Three and a half years is a long time. Not for elves or giants, but in that time I experienced a plague, a handful of political catastrophes, and the birth of a new universe.
So let's talk about that last one.
Broken Oaths
Here we go.
In three years I've definitely matured. Tragedy and hardship have a way of doing that; changing a person. What they haven't changed is my affinity for purple prose. Expect lots.
I've also dropped nearly every roleplaying game idea I've ever had in exchange for two — maybe three — Big Ideas. The first one is Talamh, Broken Oaths, what have you. It's my hack of 5e and a setting bundled together, Patreon soon. It's hard not to feel despondent about one's obvious homogeneity when compared to titans of old-school blogging and new-school indie gaming. But yeah! Hell yeah! I'm making a setting and I'm going to release it and you're going to love it. Or it'll be another scream into the abyss and you won't care. Either way.
The other is my comfort food, my coffee on a rainy morning, my herb and funk music: Astrarius. A technicolor whirl of disco, drugs, and delinquent spacers set in a glitzy, 70s space-fantasy solar system. It fuckin' riffs, dude.
This blog is about the first one. Astrarius will crop up from time to time when I need a palate cleanser, but for the majority of our time here you'll be subjugated to the incoherencies of a one-man design, playtesting, and review process.
The chambers will echo with my delusions.
The blog will retain its earliest posts, too. They're pretty cringe now that I look back — I hate everything I've ever written for an audience — but to delete them would be denying that I've changed a lot of my opinions on running a game and designing a setting. I never want to forget that at one point in time, I legitimately cared about my players having a backstory. I will not be that person again.
To that effect, they're also great records of how a person's perception of what makes a game good, or fun, or entertaining, can shift.
Talamh
Talamh is a world out of time. In an age before humanity, two precursor peoples went to war and their conflict rent the continent of Talamh out of its homeworld and sent it hurtling into the murky beyond.
But now there are just the humans. Some ruins. And a whole lot of people trying very hard to screw each other over. The players of Broken Oaths get to wade hip-deep through all that history and grimy social conflict to carve a name, a home, a reputation for themselves. It's old-school mentality applied to modern gaming conventions. There are henchmen and retainers; there are strongholds; there are dungeons which, when their facades are peeled back, are big Jaquayed noodle piles full of resource attrition.
I just know that every time I say those two words, Ben Milton shivers in delight. Here's to you, Ben, my treat: resource attrition. (And it's not just him, it's all of you, too.)
To further complicate the messaging, the whole of the Broken Oaths project hopes to engage players in my favorite style of play: emergent storytelling. Don't worry, it's free range and organic.
If I play my cards right, the overhauled character classes will be ten-level packages of mechanics and buttons which, when pushed, generated more interesting results than stacking bonuses or sources of advantage/disadvantage. I really love advantage but I fucking hate how dead 5e has beaten it. No, you get 5th level druid who can cast control weather as a ritual and fighters who have at-will maneuvers, no dice/usages per day. I really want to move away from uses per day as a mechanic for balancing the game.
And I really want to move away from giving any shits about balance.
The Patreon
I'll release more information soon. Right now I'm drumming up the old blog, dusting off the cobwebs, and shooing the crawling hands back into their receptacles. Also moving, which sucks and I hate.
But when it does arrive, it'll be a real bounty of options for those who wish to support the Broken Oaths project. And I'll have a much clearer "mission statement" for those who need a long-winded board room pitch to decide whether my intellectual labor is worth the price of a cheap gas station coffee each month.
That last bit, I beg you realize, was sarcasm. I am a slovenly whore for any amount of support. To be honest, I could do with some light buzz around the project, but I will work my tricks on the corners of the blogosphere day and night*.
*Note: The patient seems to exhibit "simp behavior," doubtless related to the lack of a paternal figure in the formative years of childhood.
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