Tunnel Crawling

It's probably fair to say I'm about 3/4ths finished with my design doc for the adventure. This isn't the first draft of the adventure as it will be presented, but all the ingredients that will go into it (who, what, where, etc.) are there so that I can work out all the logic of the fiction, and ensure I'm providing enough interesting and intersecting things the players can interact with. 

The early stages of any creative project, be it visual art, writing, designing, or music are usually the things that take me the longest to complete, by far. It's pretty rare for me to have something even eighty percent formed from the jump. Most of the creative people I know, or have worked with, are idea machines –– it's usually the refinement and assembly of those idea that takes significant effort. Hell, the polish phase usually goes faster than any other part of the process, but that won't be for a while yet. 

Once I'm done with the design doc, I'd say that I can at least see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The Name Game

I used to get paralyzed when naming characters. Endless worrying about if the name was already in use elsewhere, or wondering if any particular name 'sounded right' — not to mention, my OCD went into overdrive. This quagmire was also exacerbated by my experiences working in the video game industry where decision making can often result in Design By Committee dragging out the process even longer, if it allowed to and should be avoided if at all possible.

My struggles of naming characters would get so bad that I would wait until the very end of the writing process to decide on names. To be clear, this can work, but I believe it is more valuable to develop characters along with their names — it will make the resulting story and characters stronger.

Rather recently I have cobbled together a way to make the process fun, while also serving the vision of the story and characters. I have an extensive collection of reference notes on my observations of the Sword & Sorcery genre, so let's start there. For this particular adventure I'm referencing three main authors and works: Nifft The Lean, by Michael Shea, Conan (series) by Robert E. Howard, and the "Swords" or "Lankhmar" series by Fritz Leiber. Not only are these stories exemplary of the genre, but embody the tone I'm aiming to emulate — this is in no small part due to the apparent influences of the historical Ancient World on their settings. 

Step 1 — Start by simply taking a name from a story you think fits the appropriate tone of the story, or for a stronger result, something that might fit better for the actual character. I gravitate to names that contain flavor, or hints of the character's' actual personality, or traits, but your mileage may vary. For this instance, the character I'm naming is the villain of my story. At a high level, she is a heartbroken sorcerer who is determined to exact revenge on her former lover, and I figure she would be quite spiteful. As a jumping off point, I'll use the character Bêlit from "Queen of the Black Coast", by Howard. My character isn't a pirate, but I like how the name looks, sounds, and feels. This might seem...too direct a lift, or uncreative, but bear with me.

Name: Bêlit 

Step 2 — Begin rearranging the letters until you get something unique, while still capturing the right 'feel': 

Name: Bilêt, Bitêl, Bêtil, Lêbit, Libêt, Têlib, Tilêb

Step 3 — Try replacing a few letters:

Name: Balêc, Bilac, Butil, Labut, Lasêt, Têlac, Tilêm

I ended up with Bilac (pronounced: bye-lack) which also sounds similar to 'bile', which I feel further reinforces her traits.

Looking up the etymology of a real-world name can also push your imagination or character development even further.

In the end, I will always need to spend time naming characters, so why not make a fun game of it?

Rolling With Advantage

For starters, I think it is fair to say that I'm treating this blog as a Dev Diary rather than anything that I want or hope anyone would read. Although, other creative types might find my ramblings here useful — if only as a sort of mirror or gauge in which to measure their own successes and failures in their creative journeys. 

Second, a bit of full disclosure and honesty. Back in October of last year I was laid off from my video game dev job (among many others) to join the seemingly countless unemployed workers in the field. This hit particularly hard for me because I put damned nearly everything I had into the job, and it still failed — my team I and were not able to ship the project we'd been working on for five years. I will talk more about that later, and more likely on a platform that will have a greater likelihood to reach the video game dev community — https://bsky.app/profile/doktorwarlok.bsky.social. That said, one of the main take-aways from that future missive will serve as a good segue into the topic for today: Rolling With Advantage, aka Self-Care.

After I was laid off, I took a lot of time to decompress - a process in which I'm still working through. I was attempting to recharge through devoting more of my time to my true interests, TTRPGs. During the last five years of stressful video game development (at the very least) I neglected the practice the art of design for my personal projects. And unfortunately, (at the very most) neglected the simple enjoyment of the art form itself. This was a huge personal failure where actively avoided Self-Care.  

January rolled around, and I saw The Merry Mushmen were calling for final submissions for The Chaos Crier #1 — I don't think I need to re-iterate my love of the system here, but if this is your first visit, please check out some of my previous posts. I decided to take a stab at submitting an adventure. My plan was to convert an OSE adventure I'd written for my gaming group a couple of years prior, but upon re-reading, I decided to start fresh. This was ultimately the right decision, but unfortunately, I should have spent more time getting in the correct head-space. I let the deadline and desire to "ship" something take precedent over the enjoyment of the creative endeavor itself - what a wicked trap I had laid at my own feet. I made rookie errors that were easily avoidable had I just taken more time to self-reflect, analyze, and above all: enjoy the process. 

I also began to take Self-Care more seriously. I won't get into the details here, but I will say that I have discovered that the time spent toward that effort has paid off far beyond my expectations.

So, in that light, I have yet again decided to start from scratch. Reworking the exact adventure felt more like hammering a square peg into a round hole. To be clear, I'm not throwing it all away - the advice and feedback I got from the Mushmen still stands true. The basic theme and tone remain in-tact. I'm nearly done with the outline, and frankly, I feel revitalized having gone through the process again. 

Once I have the first draft of the new manuscript ready, I'll post a portion of my design notes here, so if you are into that sort of minutiae, stay tuned. 

-Doktor Warlok

Black Sword Hack Adventure - Revising The Recipe

I submitted an early draft of my adventure last week for the next edition of The Chaos Crier by The Merry Mushmen. Even though it didn't get accepted this time around, Eric was incredibly generous with his time and gave me excellent, much needed feedback. Some of the crits include: editing for brevity while still maintaining evocative flavor; giving players more agency by telegraphing danger; not rewarding PC exploration with combat (I didn't intend this to happen, but it happened!); and some logic problems with the fictional setup of the hamlet the PCs can use as a basecamp for their adventure. 

The issue I need to resolve first, centers around the setup of Hol, its people, and its problems. The seed of the idea came from two of my favorite stories: The Pearls of the Vampire Queen, by Michael Shea, and Cugel's Saga, by Jack Vance. Both of these stories feature protagonists that take some (literal) dirt jobs which have them harvesting valuables buried deep in the muck and mire. I represented these ideas in the hook #2. I ended up with some logic problems in answering the question at the end of the hook: "...why are the hamlet's people barely surviving?" - particularly if there are valuables nearby!

        2. The PCs find themselves in Hol, a moribund fishing hamlet on briny Moodover Loch. They have heard rumors that the loch is home to rare, immensely valuable water serpents. If these rumors are indeed true, why are the hamlet’s people barely surviving? 

Let's rewind a bit. My goals for the hamlet are to 1) to provide a basecamp for the PCs to rest and resupply, and 2) to provide a new hook for the PCs to be in the area (seemingly unrelated to the other hooks), and 3) set up another faction that can interact with the two factions described in the other hooks. 

I don't know if I'm going to keep the 'dirty jobs' aspect of hook #2. I'll do some brainstorming to see if I can salvage the idea so that it makes logical sense with the fiction, but without any unneeded complexity. I might ditch that idea all together, and do something much more straightforward by putting Hol in some sort of danger (from the Thieves Guild, or the ancient site) that the PCs could either help resolve, or exacerbate. Even though the idea represented in hook #2 did relate to the ancient site described in hook #1, those ties could be much stronger.

The Fun puzzles to solve!

Black Sword Hack Adventure - Making Sausage

Here's a little sample from a draft of the adventure: some hooks, an area map for the locations, and an NPC. There are more sub-location maps and factions I will share later!

HOOKS 

1. Dasulem of Thulan, an understudy to an infamous sorcerer, has temporarily moved into an ancient site north of the hamlet of Hol. The locals of the hamlet fear the site conceals a portal to The Underworld. Dasulem knows this is true, and has written to one of the PCs to ask for help performing a ritual which will seal the portal. She promises to compensate them to the tune of 1000 coins for their help. Link Dasulem of Thulan to your PCs in any way you see fit (friend, former accomplice, or a member of your preferred Secret Society).

2. The PCs find themselves in Hol, a moribund fishing hamlet on briny Moodover Loch. They have heard rumors that the loch is home to rare, immensely valuable water serpents. If these rumors are indeed true, why are the hamlet’s people barely surviving? 

3. The PCs are hired by the Thieves Guild from your campaign's main city to collect a debt from Dasulem of Thulan, a young sorcerer who now resides near the decrepit fishing hamlet of Hol. However, the debt is not coinage, but instead an artifact called The Stygian Bell. How will the PCs react to Dasulem’s counter offer? Will they develop their own schemes for the artifact?

   
   

   
   

   
   
   

Brine Slime [LVL 3]

Violet, slug-like, aquatic hunters with a single, serpentine eye. Upon death, they dissolve to nothing. They are considered creatures of Chaos.

- Nesting: d4 slimes appear in d4 Turns

• Slime slap (DEX): 6
• Sucking grasp (CON): Ud4 ongoing damage

Black Sword Hack Adventure - Kitchen Prep

I like to be prepared in pretty much any part of my life, so tend to take a lot of notes, and I am sharing some of them here. These are not my complete notes for my adventure, just the parts regarding tone. This is a useful step for my process, because I like to make sure I'm hitting the tone accurately. The original Appendix N references still remain my favorite stories. Black Sword Hack's Appendix IV focuses on Sword & Sorcery tales. While I have not read everything listed here, I have read many, which are listed below the break. From BSH p.96:

Appendix IV
Bibliography (in alphabetical order)

LITERATURE
The First Law and Shattered Sea trilogies by Joe Abercrombie • Three Hearts and Three Lions and The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson • The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart by Jesse Bullington • Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon • Everything by Robert E. Howard. Yes, I mean everything • Elephants and Corpses by Kameron Hurley • The Gotrek & Felix series by William King • The Lankhmar series by Fritz Leiber • The Elric, Hawkmoon, Corum, and Erekosë series by Michael Moorcock • The Empire of the East series by Fred Saberhagen • Disfavored Hero by Jessica Amanda Salmonson • Nifft the Lean by Michael Shea • Raum by Carl Sherrel • We are All Legends by Darrel Schweitzer • The Dying Earth books by Jack Vance • The Kane series by Karl Edward Wagner • The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

I decided to flavor this adventure with a lot of references to The Dying Earth, The Lankhmar series, and particularly, Nifft the Lean, which I'll talk more on in the next post. These notes are in the first section labelled Tone. Some game design tips, and formatting observations are near the end. Some of my notes are simply entries copied from wiki pages that I have bookmarked in the past, and collated here for ease of reference.  

Love For Black Sword Hack

I've been playing and collecting TTRPGs for so long that sometimes I have to pause and really appreciate that fact. Over the years my tastes have changed, as you would expect, but I always get drawn back to my roots - today's topic gets right at the heart of it. I'll share more details about my history with all of that some other time, but I'll just move on to what this particular post is all about. 

Black Sword Hack - Ultimate Chaos Edition, by Alexandre "Koybayashi" Jeannette, Eric Nieudan, Olivier "Nobboc" Revenu, Goran Glivovic and published by The Merry Mushmen. 

If you are someone who has an interest in TTRPGs and just stumbled across my tiny blog and don't know about this game, just stop, bookmark this blog page, and go grab a copy right now. This page alone should tell you pretty much everything you need to know why you need it, and the vibes...they are strong.

https://www.themerrymushmen.com/product/black-sword-hack-ultimate-chaos-edition/

If you came here by some other means, chances are I don't need to tell you what you already know. The game is a masterpiece. Some of these features aren't unique to BSH (after all, BSH is based on The Black Hack), but here are a few things I like about it, and why. 

The design captures the genre fiction: Sword & Sorcery. The game has a classless character creation and progression system. It's not that I don't appreciate classes in other games, but this aspect speaks to the source material very well. 

Mechanically speaking, The Doom Die, a great Push Your Luck device. Similarly, the fiction is remarkably dangerous and brutal, and the combat and magic mechanics reflect this well, too. As well as player facing rolls. I'm not lazy by a stretch, but player facing rolls to two things I enjoy. It gives the player a greater sense of agency and investment. It makes me feel like a an arbiter vs an adversary - this is an important aspect to me.

Finally, as a GM/Referee and creative person, I am head over heels in love with the worldbuilding aspect of BSH. It gives me the tools that allow me to easily create a seemingly endless number of settings that can emulate a wide range of Sword & Sorcery tales - frankly, it's astounding. 

I could go on and on and on and on, but I think you get the idea - I love the book.

I'm currently writing a serious of adventures for Black Sword Hack. If you are already interested in BSH, come on back here to learn more about what I'm up to. If this is your first time here, or with BSH, I hope I sold you on it! 

 - DOKTOR WARLOK