New! Gaming Release! Legions of Carcosa Available Now!

Legions of Carcosa Cover Art features four monsters

Have your The Yellow King Roleplaying Game players grown complacent battling gargoyles, vampires, and riot dogs? Do you have a reality horror mystery crying out for a fresh and bizarre villain to drive it?

Legions of Carcosa: The Yellow King Bestiary solves your problems by helping you create some for your Belle Époque art students, Continental War soldiers, alternate reality ex-insurgents, and ordinary people trapped in unraveling normalcy.

From alien parasites to warped human conspirators, from hungry buildings to incarnations of drought, from gods torn from the pages of myth to war machines that hunt in wolf-like packs, Legions of Carcosa: The Yellow King Bestiary presents 86 new Foes to mystify, haunt and menace your investigators.

Throw icewater into your player’s veins with 100 brand new Shock and Injury cards. The book also includes all the preexisting cards you need to run these adversaries and beasties without reaching for any other volume.

Foe descriptions key themselves to one of the game’s four twisty sequences. Each entry also includes hooks inspiring you to repurpose the Foe in the other three settings.

With this book in your feverish hands, the investigators can:

* Tremble in aesthetic unease when confronted by the Living Portrait!
* Flee the blazing weapons fire of the Angel of Mons!
* Shudder at the razor teeth of the hinge-jawed Flip-tops!
* Open their apps to fall into the validating, concerned clutches of the Chirpers!
* And much much more…

Whatever hole opens up in your reality today, an antagonist from The Yellow King Bestiary is ready to slither out of it, through your mind and into your heart.

Legions of Carcosa: The Yellow King Bestiary was developed by Robin D Laws and includes the works of John Harness, Daniel Kwan, Kira Magrann, FlamesRising.com contributor Monica Valentinelli, and Sara Saltiel.



New Gaming Release! Mistborn RPG Nobles The Golden Mandate

Mistborn RPG | Nobles the Golden Mandate | Cover art of a noble on a balcony with his back to us.

Of Gilded Words and Poisonous Tongues!

In the Lord Ruler’s Final Empire, blood is destiny. A skaa birth condemns you to a hard life of labor and service. A Terris birth marks you forever as an outsider, an uncomfortable reminder of a bygone era. To be born noble is to live at the peak of political and social power, blessed with the potential for Allomancy — but it also means a life of vicious politicking, ruthless competition, and the perpetual risk of betrayal and ruin. As a noble Hero, you face the same question as all who defy this grim order: do you have the courage to shrug off blood and destiny, to stand against the brutality of this world, and fight for a better future… for everyone?

Nobles: The Golden Mandate is the final supplement for the Mistborn Adventure Game. Developed in cooperation with Brandon Sanderson and Dragonsteel Entertainment, this book dives deep into the history and intrigues of Mistborn’s most notable families, from the ten Great Houses who dominate the halls of power to the up-and-coming Lesser Houses that forever nip at their heels. This essential guide melds information from the novels with background developed for the Mistborn: House War board game to form a rich environment for storytelling in the cutthroat world of the Final Empire’s nobility.

For players of the Mistborn Adventure Game, this supplement offers extensive guidance for playing a rebellious noble Hero, adding nobles to a skaa thieving Crew, and exploring what it means to defy the Lord Ruler. Also included are new rules for creating Noble Heroes: Traits, Stunts, and a new Power, Family, which lets you bring the full power of your name to bear in cunning and creative ways. For nobles with a more daring streak, there’s also new background information and character options for playing an elite, Allomancer-hunting Hazekiller!

For Narrators, an exciting multi-session adventure titled “Thieves in the Ninth House” takes your Crew to the Eastern Dominance, where they’re hired to liberate an honor hostage from the clutches of House Urbain. This seemingly simple job soon proves to be anything but, for in the world of Mistborn there’s always another secret…

Nobles: The Golden Mandate is not a complete game. You need a copy of the Mistborn Adventure Game, some dice, and imagination to play.

Who the Book’s For
Fans of the Mistborn novels and the Mistborn: House War board game; players and Narrators of the Mistborn Adventure Game; or gamers who love RPGs of politics and intrigue like Amber, Houses of the Blooded, or Vampire.

Important Notice
Mistborn Adventure Game Digital Editions will no longer be available after December 31st, 2023. Get them now or they’re gone forever.

50-75% Off Sale on OGL-Affected #TTRPG Titles

Red 20-Sided Dice Illustration from Wikimedia Commons

In light of discussions regarding a leaked draft of the OGL, several gaming publishers have put their games on sale.

Click Here to Save 50-75% off all of my Scarred Lands titles and several other games, adventures, and characters.

I’m not sure how long the sales will last or what’s to come. I do know that licensing is extremely complicated (OGL stands for Open Game License) and often requires an attorney’s review. My DMsGuild titles fall under a separate license, so those are not affected. At the moment, I’m waiting to make any further decisions or comments at this time until the new OGL is released and attorneys have a chance to review it.



Join me for SIRENS: Battle of the Bards on Kickstarter — FUNDED!

SIRENS: Battle of the Bards

Friends, I am so pleased to announce I’m writing for SIRENS: Battle of the Bards, a Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition campaign setting, featuring a stellar team of authors. I’ve been having so much fun I handed in my drafts a month ahead of schedule!

Do you love art? Satine Phoenix? Music? INTRIGUE? REBELLION? Then, the city of Salvata has something for you! I warmly invite you to check out SIRENS: Battle of the Bards on Kickstarter (which has already funded) and join Apotheosis Studios to celebrate this gorgeous game setting with fantastic art, music, prose — and so much more. Huzzah!

Game Producer Journals: The Jumpstart

In the kickoff for my game producer blog series, I wrote about demo materials for different types of games, defined a few terms, and dove into quickstart design.

Today, I want to talk about jumpstarts. First question: why do you need one? Well, the answer is “it’s complicated”. A jumpstart is one method for obtaining fans of your game and, like any promotional tool, it has its utility. Some people believe jumpstarts deter corebook sales because they encapsulate the game and often have a lower price point. I am not one of them.

Jumpstarts are best designed when they are not conceived in a vacuum. When the jumpstart has a clearly defined goal like: “teach new players how to play our game” or “give existing players a sample of what they’ll find” or “use it as a free, promotional tool to attract all players”. Jumpstarts can be designed with several goals in mind when they’re produced with the understand that anyone–even those players unfamiliar with a publisher or gameline–might pick up a copy.

Like quickstarts, jumpstarts are marketing tools for a gameline. Unlike quickstarts, I don’t believe they’re always necessary provided the corebook teaches players how to play their game. Most corebooks do not have actual play examples, sample dice rolls, a step-by-step outline for a sample campaign, a full adventure, and a full page ad to show where new players should go if they need more information (YouTube!, Twitch, Discord, forums, etc.) Many corebooks, especially second editions, serial games, or collector’s editions, are not designed with new players in mind. Many games are crafted for people who already know how to run a tabletop gaming session.

Jumpstarts are often needed because they serve players who need a different type of game design. Often, jumpstarts employ word conservation by focusing on what players need to know in order to play the game. Jumpstarts are great for a) complex settings b) complex rule sets c) new or debuting rule sets d) games with multiple playing styles e) original settings and d) messaging/visibility showing how the publisher is new-player friendly. Players who have fun with a jumpstart will have more confidence when running the game–and that player confidence is key.

It can be challenging to distill a corebook into a jumpstart. My approach to writing/designing in this form is to empower the player while providing value. I’ve found the easiest design method is to utilize a 3-to-5 act narrative structure, 3-5 non-player characters, and a sample fleshed out location. All games need setting–especially places where the players can hunt, search, investigate, etc.–and a jumpstart helps ground the players in it.

My last post included five steps to producing a quickstart. These are the same steps to follow when plotting a jumpstart with one, major caveat: conceiving a jumpstart requires greater analysis of your corebook’s content. You could repurpose some material for the quickstart. A jumpstart that rehashes all of the corebook’s materials is less useful, however, and you’ll miss out on residual sales–even if the jumpstart’s release precedes the corebook’s.

Lastly, I want to mention that while there’s no “one way” to design a jumpstart, I do believe a good jumpstart provides value. The jumpstart shouldn’t be an exact replica of your corebook’s content–there’s a different type of product for that called a “beta”. Instead, use the jumpstart to frame your corebook’s material so players transitioning from one to the other are confident they know the basics and are eager to learn more.

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Monica Valentinelli > Work-For-Hire

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