Let's Review

No, not that kind of review -- that's another part of the site.

In April, I launched this website and started doing this (almost always) weekly column. I wanted the website to be a place where I could post updates to what I'm doing and display game material that I came up with. This column was meant to just be about whatever it was that was on my mind that week. I guess, for some reason, what's on my mind this week is looking back a little.

It's been half a year already (a little more actually). A lot has changed. Malhavoc Press was born at the very end of May, with The Book of Eldritch Might as an experiment. The experiment took off like I never dreamed. Suddenly, I'm producing my own imprint with a line of products. Suddenly, I'm going to come out with print products, distributed by Sword & Sorcery. Suddenly, the work I'm doing for other people as a freelance game designer isn't my primary source of income, nor is it my main focus. My own products are.

I've said before what thrill it is that I can create the d20 products that I want and publish them myself -- no managers or marketers changing this or that. It really is great. PDF products, I predicted back then, were going to become really big.

And now, look around. They're everywhere. When I started, I surfed around online to find someone selling game PDFs. They just weren't there (there were three, actually -- but only two of them were RPG products, and only one was d20). Things are changing so fast.

When I left Wizards in April, I was still finishing up Call of Cthulhu d20. That comes out early in 2002, and I'm quite proud of it. It was a real challenge -- I was the lead designer for no fewer than eight designers and two editors all working on a single project, even though never once were we all in a room together. There were three different creative directors. Yet now, thanks to hard work on everyone's part, it's all come together into a cohesive whole.

Then I worked on the aforementioned Book of Eldritch Might, a labor of love. Full of ideas that had been sitting around in my head for a while, or had worked their way into my campaign, The Book of Eldritch Might saw a fair bit of informal playtesting but really took very little time to write. It really just sort of poured out onto my keyboard.

After that came a D&D project for Wizards of the Coast that I cowrote with Sean Reynolds. I can't tell you much about it yet (and that's quite frustrating, believe me), but working with Sean was fun. He's a creative guy. and I think we came up with some really original work together. It's a product unlike most of the others you've seen from Wizards. I just wish Wizards' schedule wasn't completed so far in advance. Some products that I wrote after this one are already out, or will be out very soon, yet I can't even tell you the name of this one. Oh well. Wish I could.

Beyond the Veil, an adventure for Atlas Games, came after that. Well playtested and another labor of love, this was another fast and fun job. I know people have been observing that lots of dragon-themed adventures are coming out lately, but this one is a pretty different take on your typical dragon encounter. It's the sort of thing I've always wanted to do. It's not your father's (or your 2nd Edition character's) dragon hunt. It comes out in December. Oh, and have fun trying to get a straight word out of the insane monks you have to deal with. Those two are a joy to GM, but to deal with as a player? Whew.

Demon God's Fane, another adventure -- this one for my own Malhavoc line, came after that. I've already devoted whole columns to the playtesting and development of this module. It is one of the highest-level d20 adventures currently available, and that made it fun to work on. I like all sorts of adventures and design, but occasionally it's great fun to just open up and go wild with a high-level, high-challenge adventure like Demon God's Fane.

Once that was up for sale, I began working on another "secret" project for Wizards. This is a huge book, and so I'm still working on it. It is something that I know a lot of people are going to like, because it contains things that I've heard people asking for since I first went to work at TSR in 1993. It's a supplementary rules product, but it's not like one of the class books or anything else that Wizards has released. I'm looking forward to this one being announced so I can talk more about it.

I took a break for a while in the middle of that project to write Queen of Lies for Fiery Dragon Productions. This was so much fun. While I love Beyond the Veil and Demon God's Fane, I think I liked Queen of Lies even better. It's a loving homage to my favorite 1st Edition adventure, D3: Vault of the Drow. Now, what I mean by homage is not a "return to" or a "redo." (I did one of those, for my second favorite 1st Edition adventure -- Temple of Elemental Evil -- already.) Even if I had wanted to do that, I couldn't -- this was a d20 product. (And here's a secret: I did a "return to the Vault of the Drow" already for Wizards -- it's hidden inside the adventure Dead Gods). No, Queen of Lies just captures the feel of Vault of the Drow, with its terribly decadent, despicable dark elves and their spider-filled, demonically decorated underground lairs.

Remember how the drow nobles in D3 used to hunt riding on subterranean lizards, using displacer beasts as hunting animals? Wasn't that cool? That's the feel, I hope, of Queen of Lies. And the big lie of the title character is a pretty creepy surprise, but I don't want to give any spoilers away. The module comes out in March.

Somehow, during all that, I've written some adventures for the official D&D website, I've put a bunch of prestige classes in my column in Dragon, and I've even done the scripts for the silly (but fun) Miniatures Playhouse for the D&D miniatures website, too. Unfortunately, the Playhouse feature is probably gone (someone without a sense of humor caught wind of it), but it was fun while it lasted. (You can find links to all this stuff on my bio page.)

But it's not been all d20 for me, either. Over the last six months, I've been developing two new games for WizKids -- one for DC Comics characters and one for Marvel Comics characters. Both are miniatures battle games not unlike Mage Knight (a really cool game, if you haven't tried it out), and both come out next year. I'm still working on both of them, although Marvel is a little farther along. At the risk of this all starting to sound like catalog copy (sorry about that), if you're a big comics goob like me, you might want to check them out.

So that's my year so far, and -- unless something drastic changes -- that's pretty much the rest of my year as well (I mentioned that the D&D product that I was working on right now was BIG, didn't I?) The Book of Eldritch Might II: Songs and Souls of Power comes out in February, so I'll be doing some preliminary work on that between now and the end of the year, of course. Meanwhile, I'm eagerly awaiting the release of the print version of The Book of Eldritch Might -- I just saw the page proofs, and they look great! Find it in stores in early December.