Saga of the Goblin Horde: Nominated for an ENnie Award!

At the beginning of May, I saw a message about the final submission date for the 2018 ENnies, and in a spur-of-the-moment decision, I submitted Blood & Bile and Saga of the Goblin Horde. I nearly didn't bother, as I'm still very new to self-publishing, and there's a lot of fierce competition from other high-quality products -- but I figured I had nothing to lose, so I went for it.

This year there were 514 submissions from 251 publishers and creators, more submissions than any previous ENnie. So it came as a big surprise (and a great honour) to discover that Saga of the Goblin Horde has been nominated for "Best Free Game", alongside four other excellent products: Esper Genesis, High Plains Samurai: Legends, Modos 2 and Forthright!

The voting opens on 11th July and ends on 21st July, and the winners will be announced at GenCon on 3rd August.

Commission artwork: Describing what you want

Jiaxingseng recently wrote a blog post about his art development process, and included the description he gave to the artist. It's an interesting read, and somewhat different to the way I handled my goblin princess commission from Rick Hershey, so I thought I'd post my own description for comparison purposes:

The basic concept is a fairly classic swirling-dress Cinderella: http://www.thefeministwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Cinderella.jpg

However she's a goblin instead of a human, and her slippers have pointed steel toecaps (this is important because one of the adventures is a spin on the classic Cinderella story; instead of leaving her slipper at the ball, she leaves it embedded in someone's head during a brawl).

She should have a golden ball in one hand, like that in the classic "Frog Prince" story: http://theblogofteresa.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/the-frog-prince-story-1.jpg

In her other hand, she should have some sort of oversized vicious-looking blade. My initial thought was something that looks similar to the "chopper" from your Assorted Items Vol 1 art pack, which would be resting across her shoulder a bit like this: http://wallpapers.boolsite.net/srv11/Images/Wallpapers/JeuxVideos/SoulCalibur/SC_ Siegfried_02.jpg

Her skin color should be roughly a similar sort of green to the goblins on my archetypes cover.

Eye color should be yellowish (yellow-green or yellow-orange is also fine, but not red, as I'm intentionally trying to distance my setting from the Pathfinder goblins, who are usually illustrated with red eyes).

My preferred dimensions would be roughly 5.5 to 6 inches high, and 4.5 to 5 inches wide. That's ideal for a full sized internal illustration, while a slightly reduced version will still be wide enough to look good on the cover.

Other accessories and embellishments would be at your discretion, the important thing is that she should look like a extremely dangerous goblin version of a fairy tale princess*, and have the steel toecaps and golden ball for the adventure tie-ins. I could envision her having a light blue dress splattered with blood, perhaps with a spiked collar and bracers, but I'll leave that up to you to decide, depending on what you think looks best.

* She isn't really a princess in the traditional sense though, she's a chieftain's daughter, so please don't add a crown.

Rick then provided me with a rough sketch to make sure he'd covered the basics:

I replied with some further detail:

The sketch looks great, the only thing I would ask is that the sword be made longer (perhaps increase the blade length by 50%). The pitch for the first adventure is as follows:

The Princess and the Peabrain: What happens when a foolish ogre kidnaps a goblin princess from her tower, only to discover that she'd been locked in to protect others, rather than for her own safety?

I envision it as a sword she took from the ogre, so it would be far bigger than a typical goblin weapon - probably a similar length to a human sword, but much wider (just like in your sketch). The princess is monstrously (supernaturally) strong for a goblin, but still a fairly normal goblin height and build, so the sword would look particularly big in her hands.

The goblin scout in your goblin mega-pack has a distinctly female face and posture, despite being very obviously a goblin. If possible I'd like to capture a similar sort of quality, so she appears almost dainty, further emphasizing the massive sword.

And then just two days later, Rick sent me the finished illustration:

Chronicles of the Goblin Princess is still planned, but it was unavoidably delayed (I had to postpone it until I've published my Swift d12 system). I've already used the artwork in my Countdown Deck though!

Jumping the Bearsharktopus: One Sheet

A Redfang scout recently discovered a huge mound of bear excrement deep within Shadowglade Forest. For reasons that are probably best not discussed, the scout decided to thoroughly examine the dung, and found it contained the bones of several sea goblins, as well as a fishing net and even a small anchor! Has the legendary Bearsharktopus finally woken up again, after decades of hibernation? And more importantly, what does the great beast taste like? Chief Bignose wants to know!

Last week I released the Saga of the Goblin Horde Countdown Deck, and I thought it might be nice to write up some examples of how to use the saga symbols on the cards. But I always find it difficult to write hypothetical "actual play" scenarios, so I decided to turn them into a proper One Sheet adventure instead.

Get it here: Jumping the Bearsharktopus

If you want to follow the progress of Saga of the Goblin Horde, please don’t forget to sign up to the official Facebook group!

Saga of the Goblin Horde: Countdown Deck

The Saga of the Goblin Horde Countdown Deck has been released! It is available on DriveThruRPG as both a free Virtual Tabletop asset and a printed deck.

As well as being a thematic Action Deck, the cards offer three additional features:

1. There are four jokers, and each has a suit. This makes the game even more crazy, and also makes it quicker and easier to resolve situations where multiple people draw a joker (you can use the suit instead of having to make an opposed Agility roll to determine who goes first). It's also handy for situational rules like Interludes, which reference card suits but don't actually define what a joker does, or the Kickball rules in SotGH, which were designed with the Mutation Deck in mind, and therefore take into account the possibility of jokers with suits.

2. Each card has a prominent "countdown number" at the top. You can use these to determine turn order as normal, from highest to lowest, without having to reference both a rank and a suit. The idea for this was based on observing how many people get confused over which suits act first when the ranks are a tie (even many experienced players will sometimes pause for a moment to work out whether hearts or diamonds go first).

3. Each card has a "saga symbol" at the bottom. These symbols are improvisational prompts; an "elephant" symbol could represent any sort of herd creature, or just something big, or it could be interpreted as strength, stamina, wisdom, memory, loyalty, etc. Likewise the "torch" symbol might represent fire, knowledge, destruction, heat, light, exploration, and so on.

The symbols can be used for all sorts of things - they can be used instead of (or in addition to) the suit for Interludes, or as inspiration for downtime activities, or to add additional flavor to the adventure generator (draw one card for each of the five scenes), or for fleshing out complications during a chase or dramatic task, and so on.

Saga Symbols

Here are a few quick examples of "boastful tales" based on drawing three cards, the highlighted words correspond to the saga symbols at the bottom of the cards (note that the specific order doesn't matter, the idea is just to take three symbols and turn them into a story):

One day you were fishing along the shore of Windpoint Island, and lost track of time. A storm was coming in, so you set off along the causeway. But before you could reach Axehead Cove, a massive sea monster rose up from the ocean, and attempted to devour you. Fortunately you managed to cast your fishing line at it, lodge your hook in its lip, and then surf back to shore!

Long ago, you took a fancy to a lovely maiden from the Stonefist tribe, after witnessing the vicious beating she dished out during a friendly game of Kickball. You headed into the Longtooth Mountains to woo her, but her brothers learned of your plan, and you had to fight them all single-handedly!

A mushroom farmer once gave you a swig from his hipflask, and the hallucinations drove you crazy! You sprinted deep into Twilight Wood, fleeing predators that only you could see, and ended up climbing to the very top of the tallest tree in the forest. When you finally regained your wits, it took you several hours to get back down to the ground!

Back to the Roots: One Sheet

Last month GGstudio invited me to Modena Play, for my first ever gaming convention, and I was asked to run a couple of Saga of the Goblin Horde games!

I wanted to run a new adventure, but didn’t have time to create something from scratch, so I combined my favorite elements from three different adventures—the ornithopter run scene from Can of Wyrms, the war horseradishes from Root of the Problem, and the ambush cards from Dungeon Squat (the first Plot Point Episode in the setting book).

I was able to run the adventure for Giuseppe Rotondo, James Horton and Riccardo Giannico at the convention, and it was well received, so with some effort (and a few adjustments) I’ve just about managed to squeeze it into a new One Sheet!

Get it here: Back to the Roots

As always, if you’re interested in following the progress of Saga of the Goblin Horde, don’t forget to sign up to the official Facebook group!

From left to right: Giuseppe, Riccardo, myself, and James.

James even drew a doodle of the adventure!

Saga of the Goblin Horde: Configurable Map

Every so often, someone will contact me asking where abouts on the Saga of the Goblin Horde map a particular adventure takes place. Although I did work out approximate routes when writing the adventures, I didn't bother recording the information, so I usually end up sketching a rough route on a map every time someone asks.

Well, I finally decided to mark up the official routes, using PDF layers so the user can enable whichever adventure they're currently running. I also added the place names and territory labels (adjusted slightly so that they no longer overlap), along with the title and compass, hex grix, and territory fog. The result is a high resolution map that can be fully configured simply by toggling different layers.

Download it here: Configurable Map

Here are a few examples of how the map can be configured in Acrobat Reader, by selecting the "layers" tab on the left side of the screen, and choosing which layers you wish to display:

Displaying the route for Bone of Contention.

You can also display multiple routes at once if you wish.

Tribal territory.labels can replace or be combined with place names.

Modena Play: My First Gaming Convention!

Gio Dal Farra (owner of GGstudio) invited me to Modena Play this year. It took place on April 6th, 7th and 8th, and was the first gaming convention I'd ever been to! I didn't quite know what to expect, but I had a fantastic time—I met a lot of really nice people, ate some delicious Italian food, and even had the opportunity to run a few games of Saga of the Goblin Horde.

On Friday morning Alessandro Aimonetto collected me at the entrance, gave me my pass, bought me coffee and a sandwich, and provided a quick tour. After that, I had the opportunity to explore the convention at my own pace. Most of the stalls were promoting board games; I did see a couple of others that had tabletop RPGs, but GGstudio had the largest and most diverse offering.

The language barrier proved to be my biggest challenge. Although many people understood English, almost all of the games were published and played in Italian. Fortunately I was able to make a note of the games that caught my interest, and I've found that many of them are also available in English :) I also had some great conversions with several other game designers, had the opportunity to look at their work, and gained some valuable insight into the industry.

On Saturday I met Giuseppe Rotondo, James Horton and Riccardo Giannico, and ran a new Saga of the Goblin Horde adventure for them (it's called "Back to the Roots", and I will release it in the very near future). I also used the Mutation Deck I designed for Just Insert Imagination :) Giuseppe later introduced me to several other game designer friends of his, we looked at some of the things other people were working on, and we talked about Gold & Glory and Blood & Bile.

I had another short visit to the con on Sunday morning, then left at 11:30am to catch my flight, which proved to be an entire adventure in its own right!

Anyway, here are some of the highlights. Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Savage Worlds

There were loads of translated Savage Worlds books (particularly for Deadlands), as well as some original Italian settings. I discussed the translation process with some of the GGstudio guys, and they raised some interesting points I hadn't really considered—for example, it wasn't enough just to translate the text of East Texas University, they also added a small section describing how the American school system works, as it's very different to the education system in Italy.

Gold & Glory

What can I say about Gold & Glory that I haven't said already? This is the ultimate toolkit for dungeon crawling in Savage Worlds, and impressed me so much that I offered to write a SotGH crossover adventure for it. GGstudio then translated my adventure to Italian, and offered it as a fold-out freebie at the con, but I don't know if they plan to release it in English as well. However I'm thinking of writing another one anyway, this time from the goblin perspective!

Fleshscape

One of the games that really caught my attention was Fleshscape, by Emanuele Galletto. It's a minimalist RPG with a very unusual setting (a sort of Lovecraftian post-apocalyptic world covered in flesh, bone and sinew, with rivers of blood and puss, where the PCs are primitive hunters fighting for survive). Emanuele does all his own artwork, and admitted that one of the reasons he chose the theme is that he's not very good at drawing buildings! The concept is really awesome though, and the PDF is available for free on DriveThruRPG, so I'd definitely recommend checking it out.

Interestingly, the Italian version of Fleshscape has been condensed down to three pages, and printed inside a custom GM screen. That means you don't buy a book, you buy a GM screen, and it contains everything you need to play! I really love that idea, and could easily see it working for other minimalist RPGs as well (in fact GGstudio also offer a game called Golconda in the same format, although I didn't have the opportunity to speak to the author, and I don't think it's available in English).

Kata Kumbas

Umberto Pignatelli is a relentless writing machine, and he produces a lot of high quality stuff. But I was particularly intrigued by his Kata Kumbas solo adventure books. These initially appeared to be pretty similar to the old "Choose Your Own Adventure books" I read when I was younger, however they're actually a lot more intricate, with lots of little secrets, clues and minigames hidden within the artwork and maps. I really appreciate clever design mechanics like that, and would love to see more of them.

Cabal

This is a new game that was being demonstrated quite extensively at the con. Cabal appears to be a sort of modern-day investigative horror/occult RPG, with a bit of a CoC/WoD vibe, and some evocative B&W artwork. I had a nice chat with the designers and they told me GGstudio are going to be translating it to English and converting it to Savage Worlds, so that'll definitely be one to look out for in the future!

Other Stuff

Of course there were loads of other interesting things as well. GGstudio had printed cloth maps for some of their settings, which is an awesome idea, and something I'd like to look into for Saga of the Goblin Horde. There were some other really nice looking games like Be-Movie, Golconda and Symbaroum, as well as Skeletons (a story game which I've read reviews about, and which I find a very intriguing concept).

I had the chance to flick through Nemezis, a setting I'd only heard of previously by name, and now I really want to play it (just based on the artwork alone)! I also saw a bunch of other products that caught my attention, such as Ultima Forsan, Night Witches, and Fiasco. I really need to start playing more games!

Summary

Overall it was an awesome and very memorable experience, and I feel very fortunate to have been invited. I made a lot of new friends, spoke to several of my fans, networked with many talented game designers, and gained a lot of insight into the RPG industry. So I'd like to say a big "thank you" to Gio and the rest of the GGstudio crew, and I look forward to seeing you again in the future!

The only thing I didn't enjoy was the trip home...