Brent Knowles's Blog

Mothership: Failing Forward

So last weekend I played my first in-person session of a TTRPG in a very long time (we normally play over Roll20). We also tried out a new TTRPG system (well, new to us).

Mothership.

How did it go? Very, very well, I think. We all had fun. We figured out the rules quickly except for a couple confusing bits related to combat. And we had one less-experienced player joining us and they also enjoyed themselves and figured out the rules quickly. Overall I felt the session was more entertaining than a lot of the D&D experiences I’ve had recently. It was also easier on me as the GM and “faster-paced”.

I’ve been thinking about that and obviously one of the reasons is that there’s less combat (Mothership is more about the players solving problems and avoiding combat because combat is very dangerous). And combat in D&D is very time consuming with lots of decisions to make and a lot of effort on the Game Master’s side to run well.

But I think the “failing forward” process inherent in Mothership also helps tremendously with session pacing.

Failing Forward

Basically, in a failing forward approach, which as best I can tell seems to be recommended with Mothership, if a player fails a check, that check still succeeds. But the failure has consequences. This keeps sections of the adventure from just being a boring round of “Let’s reroll-the-dice until we succeed!” And it lets the Game Master come up with clever responses to failed rolls (fun!)

It was definitely one of the faster play sessions I’ve had with a TTRPG, with more focus on the players interacting with the environment and each other.

I’m now thinking about how to apply this more strategically to adventure design in general. In Raiders of the Serpent Sea I stuck to the D&D pattern for the most part (pass/fail on ability checks). However, with some of the extra content I developed for Raiders (Raiding Seas, etc.) I used graduated ability checks in some places. Here’s an an example from a random encounter:

This is an example of the graduated ability checks I use in some Raiders’ content. I liked creating these because it allowed me to generate some success-on-fail options to help Game Masters run the encounters without forcing the players to roll until they succeed.

Basically the character makes the roll and the result is what it is. It doesn’t stop or bog down the adventure. It could lead to the same solution as a success but with additional consequences. Or it could lead to false information–and an interesting subplot / alternative encounter.

How I Might Change This? In a “fail forward” approach, I’d tweak the outcomes so that all of them let the character identify the statue as the correct “god of the Stone Court”.

But how they get to that solution can have different consequences. Or another way of saying it: “The check gives them the information they need but failure introduces complications / consequences.”

Maybe something along the lines of:

A character can make a DC 17 Intelligence (History) check to identify the god of the Stone Court this statue represents. On a failure, they still identify the statue but damage it in the process of examining it:

Extreme Failure. The statue falls on the character. The statue is destroyed and the character takes 22 (5d8) Bludgeoning damage. The god this statue represents is angry if they ever meet the character.Failure. The character breaks a small piece off the statue. The god this statue represents is annoyed with the character if they ever meet the character.

How about you? Any other t houghts on these approaches?

After playing Mothership, I’m definitely going to think more about how I can make the ability checks more than just a pass/fail test and build upon the graduated ability check system I’ve been using. I’ve seen how entertaining the “fail forward” approach is during a gaming session and will try to do more to encourage that in my future D&D-based adventure material!

I’m planning a new Kickstarter campaign. If you are curious to follow along, please sign up here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arcanumworldscanada/raiders-of-the-serpent-sea-foundry-vtt-edition

About Runic Tales
Runic Tales is my TTRPG company. Primarily I’ve created only Raiders of the Serpent Sea content but I’ve also been contracting on other TTRPG projects (like the Exodus TTRPG). Visit the Runic Tales website to learn more.

Working Backwards: 50 Years of …

Recently I released the final deliverable for my Raiders of the Serpent Sea Kickstarter campaign (The Raiding Seas!) As I wrap up several years of work on this TTRPG campaign it has led me to reflect on the huge impact Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) has had on my life.

Even as I wrap up work on Raiders, I am currently busy as a contractor doing fun things on another exciting roleplaying project (and the reason I have this work is because of my previous work at BioWare). This project is likely what I’ll be busy with for the rest of the year and is sure to lead to new opportunities in the future. While I’ve worked on Raiders and this “new project”, I also contributed to two additional Arcanum Worlds D&D books: Minsc and Boo’s Journal of Villainy & Chains of Asmodeus!)

So its safe to say that over the past few years, I’ve either been working on D&D material, or doing work that has come my way because of my past experience (which itself largely grew out of playing and developing TTRPGs).

Odyssey of the Dragonlords

Prior to Raiders, I worked at NAIT, a technical college, where I collaborated on digital projects with various companies–basically running a small team of developers looking to innovate in industry spaces not normally familiar with the technology we were experimenting with. We also built a motion capture lab on campus! It was an interesting few years for sure and possibly the only chunk of work in the last couple decades that wasn’t tied to D&D (though my experience at BioWare helped me land the job). And during my time at NAIT, I was running Arcanum World’s Odyssey of the Dragonlords as a campaign for my kids and their friends. We had a great time and it helped get my mind in the right place for creating Raiders.

Planescape

Before moving onto NAIT, I spent a couple years with Beamdog where I was once again surrounded by many folks playing the 5th edition of D&D. I also helped put together the enhanced edition of Planescape Torment, which reminded me of a lot of cool stuff from my second edition days with D&D. And during this time I was playing short 5e D&D adventures with my kids.

The Sword Coast

For a brief stint, I helped N-Space with Sword Coast Legends, which was my first real return to videogame development since leaving BioWare in 2009. But I was also given the starter set for 5e at this time. Up until this point I don’t think I’d had much to do with anything related to D&D for several years, so having that starter set really got me back into thinking about D&D again … and playing it.

Any and all contract work that landed my way after BioWare (such as working on Empire Avenue!) found its way to me because of my time at BioWare, and consequently, because of my past interest in D&D!

The In-Between

In 2009 I left BioWare as Dragon Age Origins development was wrapping up. I’ve spoken a lot about that departure in other places. But in thinking back to that time, I also realized there were a large number of years at BioWare where I wasn’t playing D&D consistently. Simply working the senior roles I was at BioWare, ate up so much time–I knew a few folks from BioWare managed to keep playing but I never understood where they found the time.

Neverwinter Nights

Looking back, the most active stint of playing I had as an adult was around the time the 3e rules came out–I was really into them as part of my technical work with Neverwinter Nights–helping to figure out how to get these new D&D rules to work in a videogame and so on. I ran a few campaigns and played in various others during this time period. I ended up acquiring many of the 3e books as I worked on the core Neverwinter campaign and the two expansion packs.

Baldur’s Gate 2

I started working for BioWare in 1999 (on the 2e game, Baldur’s Gate 2). Again, I’ve written a lot about getting the job there so I won’t repeat myself but honestly, having played (and DM’ed) a lot of D&D throughout high school and college helped me get the job. I had also recently had an article published in Dragon Magazine, which was maybe the icing-on-the-cake-of-being-hired (I’m sure my computer science degree helped a bit too, maybe?)

Prior to BioWare, I worked mainly conventional jobs–grocery stores, bottle depot, delivering newspapers! During that time I couldn’t imagine being able to use what I did for fun–playing Dungeons & Dragons–in any capacity at a job. It simply seemed impossible. Even when I went onto college, while I hoped I could forge a great career path for myself I seldom seriously considered that I’d be able to have such a close alliance between my favorite pastime and my work.

Definitely if we roll back into high school and earlier … it simply seemed inconceivable. And I’m sure everyone around me felt I was wasting me time, playing as often as I did. But what I think was often missed was all the creating I was doing. It wasn’t just the playing, it was the map-making, the adventure design, creating various tables and other rules (did I ever mention that I developed my own TTRPG before even playing D&D … I saw other kids play it and made up my own).

This was all practice for what eventually has become a lifelong career. Luck played its role of course, but I think the tasks I set myself to–not because I was trying to fulfill some abstract list of goals but because I enjoyed the tasks–prepared me to take advantage of those moments when they arose.

So all in all, I am thankful that I share a birth year with the tabletop role-playing game from which I’ve derived much of both my livelihood and joy.

Are you a raider hoping for raider-stuff? Find it here instead: https://runictales.com/raiders-of-the-serpent-sea/

Raiders of the Serpent Sea – Physical Copies

Hello, again. This will likely be my last post about the original Raiders of the Serpent Sea RPG project over here as we have fulfilled most of the Kickstarter commitments and print and digital copies for those who are not backers, are now available!

More details here, including links to the products available at the various Modiphius stores:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arcanumworldscanada/raidersoftheserpentsea/posts/3976412

And these are links to the extra Raiders content on DriveThruRPG, separate from the campaign and player guide: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/21008/Runic-Tales-Inc

I’ll try to keep this blog more centered on the creative and behind-the-scenes stuff work leading toward projects like Raiders. Promotion will tend to happen on our Runic Tales website instead. There are several exciting things to come, mostly Raiders related, but not entirely.

For the time being, feel free to throw any questions you might have at me, here!

Roll20: Raiders of the Serpent Sea

The Roll20 version of Raiders of the Serpent Sea is now available for purchase on Roll20!

Find it here: https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/bundle/26386/raiders-of-the-serpent-sea

(To follow along with new Raider’s information, please sail on over to our company page: https://runictales.com/)

Raiders of the Serpent Sea – Product Page

Hello all

As those of you who backed our successful Raiders of the Serpent Sea RPG Kickstarter campaign know, I have been quite busy getting the books written, printed, and now… soon… shipped to customers! I’ve used this blog in the past to keep everyone updated about the project and will continue to do so–albeit more sparingly. That’s because there’s a new home for Raiders of the Serpent Sea… and, hopefully, a new landing page for lots of RPG content from me in the future.

As we transition into the new phase of things for Raiders, look to https://runictales.com/ for updates, freebies, and other cool stuff.

Also, here’s a pic of the sample copies for Raiders, if you are interested:

And what’s the future of this blog? I am not sure… once I finish all my commitments for Raiders, I’d like to do a bit of fiction writing, both within the Raider’s universe and without. So if I do any non-RPG writing, I’ll use this blog to let you know. And maybe other things… perhaps eventually updating everyone on the exciting contract work I’ve been a part of recently.

We shall see!

Raiders of the Serpent Sea Metrics

This post is a short summary of my experience using Kickstarter to fund the roleplaying campaign, Raiders of the Serpent Sea (print & PDF). I am on the verge of the first phase of fulfillment — the PDFs release next week! I decided to take a break and get these thoughts down before I forget them.

I’ll start with a breakdown of the costs (simplified) and end with a discussion about some of the challenges around creating a campaign that spans levels 1-16 and beyond… in a reasonable number of pages.

Who knows what you will find in the forest?The Cost of Making Raiders of the Serpent Sea

With over 200 pieces of art spanning 3 separate books, this is an expensive product to create! Thankfully I was able to connect with many of the artists that worked on Odyssey of the Dragonlords who are familiar with the type of art needed for a project like this. And the new artists who joined us along the way are just as professional!

But regardless, quality art costs money!

I thought it might be interesting (and illuminating) to show a crude breakdown of where the money has been spent (anything marked with * means a future expenses). The income I needed to fund this came from the funds gathered in Kickstarter, the preorders from Pledge Manager, and loans.

Art is, of course, the second largest expense, with the cost to actually print the books the only higher expense (the printing estimate is based on an earlier quote for smaller books… so this will likely increase). Other Partners include Modiphius, Pledge Manager, and VTT development costs.

A large fee that is missing from this expense list is “Writing”. This is simply because I wrote the bulk of the content myself (aside from those portions rewritten by the editor). Generally this would also be a significant expense on a project like this. It is hard for me to estimate but I’ve put in thousands of hours over the past three years… I’d probably estimate that cost at about 30% of the overall budget (had I been paid!)

Writing Large Books!

All three books are significantly larger than I had intended (and estimated). Though I knew my player’s guide would be a bit longer than the Odyssey of the Dragonlords player guide, I had intended to create a smaller campaign book. This was to keep in line with where we landed with funding on the Kickstarter (versus Odyssey) and to compensate for the increased costs in printing and shipping versus a few years ago when Odyssey shipped. I tried a few approaches to help keep my page count reasonable. They helped, but not enough.

Raiders of the Serpent SeaActual PagesKickstarter EstimateOdyssey of the DragonlordsCampaign Book496300466
(406 when the content duplicated from the Odyssey Player Guide is removed)Player Guide804860GM Reference3216n/aPage Counts#1 Reducing Page Count – The PDF Funnel

As part of the Kickstarter campaign, I added several additional PDFs, thinking to parcel-out some of the content (to keep the core book smaller). Unfortunately as I wrote the campaign, some of the details in a few of those PDFs really needed to be included in the campaign guide (mainly some of the ship and squad information that I had planned to have in the Raiding Seas PDF). Bits of content from the other add-ons also made sense to tell the story I intended and to have the campaign run smoothly. So, the campaign book grew.

The add-on PDFs still have unique content (as described on our product page), but any material that I considered essential for the campaign, I included where it was needed.

#2 Reducing Page Count: Removing Duplicated Material

Unlike Odyssey of the Dragonlords, most of the Player’s Guide is not duplicated in Raiders of the Serpent Sea. Which means effectively that Raiders has about 90 pages of extra campaign content (versus Odyssey) and about 20 pages of extra player’s content in the Player’s Guide. There’s a further 32 pages in the GM Reference!

If I hadn’t removed the player’s guide from the main campaign guide, the book would have been almost 600 pages…

#3 Reducing Page Count: Cutting Content

No writer likes to cut content they have written but it has been necessary on every videogame that I ever worked on at BioWare and it was necessary on Raiders. There are several subplots that I really enjoyed writing that unfortunately met the “Cut Criteria”:

They were not directly involved in any of the core campaign events… they were more fleshing out other parts of the worldThey were easier to cut because any items and creatures found within them were not mentioned elsewhere in the plot

Establishing this criteria helped ensure that these late stage cuts did not damage the quality of the book (I hope we caught and fixed the few references to them!) In all I probably cut about 50 pages of content.

So… why is Raiders of the Serpent Sea so Large?

Primarily, a 5e RPG campaign like this, that spans from levels 1 to 16 and beyond simply requires a lot of material. There has to be enough encounters and challenges throughout, to allow a party of heroes to level up into the higher tiers of play. This requires content.

I had also noticed some criticism of Odyssey, that the later portions of its campaign were not sufficiently detailed. I tried (perhaps too hard) to ensure that the adventure locations were sufficiently detailed and that there were enough monsters and challenges to warrant the necessary level progression.

Preorders Close for Raiders of the Serpent Sea Next Week

Order Now

Lindwyrm Stat Block

The following is a mockup I made (this is not the final stat block, nor does our page layout artist know I mocked this up… he probably would not be impressed). But I thought for those of you not getting the regular Kickstarter updates, I’d send this now. In the next update over there, I’ll include a few more stat blocks.

Thoughts?

One Adventure Ends & Another Begins

As many of you know, over the past few years I have been running a D&D campaign for my kids and their friends, using the Odyssey of the Dragonlords campaign. We just completed session #55 — and it looks like there’s only 2 remaining sessions and we shall be done.

It has certainly been an interesting experience. We started playing a bit before COVID (so in person) but we transitioned into using Roll20 during the pandemic and haven’t played in person since — though I’ll try to get everyone together for the final session. But it was nice to have a regular event that remained constant throughout the pandemic and I have always looked forward to our sessions. And of course, running the campaign regularly has helped me prepare Raiders of the Serpent Sea (as has the playtesting campaign I’ve been running for that, with a different group).

One of the things I’ve appreciated most about Odyssey is the rich world content. This helped me enable the players to feel ownership over Thylea — their actions did change it and at this point they have created their own cities and heavily influenced the role of the gods in future events. Though they have failed at times (sorry, Aresia), I think the campaign succeeded in delivering an experience worthy of the heroic exploits of Greek legends. I will be sad to see it end, but I suspect one of the players might do something with the end state of our campaign and begin something new.

I’ve really enjoyed Odyssey and I’m eager to see how other DMs feel about Raiders of the Serpent Sea. I’m hoping I’ve struck a good balance between offering something new while building upon the framework Odyssey developed. We shall see! Still a few months before everything is locked down there.

Anyways, back to work for me. Hope all is well!

The Beastborn

Since my last few updates on the Raiders of the Serpent Kickstarter page, I’ve had a few requests to see more details about the new player race, the Beastborn.

I did a quick copy/paste from the actual player’s guide to make this short PDF. Feel free to check them out and let me know what you think. And yes, preorders are still open!

beastbornDownload

A Dragon Age: Netflix?

Sorry for the long quiet, I have been intensely focused on getting Raiders ready for page layout. But I saw the news last week that Dragon Age and Netflix have teamed up for an animated series — Dragon Age: Absolution. Lots going through my mind at that news. I mean, it seems incredible. How many years ago did we first chat at BioWare about building our own fantasy IP? I still remember debating what elements to include and what to avoid and then it is impossible to forget the years of iteration both on the world design and on Dragon Age: Origins itself (I start chatting about all that in my retrospectives). Very impressive that it has continued to grow ever stronger.

Though I’ve steered away from the games after Dragon Age: Origins for a variety of reasons, I have collected various Dragon Age goodies — mostly nugs, mabari, and such. I’ve also read some (most?) of the novels and spend my time lurking in various Dragon Age communities. It is amazing how strong of an IP that Dragon Age has become and the credit for that rests with the past and present teams developing the games.

In case you somehow missed it, you can read the Netflix announcement yourself!