News in Productivity

Johnny Rook Games is a go!

I've joined forces with someone to start a publishing company, and the first product is now for sale!  The 1e module Watchtower on the Hill can be purchased through Lulu, and the basics of a website have been put together.

When my business partner first approached me about a publishing company, it was several years ago, and the idea felt more like a pipe dream.  The more we talked about things, though, the more we liked the idea and thought we could realize it.  Even though we were woefully low on start-up funds, we talked about producing a game and threw some ideas back and forth.  We wanted to develop a full product before we tried to sell it.

Our biggest problem had been trying not to reinvent the wheel.  Every time we came up with a solution to a problem with game mechanics, we realized that it had been done already (or better) by previous products.  Then we saw what was happening in the self-publishing world and how that was being used to put out 1e material.  We were hooked in an instant, and we devoted our time to producing a few things for the growing community of traditional role playing enthusiasts!

Now, we still have a few tricks up our sleeves.  We spent a lot of time working angles, altering rule sets, clarifying mechanics, and tweaking what was left.  While the products we're putting out now are intended to be compatible with the OSRIC rules, we still plan on including original material.  It will be an evolutionary process, as we tidy up loose ends and fine tune the rules we've been working on.  In production right now is a new campaign setting that will include much of the hard work we've been putting in over the last few years.  These are products not for us, but for the hobby, and we can only hope that our small contribution helps push the hobby forward. 

This blog will continue as a separate entity from the Johnny Rook Games company, as I meditate or play around with ideas or games that have little or nothing to do with what the company publishes.  Go out and play games, everyone, and bring some new players into the fold.  Good gaming to you all!

Important Links:
Lulu
Johnny Rook Games
Watchtower on the Hill

Downtime

I wonder how odd it is to be writing about role playing games (on an admittedly low level of regularity), when I haven't played a game in over six months, and haven't played regularly in years.  I also wonder how much interest I really have in playing anymore, when the hobby has changed as much as it has.  On a deeper level, how much of my own attitudes toward the current trends come from nostalgia for something lost rather than as a critique of what is?

Despite the growing Traditional Gaming Movement, I don't see the hobby having much growth.  Most of the new products that spring up in support of refurbished old game products still carry the weight of postmodern computer gaming identity.  That is, the modules are designed with the writer's AWESOME STORY in mind rather than playability, and the smell of over-the-top 'dungeon-punk' (I wish I had coined that phrase) still lingers on those virtual pdf pages.  Small-press D20 books are on the wane, small-press old-school books are on the rise (at least in the print-on-demand internet markets), but nothing seems to be reaching out to new players.  It's all about sustaining what current players want to play.  And with simulations of Original D&D and First Edition AD&D, Second Edition is grossly underrepresented.

I know at least one person rejecting 'retro-clone,' the term that has been circulating among the adherents, as he wonders why we are referring to traditional gaming as such, or as 'old-school' style, when very little actual role playing occurs in this new style.  The shift, it seems, from playing the part of a type in favor of playing the part of an individual, is at the core of this difference of philosophy in games.  Based on what I have seen and experienced with contemporary art and literature, not to mention popular media, I agree with the objections to contemporary gaming.  It is more of a challenge to play the part of The Fighter than to play the part of Giaccomo Fenderharp, Battlesinger and Bladespinner.  I don't even know what the hell I just said, but I'm sure someone will think they can make that idea awesome with a bit of personalization.

This is a lot of the reason I don't play much anymore.  I can't find anyone that shares this philosophy of gaming.  Individuals are incredibly unreliable, while archetypes are as dependable as Old Faithful.  Deep in the pits of the Underdark, surrounded by beasts that have not seen the light of day for centuries, I cannot rely on Giaccomo Fenderharp for combat support.  I honestly have no idea what he can do, and I can't trust how necessary I am to him, since anything I can do, he can do better.  I would rather trust the longsword of Robert the Fighter, whose survival depends on me as much as mine depends on him.