DMG.

E: Right! there's tons of good stuff in it, so I'm always kind of balancing, the smoother rules and careful balancing and all the little content gimmicks of 3e/4e/Pathfinder with the sheer captivating power of the old-school stuff. and I want to find a way to kind of reconcile those, in my head? 

Have good flexible rules that can do a lot for character creation but also have a lot of room for worldbuilding and sandbox play like the old-school games did. I can never quite settle on one or the other. 

And I remember back in the 3.5 days the older stuff was kind of discarded, frequently given away for free by WotC; it wasn't until OSRIC came out that there was really something THERE to grab on to. The most influential OSR blog to me personally was likely Grognardia, because James Maliszewski's readings of older products really illustrated what they did well and what was worth celebrating about them that my newer stuff didn't have, and that was a convincing argument for trying old-school games off and on over the years. Haven't really quite had it stick yet, but I've learned a lot!

A: Grognardia recently returned to blogging - how do you feel about that?

E: I'm very excited by it! And he picked a hell of a product to come back with in Mork Borg, which is great. James admits he doesn't quite get "it" but he also doesn't have to, he can recognize that it's cool and good without being his cup of tea.

A: Have you taken a look at Mork Borg?

E: I haven't, but I'd really like to, it looks like a lot of fun, both stylistically and gameplay wise. As someone who GMs a lot by choice, Mork Borg is right up my alley, if I can pull myself away from big juggernaut projects to give it a go.

A: I hope you can find time to read it soon. Earlier, you also mentioned an interest in WoD/CoD - do you think there's anything the OSR can take from White Wolf's games?

E: I don't think there's a lot, because a lot of what those games do is very much what the OSR specifically doesn't do or does already do. CoD stories are often very tightly plotted, not a railroad but definitely involving quantum ogres and the like; at the most they're in sandboxes but they're very frustrating grindy ones for the players. 

The OSR definitely doesn't want metaplot, and it has its own toolkits already, so they're not very much alike. Emmy Allen's Esoteric Enterprises is a good example of putting the two together, but it does so by taking some of the narrative ideas in CoD stuff and putting it in the rules, style, and game framework of an OSR game, instead of mixing the two completely.

A: It's been about an hour: do you have any final statements before we finish up?

E: I don't blog a lot but when I do it's usually been about the Forgotten Realms not sucking pre-5e, so you should check out my blog for stuff on that.

A: Sounds great. Thanks for coming!