Saturday, May 30, 2020
A Kickstarter
Hello,
Swordfish Islands is far from dead, but blogging has definitely taken a back seat. Like all bloggers who have fallen off, I've got a plan to return, but we'll see if I can swing it for real!
Though we haven't been blogging, we've been releasing content as regularly as we can (both ours and others) over on the Swordfish Islands Shop. Our most recent release is Dirk Leichty's amazing Super Blood Harvest.
It's a trio of adventures with their own rules lite system. Everything was written and illustrated by Dirk, and it's amazing. In the first adventure, vampires from the dark side of the moon have scooped you up from Earth in their Bloodship. In the second adventure, the Bloodship has crashed on the Moon and you can ransack the vampire's various temples and locations. In the third adventure, you take the fight to Mars and go up against the last remains of the Vampire Imperium as one of the last free humans on Mars.
Sowordfish Islands helped Dirk get 1000 copies printed in a super fancy and deluxe way (cloth that looks like a star field, iridescent holographic foil stamping, the works).
Currently, I'm running a Kickstarter for a project I call The Worldbuilder's Notebook. It's a premium quality notebook (cloth cover, great paper, lay flat sewn binding) that's been decked out with a variety of organizational tools to make it easier to build your fantasy worlds and campaigns. The main problem it tries to solve is the difficulty of finding things you've written in your notebook after you've written them down.
You can see full details here on the Kickstarter Page.
I was also interviewed by Ben over at the Plot Points Podcast and we talked about it more in depth (along with all manner of other fun things). Definitely give it a listen.
Saving the best for last, one of the things I'm most excited about is that we've teamed up with Frazetta Girls and will be including one piece of Frank Frazetta artwork in every book, and if we hit a stretch goal, we'll do a version of the Notebook with his amazing Sea Witch piece.
Things are going well with the Kickstarter, but tell your friends!
Saturday, May 4, 2019
Elf Stones
I woke up this morning with what may be a complete understanding of elves.
It's Their Infravision
When I was a kid, I always wanted to play an elf in D&D, specifically because I'd have infravision and could "see in the dark". Getting older I moved away from that because it felt lame, but then the other day I saw this gif and it hit me that elves usually appear so aloof and borderline disgusted with the world because they are visually accosted with actual out gassings of everything in the world.
Yes non-elves, their smile does look pained because every single one of your farts is an assault on their eyes.
Naturally, it would follow that elves themselves wouldn't fart, or burp, sneeze etc. But their bodies would have to do something with that stuff, and as elves are normally depicted as being somewhat "pinched" anyway, it seems likely that their body would compress the disgusting stuff into a sort of pearl, or stone, or "pill".
These elf stones would naturally be terribly pungent in their aroma, and in civilized circles they would be discreetly disposed of. But outdoor types, such as hunters and rangers, would likely value them highly and probably carry around a small pouch of the things. They could wet them, and flick them onto targets they to help track their quarry.
Would likely prized by more traditionally disgusting races such as goblins.
Elf Stones:
All elves produce d4 "elf stones" each week. The stones are about the size of a pinky fingernail, and appear to have a hard opalescent casing that subtly flashes purple and green in the right light. If soaked in water, the casing will begin to disintegrate and the stone will become incredibly sticky and rapidly adhere to flesh and hair. Elf stones without a casing have an incredibly pungent, cloying, aroma that some compare to the smell of rotting roses. A stone that has lost its casing will stink strongly for 72 hours, and even if the stone is found and removed, the smell will linger for d6 hours.
Elven Rangers and outdoors types, will traditionally wet the stones by sucking on them for a short time, and they can flick them onto any target within 50' with surprising accuracy (+5 to hit). They deftly manipulate the wet stones with their fingernails and (to non-elves) never seem to get the smell on their person.
During periods of high stress or poor diet, elves can produce up to d10 stones per week. Half Elves have a 50% chance of producing elf stones in lieu of other forms of excrement.
Friday, May 3, 2019
The thing about G+
I do.
It
took me a few weeks to bring myself to delete the app (and inbox) from
my phone, and I still tryto click where it used to be out of force of
habit.
But what about it do I
miss? Patrick’s points about it having been on a major downturn for
quite a while are very much on the nose, so why even miss it?
1. It’s core idea was excellent. The
root of google plus itself was excellent. The wall is a wonderful way
for me to find and consume content. It was simultaneously a good way to
share visual and text based content. The wall pushed my dopamine buttons
because there was this mild “hunting and finding” element to it, that
didn’t descend into the tumblr/Pinterest wall madness.
Circles
were exceptional. I didn’t use them to post to (almost always posting
publicly because I always wanted strangers to be able to find and
reference my stuff if they stumbled upon it). Rather, I used them to
sort people I was following. It enabled me to basically rank the
content/people I wanted to see. I bundled up illustrators and nap
makers. I bundled up Game Masters. People in Texas. Layout people.
People I personally considered “elite posters”. General posters. And
perhaps most importantly: The Abyss.
There
are lots of damaged, or depressed, or politically obnoxious, or meme
posters, etc out there. On the whole, much of what they post is stuff
I’m not really interested in. Perhaps it’s even mostly trash. But.
There’s always a chance they’ll post something good. Something quality.
And so, a couple times a week I could peer into the Abyss and hunt for
the quality. While simultaneously keeping the garbage posts out of my
home feed.
Likewise I could focus
my feed down and say: “what are the mapmakers and illustrators talking
about this week?” and I could glimpse more focused memetic “pulses”. I
miss this more than anything about the platform.
2. The good times were great. The
golden era was phenomenal. Full stop. The crumbling, and destruction
doesn’t change the fact that the good times were just so fucking good.
Perhaps the branches all bloomed so heavily that their breaking was both
natural and inevitable.
3. It was a Goldilocks zone for posting. Twitter is
too shot and fragmented to have decent conversations or make truly
decent posts. Reddit is a cesspool. Everyone worth a damn is banned from
rpg.net. Mewe is all walled off and only members can see your posts.
Blog posts have always felt more “formal”, perhaps that’s just me, but I
feel like I need to try with a blogpost whereas G+ felt perfect for half
formed fragments that could then get “workshopped” in the comments.
Discord is too transient and fulfills different needs. Tumblr is both
insular and undead.
G+ just really nailed “microblogging” better than anything else I’ve ever seen.
4. It had just enough critical mass. Swordfish
Islands likely would never have existed without G+, and the pledge data
on Kickstarter showing pledges that came from a G+ link are pretty
significant. And I’m sure that doesn’t just apply to my Kickstarter.
It
may have been a small community, but the people were actually fucking
real, and they backedeach other’s projects with real money. Perhaps
other platforms are like this too, but those platforms appear to lock
the post access behind paid promotions. 500 people may like your page on
Facebook, but only a tiny fragment of those people will see your post
unless you pay. G+ did not seem to do this (at least on that level).
The
key that made all this possible was the ability to share circles early
on. Community hubs were able to basically curate people. And since G+
more or less pulled all its early adopters from bloggers, those early
curated circles had a foundation of “here are people who produce,
relatively consistently, and of good, or better, quality.”
That was just unbeatable.
It
was special. I’m glad I was able to be a part of it. It will always hold
a special place in my heart, and my life. Of course I’ll miss it. But
perhaps the line gets all muddled when someone says G+. Are they talking
about the platform? Or the community? Or bits of both?
Friday, April 26, 2019
What is the game you want to play?
A while back now, I got "into it" a bit with a friend over skill checks. Much has been written on this topic so hopefully I won't be rehashing much, but I felt like I came away with a new personal understanding of my feelings on the matter.
The conversation began, as it normally does, talking about keeping information about the world locked up behind a skill check. A quick scenario (not the one discussed):
A zombie has been killed.
The DM says: "What are you doing right now?"
Player says: "I'm looking at the corpse to make sure it's really dead, and glancing around the room to keep a look out for more."
At this time, one of the zombie's arms is attempting to wriggle away from the body to push a button that will open a door and unleash more zombies.
If a player specifically says they're looking at the corpse, and there are no obscuring environmental effects or other pressures on their attention, I think the DM should tell them that the arm is 1. still moving and 2. attempting to move away from the corpse, possibly even towards something (unsure what it's target is though).
Some would make this a perception check: did you notice the movement? Or ask that lovely question of "What's your passive perception? Something is happening, but I won't tell you what it is unless you have a number above X, or you can just roll."
As we went back and forth over a few scenarios, he said, something to the effect of "You would just tell them where all the secret doors are, and I'm not like that." Yes, I would tell players where the secret doors are (assuming they were looking for them in a way that made sense it would reveal said secret door, and yes I would provide clues in my description of the room/area if applicable that could reveal the location of said secret door and "help them" find it. (he seemed slightly aghast at this)).
And what hit me is that I am very much not interested in the "process of finding things" or the "process of opening things" or the "process of spending a sufficient amount of in game gold and time to learn a new language" as the baseline "normal" of the game.
It is my opinion that if a door is locked there should never be a limit to the number of times you can attempt to pick the lock, unless it's tied to something "real" in the game. Like, "It looks like you can try picking the lock twice before the shambling mound gets close enough to hit you." is good. Likewise, "Your attempts have completely stripped out or broken the mechanisms of the lock, and now it won't even unlock with a key" is good too. Seems obvious, but here's the question about this over on Stack Exchange, and that "vague memory" seems to have an echo.
And so I found myself saying "That's not the game I want to play. I'm not interested in playing a game about figuring out how to open a door, or find a door. I'm interested in the consequences of what's on the other side of all those doors."
If you look at Disney's version of Aladdin, the movie begins at the end of Jafar's adventure to get the door to the Cave of Wonders open. Finding the correct golden scarab halves couldn't have been easy and would doubtlessly be an adventure in and of itself (and tbh one I'd probably enjoy playing), but I don't think it's nearly as interesting as dealing with the consequences of unleashing a genie upon the world.
In Hot Springs Island, getting the gold is the easy part. Getting it home isn't. And what hell could be unleashed upon the world by a massive infusion of gold destabilizing the money system. That's the game I want to play. I don't want to spend a whole game making sure players have payed the appropriate character creation tax to be able to speak the language to find the right person who can give them a map if they make the appropriate intimidation check, and then make sure they can make the right persuasion/insight checks at the docks to ensure they're getting on a ship that's going to actually take them where they want to go and not sell them into bondage somewhere.
Likewise with the dungeon. Yes, some doors should be special. Some doors should require tricks and esoteric knowledge, but I don't think it needs to be every single door. I don't want to play a game about finding and opening doors. I want to play a game about dealing with the problems of rescuing the "wrong" people or unearthing the "wrong" artifact. I want to play the game where the treasure hoard is found, and known and confirmed and it's a race to extract as much as you can before rivals get there.
Perhaps it's just a phase, but it's where I'm at right now.
Friday, April 5, 2019
Silent Titans Pre-Sale is Live
Hi! Silent Titans pre-sales are now live on the Swordfish Islands store. You can snag a copy here: http://shop.swordfishislands.com
If you live outside the US, this is a great time to grab a copy as non-US copies sold during this time will ship from outside the US. PreSale ends April 22.
Books sold after April 22nd will all ship from the US.
More information and details to come, but here's the quick announcement!
If you live outside the US, this is a great time to grab a copy as non-US copies sold during this time will ship from outside the US. PreSale ends April 22.
Books sold after April 22nd will all ship from the US.
More information and details to come, but here's the quick announcement!
Saturday, March 9, 2019
A New Map
Hello Everyone,We haven't forgotten this blog. Promise. In fact, we're working on a whole overhaul of the site to make swordfishislands.com a more meaningful and focused experience. Soon™
News Item #1 - A New Map
There is a new map of Hot Springs Island by Jason Thompson (@mockman). It is utterly amazing.
News Item #2 - Reprint of Hot Springs Island
We have completely sold out of the first print run of Hot Springs Island (1500 copies)! Thank you! A reprint is coming, and one of the things we were waiting for was this map. It's going to be incorporated into The Dark of Hot Springs Island. We're also planning to do a poster map of it ('cause omg how could we not?!). It should be coming very soon. No firm date, but it's at the top of the stack of things to get done.News Item #3 - Silent Titans
We are publishing Patrick Stuart's new RPG book Silent Titans. We ran a Kickstarter right at the end of 2018, and the book is expected to be completed by the printer right at the end of March. We hope to have them up on the webstore as soon as they're available. We may even be doing a pre-sale.News Item #4 - The Tomb of Black Sand
We are currently working on a small dungeon called The Tomb of Black Sand. It doesn't have anything to do with the Swordfish Islands themselves, but it will be done in the same style (in terms of the way the information is presented, and with the goal of being able to be dropped into any fantasy campaign world). It's being done as a part of Kickstarter's Zine Quest event, and is expected to be completed in time for Gen Con this year (August 1st).There are a few other exciting things on the horizon, but we're not quite ready to talk about them just yet. Stay tuned. And thanks again for your ongoing support!
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
Reddit AMA - 11-09-18
Things have been kinda nuts on this front. The Dark of Hot Springs Island won the gold Ennie for best adventure at Gen Con 2018. It won the prestigious Ramanan Sivaranjan Awards for Excellence in Gaming 2018. And it just won game of the month for November 2018 on Reddit's RPG subreddit.
We're working on getting a reprint going (almost sold out of physical copies of the first run of books!). We're working on the next book The Spire Islands. There are two spire islands: North Spire Island (home of the green scaled lizardment the Goa) and South Spire Island (home of the blue scaled lizardmen the Kiru). Together these two islands have 26 hexes, making them slightly larger than Hot Springs Island (25 hexes).
Because we won game of the month on the RPG subreddit, we've been invited to do an "Ask me Anything". Stop by http://reddit.com/r/rpg on Friday 11/09/18 from 11:00am - 12:30pm and ask us any questions you'd like about Hot Springs Island or the Swordfish Islands, or whatever else you like.
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Not sure how to begin a campaign?
Here's one way to start a Swordfish Islands campaign
Your past does not matter.
About a year ago you got black bagged and thrown in a cell.
A dark cell. They said you deserved it. There was a list of allegations. You
could recognize the voices of people you knew testifying against you, or at
least you thought you could through the hunger and the dark.
It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. And that doesn't matter.
What matters is that it happened. And here you are.
After sitting in the dark for 6 months, the door opened and
an impeccably clean person, wearing black pants, black boots, and a bright coat
of saffron yellow offered you a deal. Redemption. The Martel Company needs
recruits. It will be hard work. And dangerous. But there will be treasure, and
you can buy back your good name. In time.
They beat you. But they fed you well. They beat you harder.
But they gave you equipment. They beat you 'till your bruises bled, but only if
you did not obey. And they were fair.
For 6 months you hauled rocks. Big rocks. Rocks that were
stuck in mud or in rushing rivers. You became wonderful at tying knots and
lashing. You can make a crude sledge out of just about anything. After about a
month of the beatings and hauling the only thing you thought when you saw
something was "How can I pick this up and move it".
You were not alone. You don't know how many others there
were total because everyone came and went so quickly, but you were placed on a
hauling team, and they became your family. You've slept together, bathed
together, eaten together. Watched each other shit.
Maybe you've become friends. Maybe you hate each other. It
doesn't matter. Trust was beaten into each of you one blackjack at a time by
the Martel Company. You know you can count on the people you are with right now
because you already have for months.
A week ago you were equipped to go to the islands. The
Swordfish Islands. Men and women in yellow coats lined the rails of the ship
and held crossbows to the haulers. Some tried to escape. They were shot, and no
one flinched. Not even you.
They branded the back of your left shoulder once the ship set
sail. Black magic swirled around the iron and it felt like you were marked by
ice, though you had seen it in a blaze.
When all were branded a Martel representative spoke with the
boom of a storm. "You belong to Martel now, and you have been brought here
to haul. Haul gold. Haul statues. Haul art and treasures of magical danger you
cannot even begin to comprehend."
"The more you haul and return to a Martel
quartermaster, the quicker your brand will fade. I cannot tell you how much you
must haul. That amount is tied to your crimes, and you have had plenty of time
to reflect upon them, so you know your amount better than I."
"We may sink. There are reefs and storms and
monstrosities of every stripe between here and our destination. If our
quartermaster is incapacitated any Martel Company quartermaster can process
your hauls. There will be others. Boats arrive at the Swordfish Islands
weekly."
"You do not need to haul. You are always free to
choose, but in time, the brand will consume your flesh."
A naked man was brought onto the decks. His mouth gaped and
his eyes lolled about blindly. A crooked V of black and green flesh covered the
left half of his body. As he was thrown to the deck, the flesh on his left side
sloughed off like a corn husk and bones and shriveled guts spilled out.
And then, the storm struck.
[If your character's strength and constitution scores are
below 15, increase them by one point. If either stat is 15 or higher, add a
single point to your charisma because you look fantastic after all the work you
put in over the last 6 months]
