bySwarm RPG Blog - Busy Bee and CEO of bySwarm Inc.

August 30, 2010

This Week's Focus - Free Tesaya

Normally when you hear from an RPG publisher about focusing on part of their setting, they want you to come read about it. At bySwarm though, we're asking you to come contribute to creating a new setting. If you contribute something to the setting that gets published in one of our products, you'll get a share of the revenue from that product. It's that simple.

This week, we're looking to develop an area of the setting that will receive some emphasis within our first product. In other words, if you contribute good material for it, there is a strong possibility of being in that first product. Free Tesaya is a break-away territory where beastfolk warlords, bandits and independents are attempting to carve out a piece of land for themselves. The larger neighboring countries of Thuria and Sascria both have their hands in the area as they attempt to expand their own holdings or at the least keep anyone else from gaining it. You can add unique characters, contribute new towns and settlements, or even create new monsters for the exciting Dark Golden Age setting for Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

To get started, you can visit the bySwarm site, log in, and start writing, editing and commenting:

Free Tesaya - http://byswarm.com/dark-golden-age/place/free-tesaya

Product Outline - http://byswarm.com/dark-golden-age/event/adventure-module-untitled-first-product

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August 26, 2010

Call for Artists!

We're looking for more artists to become part of the Swarm. Rather than looking for established, published artists (you're still welcome even if you are), we're looking for those that have great talent but are still trying to find an entry into the RPG industry. If you join the Swarm and contribute art, you maintain the copyright to your contribution but you give us a license to use your contribution in our products. If we do and a product brings in revenue, you'll get a share of 60% of the revenue that we pay to our contributors.

To give you some idea on possible places to start, we've been working on a list of iconic characters that we will likely want to portray at some point:

http://byswarm.com/forum/-dark-golden-age/dark-golden-age-iconics

You can also have a look at what we're doing with our first product and target some of your art for that effort:

http://byswarm.com/dark-golden-age/event/adventure-module-untitled-first-product

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August 24, 2010

Review: GameMastery Critical Hits deck for Pathfinder RPG

To be sure I cleared the $50 I needed to buy at the Paizo booth at this year's Gen Con to receive a special promo, I picked up the GameMastery Critical Hits deck for Pathfinder RPG ($10.99 MSRP). I thought it would make for an entertaining addition to the bySwarm game sessions I was to run at the convention, and that was definitely the case.

The Critical Hits deck contains 52 cards, and each one has four different effects based on four different types of attacks - bludgeoning, piercing, slashing and magic. Magic only comes into play when there is an attack roll involved. When a player scores a critical hit, they draw a number of cards based on the critical multiplier for their attack - one for x2, two for x3 or three for x4. The player then chooses one of the cards they drew to take effect for the type of attack they are using. The rules insert suggest that GMs only use the deck for special NPCs as the effects can be pretty dramatic.

Some of the cards only have a special effect, but most of them do double damage plus an additional effect that may involve a chance to save to resist. One time, a boriwog barbarian scored a critical with his battle axe. The player chose a knockback from the cards he drew that pushed the hydra fighting the party back 1d6 squares. Another time, the houndling ranger hit a critical artery with a critical hit card in which the enemy had to make a Fortitude save or die. The other memorable moment was when the human sorcerer hit a guard with a scorching ray that didn't quite kill him but caused flashing sparkles to stun him for a few rounds. The party was able to get in the gate without him sounding the alarm because of it after their initial plan had already failed.

Overall, the deck added more drama to the combat any time a PC struck a critical hit. Doing more damage is fun to do, but it's even more fun when there is something descriptive that has an additional mechanical benefit to go with it. I'll definitely be using the critical hits deck in all my games now, and I highly recommend purchasing it for your Pathfinder of D&D 3.x game.

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August 22, 2010

Playtesting Pathfinder races, prestige classes, feats and more

As we work towards fleshing out the Dark Golden Age mechanically, there is opportunity for people who fancy themselves to be rule busters. These people are able to look through rules and see flaws very quickly. They tend to be walking encyclopedias of rules from about everything published for a system. Are you one of them? If so, head over to byswarm.com and look through our material and provide any feedback that you can.

Also, if you are in the central Illinois area, I will be starting playtesting sessions at the Armored Gopher in Urbana on Thursday evenings in the near future. You'll get to make up characters of just about anything within a given level range, so it's a fun opportunity to try out a class you've never played before now. We'll run through some combat encounters and see what we can break or what needs to be made better to be worthwhile. Drop me a line if you're interested. As an extra incentive, I'll probably be giving $5 in store credit to a random person that participates.

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August 20, 2010

Building a sandbox adventure module for Pathfinder

As we've been preparing our first product at bySwarm, we've been thinking about how we could make an adventure module that is less linear and more like a sandbox. Most adventure modules have a story that is being told which the PCs can influence but which gives them little room to move off the plot line. A sandbox module gives the players a perception of freedom while still keeping them within a given range of possibilities. It is much closer to what a GM can do when asking the players what they want to accomplish.

The strategy I've laid out for us to make a sandbox module involves tracking the impact of the PCs' actions on various tracks. As a given track moves one way or another, different events are triggered. If the PCs decide to ally themselves with the bandit leader, they increase their influence in his organization and will be given opportunities to do things for him. If the PCs sit around for a month doing other things, then events will be triggered on the time track that happen no matter what. Depending on what set of actions the PCs take, the module will be different for them than another group of PCs.

There are still lots of opportunities to contribute writing and art for this innovative product, so be sure to visit the site at byswarm.com. You can view the growing outline for the module at http://byswarm.com/lq0.

New site features

While the Swarm is working on the first product, I've also been adding new features to the site based on feedback and ideas.

Encounters - http://byswarm.com/content/encounters - Encounters allow contributors to design encounters set in the Dark Golden Age. They can be as simple as encounters with monsters, but they can also be puzzle-oriented or solvable through role-playing. Just like everything else on the site, encounters can make it into a product and earn a contributor some money. This was an idea of one of our Gen Con attendees.

Short URLs - Since web page addresses can get to be very long, it can be useful to have a shortened version of them when sharing them via email, Twitter, or instant messaging. Every piece of setting content now has a short URL that will permanently be available to reach that piece of content. This is useful now for the above reasons, but this will be even more useful in our products as we can put a short URL on any content to give a GM a short cut to more information.

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August 15, 2010

Video introduction to the bySwarm model and the Dark Golden Age

I decided to take the presentation I did at Gen Con and turn it into a video using SlideShare. It gives an introduction to the bySwarm publishing model as well as the Pathfinder RPG setting that we are working to create.

(If the video doesn't play, please click on the title to view it at SlideShare.)

Writing getting published at bySwarm

View more webinars from bySwarm.

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August 15, 2010

Someone else's take on bySwarm and our model

I did a handful of seminars at Gen Con about our company and about electronic tools for gaming, and there were 10 to 15 in each session. One of those people felt really compelled by what I said about our model and our plan, and he shared his thoughts in a comment in a welcome thread. It's another confirmation for me that the model we are working to prove is one that will actually work:

Thanks for the welcome. I too look forward to being involved in this process. I have been in the table-top gaming world since '76 and have played in a number of places with a number of games. I have written my own things and even gone so far as to copyright some of it. I am currently looking to "legitimize" and coalesce my writing skills so I went to a number of seminars at Gencon. I was impressed with Mike's pitch in that he struck me as a capable writer that wanted to strike out, in a direction of his own, and create a number of works that could be termed as fresh and independent.

Electronic tools for gaming - Gen Con seminar notes

This post is a set of notes from the seminar I ran at Gen Con titled "E-tools: What do you want?" I ran the seminar twice and had some great discussion in both. These notes are an attempt to summarize that discussion. In both seminars, we broke down the discussion into GM tools, player tools and other tools. Other tools typically encompassed tools used for virtual gaming groups. This blog will also be archived and expanded at http://byswarm.com/etools with full links.

GMs

GM tools can be broken down into three general pieces - campaign management, session planning, and session management.

Campaign management

World building - mapping, geography, weather, alternative calendars
Journaling of ideas and concepts including storing of links and inspirations
Character sheets - creation and management of both PCs and NPCs

Session planning

Planning encounters
Session-specific maps and handouts
Gap analysis - for example if a monster requires fire to kill but no PCs have fire attacks

Session management

Combat tables - for comparing stats and rolls quickly
Combat management - hit points, initiative, effects, etc.
Extremely easy in-game journaling of events
Effect and event management outside combat - spells in effect, durations, behind-the-scenes events

Players

Players seem to have it a little easier because they seem to put a lot on the GM. As I worked on these notes, I began to wonder how players could contribute to making the GM's job easier by using tools together.

Reminders for special rules, oft forgotten rules
Status and duration indicators of various effects
Character builders including archiving

Virtual

People that play games with virtual members of the group said that there need to be better tools for describing scenes. Virtual gaming also needs to become easier so that if a player misses a game or moves, they are still able to participate. People are generally interested in how they can play virtually.

Specific Tools

These are some specific tools and references that were mentioned for GMs and players alike. These tools vary in that some were created for specific purposes while others can be used for gaming purposes.

Specifically for gaming

Character builders - HeroLab, PCGen
Virtual mapping tools - Fantasy Grounds, D20 Pro, MapTool
Map creation tools - Campaign Cartographer, Fractal Mapper
Campaign management - Obsidian Portal, Infrno
World building - Chaotic Shiny Generators

Generic tools useful for gaming

Microsoft Excel for in game management and character sheets
Microsoft OneNote and Evernote - note taking software for campaign management, session planning
Microsoft Vizio for maps
Adobe Photoshop for maps
Dreamwidth.com for journaling

Books and other materials

In addition to electronic tools, there were some good suggestions for research materials.

Chivalry & Sorcery 3rd Edition GM's guide (OOP) - modeling economies and populations
GURPS Traveler Far Trader (OOP) - also good world building source material
How to write stand-up comedy like a Nazi

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August 11, 2010

Compiling our first product - a Pathfinder RPG adventure

Gen Con wrapped up this Sunday, but the buzz is still going afterwards. This year's convention was among the best ones I have had in terms of fun and excitement. I met lots of great people, and I introduced even more to the Dark Golden Age being developed by the Swarm. We have both players and designers interested in our work!

Responses to the setting

People had a very positive response to the setting. For some people, they really enjoyed the beastfolk. You could see their brains start going through the possibilities when they were told that beastfolk are human-beast hybrid humanoid creatures. The other thing that often drew a response was that part of the reason for the setting's concept was to explain creatures like owlbears. Why do owlbears exist in the Dark Golden Age? Because wizards wanted to entertain the masses by creating fantastic beasts that would do combat.

Responses to our design model

Even more exciting for me was that at every game and at every seminar there were multiple people interested in becoming part of the Swarm, becoming a writer or an artist for an RPG product. People wanted a card to remember the website after the convention. They wanted to know what areas needed development. They wanted to know how they could get involved even if they weren't strong on mechanics. Most importantly, they wanted to know about...

Our first product!

Looking at the material we have so far, it makes the most sense for our first product to be an adventure module. With an adventure module, our setting material will not be so constrained after our first product. If we publish a large amount of material about the setting as a setting book, that material becomes locked as part of the canon for the Dark Golden Age. If we instead create an adventure module, we are able to keep more material as part of our ongoing development. The goal then with the module is to give people a taste of the Dark Golden Age setting and get them eager to buy more products or begin participating in the website.

Our timeline for the adventure module ends with a fall publishing date. To help target people for where they should spend their time if they want to be published in the module, I have started creating an outline for it:

http://byswarm.com/dark-golden-age/event/adventure-module-untitled-first-product

Even if you have never been to the site, it's not too late to get on board and take a chance at getting your name on the author list for our first product. We have a lot of work done already, but we still have a lot of work to do. If you are a writer, artist, editor or designer, now's the time!

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August 7, 2010

Who wants to join the Hive?

Day 2 of Gen Con included hosting two seminars and running two more game sessions introducing the Dark Golden Age. The games were fun, and it's always entertaining to watch different sets of players come up with different creative solutions to the same encounter. It's one of my favorite aspects of running convention games. I'll save any details for after the convention though so I don't spoil anything for anyone who has yet to participate.

The seminars I hosted included one on writing and getting published at bySwarm and a second that discussed electronic tools that help with running or playing in RPGs. There were about 10 participants in each session. The e-tools discussion was definitely good, and I'll be posting notes from that session after Gen Con on our convention page for anyone wanting to know what people are already using or what they would like to find.

The other seminar was a really great discussion and received a lot of enthusiasm for getting involved. The bySwarm process has a lot of potential for aspiring writers, artists and editors to get their name into a published product. With our open, collaborative model, anyone with as little as 5 minutes or as much as 5 hours of time can get involved in making a great product. I also mentioned the Hive membership received by early adopters which caused at least one person to ask how late comers can become part of the Hive as well. Members of the Hive receive elevated editing privileges, and they will also likely receive other benefits in the future. My current thinking is that anyone whose work goes into a published product will also become part of the Hive.

So it's not too late to head on over to byswarm.com and start contributing! Our first product will be an adventure module for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, and we're loosely shooting for this fall to release it.

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