Hello wonderful duet-ing friends and community,
I hope this post finds you well.
The beginning of the year is a difficult time for me as it was this time in 2021 that I lost my father. This was made worse in 2023 by my grandmother’s passing just before the new year.
As I’ve been dealing with that, Jonathan waited as long as he could to shield me from the upheaval happening in the D&D community with the leaked (though as-yet unconfirmed) update to the Open Gaming License (OGL), the agreement that allows us to publish D&D content while still maintaining rights over our own intellectual property (such as the world of Azuria, the Land of Vampires campaign, and the creatures we’ve invented using 5e mechanics).
But we hit a point a few days ago where he couldn’t wait anymore, and we’ve been working on a response and plan of our own since.
If you aren’t aware of the current situation and how it affects creators and gamers alike, there’s a great overview here. Jonathan and I have both signed the letter, and we would encourage you, if you agree and feel comfortable, to do the same. (We also like the Q&A part of this Reddit thread if you’d like a bit more context.)
As of the time of writing, we still don’t have an official announcement from Wizards of the Coast (the company who officially publishes D&D content), so we cannot yet say what our plans are for existing projects such as Land of Vampires, which we were hoping to run a Kickstarter for in Q2 or Q3 of this year.
There have been some really encouraging announcements from our friends at Kobold Press and their plans to create an open RPG. (You can find the announcement for Project Black Flag here. [And we also encourage you to support them and other third-party creators by purchasing direct, joining their patreons, etc. {If you’d like to support us, you can purchase direct from us here and join our Patreon here.}])
What we can do and say,
for the time being (because Jonathan and I do not like sitting around or handing over the reins of our business and storytelling) is that we’d like to ask for your help in an experimental new direction for our gaming products, one that is more focused on narrative and less on gaming mechanics.
I have been tinkering with experimental narratives and storytelling forms for a couple years, especially as I’ve gotten more invested in my own fiction writing, set in the world of our duet games.
Introducing Tabletop for Two and Campaign Sketches
We have a video series on YouTube called “Tabletop for Two,” and Jonathan and I thought that would also serve as the perfect name for a system-agnostic, narrative role-playing adventures and campaigns.
So what we’d like to share with you today is an example of what that would look like. We’ve been going back and forth the past couple days about whether or not you, our lovely readers and fans, would like these more open narrative frameworks or if you would prefer (or only be interested in) adventures and campaigns with explicit mechanics.
We can debate your reaction all we want, but it seemed much better to actually turn it over to you!
You won’t find “make a Wisdom (Perception) check” in this supplement or any stat blocks, but you’ll still find the story details and RP advice common in our work.
Without further ado, allow me to share our experiment: a system-agnostic adventure outline set in our world of the Storyverse, what we’re referring to, at the moment, as a campaign sketch. (There’s a button to download the PDF below the preview.)
The campaign, Journey to Vestige Lake, is still in progress but, what we’d like to accomplish by sharing this preview is finding out from you, our fellow duet-ing friends, what you like and don’t like about this new possible format for gaming.
Jonathan and I are so curious to hear your thoughts and if future supplements like this would be of interest to you.
We welcome your feedback, ideas, and suggestions. What more information would you need to make this work at your table, or do you like the narrative setup as-is?
Please share your thoughts in the comments below. We’re determined to keep creating for you, and we will. The question, at the moment, is if narrative-focused supplements like Journey to Vestige Lake are of interest to you, our community.
Thank you in advance for your time, attention, and help. We appreciate it so much!
Post Follow-Up
We really appreciate the feedback we’ve received so far. Please keep your ideas coming!
If you’d like to see a second example of what narrative, system-neutral adventures from us could look like in the future, please check out the follow up to this post and the beginning of The Last Dragon of Sanctuary!
If you like what you’re reading, please consider supporting the blog by purchasing our adventures and supplements in our shop or sponsoring us on Patreon. We appreciate you so much! Thank you for joining us on this adventure! – Beth and Jonathan
Javier Gostling says
Beth/Jonathan, I believe this system agnostic narrative content has strengths and weaknesses, as everything in life. As a DM/GM with 30+ years behind me, I would most likely have no problem taking it and running a game with it, coming up with mechanics and NPC/monster stats for my system of choice. This is usually how I design my own content, first come up with a story, then fill up mechanics. Your narrative content would provide the first part, which I find the toughest, leaving me to focus on the second.
However, I believe this type of content would be hard to consume by a less experienced DM/GM, and particularly so for a first timer. I’ve been toying with a similar idea you may want to consider. Complement your narrative content (what I call the Core Content), with System Specific Supplements that go into the specific mechanics for said system. In my vision, the Core Content tells the story, describes the setting, etc., and references sections of the SSS. The SSS in turn has numbered sections that can be referred from the CC, and maintain a consistent numbering across supplements for different systems, such that the CC references are correct no matter which SSS you are using. This way, a single CC story can have a D&D 5e SSS, a Pathfinder 1e SSS, a Rolemaster FRP SSS, etc. Together, the CC and an SSS provide the same content as currently published full adventure modules contain, which is what new or inexperienced DM/GMs need, while providing a strong framework for experienced ones to work their own personalized SSS if so desired.
The different SSS can be given out for free as they are essentially useless without the CC, while the CC can be distributed as per your standard distribution model. The CC would not need any type of external licensing if you are writing 100% original content, and the SSS while covered by licenses like OGL (whatever version) would generate no revenue, thus rendering it moot.
Hope this ideas help you keep producing your amazing content, for which I am deeply thankful to you.
Beth says
Hi Javier,
Thank you so much for your thoughtful and detailed message! I LOVE your suggestions for the CC and SSS, especially as a way of opening up the stories for adaptations for more systems!
And 30+ years as a DM, wow! I’ve had a similar concern with these narrative-focused materials for newer GMs, who do make up a substantial cross-section of our audience and who we love creating content for. I feel like the further we each are on our GMing journey, the more we know exactly what we need versus what we don’t. I like having a few stats to pull from, maybe an environmental mechanic, some pictures, and I’ll delve into the story from there. Jonathan and I have been talking about ways to not over-write (or not bog down what we’re making) for more experienced GMs, but I do think, as you’ve expertly explained, that it’s a balancing act between different types of GMs and their needs.
I really appreciate your feedback on Journey to Vestige Lake; we both really love the idea of having a core adventures with adapted stat blocks and mechanics depending on the system.
Do you think something like that would work better, across systems, with some mechanics in the CC part itself? And this question may not work as a hypothetic, so if that’s the case, I’ll wait till I have a specific example and we can try again. But some encounters and exchanges seem necessary to the narrative experience—without them, different tables would end up in a wide variety of directions—while others aren’t as high stakes. Or I guess what I’m asking is, in this setup, could you see a space in which we’d need to have our own mechanics, at least some of the time, to keep things universal across the systems? Or would that add more complexity than it alleviates?
Thanks again!!!
– Beth
Javier Gostling says
Hi Beth,
Getting back to you just now as I hadn’t checked back on the post before. Thanks you very much for your feedback on the CC+SSS idea. Getting feedback from someone who actually publishes content for other people this is very useful, as on my own I mostly toy with the idea as a means to reuse my own content on different systems, but my own intimate knowledge of the story may very well bias my appraisal of the idea.
As to your point on including your own mechanics in the CC to help drive the story, I believe it can be quite in line with the idea. As an example, a story section of forest exploration can have a random encounter table to roll on 2d6. If an entry is just narrative (i.e., a dragon flies overhead), it is just the text. Another entry that leads to combat (2 wyverns swoop down and attack) would reference a section on the SSS where wyvern stats are provided. Yet a third entry is an NPC the party can talk to, and this could have a mix of narrative such as what this NPC looks like, how she behaves, etc., system agnostic mechanics such as a 1 in 6 chance you just interrupted her while stalking a deer which affects her initial mood towards the party, and an SSS reference, where system specific social interaction mechanics can be described and combat stats are provided in case combat ensues.
More to the point, any mechanic that is story specific AND system agnostic can be included in the CC, leaving the SSS to deal exclusively with system specific mechanics. Care should be taken in following this approach that any mechanics included in the CC is indeed system agnostic and not tied to a specific system, but this can be mitigated by preparing an SSS for two or three very different systems (say D&D 5e, GURPS, and Rolemaster) which would put you in different mental frameworks when looking at the CC mechanics.
Should you attempt something like this I would love to see how it turns out. Don’t hesitate to contact me directly should you want to discuss these ideas in further detail.
Thanks!
– Javier