Roleplaying in a Winter Wonderland

Every December, I try to get some holiday-themed roleplaying game adventures to the tables. With everyone focused on work, family, shopping, and travel plans at this most hectic time of the year, this is often extremely difficult to coordinate, but as I write this, I have already run two games for my group and next week we are looking at getting a third one in before the end of the year!

Additionally, over the past few years, I have written some holiday-themed One-Sheet adventures for use with the 2018 Origins Award-nominated (I believe I'm contractually obligated to mention that) Savage World of Flash Gordon Roleplaying Game, all of which have been hosted on the Pinnacle Entertainment Group site and are available for FREE. Next week, my fourth and FINAL(!) One-Sheet for Flash will drop, and if you haven't grabbed the first three yet, visit the site today to collect 'em all:

• ‘Twas the Night Before Crystal Fest One-Sheet for The Savage World of Flash Gordon™
• The Titan of Tropica One-Sheet for The Savage World of Flash Gordon™
• The Cave of Fire One-Sheet for The Savage World of Flash Gordon™

Back to this year's run of games.

Last week, I playtested the latest aforementioned One-Sheet with the group in order to ensure it all worked so I could get it into PEG's hands in time for a mid-month release. Titled A Star! A Star!, this short adventure launches the heroes into space and then drags them back down to a frozen corner of the planet Mongo where they must do battle with Imperial forces and challenge a beast of legend before they can secure a most valuable treasure.

The playtest went very well and everyone was amused when I revealed the final boss in all its glory (no spoilers)!

This week, I finally got another Pinnacle release to the table in the form of One Foggy Krampus Eve, a scenario penned by Erica Balsley back in 2022. I had prepped this adventure to run in 2023, but things got in the way and it just sat on the shelf until a few days ago.

For this adventure, I went all out and prepped maps, character pawns, and custom tent card character sheets. I even tracked down a set of Santa Claus playing cards for the Action Deck, pulled out a transparent red and green dice set, and used vintage red wooden poker chips for Bennies, thus theming the entire event.

Without spoiling anything, One Foggy Krampus Eve has the players taking on the roles of kids captured by the one-and-only Krampus and taken off to the North Pole where they must defeat that dreaded horned beastie and his minions and rescue Santa Claus.

If you can, I recommend having Tchaikovsky's 'The Nutcracker Suite' on standby for certain scenes. It added to the fun!

As mentioned above, next week, there are plans in place to gather one more time before the end of 2024, this time to experience Silent Night, Hungry Night, a Deadlands One-Sheet written by Shane Hensley himself! I'll be playing, not running, and I'm really looking forward to facing a few frightful fiends out on the frost-laden frontier! 

How festive! 🎄

My Adventures at Gamehole Con XI

I have climbed the mountain and discovered Shangri-La!

Back in October of this year (October 17th-20th), I finally made the trip out to Madison, Wisconsin for my very first Gamehole Con held at the Alliant Energy Center. For years now, friends and industry colleagues have praised this event which is promoted as "the largest majority RPG gaming convention in the world," and this year I decided to rip off the bandage and experience it for myself, especially since there were almost 100 Savage Worlds games on the schedule (thanks to the efforts of the Savage Alliance) and Pinnacle was going to have a presence and booth in the dealer's hall. 

I was there as a regular paying attendee, though I did, as always, offer my hand to assist if Pinnacle required it. I submitted two games, and I signed up to play four others. A relatively full schedule, but I also wanted to leave plenty of gaps for socializing/networking.

Overall, I had a terrific time and I'm already contemplating a return in 2025! 

Thursday

My first event of the con was a Dungeon Crawl Classics game (Goodman Games) run by the one and only Brendan LaSalle. I've never been in one of Brendan's games before, but his reputation certainly precedes him (and he's also written some pretty great adventures for DCC as well as the infamous X-Crawl).

Taking its title (and elements of its plot) from Black Sabbath, "Electric Funeral" was a 4th-level adventure that had us traveling to a distant, doomed world to do a "favor" for a Patron in return for saving the life of one of our party. It was weird, wild, and totally METAL! I played a sword-wielding cleric I named "Delgado" and this was definitely my favorite game of the con. Thanks to Brendan for running an epic adventure and also to the rest of the players for making it such a fun time! 

Later that day, Carl Davis of Tabletop Tango over on YouTube and the Mastering the RPG podcast slid behind the GM screen to run us through a classic (though updated for Savage Worlds) Dragonlance adventure set over on Krynn's neighbor, Taladas. I took on the role of a Knight of Solamnia as we bravely penetrated a recently revealed wizard's tower that had been encased in stone. Another highlight of the con for me as I've been a Dragonlance fan since the beginning.

That evening, I enjoyed dinner and drinks with Carl and a couple colleagues from Pinnacle at Liberty Station (try the "Tavern Tots") and that was it for day one. 

Friday

Friday morning began with an excursion into Deadlands: the Weird West! "Whispers of the Haunted Peak" dropped our posse into the middle of a standoff between outlaws and the US Army over a ghost rock mine. I played a Mad Scientist who proudly stated the elaborate names of each of his gadgets before using them and the adventure was a great mix of intrigue, political machinations, and exploration.

At 5pm, there was a largely unannounced gathering of Savage Worlds creators and fans held in the primary Savage Alliance room (Mendota-5). While the idea was sound, far too many didn't even know what was going on. I hope that it can be better promoted in 2025, even with a sign or two slapped on the doors well ahead of time.

After this, I ran my adventure, "The Locked Door" for Pinebox Middle School. This was my third (or fourth) time running it and overall, it went fine, however I think it's time to put that one up on the shelf for a while. I will devote a future blog entry to the adventure, especially since I had some amazing art produced for it and I'd love to share it with you all.

Saturday

Saturday was my final day at Gamehole as my friend (and roommate) Mike and I had decided to fly home early the following day. My understanding is that Sunday at Gamehole is relatively light anyway, so we were OK with that decision. 

My first adventure of the day was an abbreviated version of "Crypt of the Everflame" for Pathfinder® for Savage Worlds. Adapted from a First Edition Pathfinder® adventure by our GM (Chris Valentine of MetaMorphic), this relatively straight forward dungeon crawl was a lot of fun! I enjoyed it so much that I am planning on running more or less the same adventure for Savage Saturday Night at next year's KublaCon! More about that later!

For my last event, I ran John Goff's "Final Rest Stop." This grindhouse horror adventure has been a big hit at previous conventions, but for a wide variety of reasons, it was a DISASTER this time around. I was baffled by some of the choices made by the players including completely skipping an essential element (location) that MUST be visited in order to obtain ALL the clues AND the key to defeating the enemy (as well as a couple helpful weapons). I literally shined a spotlight on this area (in the form of moonlight) and they turned around and walked away from it, never to return. I really had no way of introducing them to everything they needed to uncover in that location and the adventure just wound up being a fade-to-black, implied TPK. 

To top it all off, as we were wrapping up, one of the player's accidentally spilled an entire glass of water across the table destroying my large inkjet printed map, a few handouts, and character tokens. DESTROYED! It was pretty clear that like my aforementioned Pinebox Middle School adventure, it's time for me to shelve this one for a while as well. 

After that, it was back to the room to pack, a couple hours spent at an evening party, and then an early flight back to L.A. the next morning.

We Need to Talk About Adventure Lethality

I feel like we need to have a serious conversation about adventure lethality.

A couple weeks ago, I ran a horror-themed one shot adventure at Gamehole Con (more about that in the blog soon) in which the players, knowing full well that the adventure was emulating a grim horror movie, took far too few risks in fear of losing the lives of their pregenerated characters. By playing it safe, they actually missed out on discovering essential clues about how to defeat the threat.

In turn, as GM, I often find myself reluctant to up the danger level in sessions at my OWN tables because I know how frustrating it can be to take wounds or even become incapacitated (yes, we're focusing more on Savage Worlds here).

Last night, I ran a published adventure for my weekly game group. As written (and I'll avoid spoilers), the adventure should have been FAR more dangerous with overwhelming numbers of opponents, very real chances of the heroes being captured, and extremely powerful attacks by the "big bads."

While I reined in (and altogether skipped) several scenes mostly for the sake of time, I know full well that I also adjusted things to ensure that we didn't end the night with a table full of dead heroes.

But why???

Just like the aforementioned adventure at Gamehole Con, last night’s game was a one shot using a few pregens that the players shouldn’t really have cared about, right? Shouldn’t one shots by their very nature be all about taking wild risks and putting your heroes in danger without fear of consequences?

I sometimes feel like we take injury and character death far too personally, even in the case of simple one shots where backup characters (I had two) are standing by should the heroes fall. In turn, we also find ourselves irrationally frustrated with the GM for daring to use an enemy’s listed Special Abilities or Powers and/or (heaven forbid) rolling well when they attack!

What are your thoughts? Should we as GMs not worry about our NPCs smacking down the heroes, especially in one shots? Or are we somehow obligated to “play it safe” in order to keep everyone at the table alive and happy?

I worry that constantly reducing threat, avoiding certain attacks, or not taking advantage of PC vulnerabilities (especially when the player has consciously put their heroes in great danger) would make for pretty dull game sessions. As a player, I always want to feel challenged and I want to know that rushing into situations without Bennies or other defenses can be DANGEROUS. How do you balance that without coddling your players or feeling like you're dropping them all into a meat grinder with no chance of escape???

Four Months Unemployed

It has been four long, grueling months since my previous employer of over eight years unceremoniously informed us (and when I say “us” I mean 800 of us) that our services would no longer be required. 

We had no more than 20 minutes following a brief company-wide Zoom call to download any important files and close out projects before access was completely cut off and we were left standing outside the virtual office with virtual cardboard boxes tucked under our virtual arms. (It was May, so there was no virtual rain falling on our virtual heads to really round out that scene.)

Since then, I, along with a LOT of others out there, have been focusing a significant amount of time and energy on landing that next exciting role and because of that, my creativity has taken a major hit and I am only now starting to recover from it.

I have two contracted projects on my plate and I have barely touched either of them since the tragic events back in May.

Let me just say that even someone with my extensive and award-winning career (TV Promo Writer/Producer for Warner Bros. and Disney, award-nominated tabletop Game Designer (Pinebox Middle School, Flash Gordon, The Sixth Gun), award-nominated Author (Cinema and Sorcery), produced Playwright (Doctor Who, Dark Shadows), practical special effects Fabricator and SAG Puppeteer, and Voice Actor) is having as rough a time finding a decent job as everyone else out there.

I’ve submitted well over 100 applications since the layoffs and I’ve had exactly ZERO interviews. None. Nada. It’s demoralizing and soul-crushing, but it is what it is.

Fortunately, I have an amazingly supporting partner (we’re celebrating a BIG anniversary next month, by the way) who is helping me through all this and encouraging me to climb back up on that horse to refocus on my writing and restart my voice acting career. More about that later!

Anyway, the horror adventure I’m writing, titled Long Night, is pretty much ready for playtesting, so I’m hoping to bring it to the table in October for “Spooky Season.” Once I’ve done that and made changes as a result, I’ll get it into the publisher’s hands and move on to bigger and MUCH better things.

I’m here. I’m persevering, and you can expect more exciting game-related content in the future including posts about my experience at Gamehole Con in mid-October!

Roll ‘em if you’ve got ‘em! Dice, I mean!

Gen Con 2024 After Action Report

Well, another Gen Con has come and gone and this one was exciting, fun, and moderately stressful, but for good reason.

A few years ago, I decided to return to Gen Con (the Best Four Days in Gaming™) after several years away and have made it an annual event ever since. This year, having crashed and burned in the dreaded housing lottery (the nearest hotel was eight miles away!), we (my friend Mike was going to make this year his big return) opted to cancel our plans, instead focusing our energies on Gamehole Con in October.

All was fine and good until it was announced that my most recent big TTRPG, Pinebox Middle School, had been nominated for an ENNIE Award in the category, “Best Family Game.” Though I had just lost my job of eight years a few weeks prior, TaMara encouraged me to try and attend Gen Con regardless.

Luckily, I was able to cobble things together to secure a flight, ensure I had a badge (thank you Pinnacle Entertainment Group), and reserve a decent hotel within walking distance of the colossal Indiana Convention Center.

As everything was so last minute, I was unable to register for any events (everything I was even remotely interested in was already sold out), however I did wind up filling my schedule running several demos of Deadlands: Dark Ages for Pinnacle, shopping (so much shopping), and socializing. I brought a few dozen business cards with me and managed to push all of them into hands, so it was a highly successful trip in that regard.

I also attended the Diana Jones Awards and, of course, the ENNIE Awards (Pinebox Middle School did not win, by the way). Additionally, a great group of gamers livestreamed a session of Pinebox Middle School which you can still watch over on the GenConTV channel on Twitch if you're interested!

In the end, I had a really great time and it was definitely worth the stress to pull everything together at the last minute.

Next up, Gamehole Con in a couple months where I’ll be running my original adventure, “The Locked Door” for Pinebox Middle School along with the tried and tested Savage Saturday Cinema adventure, “Final Rest Stop.”

Nominated for an ENNIE

Last Friday, July 5th, I learned that the latest tabletop roleplaying game I worked on, Pinebox Middle School for Savage Worlds, had been nominated for an ENNIE Award in the category, “Best Family Game / Product.”

“The ENNIE Awards (the “ENNIES”) are an annual fan-based celebration of excellence in tabletop roleplaying gaming. The ENNIES give game designers, writers and artists the recognition they deserve. It is a peoples’ choice award, and the final winners are voted upon online by the gaming public.”

While there are naysayers out there who sometimes poo-poo the ENNIEs, saying that the whole thing is just a popularity contest and the awards don’t necessarily reflect the quality of the works presented, I will say, as someone who has been nominated twice, they are still prestigious awards in the tabletop roleplaying game industry, and awards that, at the very least, offer a nicely categorized selection of works that may well be worth investigating.

Like many (most) industry awards, the way the ENNIEs work is that publishers interested in participating must submit copies of their “personal best” releases from the previous year for consideration. In reviewing the 800(!) or so submissions for this year’s ENNIEs, I present to you a list of some of the more well known TTRPG publishers and the numbers of items they put forward for consideration:

• Chaosium - 38 (includes “Chaosium Community Content”)
• Renegade Game Studios - 37
• Paizo - 23
• Pinnacle Entertainment Group - 10
• Free League Publishing - 9
• Cubicle 7 - 8
• Modiphius - 4
• Evil Hat - 3
• Green Ronin Publishing - 3

You’ll notice that Wizards of the Coast is not present on the list this year and it’s possible that some of your other favorite publishers are also not represented. To quote a section from the ENNIE Awards’ own FAQ:

“A lot of people ask us why their favorite products were not submitted. The answer is that we have no control over it. If you want a publisher to submit a product, then you need to contact them and convince them to do so.”

Anyway, not only am I thrilled to be on the list of nominees, but I am also delighted that our game is a nominee in the “Best Family Game / Product” category as I always intended the game to appeal to both kids AND kids at heart. While there are certainly plenty of scares to be found in the setting, if Pinebox Middle School were a Netflix series (one can hope) it would likely have a TV-14 rating (the same rating as Stranger Things, Wednesday, or Locke & Key).

For those interested in supporting me, Pinebox Middle School, and Savage Worlds, voting will take place from July 12th through the 21st with winners announced on August 2nd at Gen Con!

My First 'Doctor Who' Audio Drama is ON SALE NOW!

Just passing this along to all my fellow Doctor Who fans out there!

With Melanie back on our screens once again, Big Finish Productions is currently running a SALE on her many audio adventures including MY very first one, the Juggernauts starring Colin Baker (the Sixth Doctor), Bonnie Langford (Mel), Terry Molloy (Davros), and a few Daleks!

Get your copy now for just $2.51 USD through Monday, June 24!