Brother Ptolemy & The Hidden Kingdom (4E D&D) Now Available!

-reposted from Nevermet Press-

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We are very happy to announce that our first print offering, Brother Ptolemy & The Hidden Kingdom, is now available! The Hidden Kingdom is 110-page 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons adventure setting for 5th level characters. Brother Ptolemy & The Hidden Kingdom will be available in retail stores in January, but you don’t have to wait!

• ISBN: 978-0-557-67589-0
• PRINT $14.99
• eBook/PDF $9.99

Fans on Facebook and followers of our blog can order direct starting today! Plus, as an exclusive bonus to our fans, if you order Brother Ptolemy & The Hidden Kingdom before November 30th, 2010 - we'll send you a copy of the PDF eBook for FREE! All you have to do is...

1. Order Brother Ptolemy & The Hidden Kingdom in PRINT.
2. Snap a picture of the book - in your yard, in your hand, with your dice... whereever! The crazier the better!
3. Upload your picture of Brother Ptolemy & The Hidden Kingdom to our Facebook fan page.

That's it! Everyone who does this by November 30th will get an email with an exclusive link to a free copy of the PDF. But... it get's better! The person who takes the most laughable snapshot of our book will also get a free copy of either Open Game Table Volume 1 or 2 (their choice) in PRINT for free! Snap!
What is Brother Ptolemy & The Hidden Kingdom? Check out the back cover of the book and find out!

Now go get your game and roll some dice!

Nevermet Press Now The Official Publisher for Open Game Table

Well... it's a happy marriage that was bound to happen eventually.

Get the full dealio over at NMP's site.

The Monster MashUp Contest

In case you hadn't heard - Nevermet Press started accepting entries for a Monster MashUp Contest yesterday. The contest runs only until Monday of next week (April 26th) - so if you want to win some great prizes, simply answer the following question in 300 words or less.

What is this monster's story?

Illustration (c) Rob Torno. Used by permission.

Felix Sundown Finds Twitter @FelixSundown

It's an experiment - but we've decided over at Nevermet Press that Felix Sundown is, basically, going to be the official mascot of Loaerth & Feywyrd. We kicked off the first article about L&F by interviewing Felix. Now we hope to continue exploring L&F development organicaly by having people interact with Felix, asking him questions, and following him on Twitter.

Wondering what I look like? Head over to Nevermet Press and find out! There's even a video!

Its a great way to help shape the L&F campaign setting - just ask Felix questions, or make suggestions. He's all ears.

=D

World Building with Loaerth & Feywyrd (2)

Once again something small has grown to consume a big part of my free thinking time. World Building, as a topic in general and more specifically how it applies to Loaerth & Feywyrd. I mentioned in my last post that I plan to develop L&F just enough to serve as a creative foundation for a new campaign without going overboard. I'm currently thinking about RACES for L&F, what are they, what "stock fantasy" races (if any) should be included, where do they live in Feywyrd now and where were they originally from in Loaerth? That sort of thing. But detailing everything is a waste of energy, but the temptation to do so is (for me) hard to resist. I do, however, recognize this is probably me channelling my professional career as a scientist ("everything must make sense", "all the interdependencies must be explored", "there must be a reason for everything", etc). It's like the magic rabbit hole from Alice in Wonderland... once you go down there you'll never be coming back.

So, in the short term my medicine to avoid going down the rabbit hole is to do a ton of reading on world building. The problem is there is a metric ton of stuff on world building out there in the Internet wildelands, but not all of it is worth your time.

I've collected a list of relevant books, articles and other online resources I've read, tuned specifically to world building and race creation / demographics for now. Hopefully you'll enjoy the articles as much as I have.

• "World Building", by Julie Ann Dawson from Bards & Sages, is a PDF/eBook that was developed from a syllabus of a world building seminar she ran at SUNY. It's only 16-pages in length, but for less than $1 I couldn't resist. It ended up being worth 10 times that in terms of what I got out of it. She basically covers world building in five parts: develop a clearly defined logic; Open, Closed, or Limited Access worlds; developing the logic; build the civilizations; and creating the crunch. As a long-time D&D player, my tendency was to do the last part first (the crunch), but she makes a strong argument against that approach and I'm better off for having read it.
• "Four Maxims for World Building" by B9anders over at Strolen's Citadel. While I disagree with the authors assertion that you should avoid detailing things the players will never know about [1], the rest of his post made sense to me for L&F world building.
  
• In "Four Easy Steps To Omnipotence", Drew Karpyshyn (Senior Writer for Mass Effect) lays out another four 'maxims' of world building. Common theme here? Yes: start small, stick to your common theme, be internally consistent, and use real world (or familiar) hooks to pull the player in.
  
• "World Building 101: Races" by Brandon Landgraff over at d20Source.com takes existing "stock fantasy" races and recasts them onto your unique setting. Although this is not necessarily what I was looking for, the article nonetheless proved useful because Brandon reminded me of the (often overlooked) issue of Culture vs. Race in fantasy settings: they are not the same thing [2]. This article is part of a stellar series of World Building 101 articles by Brandon, worth checking out and bookmarking no doubt.
  

Again, there are TONS of resources out there on the net about world building - but hopefully these above links will get you started with some different perspectives.

If you have any other links that might be worth checking out - please leave a comment and let us know!

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[1] I subscribe to the Tolkien, Donaldson, Hebert iceberg approach: 90% of what is known to the author is never seen by the reader. This is also why I'm so terribly affraid the whole L&F project could run aground if I get too caught up in the details.
[2] It is actually one of the things that bugs the hell out of me with the stock version of D&D: all dwarves live underground and drink stout for breakfast; all elf's love trees and are frilly wine drinking dandys, etc. You get the idea. It's one of the reasons why HardBoiled Cultures for 4E D&D is such a great resource.

World Building with Loaerth & Feywyrd (1)

As some of you may or (more likely) may not know is that I've started putting together a lightly developed campaign world called Loaerth over at Nevermet Press. The goal of the project is to build a campaign setting that is essentially an empty slate, while still giving the GMs (and the folks over at Nevermet Press) with just enough hooks to play off from for interesting new content and great adventures. Some campaign settings are so over developed that running an adventure in them often runs into Me vs. The Canon [1]. So, with Loaerth I want to develop it just enough so that I can get to the really fun part - a full blown adventure set in this new world. The way I see it, this is probably the best way to introduce this world to players without setting out to define everything under the setting suns.

So, here's the thing. I'm new at world building. I've done it a few times, but not in quite this way or on this scale. So, I'll be writing about my reading and research on world building here at TCM. I figure, this blog and the great community of readers that frequent this site are a great sounding board; you all no doubt have far more experience with this than I - so, I would be wise to get your input whenever possible.

My first steps in designing Loaerth & Feywyrd were to come up with a good hook. Sort of, what makes L&F different from the next setting. Take one part steam punk, one part fantasy, add a dash of manifest destiny, hit the delete key on "elf", and then click the undo button, and finally sprinkle some bonafide demihuman race wars on top - and viola: you have Loaerth and Feywyrd. You can find out more about what I'm talking about over on Nevermet Press. The way I'm decided to engage people in developing L&F's "mythology" is through a series of fictional interviews with Felix Sundown, an escaped feytroll who was the thrall to the Regent of Loaerth for centuries. So far, no one has taken a bite - but I'm hoping that will change.

The other first step is to design a map to place the relevant locations in; a world map that I can drill down on to a tiny scale to add detail where needed. I'm using Campaign Cartographer plus Fractal Terrains to design the world - it's relatively infinite zooming features makes it a very nice tool indeed. You can see the basic landscape layer of the world above. Thankfully, I'll likely have the help of Nevermet Press's resident cartographer Paul King to help add details where they are needed, but the goal is not to define or develop everything under the sun - only the content which we develop on NMP. The rest will be left either completely open or only very lightly commented on. The first area's I'll be adding some detail to will be Loaerth City and The Island, which I'll place on the above map in the future.

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[1] This happened to me tons of times with Forgotten Realms. My players and I all loved the setting, but I also loved tinkering around with it so much that at times it became a nuisance . There's were often very long lists of house rules and changes to the Realms' history and politics.

Nevermet Press Not Dead Yet

In case you missed it, check this out:

http://nevermetpress.com/nevermet-press-is-reborn/

Yes, its true... the struggling small press endeavor that Michael Brewer and I ventured into together last July is still kicking. In fact, we managed even get a bunch of very talented and enthusiastic writers and artists to stay with us as we figure out this whole crowd sourced micro press gaming mashup thing called Nevermet Press. With this latest post - it is my sincere hope that we will be able to get up again and stand on two feet. Which of course, will be followed by us shaking our fists at the Dice God screaming "We made our save vs. die, BIATCH!"

So, head over to NMP and add the RSS feed to your feed reader, or follow NMP on twitter. We'll be aiming to have our development journal blog updated at least three times a week - and we'll be looking for your (i.e. gamers at large) input.

In the meantime, you can support our efforts at Nevermet Press by picking up a copy of our first eBook, Portrait of a Villain: The Desire, for less than five bucks! It's a 57 page Heroic Tier supplement for 4th Edition D&D - and it's worth every penny. Check out the reviews on RPGNow.com too!

Game on!

The Deadlands' Desire

A Deadlands Reloaded Conversion of Nevermet Press's The Desire

The Desire, also known as Desiree Turpis, is a vile Madame possessed by the otherworldly strength of demons. You can read more about The Desire here. Below you will find a Savage Worlds conversion of The Desire, and some of her close companions.

A 57-page eBook about The Desire, designed for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, was released recently by Nevermet Press. You can pick it up at RPGNow.com or directly from Nevermet Press for $9.95. By purchasing the eBook, not only will you be supporting a very tiny micropublisher, but you'll also be getting some top-notch content for your medieval / fantasy / gothic campaign setting. There is also a free, system-independent version of The Desire (all 11 articles in an early draft state) also available from NMP if you follow this link. A bunch of reviews of the eBook, and links to other system specific conversions of The Desire should be coming out from a variety of sources this week. I'll update this post with links when they do - so, subscribe to the comments!

Honestly… I'm very happy at how it all turned out; and I'm sure you'll love it too. But.. enough about the eBook... on to The Desire for Deadlands Reloaded!\

The Desire for Deadlands Reloaded
If you play Deadlands Reloaded (or any Savage Worlds game for that matter), please feel free to make use of our conversion of The Desire that could easily be dropped into your Weird West campaign. My thinking behind the conversion was that she would still act as a Madame at a frontier town brothel, but instead of being a demon-possessed human; she is more an occult priestess (a veteran arcane spellcaster in game terms) who has made a deal with The Reckoners for her own personal gain. If you play DLR, and end up using The Desire, please drop me a line in the comments. I would love to hear how it worked out!

The Desire, The City's First Mistress
A few decades ago, Desiree Turpis made a pact with 'the devil' in exchange for absolute beauty and charm. At the time, The Reckoners had just appeared in the West, and 'the devil' was no devil at all, but in fact a manitous that now whispers in her ear from the Hunting Grounds. Within a few short months, she succumbed to the manitious's desires, and quietly went mad.

The Desire, as she now calls herself, is the Madame of a local brothel and gambling establishment. Through both traditional and supernatural means, she has built up a powerful and well-connected list of loyal clients over the years; all of whom are unaware that they are acting as pawns in The Desire's far reaching schemes. Her abilities are a mixture of her own study of the occult, and that of the manitous that shares in her soul.

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d8, Spirit d8, Strength d4, Vigor d8.
Skills: Fighting d6, Guts d8, Intimidation d8, Notice d8, Persuasion d8, Stealth d8, Spellcasting d8, Streetwise d6.
Charisma +2; Pace 6; Parry: 5; Toughness 7 (1).
Hindrances: Delusional (minor), Greedy (minor), Overconfident.
Edges: Arcane Background (Magic), Attractive, Dodge.
Gear: English 1840 Derringer (5/10/20; 2d6 dmg.; ROF 1; Shots 8; AP1; Reload 2); Hellstrom Leather Body Wrap (Armor +1), Maiden's Gown (+2 Persuasion against male characters), Whip (see notes; DLR p. 45).
Special Abilities
Irresistible Voice: If The Desire speaks to her opponent and uses their true, she can attempt to charm them into complacency. When using this ability, she makes a Spellcasting roll opposed by her opponents Spirit. On a success, her opponent can never directly injure The Desire until the charm is removed. On a raise, her opponent suffers the same curse and in addition will treat her as a trusted friend for one full day – and even defend her from harm. The Desire suffers a -2 penalty on her Spellcasting check for every attempt beyond the first each day.
Whispers of Desire: The Desire merely needs to whisper into the ear of her victims to instantly subdue anything but her wishes. This ability mimics the Puppet power (DLR, p. 99) with the exception that the victim must only hear, and understand, her words. The Desire uses makes a Spellcasting check, opposed by her opponents Spirit for a success. If she has in her possession a personal belonging of the victim in hand, she gains control of the victim for as long as she possesses the item. Otherwise, the domination lasts for no more than one hour (two hours on a raise).
Deflection: When in danger, The Desire shifts from sight and seems more difficult to target by ranged weapons. This ability relies on The Desire's Spellcasting skill, and is the same as the Deflection power (DLR, p. 91).

Want to see some reviews of The Desire eBook from Nevermet Press? Please visit these excellent sites to see what they had to say:

• Gnome Stew - http://www.gnomestew.com/reviews/the-desire
• Jonathan Drain's d20 Source - http://www.d20source.com/2009/12/product-review-portrait-of-a-villain-the-desire
• Alltern8 - http://www.alltern8.com/library/tabletop_collectible_card_games/what_should_we_play_-_portrait_of_a_villain/l-4511.html
• Uncle Bear - http://unclebear.com/?p=4335
• The Examiner - http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-7705-Phoenix-RPG-Examiner~y2009m12d14-Review-The-Desire

Looking for more conversions of The Desire to other game systems? Don't Play 4E D&D? No problem! Check these Nevermet Press Distributed Workshops for variations on The Desire using other rule systems...

• Vamping up The Desire - The Desire in Vampire, The Masqerade - http://tenletter.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/nmp_distributed_workshop_desire/
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game conversion of The Desire http://seaofstarsrpg.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/the-desire-for-pathfinder/

“This game references the Savage Worlds game system, available from Pinnacle Entertainment Group at http://www.peginc.com/. Savage Worlds and all associated logos and trademarks are copyrights of Pinnacle Entertainment Group. Used with permission. Pinnacle makes no representation or warranty as to the quality, viability, or suitability for purpose of this product.”

Nevermet Press Releases Its First eBook

I would be mistaken if I didn't at least announce it once here at The Core Mechanic. So.. here it is.

Nevermet Press, the micropress game company I co-own with Michael Brewer, has release its first eBook today: Portraits of a Villain: The Desire. I'm happy to report that there are a bunch of (impartial) reviews coming down the pipe from various sources over the next week or two - so I'll skip the pitch and just provide you with the link.

You can pick it up from RPGNow.com or from Nevermet Press's very own storefront.
I'd be happy to answer any questions about the eBook, how it was made, or anything about NMP in general in the comments.

Also, as many of you may already know, Nevermet Press is a community driven game design studio. We are always looking for new content developers to work with. Artists, writers, and game desiginers, all share in the creation process and potential earnings of any content developed at NMP. Just shoot me an email and let me know if you are interested.

In the meantime -- while I may be occasionally posting about Open Game Table and Nevermet Press here on TCM -- my goal is to get back into blogging about games. I have a few drafts under development now... so look for those later this week.

Cheers -- JJ

Nevermet Press Founding Member Departs

Today, Nevermet Press is sad to report the departure of one of our founders: Quinn Murphy (aka gamefiend). Quinn has decided to strike out on his own as a game designer, and to continue the development of his excellent RPG blog At-Will. If the quality of his blog, and the rapid expansion of his ambitious 4Etopia community forums is any indication of his future success, his future looks as bright as ever. The reasons for his departure are not the result of any internal conflict or "issues", but more that he simply wants to focus on his own personal development as a game designer and author. His input, opinions, and suggestions were pivotal in helping shape the core values underlying Nevermet Press, and we would be lying if we didn't say this came as a surprise. Needless to say, we are disappointed to see him go. We wish him all the luck and success we can and hope to continue working with him in the future.

"Good Luck, Quinn! We will miss you! And we hope you find your hearts desire!"

Now, for everyone who is looking forward to Nevermet Pres, this news does not in any way affect NMPs future! We will continue to push forward and launch Nevermet Press on schedule in July. We've already gathered over 20 highly enthusiastic writers and artists and are always looking for more. One of the cornerstones of Nevermet Press is community development and engagement. So, if you are an RPG blogger who wants to get involved, please contact us!

Jonathan Jacobs & Michael Brewer
Nevermet Press

@ Nevermet Press - We Want You!!!

(Original Art by Matt Lichtenwalner • dragonbones.net)

I've received a number of emails from several readers and other bloggers in the RPG blogging community wondering what the heck is Nevermet Press and what our plans are for it. I guess this is the part where I spill the beans.

Together, we want to change the way roleplaying games are made. There is a vast storehouse of creativity locked up in the community of gamers who play RPGs. We want to build a meetinghouse where we can all work together to unlock that creativity and drive the development of new, innovative material for roleplaying games of all styles and genres that everyone can enjoy.

It's an ambitious plan, but someone has to try, right? Enter Nevermet Press...

Several months ago we started working together on various projects, it naturally evolved into thinking "Hey, we should start a small press publishing company!" I love challenges, and tend to get way over extended before saying no to anything, so of course that is exactly what we did: Nevermet Press was born.

Being that all three of us are avid RPG bloggers -- we wanted NMP to offer something different to the gaming community. So, we put on our CrazyHats and started brainstorming. In no time, three "cornerstones" of Nevermet Press took shape (in true to form blogger style bolded list... oh and we are still looking for that missing forth corner...):

1. Community Developed & Supported- The strength of Open Game Table is that it draws from a host of writers that don't represent the "industry" (for the most part), but instead represents gamers, the fans, the "end-users" of what the RPG industry produces. Nevermet Press will seek to emulate that same core value by working with RPG bloggers and blog readers in the gaming community (that means YOU). We want to produce great games, but we want to draw on the community as a whole to develop them. An important difference from NMP and Open Game Table is that we will also be implementing a profit sharing mechanism for the most active content developers contributing to any one project. Our creator revenue sharing program will cover both content contributed by authors and artists alike. Everyone's contribution will count. Thus, Nevermet Press eventually be able to field potentially multiple projects supported by dozens paid content developers.
   
2. System Independent & System Optional- What games do you play? How many systems do you enjoy? Chances are you play many games and enjoy multiple RPG platforms. What doesn't change is the social gaming experience. Nevermet Press wants to develop game products that are independent of any one system. We will aim to publish stat'less books that can be used with any game system. All system specific statblocks, rules and mechanics, etc will be made available from our website. All them will be paired with a host of multiple systems as well, so we will not be focused any one system. We believe thisinnovative approach will help us stay focused on the creative aspects of RPGs. Our first major printed book: tentatively called "The Villain Manual", will be completely statblock free. You'll find tons of backstory, maps, encounters, adventures, campaign arcs, and other materials about dozens upon dozens of villains for a variety of campaign settings. This book will be supported by our website - where you will be able to download all the statblocks and "crunchy" system-specific details for all your favorite games. Found a cool villain, and want to run him in Savage Worlds? No problem. 4E D&D? Done. d20 Modern? OD&D? It will all be available through NevermetPress.com.
   
3. Stuff You Can Use Today - In the blogosphere, content is king. And much is the same with games. On NevermetPress.com, we are going to provide USABLE content every day. It's a very tall order, but think about it: new villains, new monsters, new equipment, new adventures or campaign hooks every single day of the week for multiple game systems. We will avoid advice on how to play (don't you know what's best?). You wont find definitions of what is or is not old school (do you care?). No reviews. No 'fluff'. None of that. Just stuff you can use for your game tonight. All Content, Everyday. Period.
   

That's basically the gist of it. The biggest challenge to Nevermet Press is going to be gaining the trust and involvement of the community. But... we are not looking for free hand outs. We want community whom we've come to know in the last few years to come together and for everyone to mutually benefit. We also recognize that this is an ambitious plan. Basing an entire company on "crowd sourcing" might even be considered risky by some. Nonetheless, we want to try. Michael, Quinn and I will be acting as owners, content developers, and (most importantly) project creative directors. The final shape of those projects, however, will greatly depend on the level of involvement from the RPG blogging community.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I'm looking forward to working with all of you.

If you are interested in climbing on board, and want to start working with us, then please by all means shoot me an email. I'll get back to you as soon as I can with additional details.

I can always be reached at jonathan.jacobs@gmail.com


Best Regards,


Jonathan Jacobs,
with Michael Brewer and Quinn Murphy.
from Nevermet Press