Official Release: Shadow & Fae, "The Bones of Ol' Bill"

 

If you can't tell, I drew that myself.

It's been an interesting few days for me, as I have taken a step I've never really done before. 

I've published a full adventure over on Itch, "The Bones of Ol' Bill."

The process of drafting, re-drafting, and editing it into a workable product was a bit bumpy, and I even changed it once post-publication, but it's been stupidly fun.

See, I've been running a game in my own homebrew world for years. There are places, people, and problems that have been sitting in a file on my desktop that I doubted I would ever think about again. And then I had an idea.

What if I shared them? What if I took those people beloved by my table, fleshed them out, and organized them into an adventure?

Arnesport

The town of Arnesport wasn't the first place I ever ran a game—it was the second. A band of town guards (my players) were following the trail of a group of kidnappers, and they caught a boat from Arnesport to the next stop on their quest. While they were in town, they tried to out-drink a dwarf named Maruk, bought potions from the frazzled Elivia, and headed off. 

So, as I was thinking about revisiting these folks, I wondered, "What could go wrong that would be worthy of a grand adventure?" And the rest practically wrote itself as I just kept asking, "who, what, where, when, why, and how?"

Cue a magical artifact being shipped into town, a deal gone south, and an undead captain and her crew out for revenge.

Then, throw in a handful of other situations in the area, a few horrible mysteries, and just enough unanswered questions to leave openings for future development, and I think we're finished.

The Hard Part

Honestly, the hardest part wasn't formatting, or art, or making sure everything made sense. The hardest part is probably getting it out there. Like many creators, I'm not a great advertiser. I'm not a naturally pushy guy, nor do I like spamming social media with "buy my product" posts. I think that's ok, though. I'll put it here for now, I've put it out there—a little—on social media, and I might send it to a few other bloggers to see if they want to review it. 

If you'd like to grab a copy, it is currently Pay-what-you-want on Itch.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Recipe for Encounter Stew: Threat, Stage, and Stakes

Image
Here's a recipe I've recently brewed up for making interesting encounters. Just like most recipes, it's been handed down, stolen, refined, torn up, and taped back together. Unlike most recipes online, we're skipping the details of that process. You've got cooking to do. Creating Encounters There are three major considerations when planning an encounter, Threat , Stage , and Stakes . Threat The danger of an encounter can be expressed as Total HD (THD) and average Damage per Round (DPR), assuming all  regular attacks hit (Yes, I know that they won't, but getting any more detailed than this runs into the issue of having more detail than is useful).  Note that this is an estimation, as spells and abilities can cause this to vary widely. If an encounter features a particularly dangerous spell or condition, add it to the threat.  For example, we could list threat as: "A Witch and 3 Homunculi (8 THD, 16 DPR, Polymorph)". Choose or roll a threat from your favo...
Read more

D&D Motif Index by Theme

Image
D&D Motif Index by Theme This list is not complete, and may never be. If you wish to contribute, leave a comment with a motif and its theme. Motif : A common and recognizable element in story-telling. Adventure Goals (Also Villainous Plots) Capture Individual Capture Territory Defend Location Destabilize Faction Destroy Object Escort Individual Gather Components Gather Intelligence Kill Creature Map Area Reach Location Recover Item Rescue Individual / Creature Secure Alliance Solve Mystery Steal Valuables Sway Opinion Win Competition Curses Ability Removal Aging - Rapid Banishment Haunted Immortality - Unable to Die Inconvenient Compulsions Lycanthropy Mutation Nightmares - Unable to Rest Sentient Undeath Vampirism Wandering - Endless Death - Means Of Assassination Asphyxiation Blood Loss Chemical Overdose Crushed Decapitation Dehydration Drowning Eaten Execution - Legal Falling Illness Incineration Magical Accident / Experimentation Monster - Other than Eaten Murdered Old Age Petr...
Read more

MiniLOG & MiniDELVE : One Page Rules & Dungeon Generation

Image
We're playing as these guys. MiniLOG Ages ago I wrote a One Page GLoG as a challenge to myself. I looked back on it recently and shuddered. While there were some good ideas there, I felt it lacked precision, beauty, and was still plagued with too much bulk. I slimmed it down and painted it up into MiniLOG, which is everything a player really needs to know to enjoy a game of GLoG. The basic rules are: 3 Attributes (Might, Grace, and Will) that are  the modifiers. 3 Fixed DCs Boons and Banes that stack, cancel each-other out, and boost the Crit/Fumble chance. A simplified Death & Dismemberment table. Simple and familiar gear, spells, and leveling. Plus some other things. All on one page. You can take a peak here . MiniDELVE   We're slaying these things. To accompany such a small game, I needed an equally small but punch-packed GM toolkit. Enter MiniDELVE, a distillation of everything I know (or think I know) about dungeon crafting. Dungeon overview prompts. Layout guidelines...
Read more