D101 Games' Storefront

D101 Games

• Post Dad part 2

  2009 Oct 18

  I’ve very recently became a father again for the second time. Young Henry Brian Newport was born Sept 14th 2009 and is fit and able. Mother is recovering well and elder sister Evie adores her new sibling, although is kinda annoyed that we pay less attention to her at important moments!

  Henry’s birth was always going to be this big wall that slowed down the onward rush of D101, but life is coming back into the old beast

  OpenQuest. Another minor errata is due, but being held up as my main pc is out of commission at the moment. Since this is the nerve centre of D101 where I do all my InDesign layout this is quite annoying. Hopefully resolved in the next week or two, since time to tinker with PCs is severely limited at the moment.

  Savage North. I actually used my paternity leave as a big opportunity to get the writing I needed to do done and dusted. A big push which saw the setting , magic and over arching metaplot nailed. John has done all the maps and illustrations and the whole project is waiting on me to go through the adventures and convert the original RQ 3 stats to OpenQuest. I’m about halfway through this simple process and hope to be content complete by my birthday Oct 26th and be finished doing layout early Nov. This means a late Nov release

  Monkey. I know this is going to sound lame, but I keep waiting for my head to be in the right place to get this finished. Only one chapter to do – the difficult setting & npc chapter, then a quick revision before sending off to be edited all in one go. Good news is that all the art is in so when the edited text is here it can go straight into a simple 6″ x 9″ layout. Hoping to have done by the end of this year early next year latest.

  HeroQuest.Alot is bubbling under the surface here…
  

  Hearts in Glorantha issue 4 is currently coming together, but may be delayed until late winter early spring next year. Why? Well honestly I want a break from it. I’ve pumped out three issues in quick succession and a certain amount of fatigue has set in. But I know I’ll be back revitalised, so don’t worry

  Gloranthan adventures 1: New Beginnings. Currently reading the new Sartar book (400 pages of Gloranthan goodness) to bring my old Sartite adventures into line with it and occasionally striping out the stats and references to old supplements that are no longer needed. The idea is to make this a lightweight companion to Sartar, in that it draws from that book but doesn’t rely on it too heavily, that provides a short mini-campaign for new players and games masters before the main Sartar campaign kicks off. The cover art is done and I’ve got one of the HiG regulars , Xavier Llobet, for the internals. Its all coming together nicely this one.

  The Road Less Travelled. D101’s first non-Gloranthan supplement. Its a Questworld for Generic Fantasy, using the setting and adventure from OpenQuest. I admit I stalled for a while on this one, because I didn’t want it to be a lightweight conversion of text that is effectively free and I wanted to make sure I had enough ideas to make it a proper HQ release of its own. I’m satisfied that I’ve done this now, and I’ve started work fleshing it out for a Dec release.

  …also another unannounced HQ project may see the light before the end of this year which is a lot shorter and much much different from all the fantasy stuff that’s been released/worked on so far.

  In stuff that’s been worked on by others, Nathan is beavering away on Empire’s Rising a four part adventure for OpenQuest and John Ossoway is chipping away at the Hard sci-fi epic that is River of Heaven. As well as the previously announced HeroQuest version, John is now going to be using OpenQuest for a D100 version More about that soon.

  Relentless D101 marches on….

  Mirrored from Blog.

• I am the Happy Fun Publisher

  2009 Aug 31

  Time is squeezing in on me due to impending Newlet#2 (eta two weeks or less) and also prompted by the fact that its been a year and a month since D101’s first release (Hearts in Glorantha #1) this has triggered some pretty heavy reflection on where I’m at with D101.

  I think it can be easily summed up with one phrase “I am the Happy Fun Publisher”.

  To expand I’m happiest when this is a fun hobby, when it goes under ther radar with the Boss (the wife Rachel, my not so silent partner ), and there is a genuine joy about what I’m doing.  I recently had a big dose of the ‘must get this done’ grind for HiG#3 and OpenQuest and it sucketh mightily.

  I’ve recently had a huge delusion of grandeur where I pump out the books at the going rate of the ‘Industry, what ever badly inflated price that is, and somehow next year I can give up my day job (as a web developer) . In reality I love my job, it suits me down to the ground and I like the people I work with, and now is not the time to go freelance. I also know that if I went full time with D101 at this point in time I would hate it. I’m never going to say never, but if one day it does happen it will be from a much stronger position than I’m currently in. It will will be an inevitable step that flows with the way my life is going.

  Nope I’m doing D101 as a hobby, with perhaps a higher dedication and sense of professionalism, in the same way that some people play sports or spend hours playing World of Warcraft.

  So what does this mean in practical terms;

  • I’m going to carry on with the same scatter gun approach to publishing, announcing books here and there, taking my time to deliver oblivious to deadlines whooshing by and occasionally dumping stuff that didn’t work out.  I’m focusing on the Fun, not something I feel I need to put out (except as a mental kick to get something that has been sitting on the Hard-drive in the nearly done phase for too long).  This allow me to actually carry on a few titles that I was considering dropping due to ‘time constraints’.  Immediate benefit of this is that I’m not planing on dropping my Gloranthan titles, as I was before in my previous serious frame of mind.
  • I’m not going to be charging the bizzare prices that RPG publishers seem to be charging these days (this is a rant in itself).  I’ll be charging what I think is a fair price, that people can afford yet still lets me pay out my small costs. RPGing is a social activity, RPG companies or small press should act in a social responsible way and foster a community based on fair play and inclusiveness. To do otherwise in the name for a quick buck means that the Hobby, never mind the so called ‘Industry’, is fucked.  If that means people don’t consider D101 a proper games company, then fuck’ em.  Immediate effect of this is that I’m dropping the print price of OpenQuest to the more reasonable £10.

  So that’s where I stand, having fun, releasing what I want, having a laugh with mates and not turning D101 into a joyless must do enterprise.

  Hello my name’s Newt and  I am the Happy Fun Publisher.

  Mirrored from Blog.

• D101’s direction

  2009 Aug 31

  D101’s Wave 2 (publishing its own games) is firmly here, hitting the shores and reaching the people and with it came a firm realisation (or perhaps the obvious slapping me in the face) of where I’m going with this.

  In short ‘Its all about the Story’.

  My favourite Roleplaying experiences have always been those where you remember the game play sessions by the stories that people tell afterwards.  Please excuse me if I look bored to high heaven if you wander up to me and tell me about your favourite character and what awesome powers they have or how system X hits the sweet spot for play.  These things don’t do it for me.

  These are the three things I’m I looking for in a ’story-telling’ roleplaying game.

  • Flexible and easy to learn. Story telling often requires you be inventive on the fly. I want a game systems that support me as I make things up. I don’t want a large overhead of confused players as we have to roll out a new rule to cover the situation that’s cropped up in play.  I want the system to be straightforward, not necessary rules-lite, so that it can blend into the background and let the fun and the story take over.
    
  • Make the best use of the system features. I want to produce games  that encourage and reward story telling and have clever systems that channel, not force, play in this direction.
    
  • Violence is not the only option. I want to cut down on the amount of random violence that occurs in my games due to players exerting their character’s superiority over npcs.  As big a fan as I am of Sword and Sorcery and the Action Movie genres, I getting sick of the ‘toys for the boys’ approach that most RPGs take.    Its not just about having systems that can handle politics or ’social conflict’ its about presenting a world that actually encourages the players to be more than just walking weapons’ platforms.  Monkey , as much as it is filled with Wacky Kung-fu fighting, is a step in this direction.

  How we are going to do it

  • Trad systems with Story telling bias  for example OpenQuest.
  • New modern Storytelling systems purpose built for story telling, such as Wordplay and HeroQuest.

  I put the emphasis on ‘we’ here because D101 is already a collaborative enterprise. Hearts in Glorantha is one big collaboration and so was the production of OpenQuest.  This trend will continue when some of the upcoming projects I have in the pipeline come to light over the coming months.  This is perhaps the final point about D101’s Direction, while I remain the figure head and benevolent dictator for life, D101  has moved away from being my vehicle for self-publication and more of a collective. So if you have an idea for a book, that matches our direction, get in touch (newt@d101games.co.uk).

  Mirrored from Blog.

• Its not easy being Green

  2009 Aug 04

  A quick web comic while we wait for Savage North to get done. Some of John’s art, which shows a manly obsession with Goblin decapitation, put together into a short strip by yours truly.

  

  Mirrored from Blog.

• I survived the OpenQuest release!!

  2009 Jul 12

  After nearly two years of development work, OpenQuest is out.  If you missed this the free pdf is available via our new downloads page and the print version is available via our store page.

  Go visit d101games.co.uk for both of these.

  Since the release on Friday I’ve had about 200 odd downloads and a couple of sales :)  Feed back has been posistive, with threads over at RPG.net and The Tavern singing its praises.

  I post a fuller post mortem of how the game developed when I’ve recovered from my happy state of release burn out.

  Now back to fiddling about writing adventures and settings Oh yes and laying out issue 3 of Hearts in Glorantha

  Mirrored from Blog.