At time of writing, the Kickstarter for the Merry Mushmen‘s second adventure double feature has come to a close. Both modules- Drought Dragon Desolation by myself and They’re Making Hostage Sausage at the Dragonmeat Processing Plant by Eric Neudan – are funded and set to distribute in October.

The pleasure of writing for the Mushmen is that of collaborating with exceptional and talented artists, layout designers, cartographers, and editors to create something beautiful, polished, and of the highest quality in OSR publishing. It’s also very nice to focus solely on writing and playtesting, knowing that most other aspects of the product are in someone else’s capable hands. The Mushmen (as others will attest) pay generously and set a high standard for how writers, artists etc. should be treated in our niche hobby.

The pleasure of creating my own adventures through the Osraige Press imprint is different from the pleasures of working with a publisher. The joy of Osraige Press is that of creating something messy, imperfect, and of a singular (if flawed) vision. Nobody who read the original Hounds of Hendenburgh would consider it a work of artistic greatness but it’s amateurish, functional layout and repurposed public domain images are a source of pride to me, my first journeyman attempts at creating a cohesive product with a distinct identity through ham-fisted utilisation of GIMP and Indesign. Learning to use those products, getting advice from graphic design discords, experimenting with different techniques: all those things give me the joy of mastering a new skill and slowly improving the quality of my self-published works.

With the Kickstarter over, I’m now free to turn to some of my own projects – so I’m including some updates here for those curious about the goings on at Osraige Press HQ.

Underground Emira Seraglio

This level 1-3 adventure for Shadowdark has been essentially written and playtested for well over a year. Layout, alas, has been a bit of a struggle. I initially went with stark black and white (the house-style of the system) before eventually realising that I really need to work with a few different colours to organise and communicate information effectively. I’ve attempted a lot of variations without ever being totally happy with them. Honestly, it’s now a case of going forward accepting that ‘perfect’ is the enemy of ‘done’.

I’ve opted to work with an artist for this one. The strangeness of the implied setting (Zapata western for the ‘ordinary’ world above and Persian Science-Fantasy for the mythic underworld/dungeon) is too unusual to be captured by public domain artwork or anything I can create with my own limited artistic skills.

This one honestly gives me a lot more anxiety than my other projects. Shadowdark products have a very defined style of layout, art, and tone based on the (extremely high-quality) products produced by Arcane Library. I’m going to be deviating quite a bit from that style (there is no real ‘house style’ for B/X systems apart from individual publishers). Shadowdark also has a very defined community that is somewhat distinct from the rest of the OSR/Old-School Roleplaying world despite sharing the same ethos. Whatever modest reputation my work has earned in the latter sphere doesn’t necessarily count for much in the former. In other words, it’s a risk. However, it’s a risk I’m willing to take because (1) Shadowdark is a good system and (2) given it’s massive success (million dollar kickstarters etc.) its probably going to be most people’s introduction to old-school roleplaying. That’s an audience I’d like to reach.

Zeus, by Jove!

An I, Claudius-inspired funnel adventure for OSE. I’ve had a lot of fun with this one. As someone who thinks about the Roman Empire a lot, I’ve always been surprised at the lack of OSR adventures with a Roman flavour. Like an idiot, I’ve been laying out as I go, though much of the adventure remains an incomplete word document. Release for this one is probably a long way off, especially depending on how many changes I need to make after playtesting.

It’s also an experimental attempt to combine a dangerous funnel escape (like Arnold K’s Lair of the Lamb) and a partycrawl (a la Brad Kerr’s Demon Driven to the Maw). I’m very satisfied with the (largely completed though subject to revisions after playtesting) escape part of the adventure, though I’m still not totally satified with the the partycrawl part. Will the meshing of the two different formats work? Damned if I know but I’m having a great time attempting it.

The Future

Both the above adventures are going to be available in print-on-demand which seems like a good intermediate step for me in my journey with design, production, and layout. I’d love to turn to Kickstarter in the future but that’s a way off yet. After these next two modues are completed I also want to work on higher-level stuff, given the relative dearth of adventures for mid to high level B/X.

My other goal will be to finally get a regular in-person game going again, having recently introduced a few friends to the old-school style. Family, career, life etc. has prevented me from doing that but, now that the evenings are growing longer and a few projects have come to a close, it seems about the right time to get people round the kitchen table again.

My past few projects have all been for intended for publication and ran for the purposes of playtesting. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I’d like to have some stuff ready to write up and publish that emerges organically from a long-form campaign.

That’s all folks

Thanks to everyone who backed the Kickstarter and especially to Bruno Prosaiko and Ripley Matthews, whose art and cartography are monuments to talent and hard work.