Old Kingdom Games Development Diary

Well, its been sent off down the phone lines and now available to buy at yourgamesnow.com, rpgnow.com and drivethrurpg.com!

We’re seeing what take up is like with a slightly different pricing strategy (its only $8.99 cover price) which we’d always planned to do with our second campaign gems release.

Here’s a bit more information for you:

Available Now from Old Kingdom Games only $8.99.

Buy at YourGamesNow.com | Buy at RPGNow.com | Buy at drivethrurpg.com

The world is vibrant, the world is alive… You can taste salt on the wind, smell the black damp of the earth beneath your feet. The drums of the ancestors call out to the clans, their song carried to all the chiefdoms across the sea. These are the ancient islands of the Brothers, the islands of the Bronze Gods, and they are your home.

Beware the ancient towers of the time before the Gods, do not speak of the living metals that slaughter us if we disturb them. Arm yourself, for a warrior must be ready to fight and die at the side of his kin.

Find the pathways of the elders, winding into crumbling temples deep within the mountains. Sail across the glimmering water, to return with valuable goods and stories of strange places. Wage an endless battle against the merciless oceans, against the noble warriors of your sworn blood foes or against the terrors that lay in wait in the ruins of ages past. And above all, pay your respects to the spirits and the Gods, for it is theirs to decide the fate of all the tribes.

Taste the wine and sing the story in your spirit, for at this hearth we are all kin.

Bronze Gods is a 145 page self-contained campaign setting detailing the Island of the Four Brothers - home to the Bronze Gods. Contained within is rich background and cultural information, several new races and several complete character classes, settings specific equipment and magic types, new terrain and hazard rules, antagonists, allies and a series of adventure seeds. Bronze Gods is ideal for games masters looking for an alternative fantasy setting with a twist without needing to commit to multiple books to get started.

Click here for info, developer diary and previews

Hi Guys.

We’ve got a treat for you! Work is underway in the layout stage of Bronze Gods, due out at the end of the month. We’re busy arranging text, graphics, and other various desktop publishing tasks that need doing but every time we cruise past the cover on our screens we can’t help but pause and take it in slowly. So, why shouldn’t we treat you to the exceptional work of Michael Jaecks - here’s his full color cover. Michael has provided the illustrations for the entire book and you can see some more of his black and white work for Bronze Gods elsewhere in this diary.

Click on the thumbnail below to see the full version - you can download this by visiting the free stuff section of our website (menu at the top of the screen).

Don’t forget, Bronze Gods is due out for the beginning of May and you will be able to purchase it from your favourite online stores including YourGamesNow.com, RPGNow.com, DrivethruRG.com, Fantasy-download.eu and Arima.it. If you are a member of our forum you will also automatically qualify for a launch day discount coupon as well.More to come on Bronze Gods throughout April!

When working with culture, the most important aspect in choosing what to deal with is - I think - player visibility. Not everything has to be explained (nor can this be realistically expected in a reasonable word count - we need rules, too!). But there are a group of cultural behaviours that players will often come face to face with: I call them the Big 3:

• Greets
• Speech
• And… (drumroll please) Events!

Greetings are a big factor for players. This will likely be a player’s first experience with a foreign group, and often cause a lasting impression. Warrior cultures, for example, may be using this opportunity to size a potential opponent up- whereas a peaceful group may make food offerings by default. In a lot of cases, there are complicated rituals surrounding how to properly meet with new people (sometimes different from the way to properly meet old acquaintances). Since they are so visible, I put a priority on devising a number of greetings for some of the races in Bronze Gods (Site admin note: Keep an eye out for the violent ‘Konok Greeting’ illustrated perfectly by Michael Jaecks in the final book).

Speech - Nicknames, slang, manner of speaking, and common subject matter. These are all essential for the GM who wants to play an on-colour NPC (or for a player as a role-playing aid), and let’s face it, the everyday NPC and PC interactions are the lifeblood of a vibrant campaign. Different ways of speaking and slang are great, and providing a reason as to how words were picked up is something that can interest players and GMs alike, while at the same time expanding a world’s history in an interactive way.

Events - the ceremonies and holidays of a culture go a long way towards defining what it is that the people care about, what they fear, and how they view the world. A mythological background to a simple ceremony can give hints as to religious beliefs, and ‘active events’ (the type that players can participate in as a plot hook) were given precedence in Bronze Gods.

Next subject: Prestige Classes

They’re about done. Each one probably has maybe 5 or 6 viable builds with different focus (they all have a category of class features that you choose from a list, and no PrC can get their full list by any means- the best you can do is 3 of 4.) The ‘best’ choice depends on your actual ability scores, the class you went into the PrC with, and most importantly - what you want the character to do.

My personal favorite is the Wave Dancer - a support class with some interesting class features. They mostly work around augmenting other people’s attacks and defense, but also have a few ceremonial dances that have fun applications.

Anyway, keep playing, and hopefully you like Bronze Gods when it comes out!

-Neal

Hi guys

We’ve always planned to expand our range beyond the initial exposure that supporting the d20 system gives us. If you’re a regular reader of this diary or our website you’ll know that we’re in the process of creating standalone RPG’s of our current d20 titles using the Myriad System by Sane Studios as a basis for game mechanics.

Creating new versions of The Nightmare War and Bronze Gods in this fashion takes quite a bit of time and in the interim we had a great idea dropped in front of us over on the Treasure Tables forums by Rick_TWA. You can read the full thread by clicking here and the funny responses as the idea spiraled a bit in another thread by clicking here.

Giggles aside, the idea had merit - if we create a standalone game with a page count high enough to let us stretch our legs with the Myriad System, but manageable enough to be financially viable (in case only the TT guys buy it) then we’d be on.

…and, its Gnomes, in Battle Armour for Chrissakes!

So….here you go:

Old Kingdom Games is proud to announce a new, standalone RPG “Gnomecha”.

By the year 40,001 Gnomekind has spread across the surface of the planet - their awesome steam fueled mega-cities stand as a testament to Gnomekind’s place as the dominant race on the planet*.

The monolithic Onyx Dynasty** unites the nations of the north under one banner***, bringing technological advancement and a better life for all****.

To the south, the scattered peoples of the nations of the Barron-Gnomes+ live a nomadic life fraught with danger++. Gnomekind’s expansion has taken a devastating toll on natural resources+++ and nowhere is it more evident than in the south. The Barron-Gnomes cast envious eyes towards the lands of the Onyx Dynasty and the now infamous battle cry echoes across the blasted plains separating the north from the south:

“SOD THIS, LETS FIGHT!”

…and so the Gnomemecha - great lumbering machines of iron, steam and flame now thunder across the plains driven by steadfast heroes++++ from both north and south, to do battle in the great war of our time

This isn’t just a war about differences between nations, this isn’t just a war about resources+++++:

This is a war that lets you strap yourself into a 20 foot tall lumbering mass of metal, gears, steam pipes and pistons built around a high pressure explosive engine core and then go and pound the living crap out of a Gnome who richly deserves it.

…..and if you’re really lucky, you’ll stumble across some of those greenskin ‘tree hugger’ bast**ds and get to pound the living crap out of them too.

* also, our skin isn’t green, you can’t be dominant and green, stands to reason
** “the man”
*** in a purely friendly, tree hugging way of course
**** in charge

+ or Big Guns, as we affectionately call them
++ bloody greenskin “environmentalists”
+++ we ran out of doughnuts months ago
++++ argumentative, often inebriated bunch of overweight pixies that they are
+++++ it could be argued that its a war about doughnuts

YES, ITS A STANDALONE RPG

Gnomecha places characters on the front lines of a semi-gladiatorial conflict piloting insanely dangerous ‘Gnomecha’ - hulking steampunk machines that no remotely rational Gnome would ever strap themselves into; let alone use it to go looking for a fist fight with another idiot who is strapped into a similarly hulking and mind blowingly dangerous contraption.

There’s rules for Gnomecha creation, character creation, character development (like you’ll live that long, but eh its a marketing thing), a complete history to the conflict (honestly, doughnuts were involved) and richly detailed environments (safely away from the populace and, you know, back up) in which to win victory after victory and attain fame and doughnuts.

But wait, there’s more - if pounding the crap out of all and sundry in an oversized pressure cooker isn’t really…….challenging enough for you - you need something with a bit more danger to it to prove your mettle - you can take up the challenge of playing a team of greenskins - Orcish droo-ids and environmentalists determined to stop the Gnomecha onslaught with little other than a few big sticks, rocks, and harsh language. Oh, some of the mamby pampby green ground lovers sometimes um…well… they can talk to the earth or somesuch…..take a bottle of weedkiller on your next mission, that’s all we’re saying.

MORE INFO

Click here - Gnomecha coming soon!

Hi guys

One of our forum users, ‘Nightmare Oni’ had a very good question for us about our plans to release our own standalone RPG’s based upon the open gaming Myriad rules toolkit.

At present we’re planning to release standalone, complete versions of The Nightmare War and Bronze Gods, each with a customized set of rules needing no other books to play. They will be complete RPG’s in and of themselves. The d20 version of The Nightmare War is already available and Bronze Gods (d20 System) is due out in April 2007.

The question from ‘Nightmare Oni’ was: “I’m just curious as to what you saw in the Myriad system that got you to choose it for your campaign gems?”

Although here at OKG we’d discussed the merits of developing our own system, using different universal systems etc, we eventually settled on the Myriad toolkt - and here’s why:

We saw a great deal in the Myriad system which lead us to choose it over other systems or designing our own completely from scratch.

In no particular order:

Flexibility: The system itself already allows (in fact is designed for) ease of adaption and development of the core Myriad rules system. Myriad as a release itself really is a ‘toolkit’ in that respect - rather than a complete game system. Although other ‘generic’ rules system allow for this in part, Myriad specifically encourages development of the core mechanics into other areas. We like our flexibility

Releasing Complete RPG’s without need for other books: This means we can release (for example) The Nightmare War as a stand alone RPG complete with everything needed to run the game from the ground up with no need for other books. We can re-print, reorganize and modify the system mechanics how we need in each release without having to follow inherently strict guidelines (like some other universal systems out there). In fact as we get closer to launch later this year we’ll be branding The Nightmare War as a self contained stand alone RPG (which just happens to have a Myriad variant at its core). Ash (owner of Sane Studio) appears to have deliberately designed a toolkit to be expanded upon so that if you publish a game it can be entirely self contained with an (optional) mention of Myriad. Its a good basis to work from, and it helps that the mechanics stand up well to testing too

The Core System Itself: The game mechanics are straightforward, but allow for a degree of complexity should the need arise. In short, we love the mechanics and what we can do with them. They are sound enough to act as a basis for a game, give us options in product development but don’t get too ‘out there’ meaning we have to dedicate half of a release just explaining what the heck it is we’re on about!

Here’s how the mechanics work in a nutshell:

A ‘test’ (roll) is performed by rolling a number of d6 equal to a relevant statistic. Take the highest result and add your relevant skill rating. This is the target number you have achieved. If this total is equal to or higher than the required target number, then you succeed.

If you rolled any 6’s you can add a +1 to your total for each 6 or ‘burn’ a 6 to power an SFX (special ability). This basic mechanic gives us plenty to play with and will be customized entirely for each release we publish:

Statistics - there are examples in the Myriad toolkit, some we will use and some we will tailor to each publication
Skills - as would be expected the skills list will be customized to match each release
SFX - completely new for each release - we’ve plenty of scope with the SFX mechanic

You should check out the review of Myriad at RPG.net here if you haven’t already: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12342.phtml

The review quite rightly points out that Myriad by itself is not a game system - its a toolkit for people like us to build complete RPG systems around.

Re-use Value: Another item that drew our attention to the Myriad toolkit when looking at developing our own system was the way we could easily have statistics, skills, SFX and more across multiple publications that worked hand in hand with other. This means that in the future if we wanted to release a big book of SFX’s to add value to our myriad based releases - we could, easily.

Community: It just starting to grow, but there is the start of a community building up around Myriad - not as much as some other universal systems as, on its own, Myriad really is a toolkit as I’ve mentioned. We expect to be able to energize that community to a degree and also provide OGL based content to feed back to the community as well - so its a bit of a win win.

So, there’s our thoughts on the Myriad toolkit and we’ll come back to this later in the year as we start work on The Nightmare War and Bronze Gods as standalone games.

It’s a pretty vague title. But feel goes hand in hand with the answer to the question in my last article- what is cool or interesting in a campaign setting?

For me, it’s really not a question of a specific ability being interesting. Depending on the desired feel of a campaign, any given ability or character capability can be acceptable. What is important, more than anything else, is that the feel of a campaign setting is consistent with the feel of a character’s powers and abilities.

Sometimes, the only effort that goes into maintaining this type of consistency in feel is the use of creative naming. A generic “dodge” ability becomes “augmented reflexes” in a technological-based campaign, for example. This is a good start, but it is only a cosmetic change. A setting that only contains cosmetic elements to determine its feel will usually resemble a variation on a pre-existing setting or world. Use of creative naming is important, but it’s not the be-all and end-all of feel.

What you need to make a campaign setting and it’s mechanics blend properly is consideration for the potential effects of a power. By this I mean: what is the impact of a class ability? What are the ramifications of a person having this type of power? What impact would such an ability have had, historically?

Sometimes, the potential impact is limited. For example, the ability to shoot lightning will have an impact in warfare, certainly. With an individual functioning as what amounts to artillery, the concept of mobile warfare is going to become important quickly. Not only this, but why would manufactured projectile weaponry have advanced any farther than a rudimentary state? You can see the reflections of this design process in Bronze Gods.

In other cases, an ability which seems quite innocuous may prove to have a huge amount of impact. This is especially true of influence-based or social abilities. These types of powers should be reflected in the king-makers and conquerors in history.

Next- Feel and Culture!

Hi guys

Well, Libellus Ultra: Denizens of the Black 1 has just gone live. This one is quite the experiment for us - its something of a deviation from our usual efforts, being a low cost product ($2.95).

Once we’d got The Nightmare War nearing completion we set about working on our next Campaign Gem book: Bronze Gods. You can read more about how the development for Brone Gods is going elsewhere in this diary - its a large project for us, at least the same size as The Nightmare War (in fact, it looks like it will be a bit of a longer book).

We knew that given the size of Bronze Gods, and the style of artwork we wanted for it that it would take a few months before it was published. At such an early stage in the history of Old Kingdom Games we wanted to ensure that we were getting the word out there about ourselves - maintaining something of a proactive presence. One thing we have arranged was tie up with Enworld to create a treasure hunt prize giveaway focused on Bronze Gods and The Nightmare War (the competition is open until March 31 so feel free to have a go if you haven’t already).

What we really needed was more products at our online stores as we see a great deal of traffic through the ‘new releases’ mentions on various store home pages. Enter the idea of a series of mini-books - Libellus Ultra. LU needed to be something we could release relatively quickly without sacrificing our desire to produce books with decent layout and artwork.

As we’d already released a product with a near future theme in The Nightmare War I decided we should continue to push fully into some support for d20 Future - its not a particularly crowded marketplace and I was sure we could have a fair shot at creating a series of books that would stand out.

A few open calls later and the writing was secured.

The key issue would be artwork - we needed good quality artwork at a reasonable cost to make the series viable - we also needed to turn the artwork around quickly. In addition, as I had a particular layout in mind the artwork would need to be in a style that would compliment the layout. That’s when Matt Vasey stepped up and rapidly turned around the pieces we needed. A bit of 3d work from yours truly and we had the artwork completed with a few days to spare.

I’d already been working hard on the layout graphics and inserting the final artwork and the text was relatively straightforward (once I’d decided how I wanted to modify the artwork to suit the book style - see examples of this in other diary articles).

With that, Libellus Ultra: Denizens of the Black 1 was released and we’ve plenty of material for the second release as well. We’ll see how well the initial releases are received but should be able to continue to use the LU series as periodic releases for d20 Future between our other, larger projects. If the series does well we’ll consider expanding LU into fantasy and other genres too.

Libellus Ultra: Denizens of the Black 1 is available now price $2.95.

Hey guys. Chris asked me to swing by and post a little preview of what’s going on with the artwork in Bronze Gods, the new, forthcoming, formidable Campaign Gem from your favorite role playing publisher, Old Kingdom Games!

I’m toiling away tirelessly on the art for the entire book with a target for the end of March. And while I can’t call these images “done” just yet, they are far enough along to show you. Tonight, I’m posting the spot illustrations of the five races featured in Bronze Gods as well as some process shots of the Bull God interior illustration.

So how did Bronze Gods get started?

Honestly, I really leapt into it. At the time I began, I had done no professional writing in the industry. Like many GMs, I had my own world and a number of pet projects that I worked on as hobbies, but I had never tried to produce anything professionally.

I saw an advert to write a Campaign Gem up on RPG.net, and figured I could give it a shot. I emailed Chris with an overview write-up on an idea that was designed specifically for this project- I knew the size of the book and that it couldn’t support a giant setting, but a local area and a collection of related cultures would be doable to an attractive amount of detail. When I got the go ahead, the real work began.

There are two real ways to go about worldbuilding. First, you can build a world from the inside out. This involves taking a number of elements that you want to see in a setting, and finding ways that they can connect and interact.

The second method is having an idea for the setting as a whole, and carving the details directly from it. In this method, you have no initial idea about the precise contents, merely a set of rules (the world’s assumptions) that you want the contents to follow. This is the method that I prefer. Starting with geography, then moving to people and culture, then history, then mechanics.

It may seem strange to do history after culture, but the question of ‘does culture create history, or does history create culture’ has been asked by people a lot brighter than me; I think it can go either way. Culture is more immediate to a player’s experience, so I tend to place somewhat more emphasis on it- whereas history serves as a vehicle for explanation or insight.

My hope, as a writer, is actually that I leave no fingerprint on a setting, at all. I’m not trying to say ‘look what I made’. The goal is a living, breathing world- one that players can involve themselves in fully- and which has its own, internal influences, with the writer as a neutral observer.

Haha, this is starting to get a little more esoteric than planned. Next time I’ll talk about mechanics, feel, and balance- in other words, hurling lightning: cool, or over the top?

Hi guys

You may have already read the article I posted a couple of entries back about the process of taking final artwork from our Libellus Ultra: Denizens of the Black 1 illustrator - Matthew Vasey - and getting it ready for inclusion in the final document.

In the last day or two we’ve completed similar work on 4 more of the art pieces that Matt has provided for us with just a couple more to go.

Here’s a taste of the final pieces, after the layout styling was applied (click here to read how this was acheived):

In order they are:

• Captain Grigori Vadso
• ‘The Professor’
• A new race called ‘The Distant’
• A new race called ‘The Shak’rala’

Hi, Neal here- doing some class work to be released as free support material for Bronze Gods after the book is published.

After having designed the base classes, a few prestige classes are always a nice touch. Each of the bases has some variety to it (I wanted to make sure that different characters in the same class would not be cookie-cutter copies of one another, merely differentiated by feats, and I also wanted to be sure that the different choices you can make in a class are all equally viable).

In addition to this, though, I wanted to be sure that the prestige classes could be leapt into by 2 different base classes easily- with a purpose that is sort of a fusion of sub abilities from both groups. Power level, I am aiming for equal- although there are heavy incentives for taking 20 levels of a base class (they all have fairly powerful 20th level abilities), I want a decent boost for the 10th level of the prestige classes.

One is basically done- the Frozen Lord, who has completed a pilgrimage to the plateaus in the highlands of Tomta, where there is a small glacier lake saturated with spiritual power. They will have a variety of cold-based abilities, which play off the strengths of the Weavers of Water and the Wild Adepts. Since those are the two big fighting classes, the Frozen Lord will have good combat capabilities itself. Some of the other classes- like the Fetish Hunter (working title), are getting near done.

Next update- some development history!

-N

Hi guys

As you may have noticed from our products and news pages, work is well underway on our first venture into d20 Modern / Future with Libellus Ultra: Denizens of the Black 1. LU1 is due out on March 10 and we wanted to preview some of the artwork and also show you one of the processes we used in taking the art from its initial format to completion in the book.

The art piece is titled ‘Sightseer’ and is by newcomer to Old Kingdom Games - Matthew Vasey. A little bit about this critter: Sightseers are a very polite and inquisitive race who’s first contact encounter with humanity was “Hello, would you mind terribly telling me what specie you are?” Despite their curiosity and apparent friendliness Sightseers are treated with a measure of caution by the authorities for reasons revealed in Denizens of the Black 1.

The black and white illustration below is the completed piece by Matthew Vasey which perfectly captures these curious little guys. We knew that Denizens of the Black 1 would have a heavy computer screen interface look to it in terms of the layout and the artwork needed to avoid lots of fine detail or the end result would be lost due to the background showing through. You can see a preview of the Libellus Ultra: Denizens of the Black 1 release which shows the background by clicking here.

Matthew’s art style suited this requirement perfectly. Click the first image below to see the original and the second image below to see the piece transformed for insertion into the final publication.

Taking the art into the LU design required:

• A series of relatively simple layer styles in Photoshop (giving the outer glow and satin overlay effects)
• A couple of layers with reduced opacity (the scan lines)
• A series of ‘overlayed’ layers giving the underlying green colour and texture that is underneath
• Some simple circles, lines and strings of digits creating the impression of data flowing across a screen in the background - the preview shows this much better as full pages can be previewed

That’s it for now, and welcome aboard Matthew - don’t forget to check out his portfolio from the right hand side of the screen.

Libellus Ultra: Denizens of the Black 1 is released on March 10 2007.

Hey everyone, thanks for dropping in.

2007 is going to be a busy year for OKG and we thought it could be an interesting experiment to give you the inside skinny on what we’re working on through a ‘developers’ diary.

In the next couple of months alone we’ve several titles coming out, including:

• Campaign Gems: Bronze Gods (d20 system)
• Libellus Ultra: Denizens of the Black 1 (d20 modern/future)
• Myriad Gems: The Nightmare War (Myriad system)
• Myriad Gems: Bronze Gods (Myriad system)

On top of that we’re expanding where you can buy our books, running online competitions such as the one underway now on EN World (free books!), and generally having a great time developing Old Kingdom Games.

We’re already deciding on content for our next Libellus Ultra title as well!

From time to time we’ll update this diary with events at Old Kingdom Games including various ramblings about upcoming titles, you’ll get to hear from some of our amazing contributors as they work on our titles. Check out the ‘Freelancers Portflios’ links on the right of your screen for more info on these people who make OKG what it is.

You can post comments in response to any of the articles simply by clicking on the ‘comment’ text at the end of each article - keep it clean!