Robin D. Laws's Blog, page 111

Pathfinder Tales on Atomic Array

Ed Healy and Rone Barton, of the Atomic Array Podcast, are dicks.

Hardboiled dicks, that is, in their purple-prosed noir introduction to a newly-dropped special edition of the podcast, focusing on the Pathfinder Tales fiction line.

James L. Sutter talks about switching hats from line editor to author for his plane-hopping novel Death's Heretic.

Dave (frabjousdave) Gross explains how he fused two classic streams of detective fiction to create Varian Jeggare and Radovan, the odd-couple problem-solvers featured in Prince of Wolves and the upcoming Master of Devils.

Howard Andrew Jones tells us about the modern take on the blood and thunder Robert E. Howard tradition, and how it informs his book Plague of Shadows.

I, in regard to The Worldwound Gambit, map the process of building the perfect team and heist for a demon-plagued fantasy locale. (And yes, I have to replace that @#$% plastic headset, what with the incessant popping sounds it produces whenever I flex my skull.)

Atomic Array bonus fun fact: after the interview, when you're waiting for the file you've recorded to upload, Ed and Rone produce their own hold music, by singing to you.

Pre-Prandial Link Review: Ebooks Tip, Not Enraptured, Ashen Stars Cover

The point has tipped. Amazon Now Sells More eBooks Than Paper Books.

I knew there was a reason I wasn't finding the whole end times thing hilarious.

Pelgrane reveals the Ashen Stars cover.

Korad: Polling Doniri

Doniri is not where the Donairs come from. Instead this ocean-swept peninsula is peopled by a culture known for:

View Poll: Doniri

Note that, since we're past the city defining phase and looking for details on the entire region's prevailing culture, I modified some city-specific suggestions to be more general.

The Picaresque Hero

The iconic hero encounters a state of disorder, and, by remaining true to his self and ethos, solves a problem, rectifying that disorder.

The dramatic hero is torn between two opposing impulses. He either resolves this internal disorder, or is destroyed by it.

What of the picaresque hero, the footloose protagonist of a winding tale of travel, either literal, or figurative (such as travel through social ranks)? He is Cugel, Gulliver, Encolpius, Barry Lyndon, Don Quixote. He journeys through a fundamentally disordered world, which acts upon him as much as he acts upon it. His changing fortunes reflect the disorder without altering it. He may be blinkered by a wayward moral compass, or, as in Quixote's case, delusion. He is a critique of the heroic vision.

RPG characters are very often constructed using the tropes of iconic hero fiction, but in practice, whether because their players are grubbing for XPs or reveling in a freedom from social constraint, behave like picaresques. The less structured and more sandboxy the GM's narrative style, the more their exploits structurally resemble the picaresque.

Pre-Prandial Link Review: Ashen Stars Reviewed, Pathfinder Fiction bonanza, the Self-Sabotage King

Today's link catch-up kicks off with two, count 'em, two reviews of the Ashen Stars Stellar Nursery pre-order edition:the first, from queex, the second, from Belinda Kelly.

My novel, The Worldwound Gambit, officially launches today. It's just one item in a veritable flood of new Pathfinders Tales material.

The smart response to famously inane filmfest press questions? Well, it's not joking that you're a Nazi. Oh, LVT, you remain unsurpassed in the art of creative self-sabotage.

The Birds

The updated archive is here!






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What Happens In Playtest Feedback Does Not Stay In Playtest Feedback

I'm now completing final revisions on the Dying Earth Revivification Folio, (In which the Game Master is gifted with an extended and inescapable stratagem, whereby foolishly hesitant players might be cleverly tricked into enjoying the unparalleled sublimities of the Dying Earth Roleplaying Game.) Once again I've been blessed by a wealth of superb playtest feedback

Anybody who gives solid feedback can expect some of it to appear as additional text in the finished manuscript—but not all of it. That's why it's essential to get as much outside playtest feedback as possible—to sift issues unique to one group from those everyone might be expected to face.

Roleplaying experiences go well or poorly based on a myriad of factors, only some of which arise from the rules set or adventure a game group has kindly volunteered to playtest. Our responses to those experiences can also be subjective. We can also, as mentioned previously, suffer a disconnect between the pure experience itself and our attempts to subject it to later critical analysis. For this reason a purely impressionist account of what happened and how the group felt about it may prove more enlightening than a carefully constructed theoretical argument.

That's where comparisons between responses become crucial. If half your testers like scenario Y better than scenario X, and the other half reverse that response, you're probably in good shape. If everyone loves Y and got stuck trying to play X, you may be looking at profound changes to X. Or a subtle tweak that makes everything fall into place; such are the vagaries of RPG design.

I do still sometimes make changes based on the comments of a single group. This happens when I can see others having the same issue, and the fix for it is reasonably easy to perform, without blowing up the word count. As a designer, I always want more words to explain every contingency. As gamers, you don't want to pay the price in dollars and back strain for an infinitely verbose edition.

When most groups have a problem with something, it needs changing no matter how much work and rewriting is called for. This happened with the first iteration of starship combat in Ashen Stars. Even then subjectivity rears its head: while a strong majority of players rated the complete overhaul a success, a few missed the old way.

For any new game, you're going to get at least one group whose experience utterly implodes. Often reading between the lines of a feedback report, you can sense the influence of one or two dominant players who resisted the game from the get-go and unconsciously torpedoed it for everyone. These are less fun than the reports that come in as raves. However, they're a hair more useful. They show you what text you need to add to manage expectations, to explain the key features of its approach so that those disposed to it can find the game, and those who want something else entirely can stay clear.

On the DERF, one eagle-eyed Vancian (Chris Dalgety, you know who you are) caught me writing a tagline that mentioned the moon. Aficionados of the Dying Earth well know that this celestial body long ago crashed unceremoniously from the sky.

That's a fun example, which will have to stand in for the many contributions of playtesters past and present. When submitting feedback, your least glamorous or insightful observations may make the most difference in ensuring a quality product. Telling me what confused you is enormously helpful. The spotting of simple errors—the kind that blare out at the publisher and designer the moment they first flip through the published pages—may be the greatest service a test group can render.

Pre-Prandial Link Review: Air Pulp, You've Been Warned

How Graeme Davis's love of classic aviation led to his masterfully fun The New Hero story for Stone Skin Press.

Best cinematic content warning ever.

With 105 of the 200 pre-orders needed to finance the beautiful color print run of Ashen Stars, Pelgrane Press is at the stage of a grass roots project known as Humpday. Help us reverse thrusters and emerge quickly from the gravity well, earning immediate access to the game and other great bennies besides.

Out This Week: The Worldwound Gambit

It started showing up in the mailboxes of Pathfinder Tales subscribers late last week. It's due for official release this week in both paper and ebook format. It's The Worldwound Gambit, my latest novel, and my first from the good folks at Paizo.

Here's the sell text:

In the foreboding north, the demonic hordes of the magic-twisted hellscape known as the Worldwound encroach upon the southern kingdoms of Golarion. Their latest escalation embroils a preternaturally handsome and coolly charismatic swindler named Gad, who decides to assemble a team of thieves, cutthroats, and con-men to take the fight into the demon lands and strike directly at the fiendish leader responsible for the latest raids—the demon Yath, the Shimmering Putrescence. Can Gad hold his team together long enough to pull off the ultimate con, or will trouble from within his own organization lead to an untimely end for them all?
From gaming legend and popular author Robin D. Laws comes a fantastic new adventure of swords and sorcery, set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

432-page mass market paperback
ISBN–13: 978-1-60125-327-9


The Worldwound Gambit brings together the fantasy and caper genres, plus, as you'd expect when the marks are demons, a touch of horror as well. It's pitched not only to seasoned Pathfinder fans but also to readers new to the world of Golarion. I'm stoked to see how you all react to it, and would love the chance to follow up with further adventures of Gad and his crew of heisters. Make this happen by grabbing a copy. If you dig it, help us out by passing the word along as with at Amazon, Goodreads and other online book venues.

Order it from Paizo in either traditional or electronic format, or find it in traditional format wherever fine gaming fiction is sold.

Pre-Prandial Link Review: Funding Cthulhu, The Scorsese Obstructions, Meme Blowback

As an experiment in social network harmonization, I'm going to start posting a quitting-time round-up of links I've posted to Twitter and Facebook over the course of the day. Those who already catch everything I send to those platforms can safely pass this feature by.

Perform the rugose funding ritual that calls up Graham Walmsley's Stealing Cthulhu.

Scorsese/von Trier sequel to The Five Obstructions will be amazing (if it happens.) If you haven't seen it, hunt down the original.

The White House withholds bin Laden death photos because they know you will LOLCAT them.