RPG Books
Here are some of the Game books I have written (or contributed to), designed, and published via print on demand. My work in User Experience means that I spend quite a bit of time thinking about the book as a information device, and how it needs to function both as a book to read for understanding, and as a reference tool in the heat of a game session. A lot of my focus is on physical notebooks, as RPG game sessions are ephemeral and often the notes, doodles, or scribbled maps are the only physical evidence that the experience ever happened.
Foxfield Journals and Miscellany
The Foxfield Journal came out of my love of the Japanese Hobonichi daily planner, combined with the need to take detailed notes in my Call of Cthulhu campaign. So the journals are designed using the 1920s diary vernacular, and are accurate for dates in the 1920s where each one covers a year. They also include era correct US Holiday and religious holidays, lunar phases, and eclipses. (incase that in important in the game.)
There are both calendar year versions and academic year version, (since I was running a campaign with Miskatonic University Student PCs.)
The line covers 1922-1926. If there is interest, I’ll complete the decade.
Learn more at Foxfieldpress.com
Penn’orth Gothic
Penn’orth Gothic was a bit of a pandemic project. I got interested in Letter writing as a pastime, and was taken with two existing games: English Eerie and De Profundis. So Penn’orth gothic is a epistolary game where the two players write in character through the post, describing their gothic adventures.
I created a special deck of cards to act as the oracle for key dramatic events along with a die and flipping coins.
The design, writing, art, deck design, etc. were all hand created by me.
Interstellar Overthruster
Interstellar Overthruster is a A5 booklet that gives rules for procedurally generating star systems on the fly that more or less fit with the original space opera game’s mechanics.
Rather than having to memorize a vast prewritten universe, the PCs are explorers and even the GM is surprised by what systems, worlds and strangeness they encounter with just a few rolls of the dice.
I designed and wrote the system, as well as the layout and cover design.
interior illustrations are by Ezra Claytan Daniels.
A Star For Queen Zoë
A Star For Queen Zoë is the campaign framework to go with IO. Inspired by ‘post-breakdown’ SciFi stories from the 1960s, it sets up a starting location for the PCs to use, as well as a cruical mission for them to accomplish.
I designed the print version of the book to be a ‘double book’ where the reader can flip it over and start reading the other book from the back.
Albatross Hexbooks
The Albatross Hexbooks were one of my first game products. Inspired by the Powers of 10 as well as 1980s Trapper Keepers, I made a series of POD notebooks for creating a hex grid map that scaled from planetary scale, down to an individual 6 mile hex.
Eliene Dubh: The Black Isle
Back in the old days of Google+, a RPG circle in the OSR vein grew up around Tenkar’s Tavern. And a those folks had the idea of taking a simple hex map of an island and letting members ‘claim’ a hex to develop however they wished. A lot of great content was generated, that sat on the G+ server.
I volunteered to take on the task of pulling all of that content together and laying it out into a book. The result is Eliene Dubh: The Black Isle Gazetteer.
Each contributor drew or designed their own hex, and some included their own interior illustrations. I did the book design, layout and editing, but the only content I created for this was for my own hex: 15.13 The Lorn Coast. The cover art was created by the enormously talented Luka Rejec.