Closing the orders

I left the campaign up as "InDemand" after the campaign ended, and we have indeed had some latecomers join in the fun, so that went well. However, InDemand's fee structure doesn't really work for a small project like this in the long tail (you basically pay ~30 € every month straight off the top), and most of us probably don't love IndieGoGo quite enough to just have 98% of the payments go into their expenses, so it makes more sense to close that down now that we're only drawing in one or two people a week.

The nature of the project is inherently such that you're not really missing much by not getting to participate; everything we're doing here is ultimately going to become more or less free. If you just want to give me money, you can do that on my website directly. And if you're just really into the idea of the Coup Workbook Partials, email me about it and we'll work something out.

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Funding was successful!

We have found the planned-for amount of backing, and the project is currently being worked on. Check the recent update posts for how the work is progressing.

The Indiegogo platform allows us to keep selling the project after the funding period, so I'm leaving the pitch and the perks up for now; the world's a big place and surely many people haven't even heard about this yet. The nature of the Muster project is more about funding a common weal than me selling something to you, so there's no really good reason to keep giving me money now that we've reached our funding goal. Here are the best arguments for contributing more anyway:

• Join up on the lowest level to get project updates in email. I'll be reporting on the project's progress regularly, so if you're interested, this is the easiest way to keep up to date on it over the coming months.
• If you think the project looks promising and I should be given more money for it, I appreciate the sentiment. I could use a bit more money for the art budget (basically, more money = more elaborate visuals for the book, as I haggle for more work out of the art team), but mostly you should just give me more money because I like seeing the number bars go up. Makes me feel loved.
• Muster will be put out as a free PDF (creative commons license is the current thinking), but if you'd like to join a common print run, I'll be doing some POD later for those who like paper books. You can join the pre-order as an addon Perk after selecting any of the basic perks. It's entirely feasible to print it yourself once it's finished, of course; could be cheaper, what with the postages.
• My backer incentive program is a kinda-collectable series of digital campaign material from our on-going old school D&D campaign Coup de Main — it's discussed in more detail in the campaign pitch below. While you can barter for these with campaign backers later on, joining the campaign is the most straightforward way to get in on the "fun". I imagine that the Coup Workbook Partials will be released to the wild at some point in like Q2 of 2021, but we'll see.
• At this writing I still have one Name Level slot open, so the window is open for one more "special order". Just saying, in case you have a fun idea for what Muster should be.

 

So yeah, I basically recommend joining up on the lowest level just for the campaign update convenience. Assuming I remain productive over the coming months, we should see some regular progress on this over the next half year or so. Probably going to be some previews and invitations to discourse on how the project should shape out, and so on — could be interesting.

 

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The Campaign Pitch

I think that old school Dungeons & Dragons is a unique jewel of a game, one of the few 20th century games that will stand the test of time. The rpg hobby has produced a limited number of truly unique visions, but the adventure game with neutral referee, player-directed events and anti-dramatist wargaming ethos surely qualifies. As hobbyists know, a more story-oriented "GM as storyteller" paradigm sidelined this game relatively early in the history of the hobby, so the jewel here is just a bit obscure, not exactly touted front and center, but nevertheless it shines; over the last decade, the OSR movement has proved amply how the core proposition of the game remains as vital as ever.

However, I also think that the wargamey D&D is somewhat poorly documented textually. People love to publish their campaign rules, and there's a long history of official publications to pick and choose from, but actual teaching texts are a bit sparse on the ground. If anything, the focus on mechanical rules has detracted from analytical understanding and arguably encouraged the loss of wargaming ethos in favour of a thin understanding of the game. Figuring out the real game (the one behind the mechanics, the actual method) is still largely a matter of oral tradition and mentorship via actual play.

I remember how big of an impact Matt Finch's Quick Primer for Old School Gaming was for me specifically because it was an attempt at taking a step back and discussing not only what the rules are, but also what the method behind the rules was. My D&D theory might not match his in all particulars, but "Rulings, not rules" was and is a decisive truth. This is how old school D&D should be taught: not by describing the game mechanics of an individual campaign, but by establishing a theory of what the game is attempting to accomplish, and by what methods.

Ideally, what I'd like there to be is a book that could teach old school D&D to newcomers (with prior rpg experience or not) in a way independent from a specific product line. Something I could give to a new player to look over at home, and perhaps be inspired to try. A book about what's great and desirable about the game, and how to draw that out, rather than a book of equipment prices and spell lists.

Muster: A Friendly Primer to Challengeful Dungeoneering would be that book.

We Can Make It

I'm not a D&D kid; the game was considered primitive and outdated in our local scene in my teens, while unified-mechanics universal skill systems (descendants of Runequest, basically) were all the rage. I well remember how thoroughly irrelevant AD&D 2e and Mentzer Basic seemed to me in that creative context. Much later on, the game basically won me over on theoretical, technical merits: as I learned more about challengeful adventure gaming over the '00s (mainly at the Forge, if that says anything), the things older D&D was trying to do started to click for me until I realized that it wasn't accidental at all; these people were actually trying to play with a grand vision very similar to what I was interested in accomplishing in the field. I wasn't pushing D&D forward so much as I was taking it back.

I've developed a pretty strong take on old school D&D over the last 15 years or so, enough so that I'm putting myself forward as somebody who maybe should write up some of my insights in a structured way. My game is:

• very challenge-focused, with real wins and losses front and center. Glory and disappointment abound in a way similar to sports or other challenging activities.
• very wargamey in the simulative sense: the game is about maneuvering in the fictional world rather than manipulating formal game mechanics like in a boardgame; the latter exists boldly, as it does in D&D, but in service to fun and powerful simulation rather than independent of it.
• egalitarian, with the campaign conceived as a joint operation more than the GM's personal power-trip. The referee is a functionary of the process; maybe primus inter pares, but nevertheless fundamentally equal.
• creative rather than consumerist; we are the authors of our own activity, perhaps informed by others via various books, but never beholden to the Official Rules from distant masters.
• authentic rather than ritualistic; the grand purpose of a D&D campaign is to game out the implications of the campaign set-up rather than replicate the GM's expectations of what D&D adventuring is "supposed to be". We discover the truth via play.

An essential vision for this project is that Muster will be a free, probably Creative Commons licensed booklet that anybody can pick up off the 'net and do whatever with. I'll see about putting it out in some format that actually makes it easy to modify it so you can outright make it your own; I can't imagine another GM having exactly the same ideas on how the game plays, but perhaps you can distill your own dao of D&D from mine and have a snappy primer for inducting new players for your campaign, too!

The campaign is on all-or-nothing funding, calculated for some art budget and a modest ransom for the author. We can do some printing to get the book out in physical format as well if you're into that, but the basic plan would be to create something useful and then release it out there to hopefully be utilized lots and lots by hobbyists in need of this sort of pedagogical material.

Product Details

I envision Muster as a neat little booklet. Maybe home-printed when it falls into your hands, probably with some underground (read: authentic) aesthetics, but essentially as low-threshold and inviting a read as I can manage.

Historically when D&D tries to be friendly and welcoming, it often goes in the direction of childish and cartoony, but that's not what I'm thinking here. Muster should be a bit like a current-day minis wargame rulebook: clean and easy to read, light layout and generally adult aesthetics and concerns. The message is that the game is fun, yes, but also a serious endeavour, and exciting for intellectual and emotional reasons that go beyond superficial whizz-boom video game aesthetics. It is a bit grim, because it is about a game of dungeon commando warfare, but it's the intellectualized grimness of the wargame armchair, somewhat distant from the human reality of violence.

I got the clever idea of having one of my long-time gaming friends, Sipi, illustrate Muster; this is very appropriate, as Sipi — and his 7th level Fighter-Condottiere — has played a critical role in developing our playstyle over the years, so he understands the creative agenda in play here as much as anyone. Plus, I like his grungy gamer-sketching-while-bored style more than calculated commercial illustration.

In practical terms I'm envisioning Muster as a 30–50 page booklet/PDF. It has not been written yet (we're seeking funding to justify the writing commitment here), but the topic and scope — the agenda — are very clear: a book that you can read alongside a rules text (e.g. Swords & Wizardry or LotFP or Mentzer Basic or whatnot) as a study guide and come away with an enhanced, inspired understanding of what makes the game so great, and how to play it well. Here are a few cornerstone elements that the manuscript will cover:

• What is the joy, the promise of the game? Connect the reader to the tradition of wargaming, explain why the praxeology of the art of war is relevant to general human interests, and how this nobility underlies the play of D&D. It is a deeply philosophical thing, and the game's creative ambition is so majestic that one cannot help but be inspired.
• How the game's underlying methodical structures, distinct from its formal game mechanics, structure and drive play. This is the real meat in terms of "how to play", I feel; understanding player roles and responsibilities,  establishing and resolving challenges, rulings-based organic resolution processes, the role that formal game mechanics have to play, is foundational to playing the game purposefully.
• A frank overview of the textual history of D&D and its relevance for this playstyle; given that you like what's suggested here, what game texts might be particularly useful accompaniment in developing your own campaign?
• Practical advice on how to go about setting up your own campaign, and how to maintain it long-term. Envisioning this process as less about selecting a game text to commit to, and more as a process of creative self-expression where you wield texts as tools.
• How to be a good character player, as opposed to referee, in this kind of campaign. The game offers some magnificent opportunities for being an active and influential participant, yet it is easy to fail to grasp these opportunities for want of knowledge of how to participate well.

I Have Excellent Backer Incentives

As you can see from the backer tiers, I did put in a limited deluxe option for anybody wanting to be a boss backer. I was thinking that while I'm not interested in like printing a hardcover prestige edition of Muster (easy money, but I think it's not that kind of book) for you, what I can do is make sure you get the old school primer you can actually use: I'll edit you a personal edition of the book.

So how this works is that I'll get you into the early access studio critique team, you get to tell me where you disagree with Muster the way it's shaping out, and I'll dual edit my version and your version of the primer side by side. We can call yours the "Tobias Whale edition" or whatever; you choose whether to keep it private or make it available to others. This won't be an entirely different manuscript, but I will do all the actual work on it, and you'll find that as long as you know what you want, we can create the old school primer with the theory, phrasing and emphasis that you can personally underwrite. Something that you can give your players and honestly say that you agree with every word. Even if you love setpiece scenes or something dumb like that, I'll still write it for you.

I don't know if anybody's interested in something like this, but if you are, there's no reason why I can't create a couple of alternate primer texts while working on Muster. As all the overhead elements of the project are shared, it doesn't make that much of a difference for me to develop some forks — it's just a bit more manuscript text, as layouts and illustrations and such are all shared. Could be fun!

Coup Workbook Partials

Here's the real zinger in the backer incentives department, though:

When I first conceived of the Muster project last summer, I didn't have any idea at all of what to offer backers aside from the finished primer. That was the basic idea, after all.

However, one of the things I did start doing back then (and a major reason for why it took me half a year to move on the actual crowdfunding affair) is my new online voice chat D&D campaign, Coup de Main in Greyhawk! Here, have some representative links:

• The campaign pitch from last summer
• A fairly legible strategy essay on "aspirational design" of high-level old school D&D
• One of my campaign rules workbooks that we amass and add to as the campaign progresses

(The Coup campaign is very much still on-going, by the way; the campaign supports English-language play, and while participation has been stable, we can certainly accommodate some visitors. Let me know if you're interested in checking the campaign out, we're friendly and open to new faces.)

So what I realized recently is that although I started the Coup campaign as a general way of getting back into old school campaigning after a break of a couple of years, we've actually managed to develop quite a bit of interesting campaign cruft over the last half year. The campaign rules are sort of loosely adapted Basic, except I'm applying everything I know of game design to fill the campaign with fun and expressive mechanical ideas that support my vision of wargamey D&D rather than distracting from it. I feel that this is top-shelf stuff.

My idea is that while I'm not interested in (or ready to) developing a complete manuscript on the Coup, as the campaign is still developing, it wouldn't be at all premature to distribute some ashcans — alpha playtest manuscript material. I've written quite a bit of Coup stuff for internal campaign use over the last months; clean it up a bit in editing and I believe it can be a potent source of inspiration for other GM's wrestling with similar concerns.

My quirky and (hopefully) fun idea of how to do this is as follows: if the crowdfunding campaign reaches its goal, I'll revise my campaign notes into a series of short 3–10 page "workbook partials" — essays on specific campaign topics — and everybody gets some in proportion to their contribution; say 1 issue per 5 € contributed or so. I'll publish a list of topics later, but there'll be class write-ups for both classic and new classes, magic systems, my takes on basic systems like chargen and combat, and more. In fact, here are some quick high-lights:

• I took the Mentzer Immortals rules for divinities, coupled it with some Gygaxian Greyhawk ideas for how gods work, and developed a hell of an interesting chassis for how to mechanize divine powers better. Side benefits in revising divine magic for Clerics and developing xianxia style divine Cultivation rules for Monks or whomever.
• I recently wrote up my first original class for the campaign, the "Hedge Mage" (or "Witch", I'm sort of undecided on which name I like more). It's conceptually in-between modern D&D Sorcerer, Warlock, Psion and Artificer, except cooler. Very much a "magic is an Art" statement capable of standing toe to toe with the Wizard's "magic is Science" truth.
• Our character generation system has become hilariously entertaining with the addition of things like boneyard levels (roguelike players know where I'm at) for discarded character seeds, functional multiclassing for all, actually game-relevant stat-based XP bonus mechanics and all kinds of other fun stuff. We're really rocking the idea that generating a new character should be a fun dice-lottery with surprising and inspiring outcomes.

The fun part here is that because there'll be a bunch of these workbook partials, you'll get to trade for the whole set with others who got a different set from the gacha machine. A bit of a trading card collection affair among presumably like-minded people, so who knows, it might be a chance to get to know some new people. So everybody gets the whole set if you want it, regardless of how much funding you contribute; I'm not suggesting that my campaign workbooks are worth like a hundred euros or whatever the total nominal price comes to.

I hope the idea comes across there; I can work out some sample drafts later on what the workbook partials would look like, but think 'zine, ashcan stuff; simple, text-oriented, intended for expert referees capable of parsing technical shorthand for ideas they can use. I myself love this kind of authentic and information-dense stuff, so I think you'll enjoy it as well.

Further Implications

This is the first time I'm trying out crowdfunding as a publishing approach, so I hope the project seems as reasonable to you as it does to me. I have plenty of experience with the practicalities of writing and publishing — it's basically my job, this isn't my first rodeo — so I'm not worried about being able to write up a modestly-sized book like Muster if it gains your favour. I'd presumably draft the thing out over the winter and finish up over next year, barring major distractions. Ideally it'll be a fun, successful little project that can work as a starting point for writing up some more old school D&D stuff later on.

(If the above pitch inspires any questions or suggestions on how to be more appealing, please do critique the campaign. I'm not exactly on my natural ground with this sort of social media crowdfunding stuff.)

I'm actually mostly concerned about the marketing penetration of the campaign in the current-day hobby scene, being as how scattered and diffuse it all is. If you like what you're seeing, or simply deem it curious, please help out by telling about the campaign to your friends and communities. I'm not very good at social networking myself, signing up for a new forum is often the work of years, so I'm actually worried that I don't really have a sufficiently high profile in the scene for anybody to notice the campaign. I'm cool with you all checking out this proposition and deciding that it's not good return for the money, but having it fail because nobody notices would make me sad.

Beyond these initial concerns, though, we'll have to see how things go — how much interest you have in this thing. There's some potential for expanding the project in terms of stretch goals and such, open it up to more ambitious vistas, but perhaps we'll see first whether a Friendly Primer to Challenging Dungeoneering is deemed useful. If you have your own ideas and wishes for where to take this thing, do let me know; this campaign is basically me opening the doors to the idea of developing some stuff in the old school field, so I'm obviously interested in what you view as useful and meaningful to publish. However this goes, we'll have learned something.