Orbit have revealed the cover of THE DUNGEON BOOK (out August). They’re also going to be releasing this as a hardback first in the UK, with the paperback coming out in 2027.(US is just paperback, at least for the mass-market edition - there’ll be other forms available). We’re currently working on picking a reader for the audiobook and…, er, other things I dare not speak of. Yet.

Edel’s done art for each of the chapters. Over on their instagram feed (between the BTS bits), they talk about the various images and the process of creating them.

As usual, pre-orders are very much appreciated.

The Merryshire Detective Club has gone through the first round of public play testing, and emerged the stronger for it. The single biggest bit of feedback was that the introductory scenario was too much of a Tolkien parody, so after some debate the decision was made to stick in a second scenario, Slaying the Wagon, which is about the literal disruption to village life caused by the arrival of a dwarven steam car. And then Tollers gazumped me with The Bovandium Fragments, so you’ll have a choice of the blatant Tolkien parody or the much more oblique one…

Writing on The Dreadful Hare continues, but right now I’m having lots of fun working with Jog Brogzin on the maps for the core book.

Merryshire should be going to crowdfunding later in the year - probably July or August. (Sometime after Ballad Hunters is done.) I just put up a blog post about its inspirations.

Also out from Pelgrane of late - the long-expected Paragon Blade. GUMSHOE Fantasy One2One, with talking weapons and intrigue and mystery!

I’ll be a guest at Octocon here in Cork in October, which I’m really looking forward to. It’ll be lovely to have a SFF con free of worrying about hotels and travel logistics.

I’m also showing up at the new Dagdacon, and doing a Scéal session entitled No Man But A Blockhead Ever Wrote Except For Money. I’ll also be running Orc and Pie for Merryshire and a two-project Titanium City one-shot for Terraforming Mars.

(Also, I’ll be at Dinocon as one of the twins is obsessed with palaeontology, and I brought his brother over to Epic Rap Battles of History a few years ago. But that’s neither fiction nor gaming-related)

Project roundup time!

TERRAFORMING MARS: Behind where it should be in word count, but much more interesting a game than expected. I’m running a playtest at Dagdacon later in the month.

BREAKING GED: The current novel. Beginning to come together. Now that PSYCHIC ICEBERG PILGRIM’s off my plate for the moment, it’s full speed on this.

PSYCHIC ICEBERG PILGRIM: Unfinished draft sent; there are three sections left to do, and then it’s polishing and revising and pulling it all together.

FISH STEW: Still research and editing. Plan is to finish off PSYCHIC ICEBERG PILGRIM, blast through the last DREADFUL HARE scenario, and then get going on this.

PALE KING: Not happening, alas. Getting all the above finished this year will be hard enough!

WEIRD HOLE: Oh, this one’s been announced! Whoops! It’s TUNNELS & TROLLS: A New Era! It’s crowdfunding and stuff right now!

METADUNGEON’s also crowdfunding right now, and has stomped through its initial target, which is surprising and gratifying. I can’t imagine anything more niche than “a metatextual game based on the terrible business decisions of nerds”, but apparently it’s not that niche. Or a lot of wonderful, beloved nerds have made mildly questionable financial decisions by choosing to back it.

We had the launch livestream, which was a lark. Always fun to babble about game design on the fly.

I’ve done a bunch of promo: you can find me on Advanced Age RPGs and The Billowing Hilltop and All Year I Dream About Game Conventions and Ron Talks Tabletop.

I’ll also be on the Page One Podcast this week (episode out friday).
Oh, and Die: Loaded #6.

There’s also this lovely video.

How about a podcast without me in it? The Grognard Files did a longish episode about The Pirates of Drinax.

Over on the One Ring discord (hello people who read this newsletter for One Ring news), the erudite Chris Gardiner talked about his experiences running Those Who Tarry No Longer, an old scenario of mine from Tales from Wilderland. That led into a discussion of Chris’ Darkening of Mirkwood campaign, and me rashly promising to write something about “stuff we can’t put in the books but you can put in your games”. Official™ Published™ sourcebooks have to be fairly conservative in terms of making stuff up and extrapolating from Tolkien. Some players want the books as reference materials; others want to play in the “real” Middle-earth. So, the published books have to play it safe - but I’d encourage those playing their own home campaigns to mix things up a bit. One of the virtues of playing in a setting like Middle-earth is that everyone knows the key elements and even has a rough idea of the geography, everyone’s already taken Middle-earth 101, so you skip the introductory material and jump right to the fun what-ifs.

What-if Saruman never fell? What-if agents of Umbar tried to foment a revolution in Gondor? What-if Balin’s expedition survived? What-if we’re playing Faramir’s Rangers?

My GMing philosophy has always been “chase player enthusiasm” - to borrow an example from Chris’ game, one of the PCs there is apparently an illegitimate son of Bard the Bowman and so is a potential claimant to the Kingdom of Dale. Obviously, that Doesn’t Happen in Tolkien, but it’s a plot that engages and enthuses the players, and doesn’t invalidate or change anyone’s preconceptions of Bard. It’s reshuffling and adding to existing elements, but isn’t invalidating them or adding new stuff that doesn’t fit.

How much, then, is too much?

To a degree, Tolkien shows us the way with his rewriting of Riddles in the Dark. He makes the changes to the story as it was then, but leaves the rest of the book intact. If you deviate from Tolkien’s story with your what-ifs, leave the wider world unchanged. Make whatever changes you need, but when considering the ramifications of those changes, lean towards those that would push the rest of the world back towards Tolkien’s conception of it. Again and again when doing One Ring stuff, I return to Gimli’s speech about the Glittering Caves:

“We would tend these glades of flowering stone, not quarry them. With cautious skill, tap by tap – a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole anxious day – so we could work, and as the years went by, we should open up new ways, and display far chambers that are still dark, glimpsed only as a void beyond fissures in the rock.”

Chase Enthusiasm/With Cautious Skill. Seek those far chambers.

Right. I need to cram an insane amount of writing into April, so off I go to the word mines with only the briefest of glances at the burning hellfire that is the news.

CURRENTLY READING: I went on this stupid modernist tangent, starting with THE WASTE LAND: A BIOGRAPHY OF A POEM, and then reading a history of the Golden Dawn, and now slogging through CONSTELLATION OF GENIUS about 1922. Also a reread of GAME WIZARDS and SLAYING THE DRAGON, then back to another PLAYING AT THE WORLD reread.

Also rereading John Higgs’ KLF book.

CURRENTLY WATCHING: Invincible. And the new Taskmaster.

CURRENTLY PLAYING: I got Fate of the Fellowship for my birthday, which is great. Also back to Mythic Bastionland with the Tuesday group. I’ve fallen into a series of indie one-shots at the Cork D&D Meetup, playing Girl Underground, Sagas of the Icelanders and Wanderhome.

Very much not downloading the new Slay the Spire. See above re: writing deadlines.

Gareth