Brent Knowles's Blog, page 3

My First Kickstarter!

The Kickstarter landing page for Raiders of the Serpent Sea is now live. This is my first time running a Kickstarter but the fine folks over at Arcanum Worlds and Modiphius Entertainment are providing me with lots of support. We are going to wait a bit before actually pressing that exciting Launch button. Please head over there and ask to be notified when we do launch.

Between then and now expect the player’s guide to be available to download soon! I will let all of you know once it is available. And if you don’t want to wait for new content, check out the map preview. You have the power to reveal more of that in the meantime.

I do hope all of you are doing well and I’m excited to have the opportunity to continue showing you more of Grimnir!

And… in related news, I was excited to see Minsc and Boo’s Journal of Villainy available for purchase! Proceeds go to Extra Life, so I encourage you to check it out. It was a lot of fun working on stat blocks for some old favorites and I’m hoping you all get a kick out of using some of these villains in your own campaigns!

Hrolf, a Raider Hero

Raiders of the Serpent Sea, like its predecessor Odyssey of the Dragonlords, features quotes from remarkable NPCs in the campaign and player books. I figured I’d sneak in an extra post this week to delve a bit more into one of these NPCs whose quotes you will see in the preview player’s book coming soon.

Hrolf belongs to the Hallharn raiding clan but his exploits have been such that he is well respected by most of the other raiders. He is good natured, a capable warrior, and a natural leader. Over his long career sailing the Serpent Sea he has collected numerous stories so a journey across land and water with him is never lacking in boastful tales of great deeds and glory earned.

Hrolf begins the campaign by assembling a crew of raiders to investigate strange activity in the far south of the Serpent Sea, away from any of the established raider strongholds. So disturbing are recent events that Hrolf’s crew consists of raiders from numerous clans. All raiders are concerned… and they trust Hrolf to overcome any obstacles to better understand the situation.

But Hrolf is woefully unprepared to understand what he will discover and he — and the heroes who will join him — will be hard pressed to survive long enough to bring news of their discovery to the great seers of the clans…

Check out worldmap for Grimnir if you want to see more!

Why Norse Mythology? Why Vikings?

A few kind folks who have expressed excitement for my new project, Raiders of the Serpent Sea have also been curious as to why I have chosen these particular thematic elements for this campaign book. I think my introduction, which will appear in the forthcoming player’s guide, is probably the best explanation.

The stories of Vikings have always lived large in our imaginations and there are as many flavors of these stories as there are storytellers. We imagine that these seafaring raiders lived as large in their world as they do in our stories; that they were boastful in the face of danger and took tremendous risks to secure their fortunes, fates, and place in history.

I have long been enamored with these people who sailed the seas of the hardy north. My initial interest perhaps stemmed from a different source than many others. It was a volcanic island that brought me to the Vikings. Surtsey surfaced in the 60s, south of Iceland in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago. The idea that in our time (with the geography of the world feeling so static and unchanging to me) new masses of land might be created… that parts of the world could be formed before our eyes, was beyond fascinating. I began devouring the sagas, legends, and myths of Iceland and even wrote a few fantasy stories set in a mythical world inspired in part by what I learned. This was a long time ago!

A couple years past, I was finally able to travel to Iceland and explore it myself and though I never made it to Surtsey, I did stay on the island Heimaey. The rough, wave-tossed journey made me aware that I would be a rather pathetic Viking, but I was immediately enamored with that rugged, windy place! It was perhaps there that I first began to think about this book, specifically.

Vikings are much beloved, from the early stories and myths, to their depictions in popular comics, and even to the (somewhat) more historically accurate shows streaming across all the popular platforms. We know a lot about them but there are also gaps in our knowledge: room enough for our imaginations to fill. It is only natural that the core themes—exploration, bravery, sacrifice, and fate—become the backbone of a roleplaying fantasy campaign.

Also for fun this week (or just to be cruel) I thought I might reveal some of the world map. I’d love to get more word out about the fine publishing work that Modiphius Entertainment does (as well as promote Raiders of the Serpent Sea, of course!) so I thought I might ask all of you to give a recent tweet of theirs some more attention.

Doing so will fill in more of the world map for Grimnir.

And how dedicated was I to writing a viking themed sourcebook? Well the few of you that have met me or seen my press photos will attest that I have spent most of my life clean shaven. Now… well this is what I look like:

Further Into the Serpent Sea…

Last week I was finally able to provide the title for my upcoming project. Going forward, I’ll now start explaining the world a bit more and what to expect from the Raiders of the Serpent Sea game master and player guides.

Here’s a first look at the current back cover blurb for the player’s guide:

Glory is Yours For The Taking

Centuries ago, upon a vast, beautiful, and wondrous world, a horde of shape changing fiends known as the Yoten warred with the heroic Vanir. Betrayed by their own, the heroes failed and fell, one by one. Only upon the very edge of destruction did the survivors unleash ancient magic to conjure a portal to a new world. They fled through it, sealing it against the Yoten.


They found themselves in a world they named Grimnir. Vast and inhospitable, its forests were foreboding, its sea mercurial. Winters ran long and cold and many died in the early years. Yet, it was a land free from their enemies, a place to rebuild.

Generations would pass but the memory of the old world’s death was never forgotten. The raiders, as these peoples became known, were ever vigilant, watching for the return of the Yoten.

You are one such raider, destined by fate to bear witness to Grimnir’s destruction — and perhaps fated to finally break your people free of the cycle of destruction and rebirth known as Ragnarök.

Raiders of the Serpent Sea is an epic fantasy campaign for the fifth edition of the world’s greatest roleplaying game. This player’s guide will provide you with all the details and rules required to begin your career as a heroic raider in the ill-fated world of Grimnir.

The World of Grimnir. Introduces the world, its origins, and the major historical events. It also includes details about the raiding clans and their main adversaries. Learn about the cursed gods known as the Stone Court, the wealthy kingdoms that threaten the clans, and the power of sacrifice.New Class Archetypes. Includes ranger, bard, and wizard archetypes that help bring to life the different raider clans.New Player Races. Includes rules for playing the Wicker and Tallfolk. The Wicker are creatures formed from wood and infused with the primal magic that birthed Grimnir whereas the Tallfolk are the mysterious offspring of giants.Glory! Introduces a new glory system fueling your character’s ability to boast when attempting to overwhelm your adversaries.All Backgrounds are Epic. Includes epic backgrounds for players to choose from. These backgrounds create additional motivations for your hero and weave their personal stories into the core campaign.

Still wondering what being a raider actually means? Is there more to raiding life than drinking mead, sailing, and pillaging settlements? For some raiders… absolutely not. That’s the life, the path to glory! But for others, the signs of impending doom are enough to make them search for a way to overcome the forces of destruction and save the world.

There will be plenty of opportunity for all sorts of adventures… from raiding and consolidating the power of the clans to more traditional dungeon crawls, rescue missions, and exploration. The epic backgrounds exert significant influence on the story direction. Grimnir might be saved at the end of the campaign but shall be forever altered by the heroes’ actions; for better or worse.

Finally, just for fun, here’s the Chapter 1 headings from the player’s guide (still subject to change / tweaking!) As you can see, Raiders of the Serpent Sea will have a similar structure to Odyssey, so those of you used to that book should have no trouble perusing Raiders!

Questions? Let me know! And if you want to follow along sign up to the newsletter at Modiphius.

Announcement: Raiders of the Serpent Sea

In an earlier post I explained that I am making a campaign book with Arcanum Worlds. Well… now is the time for the proper announcement!

Raiders of the Serpent Sea is a Norse-themed campaign book for 5e and will be published by the fine folks over at Modiphius Entertainment. They have released a full update to their site about it if you want to learn more!

A significant portion of the campaign book is complete, including some beautiful pieces of artwork from many of the same artists that worked on Odyssey of the Dragonlords. I intend to launch a Kickstarter (soon!) to help add more artwork, to pay for the books to be printed, and to (hopefully) add additional features to the player options and the core campaigns.

I am very much looking forward to sharing more about Raiders with you over the next few weeks!

Please let me know if you have any questions about Raiders of the Serpent Sea…. we will be releasing a free version of the player’s guide in PDF format in the coming weeks.

Making Games

For as long as I remember I have been making games. It started with writing stories during elementary school and evolved into creating fantasy maps of mundane locations. This was well before I started to play Dungeons & Dragons — I had lots of fun navigating the magical spaces of my imagination and trying to communicate them to my friends and family. But when I discovered other kids playing D&D, I finally found a foundation upon which I could structure my imagination.

And at this point I should add that for the first little bit I didn’t even have the D&D books. I just saw what the other kids were doing and then went home and developed my own rule system, maps, etc. Obviously once I got my hands on the books I was able to be more productive in regards to building campaigns…

I began playing D&D regularly with my friends — many weekends were spent navigating the official adventures from TSR or playing through our own. We tried many campaign worlds — Ravenloft, Krynn, and the Forgotten Realms. And we tried a few other gaming systems as well. It was time well spent, though I suspect the adults in my life at the time would have disagreed.

I started to learn how to program using the Basic programming language (I believe on my old Adam system). A resource I found invaluable was the various computer magazines with premade adventures that you simply had to type into your system to play. (This article has a good write up about it — I was far from alone in learning to program from these magazines).

I also bought copies of Dungeon magazine when I could find it, really appreciated the example adventures and maps. When I figured out how the map data for the Basic adventure games worked I would “reconstruct” the maps from Dungeon magazine, creating digital versions of them. In one fit of madness I even added all the classes and races from Dungeons & Dragons, including all the accessory books that were being released. There wasn’t much gameplay other than going room to room and fighting random creatures but you could make any D&D character you wanted…

Anyways, what’s the point of all this rambling? I’m not sure! I was just amused when I came across an old copy of Dungeon. And it was a nice reminder of how much influence game development and roleplaying have had on my life

p.s., many years ago I wrote a blog about learning to program and how to teach kids to program; readers added many interesting suggestions in the comments, I encourage you to check them out.

Glory is Yours For The Taking

It will probably not come as a shock to any of you who know me well that I am a huge fan of roleplaying games and got my start in this whole “interactive narrative” business back in my preteens playing Dungeons & Dragons. I ran numerous campaigns throughout high school and more sporadically into college and my time with BioWare, playing everything up to and including 3rd edition. And though I missed 4th Edition I’ve been playing 5th Edition for a few years. I have set my adventures in a variety of official campaign worlds and even designed several of my own worlds over the years.

I have always enjoyed world creation, adventure & narrative development, and rules design, whether in videogames or tabletop. I even wrote RPG articles back in the day (one published in Dragon Magazine and a few up on Pyramid). And during my time with BioWare I was often responsible, on our D&D projects, with helping to sort out the translation of the tabletop rules into a form more suited for digital play.

So… a couple years ago, after some encouragement from former coworkers, I began developing a new campaign setting. At present, I am not quite ready to reveal the title or the core theme. However, over the next few weeks, I will begin showing off world details and the fantastic art I’ve been acquiring to help visualize the setting, its monsters, and its peoples. The adventure itself will span numerous levels and take a party of heroes across a vast world as they grow from fledgling adventurers into veteran heroes. I have a lot of work on my hands, but I am very much enjoying it.

My intention is to publish a setting and adventure book in hardcover (and a softcover player’s guide) much like Arcanum Worlds’ Odyssey of the Dragonlords campaign. I have really enjoyed that adventure and have structured mine in a similar fashion — amazing art, beautiful maps, and a great layout and design.

Not only is my setting inspired by Odyssey of the Dragonlords, it will also be published under the Arcanum Worlds banner! This makes me very happy and I am doing my best to deliver a campaign worthy of sharing space on the same bookshelf as Odyssey. There will be more about my partnership with Arcanum Worlds in a future post.

For the time being if you are worried about missing out on the official announcement itself, I encourage you to sign up to the Arcanum Worlds newsletter!

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Dungeons & Dragons Campaign: Odyssey of the Dragonlords

Back in 2020 I proudly showed off my copies of Odyssey of the Dragonlords, a successful 5E D&D RPG Kickstarter by James Ohlen and Jesse Sky. At the time I mentioned I had started a campaign with my kids and some of their friends. Well the campaign is still going strong! We just completed the 39th session, with the heroes now level 13 and the Oath of Peace about to come to an end (you’ll have to read the campaign book to understand what that is about).

Though I had previously played fifth-edition with my kids using the awesome starter set, the kids wanted new characters after that and so that came to an end. So it has been really cool to see Odyssey develop into a multi-year campaign. When COVID struck, we pivoted and used Roll20 throughout, allowing us to keep social connections with the kid’s friends. It was nice to have something concrete to latch onto throughout all the uncertainty over the past year. And everyone is excited about starting to play in person again later into the fall (yay for vaccinations!)

Odyssey of the Dragonlords is a great campaign (and honestly is worth it just for the amazing art). Do check it out if you are looking for something new. The campaign itself is greek-themed (but set in its own world) with a core plot that can be resolved by exploring the world in an open-ended way — the players decide where to go and in what order. It has a wide variety of new races and class archetypes — our party includes a herculean minotaur, a nymph (Oath of the Dragonlord, paladin), and a medusa wizard in addition to a half-elf druid & dragonborn fighter.

The only drawback is that I was so excited about funding Odyssey that it has fueled a Kickstarter addiction. I have supported several RPG kickstarters over the past couple years. And now I’m currently on the fence about whether I should fund Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game…. It certainly looks interesting and my kids were big fans back in the day… I will let you know what I ultimately decide :)

Also: A big thank you to the discord community that has formed around Odyssey — they have created numerous useful resources that have helped our play sessions!

Good Tidings!

I hope all is well for those of you still stumbling onto this blog. (Well, I mean I hope everyone out there is doing well, not just those who come here to read my words….)

So… I do have an announcement to make. But not today… not quite yet. Stars are still being aligned, courses charted, that sort of thing. But soon. I do have a few things to chat about today though…

After a very long departure window, I have left my position as senior technical lead at NAIT (a polytechnic in Edmonton). It was a wonderful experience that allowed me to learn many new things. Our team at NAIT (the Centre for Innovative Media) accomplished many things, including assisting with patient rehabilitation gaming software as well as VR, and AR projects. I learned a lot and really appreciate the opportunity to explore the augmented and virtual reality spaces. The largest and most intensive project we undertook was the construction of a motion capture studio — while the funding was previously secured we still had to find a home for it, build a space, acquire motion capture cameras (through procurement), and even (safely) climb ladders to install the system! I very much appreciate all the effort the team put into this. I definitely encourage studios (both local and remote) to check in with Skylar at NAIT if you want access to a 18-camera VICON motion capture lab. Rates are reasonable and the team is fantastic to work with.

Each day brought new things to learn and overall NAIT was full of awesome people to work with and many memorable experiences. But it also helped propel me to do something I have thought about a lot since leaving BioWare. At NAIT I became responsible for more aspects of management than I had in the past and tackling those tasks helped give me the confidence to start my own company. So I have.

What the company is actually going to do will have to wait for the announcement piece I’ve been alluding to over the past while, but if you are curious, you can jump onto my newsletter (where I’m also serializing my second Lazy Designer book, with a new section every few weeks). I should be able to speak more about what I am up to by the end of summer.

And I’m also doing consulting work on a videogame as well… so definitely keeping busy and I have a lot to chat about. So many exciting things to catch you all up on!

Hey there! If you would like to know more about my past experiences with BioWare and beyond, I recently did an interview over at medium with Blackbird. Check it out!

The Lazy Designer: The Next Game

So… years ago… I republished my first Lazy Designer book via my newsletter. It was well received and my frank advice on working in the video game industry connected with many readers. So I started to serialize its sequel via the newsletter as well.

Then I got divorced and I forgot about the newsletter entirely. A few years later and I am now resurfacing several postponed projects! I feel bad for neglecting the newsletter… so I’m going to start over with posting the “Next Game”. The first post will drop in the next few days and after that I will try to get into a regular cadence with those updates (i.e., not years between posts…)

But I am also going to take the opportunity to begin rewriting sections as needed. Since my time at BioWare I have had several more years in the game industry in different capacities so I feel I have new perspectives to offer. I may even need to argue with my past self. We shall see..

I also encourage any of you to ask me questions here, or via the newsletter (or Twitter or Facebook!) if you want to know anything about the games I’ve worked on in the past, my writing, or what I might be working on now.

Brent’s Newsletter

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