Ben Stovall Blog

Author: Ben Stovall

  • D&D: Your Boss Needs Minions

    D&D: Your Boss Needs Minions

    In my Running Dragons blog, I briefly mentioned the danger of an imbalance in the “action economy” during a boss encounter. A lot players coming into D&D might have their expectations for boss fights shaped by video games, where one extremely strong enemy takes on the party despite a numerical disadvantage. For your bosses in D&D, this is suicide.

    Even the game’s own mechanics for making this more available fall short. “Legendary actions” (special moves the boss monsters may take at the end of other creature’s turns) only go so far: a lone dragon with only the legendary actions listed in the official statblock will be destroyed by an appropriate level party without a problem. Hell, the two dragon encounters I’ve run in my current game both featured clusters of minions, and they were a tier above the players – at level 8, they fought an adult black dragon (a CR 14 monster), and just a few weeks ago, at level 14, they battled an ancient black dragon (a CR 21 monster). The party slayed both dragons with only one casualty between the two encounters (during the latter, and easily reversed with a Revivify).

    Part of that is because of some of the shortcomings that exist in the Challenge Rating (CR) system that we’ll get into in a moment. My table also consists of a lot of bona fide gamers that work hard to conserve resources and adequately prepare. They knew well ahead of time what kind of dragon lair they were walking into, and both times obtained some tools to mitigate the damage it could deal with its breath attack. All this to say that my advice here will not be good advice for every table: it could be that where I see failure in challenge ratings, they’ll be perfectly workable for your table. A crew of careful, calculating players, however, might want for a bit more difficulty when they roll for initiative.

    Here’s some tips to give them that.

    Reexamining Challenge Rating

    The first things to take to heart when trying to make a more challenging encounter for D&D is to take CR less seriously. It can be very useful for determining whether a creature is an accessible foe for your players at their level, but it doesn’t mean it can hold its own without allies. In the Dungeon Master’s Guide example of this, they mention a Rakshasa (CR 13) being something that might prove more difficult than you think against a party with its limited magic immunity trait, but with its low pool of hit points, any well-balanced group will annihilate one of these fiends no problem. I think the Rakshasa works best as a late tier 2 antagonist, for a party of 8th to 11th level, despite the spellcasters at this level having no ability whatsoever to damage the creature without some kind of physical weapon.

    And! With minions included in an encounter with a Rakshasa, your spellcaster players will have a valuable task to undertake once they know of its magic immunity while the more martial characters deal with the fiend himself.

    Perhaps the worst problem the challenge rating values suffer is how hard they crash the second your players obtain combat-oriented magic items. That fighter finding a +1 shield? Your barbarian getting a +1 greataxe? Your wizard finding a wand of the war mage? Banded accuracy is thrown out of a window.

    Your fighter is suddenly much, much more difficult for CR-appropriate creatures to strike. Your barbarian and wizard are both now landing their attacks much more often than the game was balanced around. Consider this: the scaling component included in the player characters’ power, their proficiency bonus, scales one point every four levels. An item granting them a +1 bonus accelerates them that much further ahead.

    Now, I’m not advocating for holding these items back from the party. Magic items are a lot of fun to have – especially homebrew items that are on the cusp of breaking the game. It’s just another factor that contributes to CR faltering in the mid-to-late stages of the game.

    Ultimately, I think bosses can comfortably sit a tier above a party playing strategically in combat and provide a healthy challenge. There’s a few cases that can cause that to fall short – spells that will pancake the player characters or attacks that deal an amount of damage they won’t be able to play around, but I think it’s easier to adjust those outliers than to try and scale a numerically-appropriate monster up to boss viability. I suppose that brings up another question …

    How Powerful Should the Minions Be?

    I generally include a creature or two very close to my boss’s listed CR as their lieutenants. In my ancient dragon encounter, I included a Blue Abishai (a CR 17 creature) as the primary lieutenant, with a homebrew dragonborn fighter opponent that I set at CR 11. The dragon and the abishai both began the battle away from the room’s entrance, hidden in the darkness of the cave, so the fighter and a few guard drakes (CR 2 creatures) were present to oppose the party while the big monsters got into position.

    The party ended up successfully locking the fighter lieutenant down with a Banishment spell, removing them from the battle until well after everything else had been handled. The abishai used its Greater Invisibility to fight unseen, but the players managed to break his concentration and used a Stunning Strike to keep him grounded long enough for his elimination. Even the additional bonuses I gave my dragon – an antimagic darkness zone lair action, an ability to use an action and legendary actions to heal if it was at its hoard, an immunity to movement speed reduction when using its Wing Attack legendary action – couldn’t make this monster powerful enough to battle the party alone.

    Create an array of additional enemies for your boss with a variety in their challenge ratings. Give them some chaff, weak monsters that can be eliminated with well-placed area-of-effect abilities. Give them an ally that’s dangerous, but wouldn’t be a problem without the heavier hitters in the room aiding them. And give them a powerful lieutenant almost as dangerous as the boss themselves to force a division of the party’s attention.

    Building Complex Encounters

    Another option for adding difficulty to an encounter is to ensure the goal isn’t just reduce all the enemies’ HP pools to zero. If every battle in the game runs that way, it can get stale regardless of the challenge you’re building. One of my most successful encounters in this campaign was earlier on (I believe they were around level 6, it was well over a year ago now). They had infiltrated the compound of an extremist group of zealots bent on using an ancient magic ritual to call radiant fury down on a village the party sought to defend. In that battle, I included a cleric NPC enemy as the boss, and calculated her to be about CR 9, gave her a martial ally based on an adjusted Champion statblock (down to what I thought to be CR 7), and a handful of CR 2 swordsmen and several priests. These priests, however, were first-and-foremost working on the ritual. The party needed to split their focus on interrupting the magic and defeating the dangerous enemies in the battle. Chapter 3 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide has several other ideas for diverse encounter goals.

    The trick to these kinds of encounters if to ensure there’s a clearly defined win condition for the players – but not necessarily one that you’re responsible to prescribe. Your players can deduce a lot about your encounters on the scant amount of information each dice roll will tell them. They can calculate where the enemy’s AC might lie, they’ll know when a foe is putting out more damage than they can sustain for multiple rounds, and they can react accordingly.

    That said, one of the hardest things for newer players to learn is when they should run from an encounter. There are some situations that truly become untenable, and unlike a video game where everything is usually balanced around you being able to overcome it with the tools you have to hand, some battles in D&D might just not be feasible for you to win. I was in a game once where at level 4 we came across an ancient white dragon (CR 20). I had the most experience of all the players at the table, including the DM (who had rolled the encounter from his module’s table) and I immediately knew we needed to split. If it weren’t for a successful saving throw and a ring that conferred resistance to cold damage, one of our party members would’ve been killed outright by the breath weapon. (But we all made it out with the clever use of an illusion and Rope Trick.)

    A Never-Ending Education

    By the very structure of its rules, D&D is a more combat-oriented tabletop RPG than other contemporary systems. Encounters are something you as a DM will spend a lot of time cobbling together. All of your dungeons, your factions, and your wildernesses will be expected to have their own unique array of enemies to overcome. And designing these battles is a process that will never run out of things to teach you, and not just because every table is different.

    At my table, it would be blasphemous were I to on-the-fly adjust an encounter I designed and make it easier. That doesn’t mean that design stops when initiative is rolled for every party. If you had enemies in reserve, but the players are getting thwomped just fine already, maybe they don’t need to show up. Maybe that high level spell slot lingering up their foe’s sleeve got used on something before this battle. My advice in these instances is to keep any of these adjustments under wraps, and whatever you do, don’t begin making tactical blunders that the enemies don’t have a justification to make. Nothing has killed a mood at my tables quicker than them being able to tell when a battle got easier.

    Don’t be afraid to try new things with your encounters. If it doesn’t work, that’s okay. There will always be another roll.

    As always, thanks for reading. Good luck out there, heroes.

  • RPGs: Introducing Your Villain

    RPGs: Introducing Your Villain

    Villains are integral to any great narrative. Whether they stand atop a battlefield and glare at your players, or they threaten them directly for a slight imposed, or if they are nothing more than a whisper on the lips of their soldiers in their final moments, your villain matters. But they need to do more than strike an imposing figure – if your characters never meet the villain, why would they care about him? Why would the heroes throw themselves into danger to stand between them and their goals? Why would their name ever pass the player’s lips with a hint of trepidation?

    There’s a delicate balance to strike, however. You could have the villain show up, blade (or spellbook) in hand and have him thrash your players in a deadly encounter with the intention being your characters performing a narrow escape – but that’s … risky. Playing through a no-win scenario (or a scenario with an unclear victory objective) often leaves a bad taste in players’ mouths. Once you let them know that the villain has hitpoints, they’ll think they can kill him. And what if the fight goes poorly? How many characters will they lose in the attempt?

    Or, even worse, what if they succeed? What if your villain who you’ve spent weeks preparing, whose plans will be the focus of the next several months of sessions, dies at their hands? What if they become the big damn heroes, the ones they’ve been working to become due to a turn of the dice?

    But your villain must do something. There must be stakes. In most stories, the heroes need to lose before they can win, but there must be a way for the players to accomplish some kind of victory; otherwise, it won’t incite fear against your villain, but frustration against the whoever’s behind the screen.

    So, what do we do? How can we pull off something this delicate?

    Defining the Stakes

    Number one: clearly define a path to success. If they can’t win in a fight, make it clear from the beginning – cause something that makes it clear they need to flee. Give them villagers to rescue and mooks to fight, don’t throw the villain and his lieutenants at the party. Two, don’t force the villain onto your players. Not yet. Have his stats ready but leave the decision to roll initiative to the players this time. The heroes aren’t even on your villain’s radar yet. Three, take something away from the players – now, I don’t mean steal their magic items or their armor; in fact, don’t try to take anything that has to do with playing their character away. Put a mentor or other NPC that the players have come to trust and love in mortal danger.

    As I mentioned in my Beginning the Adventure blog, I like to leave the first few levels of my games very open-ended. I lay seeds all around with various enemies and storylines to pursue, then either pick one the players have become invested in, or one that I’ve wanted to flesh out.

    In the game that went on to inspire Ebonskar, I focused on using hobgoblins. The eponymous general approached the game’s starting town, a fixture of the campaign for six or so weeks of play full of fun and loved characters, and he set the town to the torch. The characters woke in the early hours of the night to the scent of smoke and bright flames licking the buildings all around the home they’d come to know. People were screaming, the heat was oppressive, and hobgoblin soldiers (several types of which they had encountered in the early stages of the game) patrolling the streets with bloodied weapons in hand.

    This scenario met all my earlier criteria. The objective was immediately clear – one, save as many people as they can and escape the town before it’s death throes take them with it. Two, the general never even acknowledged the party until the end of the event, and by then there was a street covered in burning debris between them and him. Three, the town they’d spent most of the campaign with was reduced to ash, and only the NPCs they managed to save survived.

    When morning came and the villagers looked out at the burnt-out husk that had once been their home, the characters had a villain they hated, and they had become heroes to all they had saved. And as they learned what the hobgoblin general was after, they did all they could to stand in his way.

    The Visage of Villainy

    Another thing to consider is your villain’s appearance. Your players will assume a dozen things from that first glance they get of their foe – what kind of capabilities they might have, the way they might fight, perhaps even some guesses at the kind of things they value or idolize.

    From that first look at Ebonskar across the burning field, they saw him bedecked in black plate armor, they saw that nearly featureless ivory mask with its painted lines, and they saw his greatsword, sheathed on his back with no shield in sight. They knew immediately he was an in-your-face swordsman, aggressive and determined to strike his foes down. They’d learned a lot about the usual hobgoblin statblock, which meant the hints were there for how that might be emphasized for a soldier of his station.

    If your villain is a more subdued flavor of evil, present the places that disguised devilishness shines through. In my current campaign, an early-game villain was a zealot that had co-opted a benevolent deity’s doctrine for hateful and destructive motives. She looked disdainfully on the nonhuman members of the party – and the players were ecstatic when they finally had the chance to strike her down before she could accomplish her goals.

    This is your excuse to steal the spotlight for your villain. The players will have their moments, and they will be all the sweeter with a clear picture in their minds of their foremost opposition. Portraying a villain my players came to truly despise allowed them to latch on to pursuing their defeat both in-and-out of character. There is something to be careful of with that level of investment, however …

    Portraying Adversaries Vs. Being Adversarial

    As the game master, your role is to control all the bad guys. Sometimes you get to toss in a good guy too, but you’re almost entirely relegated to the forces opposing your heroes. But that doesn’t mean you’re actively working against the party. It’s a collaborative medium, and there’s a delicate balance between challenging the players and battling them.

    It’s something that can creep up on the table – you won’t always notice when it’s happening. A quick as-you-go rule of thumb is to remember that while you are trying to play the bad guys as faithfully as you can, you are at the heart of it all rooting for the players to succeed.

    Now, I allow the dice their seat at the table unshackled. If I were playing at a physical table with my current game, I’d be rolling in the open. But the players can still hear the excitement in my voice when they throw a wrench into the carefully laid plans of my antagonists. I’m always ready for something crazy to happen that I never expected. I’ve even played into some jokey antagonism when they slay one of the big monsters in a battle or lock it down with a loss-of-control effect to communicate how much I enjoyed their maneuvers to accomplish those ends. My players rise to the challenge time and again, as I set them against harder and harder foes week-to-week.

    I will often acknowledge it outside of game when just hanging out with my players, or even allow myself a little slip to say something to the effect of “we’re not out of the woods yet” when the tide is shifting into their favor in a battle. They know I want to see them overcome the deadly opposition I’ve designed, and knowing I’m in their corner while still allowing the dice to have their say allows the relief of every hard fought victory to be something the whole table shares.

    For my next post, I’ll be throwing together some tips to ensure you can construct a truly incredible encounter when it does finally come time to face those villains down. Until then, thanks as always for reading. Good luck out there, heroes.

  • April 2022 Irregular Update

    April 2022 Irregular Update

    It’s been about seven months since my last update post. I do believe these posts will continue to pop up irregularly, but getting at least two major updates out in a year seems like a fair minimum to reach for. So, here’s how it’s been going.

    Where are you on Red Watch 3?

    Some mixed news here. Shortly after revisiting the project, reading through what I’ve written and my outline, I ended up making some major revisions. I caught on to some glaring pacing issues, restructured how I was planning to present the chapters, and ended up with an entire storyline that proved to be too much for the book. I hope not to leave that hook hanging, though. When I’m getting my completed draft into the hands of beta readers, I might work on that plotline as a companion novella – something similar in scale to Thuna, but it likely won’t be included in the book for Red Watch 3 as a collection. I’m still adjusting some stuff, finding out what I need to rewrite in the new draft, and more challenges could end up coming down the pipeline, but I’m making progress.

    It’s undoubtedly the most ambitious thing on my plate. I’m needing to be more considerate of how to keep the plates spinning with all that I set up in the first two Red Watch books and bringing everything forward in a satisfying way. I’m hoping to get a draft in the hands of my beta readers this year. I’m sorry that the wait for this book is proving so long, but I haven’t surrendered. Thank you for your patience, everyone.

    How’s the blog going?

    I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would. Being upfront about just writing about anything I wanted helped me open myself up to it, for sure. I’ve always been a quiet person socially, just felt like I didn’t have much of value to add to most conversations. But, building my own little soapbox on my website worked, since anyone who doesn’t want to hear from me can just … not be here? Easy enough.

    When I was starting the blog, though, my hosting service had a system for comments to be left on each entry and I was sad to see that disappear. I’m interested in some entries serving as a conversation starter, but I’m not trying to cross-post every entry here on every social media site. I never cared for them much – getting me to log onto my Facebook is like pulling teeth, and I use it specifically for book promotion.

    All to say that it’s good. I’m like the pace of getting out two entries a month, and I think I’ll at a minimum manage at least one. I will say most of my ideas right now revolve around D&D, and despite my passion for the hobby I don’t want that to be the blog. I’ve been working to ensure I don’t do too many posts like that back-to-back.

    Anything else?

    I’m planning to run a sale on all three of my books in May. I’ll, naturally, be mostly promoting Ebonskar as my newest book, hoping to get it into more people’s hands. So, if you were waiting for a sale to pick them up for yourself or as a gift, it’s right around the corner. Tell your friends! (If you want to.)

    As a more sore subject however, I decided to make another revision to A Tide of Bones earlier this week. Smaller in scope than what occurred before the release of Legacy, but something I’d been unhappy with for a long time. I’ve changed a lot as a writer and person since I worked on Tide and an early scene in the book wasn’t sitting right with me.

    I’m speaking, of course, about the scene with Lytha and the thieves. In the original version of the scene, there’s an implication of intent that I have now removed. The exchange is explicitly only about the money, now. The story ultimately was not improved by including that implication and in fact, likely worse for it. It’s something I have expressly forbidden from occurring in my tabletop games, and it didn’t sit well with me that it existed as an introductory moment for this character.

    As I understand, the change applies retroactively to the kindle version (unless you have the downloaded version and are offline on the device, perhaps?) but, naturally, old print copies of the text will retain the original scene. I include the mention here as almost a bit of future proofing – for if someone discovers the discrepancy of the scenes and wonders what happened.

    That’s about it.

    Thank you for reading.

  • RPGs: Beginning The Adventure

    RPGs: Beginning The Adventure

    Running a tabletop RPG for my friends is the most instantly gratifying creative experience I partake in. Each week I get immediate feedback on worldbuilding, narrative construction, character development, arena building, and several other things from people in a collaborative setting where the implicit goal is improving the experience for everyone present.

    I’ve written a handful of blog entries already about my love for this hobby, but none of them have provided much information that’s useful to begin running a game. That’s the goal today. I’ve started up at least a dozen games since my first time sitting behind the screen over a decade ago, two of which have actually reached a conclusion (which is rare, believe me), and I’ve thought a lot about ways to begin a game well.

    Here’s what I’ve got.

    Before the Beginning

    There’s a lot of things to consider before inviting everyone over and setting out the dice. The foundation, the first question, is, simply, “What is the adventure?” What is the driving action that throws the players’ characters together? The answer truly depends on how much work you want to do before the game begins. Running an adventure entirely from scratch (a “homebrew” game) isn’t right for every game master, and running from a published adventure is not inherently worse than a homebrew campaign in any way. I’ve run both in my tenure, using the Tyranny of Dragons two part module back in 5th edition’s infancy, and it was one of the two games I’ve run that ran to its conclusion.

    One of the best games I’ve had the privilege to be in as a player is my friend’s current game that started as a run of the Rime of the Frostmaiden module (which has now shifted into some homebrew after we reached the module’s conclusion and our DM wants to see if he can take a game to 20). Neither style is intrinsically more valuable than the other. It will all depend on the table.

    Where’s the Beginning?

    The backdrop for the start of your adventure is immensely important. For some players it will grow into a place that feels like home. Published adventures do a lot of legwork here, but even they can be improved.

    My best beginning towns have all provided a handful of smaller stakes hooks to pursue and investigate. I use them to determine what the table as a whole is most drawn to. In the game that inspired Ebonskar, sightings of hobgoblins had been noted by the town and the party had latched onto it pretty well – but their primary antagonist at the time was a hag that had just stolen a child.

    That’s not to discount a more linear beginning experience. When I ran Tyranny of Dragons, I used the opening straight from the book, with the party arriving at Greenrest as it was razed by the Cult of the Dragon and their blue ally in the sky. There’s several things I’d do differently if I ran that module again, but a lot of that attack on Greenrest would survive the transition.

    One of the most important things, unless your entire campaign is set in a big city, is to start somewhere that’s a shithole. My best towns – Borno’s Crossing, Saltwallow, Longmire – have all been in a decades-long slump. They’ve been forgotten towns that were once on a major roadway now bypassed by a trader’s highway or set in a forbidding locale that made them undesirable to visit. It helps to have that humble start, and it gives a lot of room for that first settlement to grow in response to the players’ actions. Even in big-city campaigns, beginning in the worse parts of town still aids in that feeling of becoming too big of a fish for the pond.

    Session Zero

    The first time you gather your party to venture forth, you really shouldn’t do much venturing at all.

    Seriously.

    Getting everyone together to lay the foundation for the game is massively important. It matters more than all the prep work in the world. It gets everyone on the same page, and can help you massively understand the type of game you’ll want to run for your table.

    You need to discuss what everyone’s idea for the game is. Do they want to be heroes that start from humble beginnings that go on to save the world? Do they want to fight liches and hydras and dragons, plumbing the depths of the darkest dungeons that ever were buried and forgotten? Or do they want to plan out the best party and make inroads with the nobility to affect change on a systemic scale?

    D&D might not be the perfect fit for every type of game out there. If you guys want to run something focusing less on delving into dungeons and swinging swords and spells at monsters, this is a good time to discuss other game systems.

    And you need to discuss what is and isn’t on the table. One of my current players has arachnophobia and asked that I avoid spiders as much as I could, while giving me the pass to use them occasionally. When they do show up, if he just says the word, I’ll stop describing their spindly little legs racing up and down the sides of the cavern walls or how restrictive the webbing is. It’ll be glossed over with no loss to the game. I have a few other things that aren’t going to be in the games I run, some rules that are hard and fast, and others that are malleable, at least to a degree. Listen carefully and take notes.

    Once you’ve got that squared away, you’ll be ready to truly begin your game. Just, one last thing …

    A Time and Place for Taverns

    Cliché, sure, but for good reason. Don’t let anyone rag on you for beginning your game in a tavern. It can be, and is, a perfect opening for many different games. I’ve started some that way, started many others, and some of my favorite times as a player began in taverns. Just because it’s been done before doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done again.

    A lot of the alternatives I’ve seen presented online seem like going out of one’s way to avoid the tavern. Some ideas take a really specific group of players to work well. But even those aren’t without merit. Beginning in the midst of a siege with the players all needing to take up arms can be exciting! In Dimension 20’s Fantasy High, the players’ characters didn’t interact with one another much until they all ended up getting detention. (Which, when watching I figured they’d all be told beforehand to try and land themselves detention day one – but that still doesn’t detract from how effective it was to group the PCs together!) Even Critical Role’s 2nd campaign began in a tavern – if Matthew Mercer can “get away with it”, then maybe he’s not really “getting away” with anything.

    And, hey, maybe during session zero your players decided they just wanted to have known each other beforehand anyway.

    Before You Go

    A few last-last minute things I wanted to include here.

    First of all, remember that as the game master, you are still a player too. If you aren’t having fun, there’s something wrong. Find whatever you need to find to alleviate that.

    Second, there is a lot of times that bending or ignoring a rule can provide a fantastically cool moment. Go for it! The rules are guidelines, right? And everyone will talk about it forever! The inverse, however, is also true. There will be times that you need to enforce the rules, things that are too janky or overpowered that they can’t become part of the game. Try not to beat yourself up over it, even if you get them wrong on either side.

    As always, thank you for reading. Good luck out there, heroes.

  • How Elden Ring Could Perfect the Soulsborne Formula

    How Elden Ring Could Perfect the Soulsborne Formula

    I’ve been following the Soulsborne series since I was in high school. I didn’t pick up the series at the time, busy as I was with school and a few other games (spent a lot of time playing MMOs in high school), but a friend of mine had the game and played through it at my house, the go-to hangout spot. Just watching, I knew the series was something special. But I was of a mind that I’d get frustrated battering my head against the same bosses over and over again, and didn’t give the game a shot.

    When Dark Souls III released, I took the plunge. My worries of frustration were immediately snuffed. The game was fair first and foremost – it wasn’t like the major boss encounters in the MMOs I was playing, where bad performance from one group member could sink the whole attempt. It was just me and the boss. If I died, it was because I did something I shouldn’t have.

    Seeing how much I’d fallen into the game, a friend of mine gifted me Bloodborne, and I slammed through it hungrily. Through both games I settled into fighting evasively with a big sword, weaving around attacks to find my openings.

    That playstyle (and my lack of passion for the aesthetic) led me to bounce off of Sekiro, but spectating alone proved enough for me to appreciate the game. And hopefully I’ll come around on it eventually and give it another go.

    That response to Sekiro made Elden Ring’s announcement feel like the exact thing I wanted to hear from FromSoftware. It’s been my most anticipated game since 2019, and a month ago I finally got my hands on it.

    It did not disappoint.

    A Perfect Storm

    It’s been a week since I finished my first playthrough. And I do need to clarify first – I definitely started another character the following day and if my six completions of Dark Souls III are any indication, I’ll sink several more hours into Elden Ring before I set it aside entirely.

    I’m not here to discuss the story, though. No interest in spilling spoilers today. Instead, as you might have guessed from the title, I want to highlight the game’s design.

    Adding an open world to Elden Ring could’ve been a mixed bag. I think, ultimately, it’s vastly more beneficial than detrimental to the game. In previous Soulsborne entries, if you came to a difficult boss, it was a roadblock. There might be some optional areas, but for the most part, you needed to break down the barrier before your story could continue. Now, it doesn’t have to stall out your experience.

    I know the first time I encountered our friend the Fell Omen, I was not yet good enough at the game. I wasn’t used to the delays in the enemy swing times, I was dodging far too early, and I built to wield a big sword in two hands so I wasn’t parrying either. Margit whooped me. In another Souls entry, I might’ve been more prepared for that first boss, but in Elden Ring I wasn’t.

    But, after an undisclosed number of YOU DIED screens, I turned away from that fog wall and opened that map up again. I’d basically gone straight to Margit from the opening of the game. What else was out there anyway?

    A whole hell of a lot. I got better at the game, I leveled up, and I came back and got my revenge.

    There’s two ways to look at that experience. You could say that the difficult spikes in the game’s primary progression path are uneven to justify the open world. I prefer to look at the game as offering more paths to explore than I expected. I know people that returned Dark Souls III after hitting a roadblock on Iudex Gundyr, the first boss. If those players give Elden Ring more of a chance since they can travel elsewhere, it can only be good for the game.

    Open World Done Right

    For the most part, I’ve cooled on open-world style games. Every now and again, one will come along with innovations or a setting that catches my interest, but there’s a dozen Assassin’s Creed games and only one Breath of the Wild (for now). That piece of Elden Ring was the one thing that made me consider pumping the breaks. But, FromSoftware knows how to do it right.

    Gathering? I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to stomach a game that forces you to entirely stop moving to collect crafting materials after Elden Ring allowed me to sprint passed rowa bushes and flowers on horseback spamming to grab them all up. Crafting? I almost entirely ignored it, but I know the value that it has. The consumable items like throwable firebombs and weapon enhancements can be used so much more now that you can find items in the world to make more of them.

    Even FromSoftware’s own systems were iterated on in a new way. Getting more flasks for defeating powerful foes or groups of enemies made exploring much easier to sink into. Stakes of Marika allowing a respawn location outside of sites of grace (bonfires) is inspired. I absolutely dived into the open world bosses and areas without hesitation, even if I hadn’t found a traditional checkpoint in a while.

    And exploration was so rewarding in Elden Ring. Each small little dungeon had something interesting in it. Even if the aesthetics or bosses became repetitive, there was nearly always something about the delve that made it different from anywhere else you’d been. Finding a Cleanrot Knight in a cave before I’d begun encountering them in the world forced me to respect their moveset and learn how best to battle them with how I’d built my character. For me, it never got stale to explore the game.

    I’d be surprised if a game better than Elden Ring comes out this year. But even all my love for the experience doesn’t mean the game was perfect.

    The Shortcomings

    FromSoftware’s approach to storytelling has its ups and downs. Every single item and piece of dialogue can help illustrate the world and lore in such a mystifying and enticing way that leaves you hungry for the next discovery. The other side of that coin, however, is how easy it can be to miss something.

    In my playthrough, I’d already been to many of Elden Ring’s endgame areas and reached the final few bosses before my friends directed me to huge, incredible dungeons I wouldn’t have found otherwise. Having no direction to find those places – even when some of them were directly related to quests I’d begun with the game’s NPCs – can lead to so much missed content. It can be convoluted in a way that isn’t intuitive to follow.

    Between that and the other instances of open world exploration, my character ended up vastly over leveled for some sections of the game. While that same ability paved my path to success against Margit, it felt worse in these areas – because I hadn’t left them to come back to them stronger later on. I’d arrived already more powerful than I would’ve preferred to be. While I still fall on the more positive reception to the open world in Elden Ring, there is absolutely something to be said for the difficulty scaling FromSoftware is able to achieve in a linear experience.

    And, as another potential detriment of the open world, its vastness may prove to be a deterrent for repeat playthroughs. While I’ve already begun a second character myself, I absolutely struggle to imagine plaything Elden Ring as many times as I did Dark Souls III. That’s not to indicate that it isn’t worth the cost, though. My one completed playthrough clocked in just under half the total time I’d spent on Dark Souls III. It’s a vast experience with a lot on offer.

    Though I might be tempted skip Melania next time …

    Looking Forward

    In conclusion, there’s lessons I think FromSoftware can take from this ambitious project that, in my eyes, is an overwhelming success. Truthfully, if there’s one AAA developer that can leverage that opportunity to learn, I believe it’s FromSoftware. I’ve got my fingers crossed for some sweet DLC, but if that’s not in the cards, I’ll be there waiting for their next release.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go collect my runes.

  • The Batman

    I’ve been a fan of Batman my whole life – or at least as long as I can remember. The animated series is one of the first things I can remember seeing on TV. My dad had VHS copies of the Burton and Schumacher films that he indulgently watched with me several times. We saw each entry into Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy together, I saw the Lego Batman Movie with my little sister, and now we have a new film released this past Friday.

    I don’t want to spill spoilers here, however, so all I will say on The Batman is that I genuinely enjoyed the film, though I am certainly not an unbiased source.

    Instead, I thought it would be fun to list out some comic runs that the movie most reminded me of, so that those of you who might be interested in further experiences of a Batman as presented in the film could have some places to look for it. After The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, I immediately fell into comics for several years, reading a lot of the most beloved runs of the Caped Crusader and picking up the at the time current run by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo in the “New 52.”

    Here we go.

    Detective Focused Runs

    In these comics, Batman is pitted against a mystery with unclear answers that truly challenge his moniker of “World’s Greatest Detective.” I slot one of my all-time favorite comic runs into this category: Snyder and Capullo’s Court of Owls. It begins with a series of murders that Batman slowly discovers belie a greater conspiracy that reaches into the city’s very roots. Widely beloved, this series of comics is one I hope gets adapted into film, and I think our current Batman canon with Pattinson might be the perfect opportunity.

    Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s The Long Halloween is another incredible collection following an uncertain mystery with twists and turns and several appearances of some of Batman’s most beloved rogues. I will say, personally, I prefer the art of the more modern comics, and that ended up providing some (admittedly unfair) friction for me from this particular story. But don’t allow that dissuade you from one of the most iconic runs of Batman.

    Another favorite of mine, featuring a titan of the comics industry, is Batman: Hush. Written once again by Jeph Loeb but with art by the incredible Jim Lee, this story features Hush’s first appearance and includes many of Batman’s other rogues and even other heroes from DC’s universe. This comic has echoes of Loeb’s decade’s earlier Long Halloween, but finds new ground to tread and leaves everything fresh and exciting.

    Against Organized Crime

    A lot of the earlier Batman stories focused on his battle against the large crime families that through corruption and greed had a stranglehold over Gotham. Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One focuses on Bruce Wayne’s first attempts to strip away that rot. An excellent look at the origin of our Caped Crusader that has inspired many runs and films since.

    For another more recent run, the year-long weekly series Batman Eternal features Carmine Falcone as a premiere villain, having returned to Gotham to reclaim his lost empire. This series had several creators behind it, and had a wider lens overall to focus on several characters of Batman’s allegiances. These 52 issues have since been collected in various trades and an omnibus.

    Riddles, Riddles, Riddles

    If the movie left you hungry for more runs featuring the most matched intellect to oppose the Dark Knight, I would recommend once again, Snyder and Capullo. In their Zero Year run, Batman is pitted against the Riddler from the jump, though Batman doesn’t know it as quickly as the reader. Nearly everything this team managed during their five year run on the Batman mainline produced magic, and Zero Year quickly became a favorite of mine.

    Whatever your desire, I hope the above might provide some more Batman stories to those of you who might be looking for them. Thank you for reading, everyone! Now to flip on the signal and remind everyone he’s out there …

  • RPGs: Creating an Adventurer

    RPGs: Creating an Adventurer

    Recently, I found a topic on Reddit that got me thinking about the trend of players making characters without input from either their fellow players or even the Dungeon Master running the adventure. I’ve experienced this in my own time running this game, leaving me stuck between a character that feels disconnected from the world or adventure, or telling a player that the character they spent time making won’t fit.

    It’s a difficult situation with no clear answers*.

    Do you as the DM accept whatever the players put forth, despite how it might chip away at the cohesion of the setting you’ve made? Do you as a player accept that you might need to adjust your character of choice to fit the DM’s world, even if it goes so far as to remove what you hoped to explore?

    I’m hoping to provide some tips that can help you keep your characters off the cutting room floor and on the tabletop, from both sides of the screen.

    Be an Adventurer

    First and foremost, make sure you have a character that actually wants to participate in the adventure. Everyone who’s had any experience with the hobby has heard the stories of the lone wolf rogue who has no interest in being part of the game. There is a time and a place for saying “It’s what my character would do,” and explaining why your character doesn’t want to be part of the team or go on an adventure isn’t it.

    The simple fact of the matter is: it isn’t only up to the DM to give you a reason to go on the adventure. We’ve all agreed to spend our time together playing this game, part of that means you have to decide why and how your character would do something you think they normally wouldn’t. Because if that’s all you give the DM, they might just agree with you, and ask you to try again. That’s what I’d do.

    Another facet of being an adventurer – at lower levels, at the very least – is being someone without resources. Delving into dungeons and fighting aberrations, monstrosities, and undead is an insane thing to decide to do. For most, there’s got to be something to prove, or a lack of alternative options. Don’t try to give your character the means to solve the party’s problems with their connections back home. You shouldn’t have such standing that you can muster an army before you’ve ever seen a battle.

    Also, remember this is a collaborative game. Don’t fall into tropes that would make your character vastly more important than the other player’s creations. The world might come to revolve around the party’s actions, but it shouldn’t ever be focused on one of you alone, always – everyone should get their time in the spotlight. Build out someone who has strengths that makes them valuable, but not someone who will be able to solve any issue by themselves.

    Anchoring Yourself to the World

    As mentioned in the post referenced, there is something to be said for the minigame of building characters in 5th Edition D&D. It’s a fun little pass time to tinker with when you’ve got the game on your brain but you’re between sessions. Maybe you were in the mood when the game got canceled last minute. Whatever the reason, there’s value in the process.

    Unfortunately, the cool characters you design in a vacuum do not always translate well to a table.

    When I was setting up my current game, I warned my players ahead of time that several of the races that had received official releases were not going to be available, but I hadn’t gone through the entire list. I had good reasons for each: some didn’t fit the setting because they would lend themselves too easily to a character that is a punchline more than a hero and while levity is welcome, I didn’t want to pull away from the more grim tone of the world. The race’s origin didn’t fit with the way I’d structured the planes for the setting. Or I just didn’t have them in mind since they didn’t all exist when I built the world, and there wasn’t a good way for me to retroactively add the entire race into my world’s history.

    And, unfortunately, my lack of preparation led to me having to reject one of my player’s first characters. He wanted to play a Loxodon hero, and I rejected him. He settled onto a Goliath instead, and while he’s assured me he loves what his character is now, I still feel a slight twinge of remorse that I didn’t allow him his want.

    I actually had an entire game collapse because of this. It was at our session zero (a pre-game meeting of all the players that I absolutely recommend every table engage with), and my players all wanted to play characters whose lineages I didn’t originally have plans to include in the world (I was hoping to run a game in my setting for the Red Watch books to help me flesh out a lot of the world). It ended well, though – I just ran a different game a couple weeks later in a setting with less restrictions.

    I think the best way to engage with the world is to come to a session zero of your game with no preconceptions – well, maybe you can pick a class. Maybe. Magic might not work the way you assume, after all … And never stop thinking about the life your character might’ve had before they became an adventurer. Talk with your DM and work out where you would have been born, where you were raised and how, what kind of people you might know. Create connections for your character, people that they will want to help and protect – or people they will stop at nothing to find their violent satisfaction against.

    The Clear Answer

    Before, when I said there was no clear answer, that was misleading.

    These issues, like all issues in a tabletop RPG, have an answer, a process, that will always help everyone come to a satisfying conclusion: discussion and compromise. Talk to each other. It seems so reductive to say that every piece of RPG drama can be solved by talking, but I have yet to encounter an issue that isn’t addressed after an earnest conversation. At the very least, it’s worth a shot.

    Thank you for reading. Good luck out there, heroes.

  • D&D: Running Dragons

    D&D: Running Dragons

    When I first started running D&D, I managed to learn how to construct a dungeon with success fairly quickly. My players were quick to engage with these delves and I had no trouble discerning what was working and what wasn’t. But, there in the name lies something I felt was equally essential to the experience: dragons.

    It took me much longer to parse out a successful dragon encounter, given their relative rarity to the near ubiquitous dungeon. My first attempts were beasts that did not display the intelligence present by the stat arrays, going toe-to-toe with the warrior clad in plate armor instead of taking to the skies and raining fire or acid or lightning down upon them. My encounters were in barren, mostly circular caves not shaped in the least by the dragon’s whims or needs.

    I hope to save you some time and failures. Learn from my mistakes. Become the dragon your players will fear to engage.

    Fight and Flight

    Dragons have a natural tactical advantage over most playable character lineages in D&D – their natural ability to fly. There is no greater disservice you can do to your dragons and your players than to have their foe linger thereupon the ground, its wings forgotten. A calculating dragon might only ever choose to land when it believes its claws and teeth can prove the end of its target. Instead allow the dragon to focus on finding a position for its breath attack to cause the most damage, and landing only afterward to tear apart the foe most damaged by the discharge.

    In 5th edition, dragons were given the option of using their wings at the end of a foe’s turn, potentially knocking their assailants prone and taking to the skies once more. I prefer to allow the movement granted by this legendary action to supersede any movement speed reductions, like those from the sentinel feat. This allows the dragon to escape from a tight spot when needed, without entirely stripping the feature of sentinel should the dragon be choosing to shift away from such foes without using this action.

    Stay out of reach of the heaviest hitters, pick your targets to put them on the ground, and don’t linger beyond what’s necessary for the dragon to accomplish its goals. If the dragon is amused by the party, allow them the chance to recover. If its beginning to feel threatened, show the party no mercy.

    Minions

    The true threat any boss encounter in D&D fears is something outside of the scope of dice and decisions: the action economy. The number of creatures on either side of a battle influences the outcome like a finger on the scale. A dragon fighting alone, unless its of a much higher difficulty than the party can handle, has already accepted its death.

    To preserve the difficulty of such an encounter, grant your dragon minions and allies to help keep the fight in its favor – at least until those creatures have been slain. In my setting, dragons are supported by armies of soldiers – kobolds, lizardfolk, and dragonborn. A powerful martial fighter sworn to the dragon’s personal safety could be included in the fight. There are also the abishai, presented as fiendish creations of Tiamat in the hells that are sent to support her servants. Additionally, in my setting, many of the eggs in a dragon’s clutch hatch into offspring that are not full dragons. This is where guard drakes and other reptile-adjacent creatures come from. Your dragon could call to its young in such battles.

    Lairs and Arenas

    One of the most important pieces of any dragon encounter is the arena. Has the dragon flown out from the heart of its domain to a place it believes it can weaken the intruders challenging its claim? Does it lie in wait at the heart of its lair, resting upon a hoard that would make the richest kings blush?

    Each type of dragon is different, and would prefer different lairs to operate in. A black dragon with its amphibious nature would want a locale it can puts its enemies at a disadvantage by submerging itself in the murky depths of the waters. A white dragon would wish for a forbidding mountaintop cavern with icy stretches of floor that put any who would assail it at odds with unsure footing. A green dragon may wish to battle in an enclosed space that slowly fills with the poisonous gas it exhales with its breath attacks.

    A font of inspiration I’ve visited time and again for dragon arenas is the game Dragon Age: Inquisition. Every zone with a dragon battle managed to create a unique locale to encounter the creatures, with an excellent AI that uses the terrain around it to allow for a incredible and dynamic fight. Each of those lairs were immensely helpful when it came to designing my own encounter spaces for D&D.

    Expectations can be at an all-time high when it comes to a battle with a dragon in your D&D game. With these tips, I hope you’ll be able to create encounters that will be the talk of your table for years. Thank you for reading.

  • Adaptation and the Witcher

    Adaptation and the Witcher

    Spoiler Warning: this post contains major spoilers for Sapkowski’s The Last Wish, The Sword of Destiny, and Blood of Elves, with potentially minor spoilers for the rest of the series, and major spoilers for Netflix’s The Witcher seasons 1 and 2.

    Here at the beginning, I want to make it clear that I am in no way an authority on this subject. I am not a professional critic, I am an independent author with three works. I have, however, spent my entire life absorbing stories. From early on in my childhood, my favorite types of videos games were RPGs. I spent more time on the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Dragon Age: Origins than anyone else I knew in my teenage years. To this day, I find most of my enjoyment in media in the stories that are being told. As much as I love a game like Deep Rock Galactic, it’ll never satiate my need for experiencing a narrative as something like Divinity: Original Sin 2, which I’ve played through about two and a half times since I picked it up last year (and it’s a long game).

    It was through video games I first encountered the world of the witcher. I’d seen praise for the second witcher game online and picked it up to play it myself. I slammed through it twice to see both sides of the major branching storyline and immediately told my brother he should give it a try. I received the third witcher game as a gift one year and it coincided with a week of vacation time I’d taken from work around the holidays. I played it every day for an obscene amount of hours, so entirely did it capture me (and so empty was my schedule at the time). I enjoyed it so much, I ordered the written works and devoured them. At the time, the series’ conclusion The Lady of the Lake wasn’t officially translated, so I waited for its release with excitement.

    When I heard news of Netlfix adapting the books, I had some cautious excitement. When Henry Cavill was announced as Geralt and it became apparent how much of a fan he was of the series, I was elated. And, for me, that first season didn’t disappoint. I was excited to see what they’d do going forward.

    Well. We have a second season now, and it’s … polarizing. That seems like the kindest word. Let’s talk about why.

    Adaptation: Changes Necessary

    When taking a piece of media and translating it to another medium, there has to be some changes. Things that are interesting to read aren’t as grabbing when watched. Tension that exists in a visual medium can be lost when read without expansion or alteration. It’s simple fact.

    But while change can enhance the experience, it can also be destructive.

    In season 1 of the show, there are many minor and major changes to the source material, some of which I find make the stories stronger. For example, the Question of Price short story and its corresponding episode Of Banquets, Bastards, and Burials. In Sapkowski’s short story, Geralt is at the ball at the behest of Queen Calanthe, who wants to procure his services for a task she will provide almost no details of. Geralt is reluctant, to say the least, as he has his own scruples about what he will and won’t do for coin. In the show, Jaskier invites Geralt to the ball, and when his reputation as a witcher becomes known, that’s when Calanthe tries to purchase his services.

    I like this change for a number of reasons. In the short story, it’s clear that Geralt has a reputation, but Calanthe thinks that with enough coin she can buy Geralt out of his morals. In the short story, she’s invited someone to the banquet she cannot be sure of, on a night that will determine the future of her kingdom and her daughter’s life. Geralt being present by coincidence and her attempt to gain his allegiance before Duny arrives, to me, seems like a smarter move for a queen as shrewd and calculating as Calanthe.

    And the end of the episode even has stronger characterization for Geralt. In the show, they maintain the consistency that Geralt has in the short story collections as to his disregard for the concept of destiny. He off-handedly asks for payment in the Law of Surprise at Duny’s insistence and immediately doesn’t want anything to do with it. In the short story, Geralt says that Child-Surprises are required to make witchers and he’s hopeful he’ll get one. I think this moment is monumentally better in the show than the short story.

    Other changes exist in the show I can at least make sense of. There’s a reason behind them I can understand after some thought. Another example from the first season, the timeline shenanigans. The short stories have no clue as to their chronology either, but there is a present-day framing device behind them all. In the show, I can understand their mixed timelines as a vehicle for having the series’ principal actors in nearly every episode. Yen’s backstory is just hints and speculation in the books, and expanding that for the show certainly is a sensible decision, as she’s going to be one of the most important characters. However, I do think the show didn’t need to be so secretive about the timelines. Having the background knowledge I did going into the show I knew immediately what was happening, but I think the confusion for unfamiliar audiences was unnecessary. But, again, I can at least understand why the show made that decision.

    Then there was the changes in the second season.

    Destructive Deviation

    While there are still changes in season two I can fit under the umbrella of “necessary for television,” there are plenty of others I cannot fathom. Most of my complaints stem from a complete departure from a character’s established personality into something entirely different, something so extreme I can’t imagine how they’ll reconcile the changes with the story going forward.

    The biggest offender is, obviously, Yennefer. Yen from the books would never begin to consider the idea of trading Ciri for her magic. Within days of training her at the Temple of Melitele she straight up starts calling her “my daughter.” She loves her unconditionally. In season 1, the show even set this up. Yen regrets trading her ability to have children for magic. She wants to enslave a djinn to undo that loss. Even consistent to the show, Yen considering sacrificing Ciri for magic doesn’t follow, at least not for me.

    This problem extends to someone like Vesemir. In the books, our old grandpa witcher has no desire whatsoever to put any children through the Trial of Grasses to make another witcher. Him considering in the show, however, isn’t entirely without reason. The show’s set up a new kind of monster entering the world through their monoliths, and needing more witchers to fight these new monsters, I could see Vesemir reluctantly trying to make more. But I don’t think he’d do it with Ciri. And, even worse, if Ciri’s blood is the key to making more, why would he let her be the first attempt when it’s very unlikely she will survive because of how deadly the Trial of Grasses is.

    How on earth can Ciri reasonably reconcile with these two? Yen in the books becomes a surrogate mother to her, but how can anyone trust someone who was trying to sacrifice them to an ancient evil for their own gain? I don’t think helping reverse the situation she caused is enough. And once she truly appreciates the danger of the Trial of Grasses, will she accept that Vesemir was so easily swayed by a child’s argument to let her try it?

    Even characters as minor as Eskel or Lambert weren’t spared the brunt of these changes. Eskel’s not a large presence in the books – he helps train Ciri in Blood of Elves, and I don’t think he shows up again. He’s in the games and he’s well-liked. They killed him in the show to elicit a reaction, but they did nothing to actually cultivate any attachment to this character. By all intents and purposes, he’s just another guy with the same name as the character the fans of the games know. He has an entirely different personality. It could’ve been a witcher with no name or a name invented for the show, and nothing would’ve changed. Lambert, in the books and games, is more of a playful prick. In the show, he’s just been a bully to Ciri.

    I feel the need to clarify that I do not fault any of the actors for these occurrences at all. I think they’ve done the best they could with what they’ve received. I don’t like that Yennefer is cursing every seventh word in the second season and using such inspired epithets as “Fire-fucker,” but that’s not the fault of the actors.

    I could go on and on about other changes to characters and plots (just ask my brothers and friends), but it’s more of the same as above. I just want to briefly mention a worry I have for the show going forward.

    Mistaking the Stars Reflected in a Pond for those in the Heavens

    These characters, after this season, are simply not the same as the ones in the books. That’s the full stop. They’ve been changed. It’s not impossible there’s a road to get them back to their book characterization, but that’s not who they are right now.

    The problem I am worried will plague this show’s future is an inability to accept this.

    The future seasons of this show will suffer horrendously if all the resolution for Yennefer’s actions with Voleth Meir and Ciri is a single meaningful conversation and some emotional music. And then they’re as thick as they are in the books? It will feel unearned. It will add negative value to the audience investment. Actions have to have consequences.

    The creators of the show have deviated from the blueprint. If they try to bludgeon their way back on track ignoring what they’ve done, no one will be able to trust the storytelling of this show.

    To borrow a line from Vilgefortz (from the books, as he’s yet to say so in the show), the show’s creative team is mistaking the stars reflected in a pond at night for those in the heavens. I hope only they’ll have the wherewithal to look skyward before the potential of this adaption is rotted out from underneath it.

    Thank you for reading. At the very least, it’s helped me to write this all out. I hope you’ve all had wonderful holidays and a Happy New Year to you.

  • Ebonskar and What’s Next

    Ebonskar and What’s Next

    So! There it is. Ebonskar will be out on November 18th. I’m excited for it to get into your hands and I hope you enjoy it. I believe it’s my best work so far, and I can’t wait to see how everyone else feels about it.

    That just leaves one question, doesn’t it?

    What’s next?

    Well. There’s at least a half dozen people hungry for Red Watch’s third installment. If that’s you, thank you for being patient while I went and did this second thing. Let me say you’ve waited long enough, and to apologize in advance that the wait is going to be a little longer. Red Watch 3 will absolutely be commanding my attention until it’s finished, but it’s not done yet. There’s going to be a bit more time to wait, and I’m going to do what I can to mitigate it as much as I can.

    Following that, I’m not certain yet. My current plan finds Red Watch reaching its end in the fourth book, but I think I’ll want to land on something between the third and fourth. I have two sequels in early stages to follow Ebonskar to make a trilogy. If people are dying to see the follow up there, I could see Tyrant’s Mask 2 as the book following. Otherwise, one of those little ideas I played with earlier this year. It’d be nice to have a standalone available for others to ease in, see if they’re interested in my writing style.

    The blog will proceed as is. I’ll post when I’ve got something I want to say, or an event to inform you about. As with my last post, I’m not going to call out each one on social media, so if you want to get updates for each of the blog entries emailed to you, use the option on the right to subscribe. Emails will only come through when a blog post goes up.

    Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoy Ebonskar!