'The Giant's Wrath' Module #3's Cover is Done.

'The Giant's Wrath' Module Cover is done! Be ready for this adventure soon! I will post up the ad copy once I get it.

Neon Knights - RPG Metal Music

     When Dio wrote this song for Black Sabbath he did it to pay homage to the rise of fantasy role-playing that was now common in the late 70's/early 80's (before the Fundamentalist backlash). Tolkien's books had found a resurgence of popularity again with the slightly terrible and grating animated movies of the Hobbit & Lord of the Rings, art and obviously the games themselves. 
      He realized then that gaming was a safe retreat from the dangers of the street with drugs, gangs, etc and it was a healthy hobby. Ideally, it was something that would inspire its participants to seek a more heroic lifestyle and achieve better in life. Gaming brought back the old notions of quests, adventure, monsters, and more and presented people with those lost heroic ideas again.
      From his time in Rainbow, his music was going towards this end with medieval-fantasy themes and imaginative concepts that only a few others groups of the time shared in (Rush, Uriah Heep, etc). This song I can bet was something he was working on while in Rainbow before his abrupt departure in 1979. When I think of the glory days of gaming and when this hobby was rising, I think of this song. It symbolizes the fusion of gaming, art and music in one. Those days are returning I believe, a little at a time. Maybe it just from my perspective being inside of it now and seeing the reaction of gamers to my ideas and how it is changing the flow to a new direction, but in any case it is a grand thing to see occur.

Oh no, here it comes again
Can't remember when we came so close to love before
Hold on, good things never last
Nothing's in the past, it always seems to come again
Again and again and again ooh again oh

Cry out to legions of the brave
Time again to save us from the jackals of the street
Ride out, protectors of the realm
Captains at the helm, sail across the sea of lights

Circles and rings, dragons and kings
Weaving a charm and a spell
Blessed by the night, holy and bright
Called by the toll of the bell

Bloodied angels fast descending
Moving on a never-bending light
Phantom figures free forever
Out of shadows, shining ever-bright

Neon Knights!
Neon Knights! all right!

Cry out to legions of the brave
Time again to save us from the jackals of the street
Ride out, protectors of the realm
Captains at the helm, sail across the sea of lights
Again and again, again and again and again

Neon Knights!
Neon Knights!
Neon knights!
All rise

The Codex Druidum Has Gone to Editing!

My OLD gaming project is officially entering into the next phase towards true publication after 22+ years! The 'Otherworld' or 'Tir nAille' game designing work of mine is now at the editor and the cover art is beginning to turn into something real. The interior art is being made as well on this and the maps are already prepped and ready to go.

It is becoming real!

Gamers are excited and the word is spread, online and at GenCon, and the interest is building. And I think rightfully so since it introduces an entire new plethora of Faery powers, races and concepts to gaming never ever had before, and this is guaranteed. They have all been carefully thought out, play-tested and have their loyal advocates. My gamers who have all been involved in the play-testing since 1991 on have all endless memories and stories to tell about it all. They are as dear and personal as those with mundane life events and experiences.

It will take a few weeks or so before the editing is at a point and I do the final edits and changes, but by then it should be close to Halloween, and that is appropriate since it is a Celtic holiday. The timing is right!

With plenty of supporting modules and the upcoming novels, there will be a new revolution in gaming and all things Celtic, it might be a meek one or a grand one. Either way, it will be a revolution of my doing.

On a related note, the third module of mine, 'The Giant's Wrath' is now fully edited, the maps are done and the only thing that is left is the cover art! So it should be done very soon! Be ready for the updates.

It is a good time to be a gamer!

A gamer album, that at the time it came out I didn't like because it wasn't like my favorite band Rainbow. The guitar style was simple compared to Blackmore's and the theme was darker and less fantasy themed or medieval except for a few songs. Now I love this album, nearly as much as the Dio era Rainbow albums. Play this to capture the feel of late 70's/early 80's gaming stuff at the time...I do. Neon Nights is THE song about gaming, I will post about it at some point for you.

My Old Novel Project is about to Surface...

In the many years of play-testing what is to become the 'Codex Druidum' I had come to develop many ideas for stories, many, and after a chance encounter with who became my film script agent for Hollywood in 1998 the process began. He asked me to write a script, so I did in three weeks. It was a sudden inspiration but one that I have found to be ingenious in the following years. I called it 'The Girl with the Rainbow Eyes' and it involves a girl named Ana who will find herself caught up in an ancient war in Faery between the Faeries of Light and Darkness.

I won't give the story away here of course, but I will say that it is a work of art in places. One I am proud of and wanted to see in movie or book form someday. The script sits gathering dust (Hollywood takes FOREVER) but I decided to write it as novel, my first novel ever written. In the past I tried to write but could never get passed the first few pages before burning out. The art of writing seemed impossible to me at the time. I had hundreds of original stories in my head but wanted to capture that magic, the same we find in our games.

So I swore a vow to myself while in undergrad school that I would write something in the novel once everyday, no matter if it was just a paragraph at a time. I was going to write them taken from the script no matter what! Slowly after six months I wrote it all and by 1999 I finished it. Then I held onto it until 2008, almost ten years later before I felt like sending it to publishers and literary agencies. But after continual rejections (about 10+) and overcoming my own ego about it, I was humbled to realize that it wasn't my story, but it was HOW I wrote it. It needed to be formatted properly like a true novel or it wasn't going to work at all - ever.

The first draft was amateurish and sloppy, a shame to admit that I composed it.

After writing several novellas in the same fall of 2008 ('The Witch of Round Mountain') I knew that I needed to sit down and correctly write a novel, not just assume that I could do so. So by December of 2008 I jumped into the re-write of the novel, almost ten years later from the original first draft. As I was writing it I was feeling the writer in me transform and take shape for the first time. My new re-write was full of energy, life and color, and it was engaging to read. In the next three months I was eagerly writing on it every day after coming home from teaching my courses at the college. Progress was being made but I was feeling the pangs of burn-out and had to stop for a break.

A big mistake.

In the interim I decided to go with the writing flow now that I found it, and put my Steampunk Horror novel 'De Civitate Sanguino' into book form (but that is another story of its own). Meanwhile my Celtic adventure novel sat again to gather dust as it had since I first composed it in the late 90's. I should have finished it then while writing it but I didn't.

Now, years later from the spring of 2009 I am finishing it again. Finally. My pet story is going to see the light of day very soon. I have a chapter and a half to go and it is a BIG conclusion more improved from the first draft and the script version. In the re-write I have changed radically many elements from the old version and have it greatly improved.

My adventure modules echo this story intentionally, and the Codex Druidum will provide gamers with everything from the setting in game form. Now with the novel about to be officially completed after twelve long years I plan to give it to a literary agency and see it become a major published novel with one of the Big Six companies. Yep, the Big Six as authors call them. A scary step in my evolution as a writer.

'The Girl with the Rainbow Eyes', and its two sequels (and possibly a third) is about to be official and hopefully a serious deal. My other novels and series are with a slightly small press and without advance pay or an agent to help, it helped me start as a writer now, but this is about to go large if I can make it.

Once the novel is finished, I will thoroughly read it through, make its corrections and prepare it for an agency. It is the next logical step as a writer to me.

 

The Codex Germania is Completed!

Just on the verge on the production of the first, the Codex Druidum, the Germanic counterpart is now done! It was Steve's old dream in 2002 to see this book and a series in print that were historical and mythical in origin as supportive materials for Game Masters but the project fell to pieces as the Codex Germania's original author (a well known RPG author with TSR - Robert J. Kuntz) stopped writing on it and the whole project stopped in its tracks. This book was initially the beginning to the series and it sat forgotten and gathering mold for a decade...until now.

Separately, in my own two decades of play-testing my Celtic Otherworld setting and rules I had thought about and longed for adding a Germanic element to it, but only was able to get a few scattered rules written but never officially tested. ALL of those early ideas of mine went into this Codex and they fit smoothly. Gamers are going to be able to play Saxon warriors, Viking raiders or anything else from that tradition now. My academic specialty is in the Celts, specifically the Celtic Britons and the 'Arthurian' age following Rome's departure and fall, and you could say a minor to my studies is on the Anglo-Saxons with some side dabbling on the Goths and Norse peoples. This Codex isn't written by someone who doesn't know the culture or topic but someone who taught history, has a degree in the field, and has always loved it.

Once these first two Codices are out, Game Masters can incorporate Celtic and Germanic magic, ideas, etc into their campaigns, merge the two, and have hours of fun. My next Codex in mind is the Codex Classicus covering the Greeks, Ertruscans and Romans. The only odd one out from this series is my Celtic one. It doesn't focus on the Continental Celts only the Insular groups, and is centered around my Otherworld aspect more than the historical. The emphasis on the other Codices is a balance with mythical and historical unlike the Celtic. I could almost make a separate one called Codex Celtica that is JUST the Celtic peoples as a whole AND their many strands of myths, etc. It wouldn't be that difficult.

So I have the honor to not just bring back to life an old moribund project of Troll Lord Games, but to do so in the footsteps of Gary Gygax and Robert Kuntz. Between my modules (which are highly rated as they are put out one by one) and Codices, the gaming world will be given some new and original works that will change the way people play for a long time to come, and that makes me extremely proud to know.

Hard Copies are Available With Me Now!

Copies of 'The Witch of Round Mountain' and 'De Civitate Sanguino' are here for anyone that wants a copy. Contact me and come by while they are still available! Yay!

This is a limited time thing because these copies are going to Octopodicon in two weeks' time!

Caledfwlch...or 'Excalibur'