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We are now holding stock of Dungeon Crawl Classics products from Orbital Intelligence!
Hi Everyone!
We are excited to announce that MonkeyBlood Design & Publishing are now stocking some Orbital Intelligence physical products for shipment from our UK-based webstore.
Sean Richer of Orbital Intelligence develops fantastic content for Dungeon Crawl Classics working with fantastic artists, writers and editors.
We hope you enjoy looking and if there is anything you’d like to see in the webstore please let us know.
Many thanks, Glynn & Sean
And if all that isn’t enough… [Disclaimer! I am involved in this project and feature as a stretch goal!]
Orbital Intelligence are running an active Kickstarter for more glorious DCC content!
2 WORM 2 FURIOUS: A DCC RPG FUNNEL & MINI-SETTING A level 0+ adventure & mini-setting for 4-6 players. CHASE A MUTATING GOD GRUB! For Dungeon Crawl Classics! With Art by Scrap Princess!
Hey, Sean over here at Orbital Intelligence (with great hits like Stratosfiend 1, Stratosfiend 1.5, Stratosfiend 2, Ternwillow, and Necrotic Edifices of Iron and Moon; the depth of time untold).
I’ve got a new Kickstarter live for my next book….
It’s a funnel, specifically a Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure for groups of 3-4 level 0s per player. For those not in the know, these can be meat-grinders… worm-grinders of adventures that reduce 24+ characters down to 4 adventurers ready to take on anything!
It’s a tiny worm, that grows and grows and grows, and rampages, and bursts into a colossal Doombringer Moth that’s a Patron, a Deity, and a raging behemoth. It grows and grows, its growth unlocks new abilities and reactions. It rarely acts the same way, and eventually it will rule. WORSHIP IT OR RUN FROM IT, IT DOESN’T MATTER!
It’s a mini-setting. A God-Queen, her throne-maidens, the legions of Sky-Knights (on their Worm-Hawks), Stilt-Walkers, and Knights that strike with the fury of a thousand hammers. In addition there’s a couple important NPCs stirring things up and causing problems. Ranging from a veteran sky-knight to turned bartender, to a Jester that loiters in the streets spreading whispers to those that live below.
“worm-hawks”
What Inspires Me For This Adventure?
Deep Carbon Observatory: I loved the chaos of the introduction and the relentless pursuit by the Crows. I hope that I’ve been able to channel some of this chaos.
Inferno Road: Again with that chaos theory, absolutely loved the perpetual mutation (and of course, the worms)
Fever Swamp: It’s a beautifully well constructed book, it’s easy to reference, tells you everything you need to know, and is a great introduction to the Hex Crawl as a medium. Also… Printed endpapers!
Crypts of Indormancy: Adventure prose as an artform. I like the puzzles that it presents, and while the premise is simple enough at first, it has a fair amount of triggers and events that happen as a result of preparation, and the lack thereof. Also it’s beautiful.
Hobonomicon: It’s a funnel? It’s chaos? It’s beautiful tables and strange happenings. It’s also a rocket launch.
Wet Grandpa: I love that everything isn’t just spelled out for the players, or the DM, that you get to explore the adventure together.
Worm Witch: Need I really say more? I love the worm magic, worm witches, and the random encounters on the island.
“Kill me now”
Why Do You Want It?
You want a weird new adventure, something your players likely have not seen or played. Can they tame the worm?
You want a new mutating beast the likes of which you’ve likely not seen in this likeness, and you like keeping track of WORM DIE, CHILL DIE, and RAGE DIE
You want a neat tool-kit of knights, worms, villagers, bandits and encounters.
Welcome to the fourth installment of Creator’s Corner!
This is where we let another small RPG publisher or freelancer loose on the blog in the spirit of supporting each other and spreading the word. The RPG scene is filled with amazing creatives and products and this is me doing my part by trying to help ‘raise the tide to lift all boats’.
#supportsmallrpgpublishers #creatorscorner
Please support these folks if you can, check out what they do, and if you can’t support directly, please help share this post.
If you want to post in Creator’s Corner and let the good RPG folks in my feeds know about you and your products, then drop a message to glynn@monkeyblooddesign.co.uk with the subject: Creator’s Corner submission.
Thank you for stopping by and supporting the creatives in the scene, Glynn
In the spirit of transparency, Sean and I have worked together previously.
Without further ado, over to Sean Christopher Richer and a look at some of the awesome stuff he is putting out there! —
HELLO I’M SEAN, FOUNDER OF ORBITAL INTELLIGENCE, LLC. We formed to start bringing ridiculous ideas to life. We focus on super weird, super strange, and extremely playable, content.
How’d we get here? Let’s jump back to when I was a child, back when satanic panic was a thing. I wasn’t allowed to play Dnd, and couldn’t tell you what edition it was in the 90s in Canada. (but somehow I played spellfire… I don’t know how that worked)
I did however hit the library hard, and going through Robotech art books I eventually stumbled into the palladium stuff. Which became the first game I’d run. This led to RIFTS, which pretty much raised me (and all things palladium for that matter). I wanted nothing more than to make a sourcebook for RIFTS (Siembieda if you’re reading this, HIT ME UP).
So what do we do now? We are trying to crank out as many zines as possible, while maintaining quality. It’s difficult, but we wouldn’t be able to do it without frequent collaborators. MonkeyBlood Design has done all of our layout so far, and I plan to keep it that way! Endmusik (Michael Weeks, friend and frequent musical collaborator) did our company logo!
A setting that focuses on “the drop”, an event where giant tentacled aliens burst forth and set up shop on earth (or wherever). It’s super Gonzo, and you can play 20 foot aliens from the get go. It was initially going to be savage worlds, then MCC, but DCC seemed like the correct home for over the top Aliens and Bat gods. Just about everything mutates, and has a separate tentacle die that levels with them.
WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A ZINEQUEST KICKSTARTER IN FEBRUARY FOR STRATOSFIEND ISSUE 2 WE WILL BE BACK TO TALK ABOUT IT IN DEPTH!
This setting is a mess of collage art, mind-rending art, and layout to match it. It contains new character backgrounds (including sentient gravel), new bestiary entries (including a demonic elf on the shelf, and sentient toast), and A NEW ADVENTURE WHICH FOCUSES ON A WORLD THAT IS SLOWLY TURNING INTO CHITIN WITH EVERY DAY THAT PASSES AND DOOR THAT IS ENTERED. Glynn KNOCKED IT OUT OF THE PARK on this one. Matching each piece of art, with even crazier layout.
This one is equal parts cosmic dread simulator, 1 player funnel, and a love letter to *cough* Dawson’s Creek. I used to put every new character background that I see for Troika through its paces. How many seconds did YOU last on the creek? In some cases you may be hit in the face by a frisbee, in other cases the sentient creek consumes you and everyone you know. In other cases, perhaps you just didn’t do your homework? Or lost your love.
If you have itch troika products, let’s talk and get a bundle going! I’d love to pair up!
The tragedy that begot ternwillow; a love letter to idyllic fields through the lens of [Redacted] of Green Gables and end of [Redact]-elion (TROIKA).
(Jackknife, Brains, and Ironsights (Ronnie) by Chin Fong)
Come spring 2020, you will start to hear about the town of Ternwillow, and how these brave pilots helped fight back horrors of humanity itself. Spoilers, they perish. All stories and play are told in the form of flashbacks, and stories of what happened. As players try to piece together what exactly the tragedy was.
Welcome to the second Creator’s Corner post! I’m getting slightly ahead of the generally-weekly posting schedule because of a short time-frame involved in the post content 🙂
This is where we let another small RPG publisher or freelancer let loose on the blog in the spirit of supporting each other and spreading the word. The RPG scene is filled with amazing creatives and products and this is me doing my part by trying to help ‘rise the tide to lift all boats’.
#supportsmallrpgpublishers #creatorscorner
Please support these folks if you can, check out what they do, and if you can’t support directly, please help share this post. Thank you for stopping by and supporting the creatives in the scene, Glynn
Without further ado, over to James Pozenel. A look at what he is up to and a look at his first Kickstarter – The House of Red Doors, a 0-Level DCC Funnel, which ends pretty soon (4 days as I post this).
A couple years ago I heard about a solo funnel tournament taking place at Gamehole. There was this photo of people seated along a wall waiting for a turn to play. How can that work? I had never seen or heard of such a thing. I was also pretty new to DCC RPG. I did not know these sort of multiplayer solo scoring tournaments were fashionable for a time in the community.
My imagination went wild trying to figure how a solo tournament would actually work. I took the term solo quite literally. One player and one judge. An intimate small table experience with two people telling a story. I thought about all the times I could get only one or two people interested in playing and I knew I had an interesting idea for an adventure at the very least. A year ago I ran that solo tournament funnel, The House of the Red Doors, at U-Con in Ypsilanti, MI, USA.
A one player adventure brings some design challenges. It doesn’t lend itself to a combat driven story. A design can grant lots fighting opportunities, but will the PC survive? Not without counter mechanics to increase survivability. Fighting takes a lot of time compared to other activities and, depending on the system, can be quite long and arcane. The counter mechanics of healing up or finding ways to regenerate lost health or abilities also becomes a time sink. A solo story (and especially a solo tournament) probably shouldn’t take hours.
Without a heavy combat focus the designer needs to bring other tools to the table. Puzzles and traps are long time tools of the trade and hazards to the adventurer. Puzzles often bar the way to some sort of success or objective. Traps are often used to protect things or areas. Both tend to be railroads to success or failure. I wanted to change that. Puzzles and traps do not have to have a single linear solution. Like your dungeons, the traps and puzzles can provide multiple avenues for success that conclude with more or less advantageous results for the player. Besides your players are going to do something weird anyway. Why not be semi-prepared for some grey area solutions from them.
The House of the Red Doors takes place in an imaginary place of dreams and wishes — not at all unlike that ancient TV show, Fantasy Island. The three parts of The House of the Red Doors are untethered and not narratively linear. The parts don’t have to make sense as in a “real world” dungeon. I think you’ll find that the adventure can easily be slipped into pretty much any genre.
In The House of the Red Doors there’s certainly times for dice rolling, but it is more about paying attention to detail and solving puzzles. Combat is available, but a player almost never needs to violently confront what is barring their way.
The endings have several solutions. That was a conscious design choice. All the puzzles in The House of the Red Doors have multiple solutions. However, your PC may not survive some of them… Picking the best solution at any given juncture is the main objective.
Last thing I want to talk about is the final stretch goal and its design. The player handout is a venerable method of giving visual information to the players. They’re usually large and intended to be held up to the group, or passed around. Since I tend towards ‘theatre of the mind’ as a judge and as a writer, I’m accustomed to players asking clarifying questions in order to make decisions. The House of the Red Doors has many instances where a visual handout could assist the player and moreover, you, the judge. However, handouts for this adventure don’t merit the big format.
I started to think about all the times I ran The House of the Red Doors and how close you are in a physical sense to the player. Instead of a big handout or the ceremony of drawing a map, the information exchange with a tiny booklet handout seems more appropriate. Maybe there’s a map. Maybe there’s an image of a scene outlined in the italics text. Regardless of the visual content, the artifact can be passed back and forth as the adventure progresses.
