Climb to the Summit

For the past 15 minutes, I've been staring at my monitor, mentally juggling how I plan to attend Game Summit next month. Will I go solely as an attendee covering the con for Roleplayer's Chronicle or will I step it up a notch and bring a little Killshot with me?

While I could cough up the $90 to attend  for the entire weekend, find a place to stay, all that, my original goal was to take advantage of the Game Designer's Lab (a new addition this year) and interview as many of them as I could. Research, my goal was research. Grafting myself to a table could jeopardize that.

There's also the matter of spending the next month rushing to get a table ready while I'm also working on getting Kickstarter funding started (application's sent, just waiting to hear back), get Broken Ruler's website up and going, and continuing to build up Killshot through various revisions and the like.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not denying the importance of cons in promoting work. Two years ago, I went during my Emerald Press days to promote/playtest EONS #1: The Endless Vault and it was a blast. The difference here is starting out too public with improperly tested rules can do more harm than good. Hence the massive spotlight something like Kickstarter can help out with - more playtesters!

So why can't I make up my mind? Because the kid in me loves the frosting.

Kickstarting Broken Ruler

I am the Warden!!

Over the holidays, I made two big decisions about my work. One, that I needed to start taking it seriously ASAP so I wouldn't go mad from all this waiting for medical crap. And two, to put Killshot's money with my mouth is and put it up on Kickstarter to try and raise some awareness and extra cash to do it up right. Nothing crazy, I'm merely thinking in the $500 range and see what goes from there. Anything I get will go towards paying for original artwork; while I have more than enough stock art, being able to populate it with something new and original to suit the type would be supreme.

That means having a website to go to. I've only been playing with it a little bit tonight, but thought there was enough to post a link here. What the hell is a blog for if not bragging about everything you're working on? Click here to check out the Broken Ruler Games blog and feel free to become a fan or just bookmark it. I'll be making all my Killshot updates on there, many of which will have significant impact on how the Optional System sees the light of day in the future.

The Future of RPGs: Learn to Embrace Innovation

WARNING: Today's post is in response to Ryan Dancey's comments on EN World regarding the past, present, and future of the RPG industry. If you hate reading posts by outsiders with no direct experience, then you are gonna detest this one.

I am the Warden and I wish you a Happy New Year!!

Timing aside, there are many reasons for those of us passionately trying to break into the industry to consider its future. And I don't mean our place in it, I'm talking about it's "survival." I put that word in quotes because I don't believe it'll ever truly go away, but there will be time to get into that later. For now, I want to talk about something few seem to consider in this business and any other, for that matter.

Innovation.

Every goddamn post I've read on the possible future of roleplaying games talks about numerous factors - marketing, distribution, audience, growth, age, technology, and more - yet none of them consider the possibility that the future of RPGs depends predominantly on the innovation of the games available. Seeing as the majority of these posts (or at least the ones I've read) focus on D&D, it does seem as if everyone warrants this entire industry's success on one company's results, even when those results are being questioned by the impact of another very close to home. The consensus seems to be if D&D and/or it's resulting d20 brand should fail, the entire market will collapse.