April TTRPG Maker, Day 30

Day 30: If you were in charge of the TTRPG Industry what would you change?

Ok.

First off I think it is a misconception that there is a single RPG industry.  There are many.  The OSR crowd doesn't follow the Storygamers.  The DIY and Indie gamers try to avoid the big publishers and everyone is off doing their own thing.

This doesn't even take in consideration the related markets and products like Actual Play podcast/videos or even something as simple as selling dice.

I don't think I would change it, to be honest.

There are things I would like though.

More Market Data
Seriously how have we gone this long and not even know who we are selling too?  I know companies have their own, but a lot of it is still guesswork.

People Need to Be Better to Each Other
Look we are all here to have fun really.  So let people have fun.  Don't like their game? Fine. Don't play it.  But maybe you are missing out on something.  That guy over there is being a dick?  Ok, call him on it.  Find ways to get him to stop. 

Look not everyone is going to like everything and RPGs have boomed since 1974.  The average player...doesn't exist.  There are so many people in this hobby with so many different points of view.  I think this 30 Day Challenge has shown that.

I think I would like to have more Cons closer to me.  Yeah I know I am spoiled, but still, you asked and I answered.

I hope you all had as much fun as me with this!
Thank you Kira Magrann for getting this going.

April TTRPG Maker, Day 29

Day 29: Exciting 2019 RPG Trends?

Ha! I'll be the last to know!

Honestly, I got nothin'.

My to be reviewed pile is about 2000 items deep (that is not a joke or hyperbole).

I am just not writing stuff for the "new" D&D 5 and it is already 5 years old.

So yeah, I don't keep up with the trends really.

Go back to day 21 and see what I said there.  True here too. I just don't have the time in the day to do it all.

April TTRPG Maker, Day 28

Day 28: What Tools Help You Create?

I have to say my best tool has been my Chromebook.

I love that little computer.  Lightweight, fast, connected to Google including docs.
It has been great.

I spent YEARS messing around with computers. Everything from my 16k 800 khz Tandy Color Computer, to bleeding edge desktops, Linux boxes, mainframes, minicomputers and nearly everything in between.

This has been the best thing for me.  I can focus on my writing and every bit of research material is at my fingertips.  I love it!

Plus if I am on my work laptop, my home PC, or even my phone, I can still get to all my stuff. 

April TTRPG Maker, Day 27

Day 27: How Do I Market My Work?

Hopefully very well!

But seriously I tend to focus on the online communities I am part of; Facebook, Twitter, formerly Google+ (pour out a bit for our departed brother).

I have paid for ads on Facebook and I have done DriveThruRPG deal of the day.

Back in the day I even did a little bit of advertising on Usenet!

It seems that my best recommendations are word of mouth.  People telling others about my books.

Again, this one where I am curious to see what others do.  Hope to pick up some tricks.

Since this is a marketing post, please have a look at my games!
https://www.rpgnow.com/browse.php?author=Timothy%20S.%20Brannan

April TTRPG Maker, Day 26

Day 26: Favorite Online Community

So many really. I love all my online communities.

I guess my greatest love is still blogs.  Best signal to noise ratio, best content on the games I enjoy and a chance to interact with other creators.

Facebook is still a great place to find a wide variety of opinions and games but that also means there is a large collection of "noise".

This is one I will really enjoy seeing what others are going to post.  I am always in the market for more places to learn about games.

April TTRPG Maker, Day 25

Day 25: A rad diversity consultant?

Ah...I am not sure what this is asking.

Am I one?  I am sure there are others more qualified than me.

Do I need one?  I don't know.

Have to see what others are saying for this one.

April TTRPG Maker, Day 24

Day 24:  Favorite RPG thing to Create?

Hmm.

That's a toss-up.  I love making monsters.  Monsters are what got me interested in RPGs to start with.

I also love to make classes.  My witch is my foremost example, but I have many more.

But in the end, I would have to say spells.

According to my spreadsheet, I have written over 800 unique spells for various games.

Spells and magic are my favorites.

April TTRPG Maker, Day 23

Day 23: Mentoring/Being Mentored By?

I suppose you could say I am mentoring my sons.  They have both been playing a very long time and now they have the bug to write their own material too.

I have always told them that if there is something they want and they can't find it then maybe they need to make it themselves.

My oldest son writes about dragons and my youngest has created a Bitcoin farm in his room.  He took my advice right to heart.

Now if you are new here and ask "what about your daughters?" Well. sadly I don't have any.  But they would be getting the same advice from me.

April TTRPG Maker, Day 22

Day 22: How are you working to improve the ttrpg community?

I hope I lead by example.

I would like to be the example that not all "old guys" are stuck in the 80s (although my wife would question my tastes in music) and we are not all a bunch of grumpy assholes.

I also try to call out bad behavior when I see it and correct my own when it happens.

My reach is not very far, but I am hoping that things like this will help.

I like to be an RPG evangelist.  Show everyone what is good about RPGs and the joy of sitting around the table with family and friends and rolling dice.

April TTRPG Maker, Day 21

Day 21: What external factors do you struggle with to create?

Another easy one.

Time.

There is not enough time in my day to work full time, be a husband and father and then still find time to write.

I spend my day job writing. I spend blog time writing.  Then to sit in front of a computer and do more?

Sometimes it is hard.  Often times it is hard.

April TTRPG Maker, Day 20

Day 20: A Game You Want to Make You Think No One Will Play?

Oh, that's easy.

I want to make an officially licensed Charmed RPG.

I am not ashamed of this, but all things considered I vastly prefer Charmed to Buffy. I don't even consider myself a Buffy fan, to be honest, more of a Willow & Tara fan. But I am an unapologetic Charmed fan.

There is the whole witch thing to be sure.  And the Charmed Ones are rather easy on the eyes.  But I think my friend and former TV writer Robert Black said it best,  Charmed never forgot who their audience was and never forgot they were a TV show.

While I know the demographics of the show and your average gamer are not exactly the same, I think with the amount of "modern supernatural" fiction being published today that a Charmed game would be fantastic.  Buffy sold well, Dresden Files is doing nicely.  Granted those are properties with significant geek/gamer buy-in and at the time of their games the properties are still active.

I would like to point out that with all the stuff I have written about witches and magic in the things I have published that this game would be a natural for me. ;)

April TTRPG Maker, Day 19

Day 19: Favorite Themes to Explore

When I write games it is magic and the nature of belief.

My favorite characters tend to be clerics, paladins, and witches.  All characters that are defined by their relationship to divine forces.

Maybe it has something to do with me being an atheist in real life. I don't know.  I suspect it is.

I just find them rather interesting.

April TTRPG Maker, Day 18

Day 18: What are some underlying messages in your work?

Witches are cool. Haunted houses are awful places in my world.

I suppose the underlying message I want to convey is that as long as everyone is having fun (and no one feels hurt or left out) then it's all good fun.

There is no wrong way to play.

Also, let people enjoy the things they love.

April TTRPG Maker, Day 17

Day 17: How Does Your Identity Influence Your Work?

This is related to yesterday's post.  But let's break it down into how I see myself.

I am an aging Gen Xer
Not a Baby Boomer (thank you!) and not a Millenial.  I grew up on a diet of MTV, horror movies on basic cable and later on VHS.  I learned to program a computer to get the software I needed (no aps or stores yet).  So I have learned to make do with what I had available and then create the rest.
My books are often the games or supplements I wanted to play in the 80s but no one had written.
So I also have a preference for some older games. I am not saying they are better (and if you spend anytime here you will know I play and love a lot of new games) I just find them fun. I like them.

I am a Midwesterner
I grew up in the mid-West.  My high school was in the middle of two corn fields. We lived through the Satanic Panic of the 80s so "of course" everyone knew of someone that knew someone that saw a Satanic altar.   I got the see the power behind a social movement early on and in your face full color.
This also affects my next bit of identity.

I am an Atheist and Skeptic
I grew up as an Atheist in a town whose claim to fame is the number of churches they have.  Look I love writing about ghosts, witches, magic, and gods. I just don't believe in any of it in real life.  None. In a very significant way, my early explorations into RPGs (D&D in particular) and mythology was a way of dealing with being the only kid in school* who didn't believe in fairy tales.  * I have since learned through the wonder of social media that I was not the only one they were just as afraid as I was to say anything.

I am a Father
Becoming a husband and father is one of my greatest achievements in life.   Yes, I have had plenty of other really great achievements; my education, my degrees, my books.  But being a dad.  Nothing ever comes close to that.  I write games I want my kids to also enjoy.  I want worlds that they would want to play in.

I am sure there is more.  I used to have a professor that said culture is like a tackle box that someone shook up.  It is very difficult to pull out one thing or separate one from the other.  I think that is true here.

April TTRPG Maker, Day 16

Day 16: How does your environment inform your work?

I have talked about this one before.

I grew up in the midwest in the 70s and 80s.  My "adventures" were often road trips. My backgrounds included a love of horror movies, a mother who knew some of the most blood-chilling stories I have ever heard, and a fascination for mythology and the occult.

It was a heady brew that only the alchemy of the 70s and 80s could produce. 

In my books, I want to recapture the feel of finding some lost occult tome of the 70s.  Something a little subversive, a little dangerous and a little outside of the reach of the normal people out there.

Hammer Horror + Occult 70s + NWoBHM from the 80s gives you the environment I grew up in and what informs all my RPG creations.

April TTRPG Maker, Day 15

Day 15: Favorite Tropes to Subvert?

Halfway there!

Favorite Tropes to Subvert?  ALL OF THEM!

But seriously, a few come to mind.

You will never, ever see a "Women in Refrigerators" situation in one of my games.  No woman will ever be killed to forward a male character's arc. Never. 

You will never, ever see rape as a means of helping to build up a character as via a Rape-and-Revenge arc. As in when you take a character down to their lowest levels so they can be built back up into something more powerful.  I guess the trope could be called the "I Spit on Your Grave" trope.

Most of all you will never, ever see a "Bury Your Gays" or a "Dead/Evil Lesbian cliché" in anything I publish. Ever.

"But", you may ask "what if the story calls for it?"
Sorry, but no. Time to write a new fucking story then.

"But aren't you giving 'special treatment' to a certain group?"
No. And also fuck you, go write your own fucking games and don't buy mine if that is what you think.

These are my lines in the sand.

April TTRPG Maker, Day 14

Day 14: Are Your Game Mechanics and Characters Intersectional?

My mechanics are math which is about as non-intersectional as you can be. Math is math.

Again, not to sounds like a broken record, I go back to my key philosophic design foundation; Is it fun?  Everything else flows from that.

Now to be fair.  I DID write The Witch: Aiséiligh Tradition AS I thought a radical feminist witch group would look like in a D&D/Fantasy world. 

Here I did play with concepts of power and gender as they related to the archetype of the witch.  I based it on the "Reclaiming Tradition" in modern Wicca who have decided that they need to reclaim the name "witch" and make it their own positive label.

The Aiséiligh are in a very real sense my Social Justice Witch class.  Lawful, Good, and sick your patriarchal shit.

April TTRPG Maker, Day 13

Day 13: Participate in Streamed Games?

No. I really don't.

I am of an age where I don't get a lot of time for my games, so I like to run them when I can.  Since my regular group consists of my family there is not a lot of interest in me streaming the game.

Plus streaming games have a certain flow to them that my home games do not.  Plus there is a ton of inside humor. What's the point in streaming content that really only the people at the table will get.

I have not against streaming games and think they are kind of cool really.  The ones I have watched have been a lot of fun.  But you likely will not see me doing it anytime soon.

Would I play in one that someone else was running? Yeah, I might do that.

April TTRPG Maker, Day 12

Day 12: How to Make Work more Inclusive?

I hope that my work is fairly inclusive as is. 

With my two primary philosophies "Is it fun?" and "Can I play what I want?" I hope that I have not left any room for anything exclusionary.

Since I also feel that once the book leaves my hands and it is in yours that you can make as inclusive as you like/want/need.

I just have to make sure there is nothing in the rules that say you can't.

I'll be interested in seeing what others have to say about this.

April TTRPG Maker, Day 11

Day 11: Shoutout to an Underloved Creator

I know of a lot of creators that are doing great work.  But underloved?

Justin Issac is doing some cool stuff under his labels Halls of the Nephilim and The Lone Bards.

Gavin Norman has been putting out some great stuff for his Necrotic Gnome label.

Any others I mention I think are pretty well known.  Liz Chaipraditkul at Angry Hamster Publishing I think is well known now. At least I hope she is!

I am sure there are more.

How about this.  Here is your excuse, permission, invitation to post YOUR favorites below.  Post yourself if you wish!