[One Bad Egg] My Involvement
Okay, so I have been involved in this little project for a few weeks and now that it's hatched, I can talk about it. From here on out, there shouldn't be a lot of secrecy about the company and its projects. Part of the charter is to work openly and share our ideas with gamers.
One Bad Egg is what happens when really smart and creative game designers get together to make D&D stuff. Look at the roster of people running this little outfit: Rob Donoghue, Fred Hicks, Chris Hanranan, and Justin Jacobson. All four have some pretty serious cred in the gaming industry.
I've been editing their stuff and tossing a little of my marketing mojo their way. Fred pulled me in the day the first egg teasers started hitting LiveJournal. I'm already working with him as the assistant managing editor for The Dresden Files RPG, so we already have a working relationship.
Fred tossed a business philosophy document my way and asked me what I thought. Quality D&D products, priced for the taking, overflowing with adventure hooks. Groups of products that loosely tie together but they're only gently connected to a setting, so it's easy to drop them into your own campaign. A combination of cool ideas and some solid game mechanics. Okay, I was sold. I shared with Fred my own opinions about the "cheap PDF" market, since I consider myself a perfect example of that market's prime consumer. I buy a large number of PDFs priced under $3 a piece. I'll take a chance on almost any $1 and $2 PDF. I don't want too much world glue. If a monster's or spell's text is too closely tied to a world, I might not buy it. It's difficult to ignore Forgotten Realms hooks when I'm preparing for my own campaign, for example. Yeah, I can change "Elminster" to the name of some other wizard in my game's world, but I don't want to. So the trick is to walk the knife's edge of generic on one side and flavorful on the other.
One Bad Egg was thinking about tying all their products together using a "half-world," or a sort of idea for a setting without all the details colored in. Fred was developing a half-world called Qorre (pronounced Core), wherein the world is crumbling into the swiss-cheese ground and angry monsters are swarming up into the civilized lands, attacking people. I think the essence of the world is summed up in, "You don't invade the dungeon. The dungeon invades you." I can't stop thinking about this idea. It really has its hooks in my brain.
But there was this other idea in there that was even cooler. The Shroud is this evil mist that came out of the cracked glaciers in the far north. Everything it touches, it taints. It's created whole new races, called the Shroudborn. There will be a set of new deities DMs can drop into a world.
My first real contribution to One Bad Egg was getting Fred to consider leading with the Shroud rather than the world of Qorre. As far as I know, there isn't going to be a product called The Shroud, though you can read about it on the web site for free. I think the Shroud is grabbier and easier to drop into a home brew fantasy setting, or even into your Forgotten Realms or Eberron campaign, because it's this thing -- this event, or threat -- that changes things. Qorre is there, in the background, but it's not important. The Shroud is the glue that makes these products stick together, but it's easy enough to just grab the pieces you want and stuff them into your own setting.
My second contribution was renaming "half-worlds." I was certain that this half-world idea was so core (ahem) to One Bad Egg's vision that it needed to have a catchy name. After one or two failed tries, I came up with WorldSeedsTM. WorldSeeds are little magical beans of fantasy world goodness that await your tender love and care. Plant them in your own games, water them, grow them, prune them, and you'll have a giant beanstalk of fantasy fun. And I love Fred's WorldSeed logo--the egg-shaped world.
My third contribution is editing. I've edited a few things already, including a lot of the stuff you can read on the web site, plus the Apelord and the Witch Doctor products.
The Apelord is one of the Shroudborn races. This is a short $2 PDF packed with goodness. There's a new PC racial option. Who doesn't want to play a talking ape that can climb as fast as he can walk? Okay, maybe not everyone, but I know a bunch of people who would have a blast with this! These apelords stick together in nomadic tribes, call on their ancestors for guidance, and carry around the ashes of those ancestors so that the necromancers can't get them and turn them to evil. Sweet. The PC race includes new powers. There's a handful of apelord monsters that DMs can use for encounters. Finally, there are two pages of adventure hooks. Remember: One Bad Egg stuff overflows with story ideas for DMs. I think you can buy the Apelord now, or real soon.
The Witch Doctor class won't be out for a bit -- I think we're putting out a teaser of the first 5 or 10 levels soon. It looks like it will be a ton of fun. He's a controller class who specializes in powers that curse opponents and shove them around the battleground. Classes take a long time to playtest because there are 30 levels of powers to vet.
My last contribution is some writing work. I'll be creating a pair of deities for our Qorre world, too. The One Bad Egg team split up a dozen deity "slots" and we're fleshing them out in a sort of collaborative way. Everyone's stuff is a hundred times more fantastic that way. This will be my first real foray into professional D&D writing, barring that Mirror Magic thing. Each deity is pretty short: probably 600 words, including a new encounter power. I'm creating a goddess of light who is the beacon who helps the lost find the way home, and a god of shadow and smothering, who is a huge, disembodied, spectral hand tainted by the Shroud.
This is a project that has been a lot of fun already and I expect One Bad Egg will release a lot of really imaginative goodies!
One Bad Egg is what happens when really smart and creative game designers get together to make D&D stuff. Look at the roster of people running this little outfit: Rob Donoghue, Fred Hicks, Chris Hanranan, and Justin Jacobson. All four have some pretty serious cred in the gaming industry.
I've been editing their stuff and tossing a little of my marketing mojo their way. Fred pulled me in the day the first egg teasers started hitting LiveJournal. I'm already working with him as the assistant managing editor for The Dresden Files RPG, so we already have a working relationship.
Fred tossed a business philosophy document my way and asked me what I thought. Quality D&D products, priced for the taking, overflowing with adventure hooks. Groups of products that loosely tie together but they're only gently connected to a setting, so it's easy to drop them into your own campaign. A combination of cool ideas and some solid game mechanics. Okay, I was sold. I shared with Fred my own opinions about the "cheap PDF" market, since I consider myself a perfect example of that market's prime consumer. I buy a large number of PDFs priced under $3 a piece. I'll take a chance on almost any $1 and $2 PDF. I don't want too much world glue. If a monster's or spell's text is too closely tied to a world, I might not buy it. It's difficult to ignore Forgotten Realms hooks when I'm preparing for my own campaign, for example. Yeah, I can change "Elminster" to the name of some other wizard in my game's world, but I don't want to. So the trick is to walk the knife's edge of generic on one side and flavorful on the other.
One Bad Egg was thinking about tying all their products together using a "half-world," or a sort of idea for a setting without all the details colored in. Fred was developing a half-world called Qorre (pronounced Core), wherein the world is crumbling into the swiss-cheese ground and angry monsters are swarming up into the civilized lands, attacking people. I think the essence of the world is summed up in, "You don't invade the dungeon. The dungeon invades you." I can't stop thinking about this idea. It really has its hooks in my brain.
But there was this other idea in there that was even cooler. The Shroud is this evil mist that came out of the cracked glaciers in the far north. Everything it touches, it taints. It's created whole new races, called the Shroudborn. There will be a set of new deities DMs can drop into a world.
My first real contribution to One Bad Egg was getting Fred to consider leading with the Shroud rather than the world of Qorre. As far as I know, there isn't going to be a product called The Shroud, though you can read about it on the web site for free. I think the Shroud is grabbier and easier to drop into a home brew fantasy setting, or even into your Forgotten Realms or Eberron campaign, because it's this thing -- this event, or threat -- that changes things. Qorre is there, in the background, but it's not important. The Shroud is the glue that makes these products stick together, but it's easy enough to just grab the pieces you want and stuff them into your own setting.
My second contribution was renaming "half-worlds." I was certain that this half-world idea was so core (ahem) to One Bad Egg's vision that it needed to have a catchy name. After one or two failed tries, I came up with WorldSeedsTM. WorldSeeds are little magical beans of fantasy world goodness that await your tender love and care. Plant them in your own games, water them, grow them, prune them, and you'll have a giant beanstalk of fantasy fun. And I love Fred's WorldSeed logo--the egg-shaped world.
My third contribution is editing. I've edited a few things already, including a lot of the stuff you can read on the web site, plus the Apelord and the Witch Doctor products.
The Apelord is one of the Shroudborn races. This is a short $2 PDF packed with goodness. There's a new PC racial option. Who doesn't want to play a talking ape that can climb as fast as he can walk? Okay, maybe not everyone, but I know a bunch of people who would have a blast with this! These apelords stick together in nomadic tribes, call on their ancestors for guidance, and carry around the ashes of those ancestors so that the necromancers can't get them and turn them to evil. Sweet. The PC race includes new powers. There's a handful of apelord monsters that DMs can use for encounters. Finally, there are two pages of adventure hooks. Remember: One Bad Egg stuff overflows with story ideas for DMs. I think you can buy the Apelord now, or real soon.
The Witch Doctor class won't be out for a bit -- I think we're putting out a teaser of the first 5 or 10 levels soon. It looks like it will be a ton of fun. He's a controller class who specializes in powers that curse opponents and shove them around the battleground. Classes take a long time to playtest because there are 30 levels of powers to vet.
My last contribution is some writing work. I'll be creating a pair of deities for our Qorre world, too. The One Bad Egg team split up a dozen deity "slots" and we're fleshing them out in a sort of collaborative way. Everyone's stuff is a hundred times more fantastic that way. This will be my first real foray into professional D&D writing, barring that Mirror Magic thing. Each deity is pretty short: probably 600 words, including a new encounter power. I'm creating a goddess of light who is the beacon who helps the lost find the way home, and a god of shadow and smothering, who is a huge, disembodied, spectral hand tainted by the Shroud.
This is a project that has been a lot of fun already and I expect One Bad Egg will release a lot of really imaginative goodies!