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Chatty Studios Presents: Project Kobold Love

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Edit: For those coming over from Kobold Quarterly, hi! Just a quick note to clarify that I’m not taking any donations for Kobold Love… That one will be free to see me build it and such to prove to you guys that I can produce quality material… I might ask you to buy the final product if I get it published, that’s all.

In which Chatty jumps off a cliff of his choosing…

One of the numerous lessons I learned from my first Gen Con Experience was that I had the skills and guts to carve myself a name in the RPG industry, I just had to believe in them and do something about it.

However, with a family to feed and being already halfway through my 30s, I can’t afford to start at the bottom of the Freelancing ladder and climb my way up… I might as well just stick to my day job.

Enter Chatty Studios

Chatty Studios is my own part-time stab at entering the RPG publishing industry. Taking a page from Wolfgang Baur’s Open Design concept, I want to publish fan-supported D&D 4e material through a patronage system.

Patrons would pay me up front (giving me capital to allow me to hire artists and technical help I do not possess) in exchange for an open and interactive experience where I build the product through blog posts for their eyes only.

In those posts I would share my design/writing philosophies, poll patrons on design choices, participate in play-testing and create the product like a TV chef cooks up for viewers every week.

In the end, we’d have a final product that all patrons would get first (PDF or Dead Tree, depending on participants). I’d then publish the adventure (or license it to a publisher) to help me pay for my next Gen Con trip and maybe buy my wife and kids a few gifts.

Thing is, I’m perfectly aware that I’m currently an unproven nobody in the industry. While I’m a rising Blogger, I know that I don’t have solid street cred… Hell a lot of my readers don’t know my real name!

That’s why my first Chatty Studios project will be a Creative Commons D&D 4e adventure that I’ll create on this blog (Chatty Studios will have it’s own Website when I launch it officially before year’s end). All readers are invited to partake in it (please see below for boring legal IP stuff) as if they were paying Patrons.

I’ve been shamelessly hyping it all over the Blogsphere for the last week and I dubbed it…

Project Kobold Love!

Here’s the project’s pitch I wrote when I came back from Gen Con:

I’m sick and tired of the Editions Wars. So much so that I want to show that a game system is just an excuse to have fun, no more.

Project Kobold Love will be a Creative Commons, Non-Commercial, 5 scene adventure featuring the Reverse Dungeon Trope. If it’s good, I want to be able to publish it commercially while leaving others the right to hack it legally as long as no one tries to sell it without talking to me first.

Elevator Pitch of the adventure:

A bunch of Kobold ugly ducklings go forth on a Quest to seek out the Tavern-in-the City. They are to kill the mysterious stranger that sits in the corner, giving quests that always end up destroying their dungeon home. It’s going to be a 5 scenes, Semi-linear event-based adventure, filled with carefully chosen Fantasy RPG tropes. Playing time 4 hours.

Approach: I will make a series of posts on a 1-2 posts per week schedule.  In each, I’ll build the adventure for D&D 4e, full with DMing tips, Tropes design notes.

The Hook: I will openly ask other RPG bloggers and readers to follow my lead, stating the adventure in their favorite non-4e game system. Legacy D&D, Pathfinder, Encounter Critical, GURPS, BESM… I don’t care! The crazier, the better.

Hell it can be all hacked to hell and be made about Pigs in Space… I’m sure it’s going to a LOT of fun.

I’ll then publish my adventure on one of the RPG PDF sites and look into getting it printed by someone out there.

I’ll then see if I can get customers to pay me to do another project.

I want to network the hell out of that one, I want people to have fun with it. Yes some of that is Hype for me, but that’s what business is all about.

I really want to get our growing community of readers/fans to start merging and mingling more. We’re friends for heaven’s sake, not enemies camped in the headquarters of our favorite game company/designer.

I have challenged Mike Mearls, Wolfgang Baur, Nick Logue. I expect their fans to tackle this project on their sides.

If anyone wants to take the challenge of making your own Kobold Love adventure, my sponsor, ZeStuff.com, is offering 3 15$ gift certificates. I’ll draw 2 randomly between those that tackle the project on their website, or in my forums here (just email me at chattydm@chattysdm.net and I’ll create you your own message board).

I’ll put the last one (that I’ll try to up to 30$) up for the readers to choose the best Kobold Love Hack!

Edit: This just in! Alex of http://maille.czaralex.com is offering a Brass bag capable of carrying 30 assorted gaming dice fastened with a leather cord and bead to the reader-chosen winner of the contest! Have a look at how great they look!

Prizes will be given 2 weeks after this series concludes… So you have plenty of time (like 5-6 weeks or so).

So please step up in this post (or the next one), with your game system of choice, if you feel like you could tackle this!

Boring Legal Stuff:

I lay IP claims to the project and the adventure I will publish in this series. As per the Creative Commons license I applied to this blog, everyone is welcome to hack it, modify it, post it on their websites and do whatever they want with it, provided they credit me and don’t try to commercialize it without my written agreement.

Also, by posting comments in any articles of this series, you surrender the commercial rights to any ideas or derivative work I might do with them. I will credit (with full name) anyone that helps/inspire me (and likely give out free copies of the finished product) but I do not want to fight with anyone about me stealing ideas if they were posted up here… It’s just too hard to differentiate what ideas I had and which were influenced by fan suggestions.

Now that this is out of the way…

Here’s my post plan for the series:

  1. Interlude 1: The Posse is Building
  2. The Adventure Plan
  3. Interlude 2: Reflections and the Half-Kobold Template
  4. Intro, Background and Summary, part 1
  5. Intro, Background and Summary, part 2
  6. Interlude 3: Changing Gears
  7. Scene 1: Dungeon Diplomacy! Part 1
  8. Scene 1: Dungeon Diplomacy! Part2
  9. Scene 2: On the Road… Again
  10. Scene 3: Skill Challenged Kobolds in the City
  11. Scene 4: Trope Showdown in the Tavern of Clichés
  12. Scene 5: Conclusion and Epilogue
  13. New Mechanics, Templates and Monsters
  14. Playtesting
  15. Layout issues, Maps, Arts and Monster Stats
  16. Naming the adventure and making the final product

As mentioned before, I might add new posts or break down some if they grow too big. You, the readers will help me drive the show.

Up next: The Adventure plan!

Credits: Wizards of the Coast (Image)

Comments

  5. Wow, that’s better feedback than I expected!

    If you like the idea, please tell your friends and readers and link here. I need all the help i can get to get this project flying.

    It will be insanely fun!

  6. I love the concept here, bro! Once I figure out what my schedule is like between work, the new baby, and my side projects I want to see if I can work up a version of this too.

    I don’t know how feasible that is with all of the demands on my time right now, but at the very least I’ll buy a copy – it seems like the perfect introduction to 4e for my pals!

  7. I’m pretty sure this is my first comment on your site. I’ve been lurking around for a little while now. I’d like to re-iterate the “brilliant concept” comments floating around. This could really turn into a new publishing model for gaming content.

    Very excited to see how this turns out.

  8. Hey Phil,
    Great project. I would love to have a go at it, but I too am trying to up my Gamer cred as I work furiously on my LoS project. So I will be checking in from the sidelines and wishing you all the best. What I can do though, is post about your project on my blog and try and help get the word out.
    Good luck my friend.
    Jeff

    Jeff Mejias last blog post..Legends of Steel – Boskar (Draft)

  14. Hmmmm, very tempted to stat this out in Savage Worlds. I have no idea how to do the Skill Challenges, though. Could be quite interesting…

    Very cool idea, though. The adventure concept is genius. I can’t believe it hasn’t been thought of yet!

  15. Before an old school gamer chimes in, TSR’s AD&D Reverse Dungeon adventure had an option of the Goblin PCs attacking the city where the adventurers came to save thier dungeon home.

    This project is going to be an Hommage to many adventures, Reverse Dungeon being the driving one

  17. @Tom: Let’s just say that the way my Gen Con experienced turned out, I’m springboarding off that cliff without really having checked if someone put a net.

  18. This sounds pretty awesome. Playing an unusual race in a quest that is effectively physically attacking a tired cliché? Fun times.

    I hope that payment scheme works out. It makes a lot of sense, in a way, since it helps avoid you having to put the money down before you know if you’ll turn a profit. It also keeps your wife from killing the project before you start, just because you don’t have the money and the kids need braces or something.

    Anyway, I’ll be following along. The module sounds like an enjoyable romp.

    Davids last blog post..Messing with Players

  19. So I thought I would start off some ideas for your fiendish endeavor,

    Have the Kobold PCs first start there lives running the Gauntlet of Trappe Traps, Everyone knows that these are the ugly ducklings of kobolds and some one needs to run through and test the trapped rooms, and defenses of the strong-hold, funny thing is that because these PC Kobolds have been doing this soo long they have picked up some useful abilities, (e.g. class levels) and are pretty good at running the dungeon. Everyone can do non lethal damage, and it lets you run some neat encounters.

    If they lose, everyone still thinks they are losers, If they win everyone dislikes them because they cheated some how ( when really they are just mad because if the ugly duckling Kobolds can beat their traps then any stupid adventurer can) This can lead to three different hooks

    Hook: PC kobolds are allowed to stay with the Kobold community, but are constantly slighted about their inability to be helpful, or useful to the community. (If the try to prove it by fighting, have the large pack of kobolds surround them, because kobolds do not attack without numbers, if they try to prove with tasks make them impossible tasks.) At one point some kobold may mention the “impossible task” of taking on adventurers head on.

    Hook: During the trap encounters, have a dead adventure body lying stripped, of everything useful, but there is a half a map of the dungeon, the important thing to that map is the seal that is located on it. This gives reference to a sigil of a town that it came from or a person who made it. This can come up later or sooner.

    Hook: The Trap Maker needs new parts, he does not trust the PCs to get for him, but it is a good ploy to get these useless whelps away from the community, so he makes two lists one he gives the PCs to find for him, the other he keeps to go and get the real parts. (This would work with equipping the PCs some.)

  20. @Dasis: Those are incredibly good ideas! Thanks for sharing them!

    Just so you all know, the Adventure Plan is already written up and will go up tomorrow night… but some of your ideas would fit perfectly for a possible ‘what if’ hack of the adventure! And at least one could definitively flesh out Scene 1 of the adventure.

  22. Per our discussion, Phil, I call dibs on the Pathfinder system. I’ll be looking at your 4e offerings in the furutre, but right now Pathfinder is the only game I play. Oh, and Deadlands.

    In fact, the old Deadlands system might be ghreat for a game like this, also.

  23. @Darvin: Lol!

    @Steven: The Iron DM joins Kobold Love! I’m honored and humbled (and I’ll totally kick your Iron butt next year!)

  26. Count me as “interested but horribly aware of constraints on his time”. 🙂

    If everything else permits, I might have a go at adapting this for Babylon 5 with Pak’ma’ra protagonists.

    … and as my sanity drains away, I wonder if I could do Call of Cthulhu too …

    David Dorwards last blog post..Pathfinder Game One

  27. Finally up-to-date since last time I commented here… Yay!

    Fast thoughts:
    – I like Kobolds
    – I like the CreativeCommies (:P) philosophy.
    – I like the Open Design whole idea.
    – I like Canada, specially Quebec (and I’ve been there!). [Bonus points!]

    Fast conclusions:
    – You have one more supporter here 😉
    – I don’t think I can afford neither the necessary time and money to be one of your patrons, but I’ll be really aware of its progression and, if I like it, maybe I’ll be one of your first customers.

    Read you soon!

    Aritz

  28. I think this is a great idea and should be a lot of fun, but just so you know, the kobold theme was explored previously with the publication of Bards and Sages’ Koboldnomicon (to which I submitted a few small bits) and the accompanying adventure Night of the Zombie Kobolds! Nevertheless, kobolds need love and I’m happy to see they’re getting it.

  29. @Pseudodragon: Wait till you read Scene number 5 tomorrow… it will all become clear why I chose Koblods…

    Plus Kobolds are pet creatures of both Wolfgang Baur and Mike Mearl who some think sit on opposite ends of the fluff/crunch continuum. So it’s a great symbol.

  32. I’d start with Onebookshelf (RPGNow and DrivethruRPG.com), there’s also a newer, smaller player (yourgamesnow.com ?) and then there’s Steve Jackson’s area 51 electronic store.

    All these need you to surrender a part of your proceeds to them in exchange for better distribution and visibility and customer reviews.

    Then there’s direct sales by installing a Store on your website…

    Or do like Wolfgang did and instal a Pay Pal donate button and email the file on payment.

    My 2 cents.

  34. I love this idea. I’m going to see if I can hack it into my pet game system, and I’m passing it along to my gaming group, who in turn will (possibly) hack it into Starwars d6, D&D3.0, AD&D, and possibly a couple others. This ought to be fun!

  35. @Aaron: Great! Please inform me here or on my Email if and when you officially join if you want to run for prizes and where you will post your work.

  36. Greetings from the clockwork empire that is Kobold Quarterly/Open Design!

    We of the Wolf’s Gang are appalled by all the love kobold’s are getting over here! I hereby volunteer to show those pathetic runts a firm hand… with a stick in it (and nails in the stick). If you’re going to be nice to a Kobold, make sure you only do it once a Quarter!

    Joking aside, this is a great idea Chatty. As soon as Wolfgang’s posted this news, I was ready to jump onboard. Since I’m in an Indie frame of mind right now (err…independant, not Dr Jones), I’d like to propose Seven Leagues as my Kobold Love system of choice.

    I promise I’ll be nice to them 😉

  37. That’s great news Dan, I’m happy that a fellow Open Design fan jumps in (I’ve been a patron twice, I just remain in the shadows and let Wolfgang work his magic).

    I’m updating my Interlude page right away!

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