April TTRPG Maker: The Next Half-Dozen
First six responses are over here.
7. Your workspace.
PC, because Melissa and I use Google Docs for writing, collaboration, and feedback, Photoshop for art, and InDesign to lay everything out. Sometimes I'll draw maps on sheets of graph paper and scan them, but other times I just do them entirely in Photoshop. So, yeah, mostly a PC.
8. Describe your routine.
I don't really have a routine. Web design and various farm stuff eats up a random amount of time (and can spring up sporadically). The stuff Melissa and I work on eats up a random amount of time. The non-work stuff we do eats up random amounts of time. When the kids get home from school they eat up random amounts of time.
When it specifically comes to RPG work we just do it whenever we can until we need to take a break, something else happens, or it gets late.
9. Describe your process.
I also don't really have a process. I write and draw whenever I think of an idea, and a lot of times I'll think of an idea while working on another idea: sometimes I just make a note of it in a big-ass Google Doc where I keep these scattered ideas (when they get big enough I put them in their own doc), and sometimes it causes me to completely switch gears and I end up working on this new idea for awhile.
But sometimes if I shift gears and start working on the new idea, that'll cause me to think of yet another idea, which either results in a quick note in the one doc, or I run with the new one. There's a lot of back and forth between ideas and art, which I guess has the advantage of preventing me from getting bored (though more than a few times I think I've thought of a new idea, but when I check my docs realize that I'd already thought of it before).
10. Favorite game to relax with.
Assuming you mean tabletop RPGs, the only one Melissa and I play with any regularity is Dungeons & Delvers. I wouldn't call it relaxing, but it's our go-to game both to play and write for (unsurprising since we designed it to do everything we wanted a d20 game to do).
We haven't play a board game in quite some time, but we mostly enjoyed Zombicide: Black Plague, Super Dungeon Explore, Arkham Horror, those D&D adventure games, and Takenoko (we picked up a Conan board game, plus Rising Sun and Mythic Battles, but that was just for minis and we threw everything else away). We've begun working on our own board game, because while we like the D&D ones there are aspects of them that bug the hell out of us.
For video games we play StarCraft 2 once or twice a day, and Diablo 3 whenever a new season starts (not much point beyond that, really, but if you play either hit us up). Used to play Tera but we've played through most everything a few times and are waiting for some new content to crop up (ideally a new starting area because the intro is boring).
Other than that most games I play have an actual ending, so I play them for however long it takes, put them down, and move on to the next one (it's pretty rare that I play through a game more than once, though it happened with Mass Effect 2 a few times). Just wrapped up The Evil Within 2, and have started Ni No Kuni II because our daughter kept pestering me about it, though God of War will likely pull me away for quite some time.
11. What's yer brand?
Assuming you mean company, Awful Good Games.
Assuming you mean games we primarily write and design for, that would be Dungeons & Delvers (both the d20 and dice pool versions). We started out designing classes for Dungeon World, along with a bunch of magic item books and some adventures (also A Sundered World), but have been slowing down on that in favor of our own games. We're still publishing for it, though.
Other than that, not really sure how to answer.
When we originally started publishing stuff for Dungeon World we just kind of did what everyone else was doing (ie, little to no art and/or creative commons art, and classes there were just a character sheet), but we quickly started doing more than the baseline, providing small books with our classes that included more content than could fit on the sheet (including items, compendium classes, variant classes, races, etc), and expanded and clarified content that we thought might be confusing or ambiguous (something I'm told that even our detractors started imitating).
I guess you could say that Melissa and I put a lot of time and effort into what we do, but we're always trying to do better (compare our early and current art: there's a huge difference), and I think it really shows even ignoring the fact that it's just the two of us doing everything: I think a lot of our stuff looks better than some Kickstarter projects with pretty hefty budgets. We also try to avoid cutting corners (I can't fucking stand blank spaces and especially entirely blank pages, among other things) and (over)charging people like a buck a page (or every 2-3 pages).
12. How do you get your work out there?
I blog and post our stuff on various social networks pretty regularly, let people know what we're doing, where we are, get feedback, etc. This can be difficult because some people for some reason reeeally hate it when some people post/talk about their own content, especially when they have the audacity to charge for it: apparently it's cool when other people talk about someone else's content, or when you're the "right" person, and maybe when you're offering it for free, though.
So, I guess if you like our stuff tell other people that might also like it!
You can now get a physical copy of Dungeons & Delvers: Black Book in whatever format you want!
After months of doing other things, we turned our attention to and released The Warden. It's based on the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons class of the same name, but judging by the responses we did an excellent job converting it over.
Dwarven Vault is our sixth 10+ Treasures volume. If you're interested in thirty dwarven magic items (including an eye that lets you shoot lasers) and nearly a dozen new bits of dungeon gear, check it out!
Just released our second adventure for A Sundered World, The Golden Spiral. If a snail-themed dungeon crawl is your oddly-specific thing, check it out!
By fan demand, we've mashed all of our 10+ Treasure volumes into one big magic item book, making it cheaper and more convenient to buy in print (which you can now do).
7. Your workspace.
PC, because Melissa and I use Google Docs for writing, collaboration, and feedback, Photoshop for art, and InDesign to lay everything out. Sometimes I'll draw maps on sheets of graph paper and scan them, but other times I just do them entirely in Photoshop. So, yeah, mostly a PC.
8. Describe your routine.
I don't really have a routine. Web design and various farm stuff eats up a random amount of time (and can spring up sporadically). The stuff Melissa and I work on eats up a random amount of time. The non-work stuff we do eats up random amounts of time. When the kids get home from school they eat up random amounts of time.
When it specifically comes to RPG work we just do it whenever we can until we need to take a break, something else happens, or it gets late.
9. Describe your process.
I also don't really have a process. I write and draw whenever I think of an idea, and a lot of times I'll think of an idea while working on another idea: sometimes I just make a note of it in a big-ass Google Doc where I keep these scattered ideas (when they get big enough I put them in their own doc), and sometimes it causes me to completely switch gears and I end up working on this new idea for awhile.
But sometimes if I shift gears and start working on the new idea, that'll cause me to think of yet another idea, which either results in a quick note in the one doc, or I run with the new one. There's a lot of back and forth between ideas and art, which I guess has the advantage of preventing me from getting bored (though more than a few times I think I've thought of a new idea, but when I check my docs realize that I'd already thought of it before).
10. Favorite game to relax with.
Assuming you mean tabletop RPGs, the only one Melissa and I play with any regularity is Dungeons & Delvers. I wouldn't call it relaxing, but it's our go-to game both to play and write for (unsurprising since we designed it to do everything we wanted a d20 game to do).
We haven't play a board game in quite some time, but we mostly enjoyed Zombicide: Black Plague, Super Dungeon Explore, Arkham Horror, those D&D adventure games, and Takenoko (we picked up a Conan board game, plus Rising Sun and Mythic Battles, but that was just for minis and we threw everything else away). We've begun working on our own board game, because while we like the D&D ones there are aspects of them that bug the hell out of us.
For video games we play StarCraft 2 once or twice a day, and Diablo 3 whenever a new season starts (not much point beyond that, really, but if you play either hit us up). Used to play Tera but we've played through most everything a few times and are waiting for some new content to crop up (ideally a new starting area because the intro is boring).
Other than that most games I play have an actual ending, so I play them for however long it takes, put them down, and move on to the next one (it's pretty rare that I play through a game more than once, though it happened with Mass Effect 2 a few times). Just wrapped up The Evil Within 2, and have started Ni No Kuni II because our daughter kept pestering me about it, though God of War will likely pull me away for quite some time.
11. What's yer brand?
Assuming you mean company, Awful Good Games.
Assuming you mean games we primarily write and design for, that would be Dungeons & Delvers (both the d20 and dice pool versions). We started out designing classes for Dungeon World, along with a bunch of magic item books and some adventures (also A Sundered World), but have been slowing down on that in favor of our own games. We're still publishing for it, though.
Other than that, not really sure how to answer.
When we originally started publishing stuff for Dungeon World we just kind of did what everyone else was doing (ie, little to no art and/or creative commons art, and classes there were just a character sheet), but we quickly started doing more than the baseline, providing small books with our classes that included more content than could fit on the sheet (including items, compendium classes, variant classes, races, etc), and expanded and clarified content that we thought might be confusing or ambiguous (something I'm told that even our detractors started imitating).
I guess you could say that Melissa and I put a lot of time and effort into what we do, but we're always trying to do better (compare our early and current art: there's a huge difference), and I think it really shows even ignoring the fact that it's just the two of us doing everything: I think a lot of our stuff looks better than some Kickstarter projects with pretty hefty budgets. We also try to avoid cutting corners (I can't fucking stand blank spaces and especially entirely blank pages, among other things) and (over)charging people like a buck a page (or every 2-3 pages).
12. How do you get your work out there?
I blog and post our stuff on various social networks pretty regularly, let people know what we're doing, where we are, get feedback, etc. This can be difficult because some people for some reason reeeally hate it when some people post/talk about their own content, especially when they have the audacity to charge for it: apparently it's cool when other people talk about someone else's content, or when you're the "right" person, and maybe when you're offering it for free, though.
So, I guess if you like our stuff tell other people that might also like it!
Announcements
You can now get a physical copy of Dungeons & Delvers: Black Book in whatever format you want!After months of doing other things, we turned our attention to and released The Warden. It's based on the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons class of the same name, but judging by the responses we did an excellent job converting it over.
Dwarven Vault is our sixth 10+ Treasures volume. If you're interested in thirty dwarven magic items (including an eye that lets you shoot lasers) and nearly a dozen new bits of dungeon gear, check it out!
Just released our second adventure for A Sundered World, The Golden Spiral. If a snail-themed dungeon crawl is your oddly-specific thing, check it out!
By fan demand, we've mashed all of our 10+ Treasure volumes into one big magic item book, making it cheaper and more convenient to buy in print (which you can now do).
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