Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Darkness and Dread: Anyone have it?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="mearls" data-source="post: 1709174" data-attributes="member: 697"><p>You rang?</p><p></p><p>Darkness & Dread was an interesting, but at times frustrating, project. I originally intended it to be a stand alone, complete game, but that couldn't happen in the space I had to work with. For instance, the creatures chapter was supposed to be much longer, and I wanted to do 4 or 5 sample adventures instead of one.</p><p></p><p>The character classes were a risky choice - I knew that they wouldn't be useful to a lot of people, but for gamers who were new to the concept of dark fantasy they'd prove useful. A character class is a player's window on to the world. Nothing demonstrates the downshift in power to a player more than giving him a character class that isn't necessarily optimized for an adventuring career. Since horror games tend to have high PC fatality rates, I went with the classes to make character creation as fast as possible.</p><p></p><p>The adventuring vice has the reaction that I pretty much expected, and it mirrors a lot of the reactions to the stuff I've done for FFG: when in doubt, I tend to assume that the reader hasn't done this sort of thing before, whether it's running a planar game or dark fantasy. One of the issues I have with most sections of GM advice is that they focus on higher concepts and ignore practical, simple approaches that can directly influence a game. I call it the foreshadowing problem - a GM's advice section might say "Use foreshadowing to make your adventures cool" but it never actually explains how to do that. It's sort of a given that you know how to think, "OK, I'll have this big villain show up for a scene before mysteriously disappearing." No one ever says exactly how to do that.</p><p></p><p>The reaction to the advice section is pretty much what I expected - to people who already do this stuff, it's redundant. But, to people who haven't tried horror games before or haven't been happy with how their games have gone, it's very useful stuff. The way I see it, I'd rather design something that provokes a bifurcated reaction rather than one that makes nobody particularly happy. I guess I'd take limited success over universal mediocrity.</p><p></p><p>When I finished this book, I was intensely unhappy with it. I really wanted another 60 - 90,000 words to play with. I would've added a lot more monsters, a complete pantheon of gods, and a chapter on integrating horror into a standard D&D game.</p><p></p><p>The most important thing I walked away from this project with was a revelation about marketing. RPG books only show their real value after you've read one nad used it in your game. That takes a while. I think that RPG companies should be more aggressive in getting in-depth information about a release to gamers. I have this sort of marketing philosophy about this - I'd rather that someone who will end up not liking a book not buy it in the first place, and I want people who would like the book to know enough about it to make an informed decision and (hopefully) buy it. I have some ideas on how to do that, and I'm going to try to implement them for the Book of Iron Might, one of my projects for Monte Cook's Malhavoc Press.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="mearls, post: 1709174, member: 697"] You rang? Darkness & Dread was an interesting, but at times frustrating, project. I originally intended it to be a stand alone, complete game, but that couldn't happen in the space I had to work with. For instance, the creatures chapter was supposed to be much longer, and I wanted to do 4 or 5 sample adventures instead of one. The character classes were a risky choice - I knew that they wouldn't be useful to a lot of people, but for gamers who were new to the concept of dark fantasy they'd prove useful. A character class is a player's window on to the world. Nothing demonstrates the downshift in power to a player more than giving him a character class that isn't necessarily optimized for an adventuring career. Since horror games tend to have high PC fatality rates, I went with the classes to make character creation as fast as possible. The adventuring vice has the reaction that I pretty much expected, and it mirrors a lot of the reactions to the stuff I've done for FFG: when in doubt, I tend to assume that the reader hasn't done this sort of thing before, whether it's running a planar game or dark fantasy. One of the issues I have with most sections of GM advice is that they focus on higher concepts and ignore practical, simple approaches that can directly influence a game. I call it the foreshadowing problem - a GM's advice section might say "Use foreshadowing to make your adventures cool" but it never actually explains how to do that. It's sort of a given that you know how to think, "OK, I'll have this big villain show up for a scene before mysteriously disappearing." No one ever says exactly how to do that. The reaction to the advice section is pretty much what I expected - to people who already do this stuff, it's redundant. But, to people who haven't tried horror games before or haven't been happy with how their games have gone, it's very useful stuff. The way I see it, I'd rather design something that provokes a bifurcated reaction rather than one that makes nobody particularly happy. I guess I'd take limited success over universal mediocrity. When I finished this book, I was intensely unhappy with it. I really wanted another 60 - 90,000 words to play with. I would've added a lot more monsters, a complete pantheon of gods, and a chapter on integrating horror into a standard D&D game. The most important thing I walked away from this project with was a revelation about marketing. RPG books only show their real value after you've read one nad used it in your game. That takes a while. I think that RPG companies should be more aggressive in getting in-depth information about a release to gamers. I have this sort of marketing philosophy about this - I'd rather that someone who will end up not liking a book not buy it in the first place, and I want people who would like the book to know enough about it to make an informed decision and (hopefully) buy it. I have some ideas on how to do that, and I'm going to try to implement them for the Book of Iron Might, one of my projects for Monte Cook's Malhavoc Press. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Darkness and Dread: Anyone have it?
Top