Clockwork: Empire Roleplaying Game

I stumbled across the kickstarter for another steampunk game - Clockwork: Empire Roleplaying Game. It seems that steampunk is picking up some momentum with SteamCraft, Tephra, and now this game along with the others.  With 26 days left for funding at the project at 150% of the goal it looks like another success for the genre and it will be interesting to compare and contrast the game with other offerings in the same genre.  I downloaded the free quick start rules and will try to give them some proper attention in the next couple of days.  More later....  

Q&A with Jamie Hardy of Perilous Journeys Publishing

I am going to post this now even though I was in the process of brainstorming some more questions for Jamie Hardy of Perilous Journeys Publishing.  As I mentioned in my previous post, an upswing in work commitments is currently eating up a lot of my free time.  Maybe I can do a continuation of these questions at a later time...

Would you mind giving a quick introduction about yourself and your company?  (Whatever you feel is appropriate in this forum)

My name is Jamie Hardy and I am the founder and owner of Perilous Journeys Publishing.  I have always been into games.  My first memories are of board games, in elementary school I moved into AD&D, and most of high school was spent playing AD&D.  I started to get into some other RPGs then, but as many people know, getting players to move to a different rule system after being so used to one system is very difficult.  In college I got into different groups and LARPS that gave me the opportunity to play with those who were fans of different systems and genres. 

The first game I tried to write as a Highlander based RPG in high school.  It was very much in the AD&D rule structure.  I don’t remember much about it, but I am pretty sure it sucked.  I am not sure it really got played either.  Many years later, I now have two RPGs out with SteamCraft being that newest game.  Out first expansion for SteamCraft, tentatively titled Shadows Over Newport will be released soon.  We are also working on some additional products for SteamCraft and have a new RPG in the works. 

With all of the commercial games that are available why did you feel the need to publish your own?

I didn’t think of it that way.  With PJ, it was just putting out the game.  I wasn’t building a company and at best I have broken even with my costs, but certainly not the time I put into it.  SteamCraft was different. 

Years ago, my wife was living in Japan for a while so we skyped.  One day I came across this steampunk stuff.  I read up on it and starting looking at the fashion, its themes, and the people who were getting into it.  So the next time I talked to my wife, I explained to her this steampunk thing.  I told her that since Twilight had killed off the vampire/Gothic thing that I thought steampunk was going to be the next big thing.  I told her that someone should put out a steampunk RPG because it could be huge.  If you could release at the right time, with an easy to use system, you could have a success once steampunk became more popular like the Gothic/vampire stuff did in the 1990’s to mid 2000’s. 

My wife then said that I should do it.  She said that since I had already written an RPG, I had a game system that would work, there should just need to be the need for a setting – and that wouldn’t take too long.  It wasn’t as easy as it seemed at the time.  I built a new system to make things work the way I wanted and world building took a long time. 

Why steampunk? (Have you always been a fan, etc.)

Well, I grew up watching the old Wild Wild West TV show.  I found it awesome at the time.  In that regard, I suppose you could say I have always been a fan of steampunk in some way.  Nevertheless, I think cyberpunk has been a longer direct fascination.  I think some of the most fun I ever had in an RPG was playing Cyberpunk 2020 in high school a few times.  I think after the release of PJ, I started thinking of other genres and was going to put out a cyberpunk version of that.  Then I came across steampunk on the internet and that led to SteamCraft instead.  I am sure what grabbed me at the time was the aesthetics.  I think what keeps my interest is the technology and the type of characters allowed by that technology.  I really like the frontier and individualistic aspect of the steampunk era where scientist and inventors are in some sense the heroes.  Tolling away in a one room shack, they come up with fantastic inventions to help the world or more often, to sell for a massive profit.  I love the idea of needing or wanting something and then someone going into a room, grabbing parts, and then building what is needed.  Steampunk allows that because it harkens to an era where something like that did happen, i.e. Fulton, Edison, Tesla.  It is a much more romantic, compelling, and interesting view of scientists and engineers than what is the case in the modern world. 

I took the aesthetic, technological, and inventor aspects of the steam era and then mix it with the themes I enjoy from cyberpunk and the result is a really interesting amalgamation that is my view of steampunk. 

I noticed the similarities with Gygax’s Lejendary Adventures and how you fixed the frustration I and others have had with that game.  Was that the motivation for Perilous Journeys?

To answer this, I need to put things into context.  I grew up playing 1^st edition AD&D and never went on to play 2E.  In the late 1990’s I got onto the internet and found Gary Gygax’s website.  I then went and emailed him and I am sure it was about AD&D.  I know at some point I sent him the Bard as a class and he said some nice things but pointed out because of a settlement he couldn’t offer an endorsement but suggested I post it up on Dragonsfoot. 

Anyway, at that time Lejendary Adventure was in beta.  Gary talked it up, I downloaded it and printed it out.  I got onto his mailing list and we ended up chatting a lot.  I very much had an AD&D outlook on games and talking with him really helped break that mindset.  At some point he decided to let me write a supplement for the setting Lejendary Earth.  The project was much different at that time than what came about.  I started working on a small portion known as the Djarenn Septarchy with a friend of mine.  Anyway, I ended up moving around the time LA was released and I never finished that project.  At that time I think Gary had a lot of people working on various things and I don’t think any of us delivered any of the products. 

Sometime down the road I get back into LA and the old Yahoo Group was replaced by a website.  Prior to Gary’s health decline, I did get involved with a lot of LA potential products.  I wrote up some stuff about necromancers and had an article as well as new spells for the Lejends Magazine ready to be published just as the magazine was canceled.  At another point, I helped a member of the LA community write an adventure.  It was supposed to be produced by Hekaforge, but because LA pretty much failed it was canceled.  Another publisher was going to put it out and I started to write another adventure as part of the deal, and that company went under.  Meanwhile, I was branching off into other games and helping people out for free with writing, editing, and testing things that wouldn’t get published. 

Down the road, Gary died.  Gail Gygax, his wife, pulled all of the contracts she had.  A 2E of LA was planed and then scraped.  At that time, a small publisher wanted to do a retro-clone of LA and get it into print.  I agreed and I started to work.  Well, I was much more productive than he was and plowed through it.  When I was maybe 2/3 done, he contacts me to pull the project.

Around the time I was writing adventures that I thought would be published but new were, I got married.  My wife saw how much time I spent of gaming boards, doing things for other people, and writing projects just to have them canceled.  At the time, I got the impression she was a bit pissed I kept wasting my time.  Knowing this, I decided that I would just do things myself so that I can say at least I got a product completed and done. 

Now that I was not producing a retro-clone, I was freed up to do things how I wanted.  I suppose my overall goal was to produce a skill-based RPG that gave you the openness of original D&D to appeal to those players as well as to the few people who played LA.  That required me to produce a skill-based game around the way people actually played LA. 

I think that Gary was a very smart man, but I believe that what made AD&D great were people around him to challenge him and clean up rough ideas and poor writing.  LA lacked that.  Thus, you got a confusing mess and no one came close to playing it like it was written.  For example, if you play the game as written, you had to come up with the character concept.  Then select the abilities you thought appropriate.  Then you consulted with the GM about what exactly each ability did.  Then, you both had to agree on what the numerical rating of the ability meant.  That is, do you have a broad knowledge of everything, or specific knowledge of one thing?  There were no real guidelines or rules on how to handle any of this.  How did people actually play?  Well, they assumed that whatever the ability covers a PC can do.  Further, you just roll under the rating and the action succeeds. 

In order to create the type of fantasy game I wanted, I thought back on those early conversations with Gary.  One of the notorious things that everyone asked in regards to LA, was what an order is?  Well Gary had imagined that the GM would create a world and that there would be associations that trained people.  If you recall in AD&D, when you leveled up you needed training.  He thought this means GM’s created associations for players to belong to and I got the impression that this was what he had done since D&D. 

What I then decided to do was to take my interpretation of how Gary played D&D and put it into the skill-based system.  Over the years I realized that there is a strong interplay between the game setting and the mechanics and part of LA’s problem was not integrating them.  When doing PJ, I realized I had to integrate the rules with the background assumptions of the setting. 

Along the way, I decided that the sloppiness of the 1970’s style RPG was unacceptable to the modern gamer.  So when creating the abilities list I made sure that each ability was clearly defined to avoid overlap.  I removed nonsensical abilities like Luck and replaced it with a mechanic in the game.  I made sure that you could do whatever was in the list of abilities.  I made changes to the attribute system to solve problems people had. 

I had the LA gamer in mind when I worked on Perilous Journeys.  I wanted a game that they would embrace as well as one that would appeal and make sense to new gamers.  I didn’t want a rule system that contradicted itself.  I wanted to make sure that if there were game world institutions that needed to be incorporated into the rules that it was done.  I wanted to remove the needless restrictions that Gary was fond of putting to games.  I wanted a flexible rules-light system that allowed the freedom of original D&D, but reduced the hand waiving that GMs have to do in that game. 

Perilous Journeys was your first design and it was made available through Lulu.  What have you learned from that experience?  What would you do differently looking back?

I think everyone starts with Lulu, but few stay there.  Lulu makes things very easy for self-publishing.  It breaks everything down into steps.  There aren’t limits to file sizes.  You don’t have to convert your art from RBG, to CMYK, nor do you have to use PDF x-1/a.  They have a great tool for doing covers.  You can do full bleed with Lulu. 

What most people do not know is that Lulu is not a printer.  Instead, they send your files to independent printers.  This is why people do not stay with them.  You can use CreateSpace and save a lot of money and be on Amazon without having to pay Lulu’s fees and higher costs.  DriveThruRPG allows POD now, and their printer is often cheaper.  If your goal is to get your RPG product out there, then Lulu isn’t the place you want to stay.

I am not sure I would have done anything different.  My goal at that time was not to have a gaming company.  It was to see an RPG product I wrote be available and Lulu worked for that.  If there was one thing it would have been to do hardcover instead of perfect bound.  Lulu uses different page sizes for those requiring a different layout.  Since people wanted a hardcover, I would have likely done the layout for hardcover size.  Perfect bound would have still be an option because I can use the layout for the hardcover for the perfect bound, but not vice versa. 

The SteamCraft kickstarter was a success.  I believe you exceeded your goal but, most importantly, fulfilled all backer rewards.  It’s refreshing to see a kickstarter that ends in a positive manner.  Can you tell us about the experience?  (Stuff like did you have SteamCraft completely designed before doing the kickstarter, did you have a plan in place, etc.)

I might be wrong about this, but insofar as I can tell by searching on Kickstarter, SteamCraft is the only steampunk rpg that has fulfilled its rewards and to top it off, we pretty much did it on time.  I believe we were able to do this because of good planning and a bit of luck.  The writing, layout, art, etc were all done and we had the PDF for sale since April of last year.  We used POD to make copies and sold them at conventions. 

It was going to conventions that led us to doing a Kickstarter.  There is another steampunk rpg that was out in the area and they had insane success on Kickstarter.  I started to think about doing one then.  People began to pressure me to just sort of launch it because somehow I was going to be behind.  Instead, I ignored them.  I put a plan into place on how to do a Kickstarter.  I also wanted to know exactly how to do things.  So, I got prices for printing the book.  Got an ETA on how long that would take.  I learned how to get the book into distribution.  I then set a schedule for everything beginning with the Kickstarter.  I then totaled how much money was needed to print the books, fulfill the rewards, and then ship everything.  The only thing that we continued to do was edit the book for a final printing. 

The actual experience of Kickstarter is nerve wracking and a bit addictive.  I found myself constantly checking the totals and waiting for backers.  I was trying to find new places to get the word out.  It was great to be funded and Kickstarter is an amazing way to get your product noticed.  We have fans all of the world because of Kickstarter.  However, the experience was very stressful and having to fulfill rewards personally takes a lot of time.  The current plan is to only do a Kickstarter if we need the money to get a product out.  We have a card game and another RPG in the works, so there may be a Kickstarter for those.   

On the flip side of that question – and you choose to be as specific as you want in your answer – what do you think causes these problems that commonly pop up for kickstarters trying to get a game published?

I assume you mean something along the lines of why successfully funded RPG projects fail to fulfill their rewards or take a long time to complete.  I think that there are many reasons, but I will pick three general ones that I am aware of.  First, is that they do not think about the business side of things.  You need to know how much it is going to cost to print books.  You need to take shipping costs into account.  You need to carefully choose the all too common stretch rewards.  The costs on those can be substantial.  Once you reach you goal and have the money, you need to avoid the urge to splurge the money on upgrades you did not budget for.   

Second, people take on too many projects.  There are at least a few cases of people once they are funded with one project, go and start another one.  Putting out one project is lengthy and expensive, when you add two or three, then things are naturally going to get behind. 

Third, the very nature of Kickstarter leads to delays.  People are there to get money to do the project and have no understanding as to how long things take or how much it costs.  Many people going into Kickstarter have little done.  Some are still “testing” things but have it written.  However, they still need art and to do the layout once the testing is complete.  Of course, the reason why they are on Kickstarter is to get the money for the art, and sometimes pay for layout and editing.  If they could pay for those things, they wouldn’t need to do a Kickstarter. 

In many cases, you are getting in on the ground floor of a project with someone who has never produced a product before.  It isn’t just the inexperience that causes the problems, but how much needs to be done prior to release.  The more that needs to be done and the more people that are involved in getting the project done, the more likely delays are going to happen.  Inexperience and worrying about funding creates unrealistic deadlines.  If someone posted up it would take one year for you to get your book, would you back it?  In many cases I do not think potential backers are intentionally mislead, but I think there is a subconscious motivation to be optimistic about deadlines. 

I think SteamCraft was in a different situation than many other projects on Kickstarter.  We wanted money to do a printing of the book and get it into stores.  Most other people need money just to get their project completed and produce a few copies for their backers.  We were much farther along in the process allowing us to meet our goals. 

As a side note, and I cannot speak to this being a common issue or not, but I believe that many people vastly overpay for art.  Part of it is that people still buy under an old pricing model.  That is they pay by the size of the art in the book.  They pay $40 for a single quarter page, but then have to pay $150 for the same image if it takes up a full page.  That pricing model makes no sense for the modern publishing world.  You should purchase by the piece, not the size it is going to be printed.  Again, that comes back to the first problem I mentioned – not thinking like a business.  But, when you are doing something for the first time you are often going to make mistakes like this.  I was lucky enough to spend time leaning the RPG market before I decided to be a publisher. 

Where do you stand on the retroclones?  (Do you use any of them or don’t see the point at all, etc.  Tell us how you feel.)

Retroclones cover so many different types of games with different purposes I don’t want to lump them all together.  I believe that OSRIC was intended less to be a book for people to use in place of AD&D, but to provide legal cover for people wanting to put out adventures.  That way, the first edition gamer can put out an adventure and say “For use with OSRIC” instead of AD&D.  That makes sense to me.  Most people have never played the original “White Box” D&D.  It is not something you can easily get a hold of.  So, having a retroclone of that makes sense to give people access to that style of game. 

The term ‘retroclones’ can also be used for original but sorta clone products.  People re imagine D&D, but put it in space.  Or I have seen people try to make a Second Edition of AD&D the way that Gary intended it.  These are interesting products and I have no problem with that. 

With that said, I do have some issues.  I see no reason to play a clone if you have access to the original, or if the original is cheaply available.  If you want to play AD&D, then just go play AD&D.  I do not see why people would want to purchase a clone of that.  The books are easily available and pretty cheap. 

What other types of games do you enjoy?

I like most types of games, although a lot of the new German board games I don’t really care for.  I suppose I prefer tactical, simulation, and role-playing games the most.  I like games that involve problem solving, planning, and finding creative solutions.  The medium of the game doesn’t matter.  I enjoy card, board, computer, and PnP RPGs.  This ranges from traditional card games and RISK, to computer games like Civilization and The Secret World.  Of course good old-fashioned slaughter your enemies games are fun, which is why I played Dark Age of Camelot for over 10 years slaughtering Mids and Albs who were invading border keeps in my homeland of Hibernia. 

 

 

 

Sporadic Posting Ahead (short-term)

Business seems to be picking up in the bus business.  That is good news for my bank account with Christmas a few short months away but with the extra work commitment this blog will receive a little bit less attention than normal.  Never fear, posting will become more frequent in a short time.

Lords of Salem

Work has been extremely busy as of late but I had some spare time so I decided to write about watching The Lords of Salem to help get back into the swing of things. 

When I first saw that trailer I was pretty excited.  I had enjoyed all of Rob Zombie's previous film work.  House of 1,000 Corpses reminded me of all those crazy horror movies from the 80s that my buddies and I used to watch to all hours of the night, The Devil's Rejects was just a wild and crazy ride from start to finish, his first Halloween movie felt like Halloween in the Friday the 13th universe to me for some reason, and the second Halloween movie was just plain intense.  I thought that the Lords of Salem would continue this trend but I was mistaken.

 

I did enjoy the flashback sequence at the opening of the movie; in fact, the flashback sequences scattered throughout the movie were probably the best parts.  There were a few spots that put dark, twisted imagery to good use in the film also.  Other than that, it was a slow journey in the same vein as Rosemary's Baby with no real scares that I can recall.  In short, the film was very disappointing to me.  I believe it could have better if the story would have been told from several perspectives - use the flashback sequences, show the author that was a guest on the radio show researching a book and slowly uncovering the Lords of Salem, use the Sherry Zombie character and her perspective but also sprinkle in some of the other descendants and their stories.  He could have weaved the stories and flashbacks together until it all interconnects at the end.  Just a few thoughts....

 

 

 

 

An Announcement From Perilous Journeys Publishing

I recently read the latest announcement from Perilous Journeys Publishing;  the original announcement can be read at this location at their website.  Think of this as a briefing on the state of the company and their games.  Plenty of exciting news was made available to the fans including:

 

• Website has been redesigned.
• New SteamCraft resources.
• Free pdf with proof of purchase on an in-store purchase of SteamCraft.
• SteamCraft expansion is coming soon.
• A new edition of Perilous Journeys RPG.
• more...

 

Stop by and check it out if you are interested in steampunk gaming.  They are up for an Airship Award and I will be doing an interview with Jamie Hardy on my blog soon.

D&D 30 Day Challenge - Day 15 to 20

I know I am about to sound like a killjoy or something but I am not participating on days 15 to 20 of the D&D 30 Day Challenge because I feel that six posts about favorite monsters - even if they are split into separate types or categories of monsters - is just plain overkill.  I believe that asking for favorite and least favorite would have been quite sufficient and there could have been posts answering different questions such as:

 

What was the first module you played through?

 

Give some details about your first character?

 

Do you use Psionics in your game?

Did A/D&D lead you to other TSR games?

 

Did you ever use the advice in the DMG for mixing AD&D and Gamma World?

What game did you play as frequently as D&D?

Are you primarily a player or a DM?

Is there a campaign you have always wanted to run as a DM but never have?

There are eight quick example questions I come up with off the top of my head.  For those participating in full, I have no problem with your efforts.  All of those monster questions just were not for me - nothing more, nothing less.  I will participate again on day 21.   

 

 

 

D&D 30 Day Challenge - Day 11 to Day 14

OK.  I got a little behind on this thing and I need to catch up so I will do so in this post.  Besides, some of these questions are best suited for quick answers anyway. 

 

Day 11 - Favorite Adventure You Have Ran

My favorite module ever is probably B2 The Keep on the Borderlands.  It was included with the Basic rules and I used it several times to introduce people to the game so I have ran it more than any other adventure.

 

Day 12 - Favorite Dungeon Type/Location

Give me the sprawling megadungeon any day.

 

Day 13 - Favorite Trap/Puzzle

I am just not a trap guy.  I have used and will continue to use traps that are detailed in products such as the Grimtooth's line of products but I do not try to devise my own traps.  It is just not my thing.

 

Day 14 - Favorite NPC

I assume this means a recurring NPC from my campaigns and I do not have one.  I prefer to not have recurring NPCs showing up time and time again.  Maybe a few show up until they are eventually vanquished but there is no villain that escapes time and time again attempt to defeat the group yet again.

 

I am caught up on the 30 Days of D&D Challenge now.  I probably will not be very productive on the next run of questions just because I do not think the favorite monster needed to be split up into a weeks worth of posts.  That is just me, though.

D&D 30 Day Challenge - Day 10

The craziest thing I every saw happen during a D&D session was also the funniest in play action to take place in my old gaming group.  We were on one of our marathon gaming sessions on a Friday or Saturday night.  I do not remember exactly how many of us were playing but it was 3 or 4 players in addition to the DM.  I can not even recall if we were playing a published adventure or something the DM had put together. 

 

What I do remember is that we had been playing most of the night and had fought our way through hordes of enemies and the hit points were getting low.  At this point, we were being a bit more cautious in our actions.  We arrived at a place with a close door and decided not to just rush in but to listen at the door to see if we could tell if anything was in there.

 

The first character stepped up to the door and placed the side of his face against the door and heard nothing.  We were sure that there was someone or something behind the door so the next player stepped up and heard nothing also.  If my memory serves correctly, I believe the DM kept saying, "You failed to hear anything" if one of us failed so we kept trying.  All of the players attempted to listen at the door and heard nothing. 

 

Eventually, the turn cycle back around to the first player to attempt the listen at door action.  He thought for a moment and said, "My horse is going to listen at the door!".  Some light giggles were heard as the DM rolled the dice behind his screen and said, "The horse succeeds!".  As luck would have it, we knew something was going on behind the door but none of our characters spoke "horse" or whatever you want to call it.  At this point, the session was pretty much over for the night.  Everybody seemed to get a case of the late night laughs brought on by being up way after bedtime and drinking a ton of pop.  I do not even remember if we went into the room then or later but I will always remember that one guys horse listening at the door. 

 

D&D 30 Day Challenge - Day 9

I really do not have any D&D characters that I have not played.  When it asks for a character that I "have not played" I am taking that as "rolled up but never played" for one reason or another.  As far as I can recall, I have played every D&D character that I ever generated.  If I take other games into consideration then I have several characters that I have not played:

 

A Paladin type character for Fantasy Hero.  My gaming group just was not interested in what they perceived as a very high learning curve for the Hero System games.  I sure would have like to play one of these games.

 

An autoduellist from the original GURPS Autoduel.  I could never get my friends interested in devoting any time to the GURPS line.  We played plenty of Car Wars so I do not know why this one had no appeal to them.  Sigh...

 

A Cymrilian Warrior Mage and a Gnomekin Warrior for Talislanta.  My old group actually played this several times but some of the other players just were not into Talislanta at all.

 

Several characters for Villains & Vigilantes.  I used to make up characters for this game just because it was fun.  Somewhere in storage is an old folder of mine with a ton of V&V characters inside; illustrations for all are included.  One of these days I should dig that out and do some old school V&V posts about the characters and campaign world we created in our youth. 

 

There you have it - not one favorite character that I have never gotten to play but a list of characters that may or may not have been a lot of fun to play.  Maybe one of these days...

 

 

 

 

D&D 30 Day Challenge - Day 8

My favorite character I have ever played in D&D is a Human Paladin named Thomas Solinus.  Most people would probably pick a character that they played throughout several campaigns that had gained enough experience points to be knocking on 20th level or somewhere close.  Many of these characters would have travelled to other planes and would have faced powerful challenges to make it back home.  Of course, that would make sense but I am going against the grain on this post.

 

Thomas Solinus is a Human Paladin that never made it past 1st level; he is just on hold.  I still have his character sheet and I am just waiting to use him again.  Thomas is the first human paladin -my favorite race and class - character I played since coming back to the hobby after an almost 6 year absence.  I was in the Army from 1992 to 2000. I only gamed twice in the military - both times were with forgettable groups - and had my last real game sometime in about 1990 or so.  For the sake of discussion, it was a 10 year absence.

 

I was back home in Oklahoma when D&D 3E was released.  For the introductory price of $20 I was quick to snag up the new books.  I read them with great interest and made a few characters, introduced cousin Alex to the game, and we started working on the world of Toldara.  I started getting the idea for Thomas around this time.  I rolled him up and played him in a game.  I played with some old school tendencies and the other players - all newbies - really dug it so it was a fun time. 

 

Unfortunately, I have not been able to game much since 2000; a little here and a little there.  I really need to get a group going or do some online stuff or something but I just have not done it.  The good news is that I still have Thomas in a folder just waiting to go.  Maybe I will get to break him out sometime...