A Brilliant Idea!

 Howdy you Tempestuously Avid Spectators!

Got a question for ya:  Are you a writer?  If so, where do you get your ideas?  ...Ok, I got two questions for ya.  Do you get people ask you that?  THREE!  I got three questions for ya!  Bet ya didn't expect that!  Because NO ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition!  Hey, if you're gonna steal, might as well steal from the best, right?  Four!  I got four questions...ah, never mind.

One of the most common questions writer-types get asked is "How do you get your ideas?"  It doesn't seem to matter whether you write short stories, novels, comic books, sitcoms, plays, movies, or RPG adventures...chances are you've been asked this at least once.  I know I have.  This has spawned this little essay which I like to call:

A BRILLIANT IDEA!

(That's What I Need, A Brilliant Idea!)

Well, I don't know about you, but I can't get away from ideas!  

I get ideas from the books I read, the shows and movies I watch, the games I play...the list goes on and on.

Sometimes, I'll watch a movie and wonder how the story would be different if the hero had made the OTHER choice a half-hour in (or an hour, or whatever).  Suddenly, it's a different story.  

Or, I wonder how the story would be different if the main guy was this OTHER character from this other story.  

Sometimes you get silly fan-boy fantasies like...what if Fafhrd and Grey Mouser met Elric?  Or...what if Conan was let loose on Middle Earth?  Or...what if you put James Bond and Jason Bourne (hey!  They have the same initials!) in the same story?  Would they be working together, or on opposing sides?

Sometimes you get an idea for a situation, not a whole story.  Sometimes you just get an idea for a character, or at least the start of an idea for a character.  Like I said when I was talking about Mutant World, I saw the pictures of those characters and used that as the starting point of who they were and what they were about.

I get a lot of ideas from different RPG supplements.  But then, that's what they are for.  Little adventure scenarios, weird and sometimes cursed magic items, mysterious locations, the barest seeds to spark an inspiration and grow your own adventure.  And they can be re-used and re-interpreted in different ways, even different genres!

Check it out:

A runaway princess learned the secret to undoing the terrible secret power of the evil wizard-king.

This could totally be the premise of a thrilling sword-n-sorcery tale starring Conan, or a sprawling high fantasy epic like Lord of the Rings.  Then again, it could be the set-up for Star Wars.

Sometimes you're forced to be creative.  Some time back in...I guess the 90's, TSR published a gameworld for the Dungeons and Dragons game...the boxed set was titled "Red Steel".  The short version (and probably not the fairest description) is that it was D&D in the wild west.  The land was suffering from a curse (three, if ya want to get technical) that get everyone magic powers...or mutations depending of your POV.  

This sword-n-sorcery in the wild west premise intrigued me...to this day I'm not sure why (I was never really into westerns).  But suddenly I wanted to write a fantasy/western.  Due to copyright reasons, I couldn't use their geography, so I made my own world by doing a sort of alternate-history thing.  I came up with a town called Sovereign, in the Nevada territory, and I came up with a witch named Persephone Bliss to explore it.  It came out pretty well, I think, and it did receive some positive responses from slush readers, but positive enough to make a sale.  Now, the first and (so far) only story, Persephone Bliss and the Journal of Emerson Thrarn, is currently available only in The Adventure Sampler, a free gift given to those who sign up for my mailing list.

So where do you get ideas from?  EVERYWHERE!  The media you consume, the experiences you've had, the places you visit...  Everything and anything can spark a flash of inspiration, and usually pounce upon you when you least expect it.  The best you can do is try to figure out which ones are the Good Ones and try to put them together into a reasonably passable and enjoyable story.  

It ain't always easy.  But that's the goal, and I'd better get back to it or these stories will never get done!

Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell

So What Are "Pulp Adventures"?

 Howdy do and how are you?

I'm fine, thanks for asking!

So let's see...in our last exciting chapter we started a new serial, Wrath of the Volcano God, and I thought I ought to give a little background of how that came about.  I know some people really like when writers talk about that stuff, so here goes.

This is actually an offshoot of the Dungeon Adventures concept, but I'll reiterate here so you don't have to find the other post.

As I've stated before on this blog, I am also associated with Fantanomicon Press, which makes downloadable paper miniatures for various genres of role playing games.  I've got figures which could be used for fantasy games, jungle pulp games, some space opera guys, and others.  

One day I had this idea that I should write some stories about this guys.  Sort of like they did in Third Edition Dungeons and Dragons, they had these "icon characters" that they used in the rulebooks, on the covers of adventure modules, and eventually made a serials of short adventure novels featuring these same characters.

And I thought:  Why don't I do that?  So I selected a handful of characters from the Basic Dungeoneers set and came up with an adventure for them to undertake.

My first thought was to try and write something funny, including things in the fantasy story that were a direct result of game mechanics, or the  game mentality.  Things like ridiculously complex mechanical traps that inexplicably pop out of cavern walls.  Having a character die and the player replacing him with a same-but-different character.  

Was I successful in this endeavor?  I guess that's up to you to decide.  As I worked on the story, other adventures came to mind.  I can have a changing roster of heroes, who forge and resume their relationships as they encounter one another on various adventures.  And I kind of liked the ideas I was cooking up.  Then I thought, too bad I can't do this with characters in the other genres.

Then I thought:  Why couldn't I?

So I set out to write a story featuring characters from the Rugged Adventurers set. Now, I've never played a pulp style RPG like Thrilling Tales or Hollow Earth Expedition, but I have read a few pulp magazines and seen a LOT of cliffhanger serials.  There won't be as many game-related concepts (although I do have a type of "Adventurer's Guild"), but so many pulps and serials have enough fun-but silly-elements that I don't think they're really necessary.  However, I am constructing their fictional version of Earth the same way I would design it for a game--I'm incorporating various fictional countries and devices that have been featured in cliffhanger serials (probably for my own amusement, though there are people out there who might recognize the references). 

And, of course, I've got other heroes for other genres who can have quick little adventures of their own.  All in all, I've got some nifty ideas in store and I'm excited to see how they come together!  Aren't you?  Of COURSE you are!  So Tune-in And See all the Thrills And Surprises coming our way!

Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell

a word about Dungeon Adventures

Howdy, all you Truly Adventurous Souls!

So we've finished up the last exciting episode of our Phantom Sleuth serial, which means we're going to have something new start up this week!  And aren't you anxious to find out what it is?  Of COURSE you are!  And you've come to right place, because that's what we're going to talk about today!

Well, in order to tell you about this, I have to recap the evolution of Mutant World, just in case ya missed it!

Anyway, Mutant World was a direct result of the art.  I discovered the characters created by Luigi Castellani over at Artikid Arts and was entranced by them. I wanted to write a story about these characters, and so I did.  Then I was inspired to write a few more, and have more bubbling on the back-burner even now.

While writing these stories, something occurred to me:

I also run Fantanomicon Press, which sells downloads of paper miniatures for D&D and other role-playing games.  I have several characters designed for different genres with no concept of who they are or what they're about.  So my epiphany was that I should be writing stories about them!


Seemed like a brilliant cross-promotional idea, so I set to work writing a story about some characters inspired by the figures.  The whole thing was a silly idea, and so I tried to write a silly story.  My thought was that the story was supposed to be the story being played out in a D&D-type RPG game.  Sorta like in "The Gamers" (a series of movies about a group playing D&D), except it's only the in-game stuff.

There are inherent differences between playing an RPG and writing a story, but I tried to get certain things across.  Like...having your character die-off mid-game and needing a replacement character.  There are a few other things, too; which I hope are humorous to folks that have played the game.  This is the start of...

This is...well, basically a catch-all series for miscellaneous stories inspired by D&D-type games.  This will allow me to try out different Tones And Styles, and you folks can tell me which ones you like.  

And it all starts THIS Saturday when we start our BRAND NEW serial:  Quest to the Kobold Caves!  It's the first serial to appear on the blog that has NEVER BEEN PUBLISHED BEFORE!  So don't forget to tune in this Saturday!

Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell

more Dungeons and Dragons

What up to all you Thieves And Swordsmen!

So, here's what's been going on with me in recent months...

As you may or may not know, I currently reside in beautiful, scenic Las Vegas, Nevada where it doesn't rain enough.  I do have some family here, among them is my young nephew, who just finished high school.  A friend of his from the east coast moved out here a few month ago, and they wanted to play some D&D.  So we have been.

Apparently his friend has never played before, so I cobbled together a quick adventure that I thought would give him a good taste of the game.  Of course, whenever I have a new player, I feel a certain responsibility to play up the different aspects of the game, and all during play I tried to stress that different groups play in different ways.  Some favor role-playing, while others favor simple game mechanics.  Some focus on just fighting monsters and bad-guys, while others take copious notes to solve the long-term mysteries in the game and storyline.

I try to keep a healthy balance of all these things.  There's enough story to keep them following it, but no so much that it's overwhelming.  Some more notes would probably help them out, but we usually just sit and talk over things for a moment and they remember.  There is a good deal of fighting, but that first adventure threw me off because they decided to try and talk to the goblins in the cave instead of simply fighting them...which led to an unexpected but epic conclusion.

We're using the Labyrinth Lord rules, because they're quick and easy without a lot of the extra (optional) rules.  I thought that would be easier to explain to the new player.  We can import other rules if and when we feel they are needed.

My nephew decided to play a fighter, which is what he usually is.  His friend is playing a thief.  Thanks to one of those shows on YouTube, he wanted to have a gun, so I imported the wheellock pistols and rifles from the Red Steel campaign world.  It takes three rounds to load the gun, then you only get one shot, but if you're lucky, that shot can do a lot of damage!

I was hitting all the classic cliche's because it was quick and easy!  They started off in the little village where they had lived all their lives.  They worked for a pig-farmer until they were 20, finally had enough of that and decided to become adventurers!  So one day, in the tavern of course, they are approached by an out-of-towner who wants to hire a group to play bodyguard for him and take him to a nearby set of caves with a dangerous reputation.

Why does he want to go?  He's been researching a great kingdom that fell apart about a thousand years ago, and he believes there is some sort of marker, or sign that will give him a clue about to find some prominent and important ruins from that kingdom.  He has a purely archaeological purpose, of course!  

They hired a couple of npc's who were right there in the bar at the time and set out for adventure, excitement, and really wild things!

Then there was an ancient stone religious site, pesky sprites, a rickety bridge over a long chasm, betrayal, murder!  And that was just the first half of the adventure!  There was a mysterious invisible thing trapped in a chest, which burned runes onto the characters foreheads when it was freed.  A group of goblins that would have let them move on if only they had shut up, but instead they kept talking until the goblins became suspicious.

The goblins had a magical device and used it, but the players' stalwart hired-help destroyed the magic item and all hell broke loose, allowing the players and their companions to escape in the chaos.  They found some surface-people imprisoned by the goblins and freed them, killed an ogre way too-easily, took his treasure, found a way out of the caves and called it a day and headed back to the village.

There were minor problems and unanswered questions when then returned to the village.  Most of their treasure was in the form of gems and pieces of jewelry which they had to sell before they could pay off their hired help.  But no one in their little farming village could afford to pay what they were worth.  They would have to move on to the large dwarf-city to the north, or on to a larger human town to the south.

It turns out that one of the goblins' prisoners was looking for the same sign as their benefactor.  Both of these characters said they learned of marker in the caves from a certain Temple, which is located in a human city to the south-west and they were fervently convinced that it was a dark and evil place that needed prompt investigation.

But more importantly, what were these mysterious runes on their foreheads?  There was no wizard in their little farming village to consult.  The nearest wizard lived in the human town to the south.  (In all honesty, I didn't know what they were for when I put them in the adventure.  It was simply a device to worry the players, and be a good reason to continue adventuring.)

But apparently the mysteries were enticing, and there was a sense of a "Bigger World" out there, and they decided they wanted to explore more of it.  So, I've been developing the world, named it Leauvalar, and drew up a map depicting part of the Kingdom of Griffonwyr, wherein lies their hometown. 

They have had four or five more adventures since then.  During their travels they have lost a lot of NPC companions (but not all of them), they've been aged by ghosts, temporarily polymorphed, poisoned, paralyzed, received weird adjustments to various ability scores, carried cursed weapons, followed two treasure maps to buried treasure, had experience levels drained and restored, encountered rival (NPC) adventuring groups, and found their hometown leveled in retaliation by the remainder of that goblin tribe from their first adventure.

All this, and they're only fifth level!  I guess it's been about two, maybe three months in game time.  We've been playing for about five months, I guess.  

It has been years since I ran an ongoing game like this, and I have admit it feels pretty good to do it again.  On the other hand, I'm beginning to define many of the vague mysteries I've been hinting at, plus I'm re-learning how much work goes into running the game.  I'm starting to get kinda bored with it.  

On top of that, my nephew's friend is going to have to move back to the east coast.  Some sort of family matter, I think.  Of course, with all the restrictions from the Covid lockdowns, I must admit that Las Vegas isn't as much fun, or offer quite as much opportunity as it did...say, a year ago.  

Both my nephew and his friend have suggested that we continue the game by playing online via Skype, or one of those online table top sites.  Apparently I'm getting old, because that sounds pretty weird to me, as I've never tried to play D&D online like that before.  So I don't quite know what we're going to do about that yet.

If we do continue, we probably won't play as often.  I seem to be designing adventures instead of getting stories written.  It's not their fault, I'm just terrible at managing my time.  On the other hand, I am thinking of using these adventures as the template for a story, or at least writing up the adventures as modules to sell on DriveThru.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see how the adventure unfolds.  Well, I have at least three different things I need to work on, so I guess I'll bring this to a close.  

Don't forget to tune in on Saturday for the conclusion of the Phantom Sleuth adventure, "The Case of the Accursed Amulet"!  And I'll be back in two weeks with another exciting post!

Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell

Dungeons and Dragons

Hail and well met, Templars And Sorcerers!

As I'm sure you all know by now, I am a fan of role playing games in general, and specifically Dungeons and Dragons.  Don't worry, I'm not going to post yet another online recount of the history of Dungeons and Dragons, and aren't you glad of it?  I know I am!

The main point I want to make is that D&D has evolved throughout the years and grown through many different editions of the game.  Some insightful person once remarked that D&D is like Doctor Who, whichever edition you first encountered is the one you think is "best".  

My first exposure to D&D was the B/X version, which was soon replaced by the BECMI version.  This version consisted of a collection of boxed sets, each containing rules for the increasing levels of game play.  The firs one was the Basic set, then Expert se rules, Companion set, Master set rules, and finally the Immortal rules.  The initials of these levels give this version its name:  BECMI.

I played some BECMI, which was eventually combined and compressed into the Rules Cyclopedia.  When this version of the game was no longer supported, I graduated to Second Edition AD&D.  

Sometimes I actually got to be a player, but usually if I wanted to play at all, I had to be the Dungeon Master and run the game.  Between playing and DMing, I got to poke around (at least a little bit) in a LOT of generic, unnamed fantasy worlds.  

I found out that I enjoyed creating these little worlds, although in retrospect, I think they often were composed of more-or-less the same elements.  Like I said, they were pretty generic, trying to accommodate all the standard races from the rulebooks.   Of course there were variations on the theme.

I found D&D helpful in practicing my world building, and certain aspects of plot structure.  And I must admit, during my teenage years, I started countless little fantasy stories that were straight up inspired by the information in those rulebooks.  I began to see the elements in the stories of Conan, or Fafhrd and Mouser that helped inspire the game.  Slowly, I got a better understanding of these concepts, and how to employ them.  But-ho boy!  Those early attempts were pretty bad!  But hey!  Ya gotta start somewhere!

I've always had a healthy imagination, but I do think D&D helped me to hone and harness that into whatever rudimentary writing skill I have today.  I've written many a D&D adventure, and a fair few stories.  There's a big difference in the composition of those two things.

First of all, writing an adventure for an RPG has aspects that are easier than writing a story, and other aspects that are harder.  For an adventure, you basically just have to come up with a situation, a problem, or a puzzle.  It's up to the players to figure out how to solve those situations.  Of course, sometimes you have an answer in mind, and it can be mind-blowing when your players decide to do something that you've never even considered a possibility.

On the other hand, if you're writing a story where this motley group of misfits explores the Haunted Castle, you don't have to create the ENTIRE castle like you would for a game.  You have to come up with the parts that turn out to be important to the plot.  In fact, if you have your characters explore every room in that castle, you would probably have a long, repetitive, and cumbersome story.  

On the other hand, you could make sure that the characters do...whatever you expected them to do when they come upon this problem or that puzzle.  Of course, you could miss out on the players doing something exceptionally cool and unexpected.  But you would avoid the Incredibly Stupid Thing that players always seem to decide to do.

Six in one, a half-dozen in the other, I guess.

Personally, I think my D&D game has improved because I'm trying to be a writer.  But I think me trying to be a writer has improved from playing D&D.  It's a weird, symbiotic, chicken-or-the-egg situation.  

I have tried, in the past, to write up D&D game sessions as stories, and some of them turned out pretty badly.  Others were a little better.  However, I've tried to use D&D to compose elements and ideas for stories, and I think that has turned out rather well.  Perhaps these elements are identifiable in my stories, perhaps not as badly as I think--they may be shrugged off as being influenced by the old pulp stories that I am a fan of.  

I still use RPG game supplements for inspiration and ideas for characters and potential plot points.  But of course, inspiration can sneak up on you from just about anywhere--books, TV shows, songs, the way one guys says his line in that commercial...  Like I said, inspiration can just ambush you like a ninja.

I still collect PDFs of some of the older D&D stuff that I missed out on.  And also new stuff published for the Old School Renaissance movement.  I'm especially fond of Labyrinth Lord, as it is basically a re-invention of the B/X version I started out with.  It's not bogged down with too-many rules, and it's a nice streamlined game.  It's quick and easy--that probably doesn't say much about me, ha!

What version of D&D, or what retro-clone do you play?  I'd love to hear about it, so leave a comment below!  

Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell

Shared Worlds

Howdy you Terrific All-Stars!

I trust that you are all striving against calamity, overcoming odds, battling the hum-drummery  and ho-hummery of mundane life, and possibly even yanking defeat from the very jaws of victory!  ...Wait, that last one doesn't sound quite right.  *shrug*  Well, you know what I mean!

Today I'm going babble incoherently about my general appreciation for the concept of Shared Worlds in various forms of fiction.  So down your Tankards of Ale or Stout because here we go!

First of all, you know what a Shared Worlds is, right?  Of course you do!  That's when multiple books, movies, TV shows, etc all take place in the same world.  Comics is a great example of this, as both Marvel and DC do this.  And things that happen in one comic book series could have some effect on the others.  So, theoretically, if somebody knocked over the Statue of Liberty in a Spider-Man comic book, it would also be knocked over in Daredevil or Fantastic Four.  Or, when Gotham City gets quarantined and declared a massive disaster area/war zone, they hear about it in Metropolis, Star City, and Bludhaven.  This Shared World is what makes all those Infinite Crises and Secret Wars crossovers possible.

This happens on TV, too, though not always to such an esoteric extent.  I remember a night back in the 90's when all four sitcoms that took place in New York suffered from a blackout.  It started off in Mad About You, ran through Friends...and went into the other two shows, whatever they were.  Which suggests they all exist in the same version of New York.

Perhaps a better example would be the various Star Trek series.  Of course, they started off with The Next Generation, but then they started Deep Space Nine, and the two shows ran concurrently.  Various major and minor characters crossed over between the shows, and they shared a mythology that included encountering the (some of) the same alien races and mentioning events and worlds.  And then they started Voyager, but they were harder to connect to the other series, as they had inadvertently ended up in some unknown part of the galaxy, but connections were made anyway.

It feels somehow wrong to admit that my first discovery of the Shared World concept did not actually come from comic books.  I mean, I was vaguely aware that all the comics were connected to one another, but I wasn't really into comics until my mid-teens.  
In my early teens I had discovered Dungeons and Dragons, and the fantasy genre in general consumed me.  I'd read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and the Dragonlance Chronicles.  I'd seen the two Conan movies and Red Sonja.  But then, I had discovered Thieves' World...

The book was titled Santuary, it was the first three Thieves' World books gathered together into one convenient volume and it came from the Science Fiction Book Club.  Either the Foreword or the Afterword explained the concept:  What if Conan, Fafhrd and Mouser, Elric, and other fantasy heroes all lived in the same world, so they could meet and interact with one another?

Of course, they couldn't use such copyrighted characters, but they invited several writers to invent a bunch of great characters who did live in the same world, and could interact together.  Forming alliances and rivalries, and generally affecting one another's lives.

And although anthology books at the time were generally unsuccessful, Thieves' World enjoyed an unprecedented popularity that allowed the series to continue for several volumes, a spinoff, and an attempted reboot.

I think it was due to this success, that a similar series project was launched, this time a science fiction series known as The Fleet.  I must admit I only ever found one volume of this series, and I don't even remember if I ever read it.  But I understand there are six books in the series, so they must have enjoyed some success, too!

This is especially prevalent in IPs that have an "expanded universe".  Properties like Star Wars, every campaign world published for Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft, and several others feature adventures of various characters who seem to be connected only by the fact that they live in the same world, and theoretically have some affect on the world they live in, and consequently on one another's lives.

Some more visual examples include the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where all the characters have their own individual adventures and become aware of one another as they meet up and become friends, enemies, or reluctant allies.  There is a lot of crossover on the the TV shows based on DC comics like Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow.  

Perhaps my own, personal favorite, Star Wars:  The Clone Wars.  Sure, there are a regular and recurring cast of characters, but they splinter off into different groups and have their own adventures.  I totally dig the way they handled their Shared World! 

Anyway, the short version is that works such as these have make some impact upon me, and some of the series I'm currently developing.  What Shared Worlds do you like?  Leave a comment and let me know!  And don't forget to tune in Saturday for the latest installment of Serial Saturdays!

Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell

Interlude...

Greetings all you Trackers And Scouts!

I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, I don't really know what to talk about today.  I was going to talk about those old Saturday Matinee Cliffhanger Serials, but I'm not really in the mood, so I think I'll save that for another time.

I have been working on the Aurivyn stories about Darg and Maxalla...but not as much as I ought to be.

I think I'm going to blame this on the Coronavirus.  I am one of the many people who ended up losing their day job due to lockdowns, and with the limited re-openings, and now new shutdowns slowly being instituted...I'm a little worried about finances.  This is a terrible distraction for me at a time when I should be getting all sorts of writing work done.

A more pleasant distraction was the recent visit of my niece and nephew.  They wanted to play some Dungeons and Dragons, and so I rattled off a quick adventure mostly on the fly.  I have designed another adventure that we have not played yet, but I think it came out really well.  I am contemplating writing it up with the OGL Labyrinth Lord rules and offering it for sale on DriveThru RPG.

Well, I've got plenty of things I ought to be working on, so I'd better sign off.  Hopefully, I'll have more news to share next time!


Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell

The Creation of Aurivyn

Greetings to you Tremendously Astute Spirits!

So, I'm gonna tell you straight up:  I'm taking a little break from Mutant World.  Now, now, calm down.  Yes, there WILL be more Mutant World coming in the future.  But I'm taking a little break to write up a few episodes of another series called...

I won't lie about it, Aurivyn grew out of Dungeons and Dragons.  

I don't really remember when or how I first learned about Dungeons and Dragons, but I remember being completely enthralled with it once the concept was explained to me.  My sister had the Basic Set, and I got to look through it and formulate impressions that have pretty much lasted my lifetime.

Played a few one-shot adventures, and collected books, adventure modules and the BECMI boxed sets.  Of course, I moved up to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, and 2nd Edition is the version that I played the most.  

  

Over the years, I created a fair few continents...not really complete worlds...but definitely big enough to house several campaigns.  Never really got to play them though.

Eventually I found the world of Mystara, and it quickly became one of my favorite published campaign worlds.   I collected as many products related to it as I could.

Someplace along the line we had moved to another state and I lost my gaming group.  Being socially awkward and the demented loner type in my younger years, I rarely tried to hook up with new players.  Eventually I grew out of the habit of playing, and looked at the material as inspiration for writing and drawing.

That's the preamble, now for the beginning of the actual story!

I was taking care of my Poor Old Mother (TM) and somehow it was decided that my oldest brother's two boys should get to visit Grandma on weekends.  We decided to take one at a time.

The younger of the two boys, my nephew Jason, came to visit for the weekend.  I'm afraid he probably spent most of that weekend fairly bored.  But he popped into my study to see what I was doing, and spotted my collection of D&D stuff, so he asked about it.  I told him it was a game and that there was no board, you use your imagination instead.  I told him some stuff about it and he decided he wanted to play.

So, I drew up a quick five-minute dungeon, we pulled out a sample character and a map from one the box sets and we played.  I don't really remember why, but I figured he would dislike it and never want to play again.

Boy was I wrong!

So when I took him home, it was all he talked about.  So of course his older brother--Richard--wanted to play, and I mus admit that I wondered how he would have handled the adventure.  So he picked out a sample character and I sent him on the same adventure.

What was the adventure?  Well, they lived in a rural town populated by a superstitious medieval people.  A small statuette was positioned on the edge of town as a ward against evil spirits, and one day it was missing.  Each of my nephews was sent off--separately and alone--to retrieve it.  The search led them to a secret dungeon in the nearby forest, where they faced monsters and traps, rescued the statuette and found the person that stole it.

They both loved the game and wanted to play some more.  So the next weekend, both came for a visit.  They decided to keep the same characters and I sent them on a brief published adventure.  Their third adventure was a watered-down version of yet another published adventure.  

But for their fourth adventure, they were returning to the village where the first adventure took place and suddenly I had a problem: which one of them retrieved the statuette?  They didn't go together.  Some villagers would swear that Jason returned the statuette, while others would insist it was Richard.  How could I fix this?

Suddenly it hit me:  I had two alternate realities overlapping!  The rest of the campaign was about them trying to fix this.

I've always wanted to write up these adventures, so I'm going to!  I'm adding in some other elements from some of the other homebrew worlds, partly for plot purposes, partly for legal reasons--to differentiate my story-world from the published game setting.

I have written a couple of stories that take place in what would eventually become Aurivyn.  The Saturday Serial story "The Crystal Cage" takes places there.  So does the story "Buy the Sword" currently available in "The Adventure Sampler", which is a free gift received by the folks who sign up for my newsletter.  But these were minor experiments while I was trying to hammer out the plot for the series.

I have the details worked out now, and I'm pleased to announce that I am working on the first installments of an Aurivyn story arc called "The Wrath of the Ancient Prisoner", and it all started on that weekend when my nephew wanted to play a fighter!  Little did we know what that began...

Well, I'd better get to work, so until next time I wish you...

Good Adventuring!

Timothy A. Sayell

The Gecko Gang

Welcome back Travellers, Agents, and Survivors!

Here on the blog, we're still talking about Mutant World, and some of the creatures our heroes have to face during their adventures.  Today, we're talking about the Gecko Gang!

Who or what are the Gecko Gang?  Well, they are a rival group of post-apoc survivors, except these guys are mutant lizard men.  They wander the wasteland doing whatever odd jobs they can find:  bounty hunting, mercenary work, irreputable errands.  They aren't very picky.

There are five of them.  They stand about seven feet tall.  I started off thinking it would be kinda funny to have a rival band of lizard men all modelled after the Gecko from those insurance commercials, you know the guy!  But he didn't look mean enough, and I kept thinking of a head with a wide maw and bulging eyes, more like that purple guy from Monsters Inc.

But then I was drawn back to my D&D past, and I realized what I needed was something closer to this troglodyte drawn by Willingham in the B/X Basic Set.  Yeah, that's more like it!  Tall, and sleek, and mean, and strong.  Yeah...


So then I had to figure out how to differentiate between them  Should they have stripes?  Spots?  Combs?  Spikes?  Stegosaurus plates running down their spines?  Of course, then I realized I could just differentiate them by color.  It's an old fashioned cartoon trick, multiple characters that would look alike except for being different colors.  You know, like Donald Duck's nephews:  Huey, Dewey, and Louie.  


And their names, of course, which are all bastardized derivatives of giant movie monsters.  Gazillo, the yellow one, is the leader of the group.  The blue one, Gidoro, prefers hand-to-hand combat.  Gwanji, the red one, is the group's sniper.  The green one is Gorgi, and he ain't afraid to hunt down a beast, no matter how big it is.  Gam is the orange one, and he comes outta nowhere to help ya when ya need it the most!


Assuming, of course, that you're on his side!  If you're not...well, that's a different point of view!


But YOU can experience the adventure along with our heroes in

Mutant World #2

Scourge of the Sundered Sands

Available Now!
to Kindle and Kindle Unlimited!





Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell

The Maulers

Greetings Treasure-hunters, Adventurers, and Survivors!

We're still talking about Mutant World, here at the blog.  Today we're going to talk about the mutant beasties that our adventurers face in the first story:  the Maulers!

Now, astute and learned readers will probably recognize that this adventure is basically a dungeon-crawl adventure in a stylized, fantasy post-apocalyptic world.  I've already explained the RPG influences, so that shouldn't be too surprising.

Anyway, this future-dungeon is a ruined shopping mall, so I reasoned that the people living there must be mall-ers.  But I had the good sense to change it to "Maulers", so it wouldn't be a straight-up joke.  ...Yet the pun is still there.

So, who and what were the Maulers?  Well, it was the first adventure, and thinking about role-playing games, your first adventure usually pits you against a relatively weak creature.

Kobolds immediately sprang to mind.  

I have a soft spot for D&D kobolds.  I first saw them pictured in the B/X Basic Set.  This pic by Erol Otus defined kobolds for me.  Back then, they were this weird little dog men.  Cunning and cowardly, but sadistic.  These brutal little dog men are now my default setting; these are what I think of when I think of kobolds.

In later editions of D&D somebody changed them.  Nowadays they are some sort of midget lizard man, with some sort of a connection to dragons.  This always annoyed me, because I thought they were fine the way they were.  But hey, what can ya do, right?

But suddenly it occurred to me:  they are a weird cross of dog and human.  That could just as easily be a type of mutant race in my story!  Hey, if Thundarr can have Moks, I can have kobolds!  Sure, I can't call them kobolds, but aside from that, they can basically be the same!

"Oh sure, they're cute now.  But they're gonna get mean, and nasty somehow, and there'll be a million more of ém!"

It really wasn't that big a change.  Mostly just in their costumes, props, and some weapons.  They can still be cunning.  They can still be cowardly.  They can still be sadistic.  They can still be subjugated and compelled to work for some stronger...

WHOOPS!
Sorry!  Almost gave away a vital plot point!   

But YOU can experience the adventure along with our heroes in

Mutant World #1

Mistress of the Mutant Maulers

Available Now!
on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited!





Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell

Getting Down With It! Part One

What Ho, my Two-Fisted Adventure Seekers!

You know, one of the basic pieces of advice "they" like to give about writing is to read.  A LOT!

I'll admit that I don't read as much as I should...but I have read a fair bit, and I'm pretty good at retaining the stuff that I read.  I read a lot of cheesy stuff, cuz I LIKE the cheesy stuff.

What kind of stuff?  Well, I read those old pulp magazine reprints, and I love those short little fantasy and sci-fi novels from the sixties and seventies.  

But I've read some more modern stuff, too.  And I'm usually pretty detatched, observing the story and making snide MST3K-style comments as I go through the book.  But there were two times when I got embroiled so much that I got mad when characters died.

The first time this happened was when I read the Dragonlance Chronicles Book 1 Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weiss and Tray Hickman.  This series is sometimes called "the poor man's Lord of the Rings", which seems like a left-handed compliment, to me.  

Anyway, this story kicked off the Dungeons and Dragons world of Dragonlance, and is beloved by many, including me.  So it starts off with a group of adventurer friends meeting back up after five years of each one exploring on their own.  They run into these two outcast plainsmen with a magic staff that is a holy relic from ages past.  The magic staff is the Healing Staff of Mishakal, and the girl carrying it is named Goldmoon.

So, after various adventures, the group is taking her to the ruined city of Xak Tsaroth where they're supposed to find more clues on how to awaken and re-connect with the Old Gods and learn about the evil Goddess Takhisis, the Queen of Dragons, who is trying to take over the world because that's what bad guys do in these things.

Anyway, our heroes get to Xak Tsaroth and we find this black dragon who kills Goldmoon!  Boy did that tick me off!  I don't really know why, but it did!  Fortunately the Goddess Mishakal brought her back to life in the very next chapter, so it was okay.  I honestly don't know if I would have finished the trilogy if that hadn't happened.

The second time, however, didn't go so well...
But that's a Tale for Another Session, so I'll tell ya about it next week...
Until then...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell