Monty Haul #1 is Alive and Kicking

You can scuttle over to DriveThruRPG right now and pick up a copy here!

Monty Haul #1 is a 'zine dedicated to expanding your options for fantasy table-top role-playing. Issue 1 focuse on magic-users and includes campaign notes on creating magical cities that feel magical, new archetype options for warlocks (the King in Yellow patron), sorcerers (Eldritch Ancestry), and Wizards (the school of Things Man Was Not Meant To Know). 

Two new backgrounds are aslo including, along with a new rule set for dealing with alchemists and apothecaries. A rules light NPC reaction system and a collection of magical pests to plague your mages with rounds out the issue. 48 jam-packed pages in all!

It's a kaleidoscope of usable options, written in a conversational style and grounded in the gaming days of yore. If by "yore" we're talking about the early 1980's, that is. Monty Haul is suitable for discerning DMs and players of the fifth edition of the world's most popular fantasy rpg. 

If you pick up a copy, please let me know what you think. Also, please consider writing a short review on the site. It really does help. Okay, I'm working on issue 2 as we speak! Lots to format. I may not get everything into the issue...what to do, what to do? 

Monty Haul Design Notes: Alchemy, Herbalism, and Poison

One of David Teniers; many paintings of medieval alchemists

I'm going to put a quick PDF doc here (because I like how it's formatted, and blogger will just make it look ugly, see) about what my thinking process was that led me to write new rules for alchemy in 5th edition. I wrote it originally for this blog, and so it's in my conversational style. I did this for a few reasons:

1. for those of you who don't know me, here's a pretty good snapshot of how I write, and also, how I approach game design.

2. Alchemists and Apothecaries are going to be one of the feature pieces in Monty Haul #1, and here's a bit of a preview.

3. The pdf is easier to distribute as a formatted object and it lets you download it now and read it later. Well, I do that; I don't know if anyone else does. But that's how I think, so, there you have it.

Here's the PDF link from my Google Drive: Design Note on Alchemy
Feel free to snag it and check it out at your leisure; it's a quick read. And if you are so moved to back my 'zine, Monty Haul, that would be great, too! It's already funded and right now I am flogging for stretch goals.

Running a Kickstarter is Hard Work

I now know what a helicopter parent feels like. I've been hovering over my computer, hitting the refresh wheel so much it's now just perpetually spinning like the top from Inception.

But there's a reason for the hovering: people expect updates, and things move pretty fast. It's not really scary, but it's certainly daunting. Oh, and there are questions to answer, as well. But it's all for a good cause, because...Monty Haul is a go!

Kickstarter is Live!

And despite a rookie mistake at the beginning (which not a lot of people saw since it was the middle of the night), we have pledges, too! If you'd like in on the action, you've got two weeks, starting today: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/markfinn/monty-haul-fifth-edition-zine-with-an-old-school-vibe

The Kickstarter is Nigh!

I love using "nigh" in a sentence, don't you?

Hey, just in case you missed the first notification, here's another one for you: the Kickstarter for Monty Haul, an old-fashioned RPG 'zine for 5e, starts on Wednesday, but YOU can get notified when it drops so as to not miss out. All you gotta do is follow the link below and throw your email into the gaping maw of the Kickstarter beast.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/markfinn/monty-haul-fifth-edition-zine-with-an-old-school-vibe

I will post major updates here, but if you want to stay tied into what's up with the KS, please back the project (even if it's just for a buck) and you can follow along with the updates I will be (hopefully) posting regularly in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks, oh my gentle readers. I'll see you on the other side.

Introducing my 'Zine Quest 2 Project: Monty Haul!

Last year, Kickstarter surprised everyone with a cool little event called Zine Quest, a celebration of the early days of Role-Playing Games and the 'zines that jump-started (and for a while, sustained) the hobby.

Their intention was simple: don't think, just do. Make a 'zine, old school, with folding and stapling and drawing and paste-up and so forth. Take two weeks to raise money for it. Then print it and move on to the next issue, or whatever your jam is.

It was very cool, and it produced some really interesting projects. I'm not the only one who thought so, either. In a stunning move that surprised absolutely no one, they are doing it again. And this time, I'm doing a 'Zine of my own. Meet Monty.