My current project is Curse of Aufgartz - A Savage Worlds Solo/GMless Game.
It is a dark fantasy story with a heavy Diablo 1 feel, offering several quests that you can tackle, and that will keep you busy for about one to four hours, depending on which optional rules you use.
Here's an early sketch for The Chainer, one of the agents of the Curse that you'll have to face in the game. Looks familiar?
The design goal is to make a game that you can play with no GM, alone or with a group.
It works a bit like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, because you make story choices and go back and forth through the book, and also a bit like a board game.
You choose which quests you want to tackle, in a structure that resembles a typical Savage Worlds Plot Point Campaign, with Plot Points and secondary quests.
Each quest is a two-page spread, and it does not ask you to flip the book back and forth. All the options, events and game contents are there in that two-page spread. You finish the quest, you return to Aufgartz (the "home base" chapter), and select a new one.
I'm so excited about this project because it involves more than writing a standard adventure. It needs a structure and and a set of procedures that will allow the book to function as a GM, using some tokens and trackers.
The current iteration of the game includes a single-sheet printout called Adventuring Journal, which features:
A Time Tracker, where you mark the passing of time. You mark boxes when you solve a Quest or as a consequence of some events. As time passes, more quests unlock, but the Curse also grows stronger.
A Quest Log, where you mark which quests are available and which you've already solved.
An Advancement Tracker, where you mark boxes as you complete certain quests or events. After a certain number of marks, you gain an Advance.
A Clue Tracker, keeping track of your success at unveiling the secrets of the Curse.
A table to roll random Curse Effects, which are triggered as you advance in the game and Evil spreads in the land.
All these bits work together fine... so far! But I'll sure need a group of playtesters to check how it works for good!
Eric Lamoureux is one of the voices of the Wild Die Podcast, and one of the brains behind Just Insert Imagination. As such, he’s designed a lot of stuff. His most recent hit is Wiseguys: The Savage Guide to Organized Crime, a Savage Worlds setting book that got launched with a successful kickstarter last year. To celebrate its one year anniversary, Wiseguys will be on sale for the whole month of September, so you should definitely take a look!
But who is Eric? Eric is a French Canadian living in the USA, a family man, and a person that strikes me as some kind of “well-adapted introvert”, which I have no idea what it is supposed to mean, but he sure is fun to talk to… or listen to, on his podcast. Plus, he's portrayed like this, Wiseguys style:
1 Hello Eric. Tell us about Wiseguys as if you were trying to sell it to your aunt!
It’s full of Italian recipes! hehe Wiseguys is Tarantino meets Ocean’s Eleven and Goodfellas. You play mob associates and soldiers trying to strike it big in Las Vegas in the nineties after the Giuliani led Mafia Commission Trials put all the godfathers back in New York behind bars and left Las Vegas ripe for the taking! It’s also a modern bestiary with over 100 NPC stat blocks, primers on 6 other crime syndicates, and setting rules to run heist and manage contacts that you can use in pretty much any other setting or genre.
2 Let’s talk about design. How long did you work on it? Was it a night job? How would you describe your creative process?
Wiseguys began with the adventure scenario published 4 years ago that followed the misadventures of five mobsters on a road trip in the Nevada desert with a body in the trunk of their Cadillac. People wanted more so Wiseguys was born.
I worked on Wiseguys for over two years part-time. I started by doing a lot of research. I wanted it to be about more than just Italian American men. I read countless articles and books and watched documentaries, tv-series, and movies. That’s where Tarantino influences came in with its strong female leads. That’s where I also learned that the Italian American Mob employed people of all ethnic backgrounds. This opened up the scope of the game and the characters that people could play quite a lot. If you look at the pregens included in the Jumpstart, you’ve got a Latina roller derby player, a black Elvis impersonator, and a former med student showgirl with a pet venomous snake. You can’t get this roleplay experience anywhere else! I then wrote the Demo Kit which was also a playtest document. I ran a playtest group, ran it at conventions, and also used feedback from a few playtest groups. After that came the Jumpstart which was more polished and used all that feedback and experience from the first year. This was pretty close to the final product. The last six months was a lot of grinding, rewrites, edits, and incorporating material from other writers.
3 Let’s get deeper into the design. Which was the hardest part of designing Wiseguys? And which was the easiest?
The hardest part of designing Wiseguys was to decide what made the cut. I ended up with way more than the 180 pages included in the final version. Managing the whole project from writing to managing the Kickstarter campaign to art direction was also quite the challenge. There were about 20 people working on this project from writers, editors, proofreaders, layout, graphic designers, and artists. The easiest part for me was probably running the playtest. It was a lot of fun.
4 Let’s talk about the Kickstarter that launched Wiseguys. How do you rate this experience? What have you learned?
The Kickstarter campaign was an amazing experience. It was my first project and it was quite stressful; I didn’t want to disappoint anyone. I’ve learned that we, at Just Insert Imagination, have the support of the Savage Worlds community and we’re so grateful for that!
5 Are you currently working on something? Can you tell us about it?
I’m currently working on two freelance projects. However, I’ll let the publishers talk about them when they’re ready.
Morne and I at Just Insert Imagination are currently exploring mini-settings for Savage Worlds. One is an urban fantasy setting that takes place in Cape Town, South Africa where Morne is from. The other one is a stone & sorcery setting where cavemen must save their homeland from cosmic threats. Think Genndy Tartakovsky,s Primal meets the Cthulhu mythos.
6 If you could buy any franchise and make an RPG of it, what would it be? Tell us about the franchise and the game you’d make out of it.
That’s a tough one! I think the Chronicles of Riddick series would work great in Savage Worlds with planets trying to kill you and the Necromongers being the secondary antagonists. I’d design a deadly planet generator for sure! The other one would have to be the Evil Dead franchise. Savage Worlds would be a great fit for Evil Dead’s campy and slapstick style.
7 Let’s see how good you really are as a role player. You are a Hollywood screenwriter, and you must now write a five lines email to convince Mr. Warner Bros to produce a movie based on one of Mr. Lamoureux’s adventures or settings. Go.
I would spike my hair straight up, show up unshaven and rant on about explosions, the underdogs taking on a bully, big guns, exotic location, and six-pack abs! So...Do we have a deal?!
9 Talking about Savage Worlds, you are quite the authority. Which are your top three settings? Actually, I’m pretty sure one is Beasts and Barbarians, right? So tell us about the other two.
Yeah, Beasts & Barbarians has been a steady top 3 for me since the day it came out and satisfies my cravings for sword and sorcery stories.
The other two are very seasonal. Right now I’m quite enjoying Deadlands: The Weird West. It has a lot of depth and is quite versatile. Some people play it as a straight-up western, others use the horror elements, while some play it as a spaghetti western. I’m on an Arabian Nights kick right now so I’m quite enjoying reading Hellfrost: Land of Fire.
10 One last question before we say goodbye. Please point us to a song you think we should listen to.
Very few songs move me the way Jeff Buckley’s Lover, you should've come over does.
Thank you, Eric!
Thanks for having me, Giuseppe! Keep writing great games and doing this service for the community!
Gold & Glory - Seven Deadly Dungeons was my first project I designed completely by myself, crashing together my love for Savage Worlds and OSR games.
From the blurb:
Welcome to a world of legendary heroes and daring feats or, more probably, to a dishonorable story of ill-fated treasure hunters who’ll soon bite off more than they can chew… unless they manage to return home with enough gold to carouse wildly until their next expedition!
Gold & Glory is a toolbox, to enjoy the Fast, Furious and Fun rules of Savage Worlds in a game of classic dungeon exploration, in the spirit of the Old School Renaissance, with no other book needed besides Savage Worlds Adventure Edition.
It is ideal to play one night games as well as longer campaigns and allows you to play with no preparation at all. Gold & Glory: Seven Deadly Dungeons includes:
A random character generation system to start playing in no time
New equipment for dungeon delvers
Magic and Miracles Arcane Backgrounds to create classic arcane characters in the FFF spirit of Savage Worlds
Downtime activities such as Carousing and Magic Research, tied to the Experience system, to keep your heroes busy between one expedition and the next
The Dungeon Deck system to generate your dungeons while you play
Seven deadly self-generating dungeons for your heroes to explore!
More than 30 new monsters to face and a heap of magic items to loot!
All Gold & Glory interior art and covers are by ink master Francesco Saverio Ferrara (check his works on Facebook!), and we also used some maps by acclaimed map artist Dyson Logos to complement the layout.
Gold & Glory has received a widely favorable reception, with several dozens of five-star reviews, both for the SWDeluxe and SWADE version.
Even now that two years have passed since release, I must admit I'm really happy and satisfied with how the random character creation system works. That, and the Dungeon Deck that generates thematic dungeons while you play, are two of my most accomplished designs, in my view.
Design aside, I'm also happy with the variety of the seven dungeon adventures I squeezed into the book, a mix of vanilla fantasy, dark fairy tale, and horrific visions. They range from the rather classic swamp temples of the Serpent Shrines and the abandoned dwarven city of the Dwarf Prince Demise, to the Moldy Caves, infested with undead bandits and moldy abominations, to the non-euclidean Witch House with its grim fairy tale vibes, to the verdant, puzzling nightmare that is the Green Maze, to the steampunkish, ooze-infested Iron Vat, to the Hellraiser tribute that is the Halls of Pain.
And thanks to the Dungeon Deck system, each of those will play different every time, with a unique map and always new combinations of events, hazards and rewards.
The Gold & Glory book is also expanded with the following:
Solo, GMLess and One-on-One Adventures: A supplement with rules, options and suggestions to play with no GM. The obvious complement to a system that is already prepless on its own! It also features an Abstract Clues system and options for hired Allies, which can be used in any type of fantasy games!
The Old School Gaming Guide: A guide aimed at explaining the core concepts of “Classic Dungeon Games” and how they interact with the Savage Worlds rules through the Gold & Glory book!
The Dungeon Template: simple empty form organized with all the infos and tables of the G&G dungeon format, which you can fill with your own unique creations.
The Character Sheet Pack: A character sheet specifically designed to make character creation ultra fast, with checkboxes for all the main results of the G&G random creation system.
And then there's a whole lot of dungeon adventures written by guest authors such as Diogo Nogueira, Richard Woolcock, Andrea Mollica, and Courtney Campbell... but the "deadly dungeon hosts" will be the subject of another post!
