January 2025
January 2025: Announcement!
I delayed sending this newletter, because I was awaiting the official teaser, and here it is!
Get Ready for RiverBank: A cozy RPG of elegant animals, chaos, & whimsy
From Kobold Press - Get Ready for RiverBank: A cozy RPG of elegant animals, chaos, & whimsy
This is the project I have been designing and writing for the last little while, the thing I wasn’t really able to talk about. There’s still very little I can say, except that Kobold Press is publishing this tabletop roleplaying game, it’s mine, and it’s got Animals in it. Those of you who have read The River Bank might make some guesses about the sorts of things I could be doing.
A roleplaying game? What the hell? To my mind, it makes perfect sense. I played my first roleplaying games in the late 1970s—in fact, I went to my first gaming con (for military miniatures) in 1979, and my first Gen Con in 1982 or so, when it used to be held on a college campus in the middle of nowhere, UW-Parkside. Back then, there were perhaps two thousand attendees. The first games I played in were run by someone who in later years became a professor of anthropology, and someone who became a software designer in the south Bay area. Back in those palmy days, it was either AD&D (though we all knew the Chainmail rules, oh, yes we did), Chivalry & Sorcery, or a hybrid. (Well, there were also Runequest and some others, but I didn’t know anyone playing them.)
Life moved on and so did I. A few years later, when I lived in Eugene, Oregon, it was all Cyberpunk 2020 and a foray into Shadowrun. And then another move or two, a couple of years in book publishing and a couple of years in comics, and I ended up working at Wizards of the Coast, at first working on web games and managing a white-paper group, then doing continuity for Magic: The Gathering. (I wrote a lot of flavor text.) When Wizards bought TSR, I shifted to working on what became Third Edition, then was a creative director for Greyhawk. I started teaching fiction seminars and workshops for Gen Con somewhere in here.
And then I left WotC/TSR and went off to still other things, eventually ending up as a college professor. I wrote fiction, simultaneously a lot and not enough. I also wrote a lot of text for an RPG that isn’t out yet, Dreamland. After bad publishing news last December, I took a break and did a bunch of editing for various RPGs, and somewhoe, magically, this turned in to designing RiverBank. I will return to fiction after this, I can already tell—but this has been a much-needed break.
In some ways, I feel like this is the project I have been aiming at for years now. For the last while, I had been writing a lot of experiemntal works, trying to answer to my satisfaction the question of how to create immersion in strange places: ultrashort stories, odd forms, fiction without plot, without characters, without setting. Creating a roleplaying game is a little like writing Life: A User’s Manual (if you’re Georges Perec). It’s a little like creating any utopian novel: how could the world work, and why, and how? It’s a little like a book-length experiment in fiction, or a fictional experiment in social history.
So, what’s next? In February there will be a bigger announcement, where we do more than tease the idea. In March, we announce a lot more, and in April we start the crowdsourcing. My design and writing should be finished by then. I’ll keep you updated here, but meanwhile, sign up for the RiverBank newsletter!
Patreon
I added one patron, so I am up to 108. I also had a couple of people up their donations, which was incredibly nice of them. I am curious to see what happens next, with this game! And what happens when I start working on fiction again….
Workshops & classes
2025 Novel Architects Workshops are a Go! Barbara Webb (https://buttondown.com/bjwebb) and I are doing the Novel Workshop 6/29–7/12, and the Advanced Workshop for previous attendees is 6/15–6/28. We’re now accepting applications, so here’s the skinny: https://kijjohnson.com/teacher/
Chris McKitterick’s (https://christopher-mckitterick.com/) Ad Astra short fiction workshop will be 6/15–28.
Appearances
I know I’ll be attending World Con this year, in Seattle 13–17 August, 2025. Not sure yet about Gen Con, but that is also an option! details as I have them.
Projects in progress
(At last I can call it by its name!) RiverBank TTRPG [designer and writer] is underway. I have seen art! The Backerkit will be in April, probably.
The American Tour [author] novel is still in limbo.
Mystery Flesh Pit National Park: The RPG [editor] is in print! <https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ganzagaming/the-mystery-flesh-pit-national-park-rpg/posts>
Dreamland RPG [writer and editor] is still scheduled to launch on Kickstarter early next year, I think; details as I get them. <https://www.dreamrpg.com/>
I think that’s all for now! Let no ill thing arise, dear ones—
Kij