Diana Probst

Aaah, this makes you our new favourite person! We have seriously considered whether we should just do this until the whole place is covered... but we reckon there are probably at least three more things we can do. There's another middle class area we want to cover, which is much more about how one set of people covered by the guilds would work, and there's the top end of the city as well, and then possibly we could do all of the criminal elements, top to bottom. We're not saying we WILL do all of those, but those are the things we'd like to cover if we could. Things like Thunder Tower are probably too small on their own, while the Clearwine Temple is probably too big, but an area of a dozen houses with internal and external politics means we get the right amount of detail. If I had infinite money, though, I would have Clearwine mapped.

The second Beer With Teeth sourcebook for Clearwine is out, this one focusing on a middle-class area in the Colymar city. Cups of Clearwine is available on the Jonstown Compendium on DriveThruRPG. 12 households (13 if you count the pigs, geese, and alynxes of the courtyard) and dozens of NPCs. Art by Kristi Herbert. Writing by the whole Beer With Teeth crew. It includes a five-page adventure and a two page goods appendix, for those things you want to buy from the crafters in the area.

Our GM created a bunch of NPCs first, to get used to the rolling, which was good. He ended up with some great people (the Humakti Temple in Boldhome has some of the most strained internal politics imaginable, and as for how the High Sword gets on with the Earth Priestess, just don't ask...) and he also ended up knowing what was going on in the world and the past. When he ran the PCs through chargen, he did it individually, so we got a lot of attention, but that attention was mostly on our pasts, individually chatting about what we were. When I've run it, I've both done it with all the PCs together, and done it with all the PCs individually, and I prefer together. I've also nicked his NPCs, because they're a really solid set of people who have their own loves and hatreds. Mostly, he doesn't create NPCs by that method, and neither do I, but those ones? They're special.

To me, that's a strength. This is the session in which you get together your chosen snack food, and put your history together. The GM talks about history as it happens, and after a while you know how you know each other, and when you parted company and met each other again. It's a session's-worth of mutual planning. A lot of this will go on the sheet and not do much, yet. You don't have to demand they REMEMBER this. Just that they write it down, and end up as a party. I had no clue what the words meant when I made my D20 rolls, but my GM tied together the story as we went along, and the result was that in my very first session, I knew I was a hyper-aggressive little warrior who HATES Broo and Chaos. And lo, there was Chaos to fight... The process is a good one - the dice rolls are just the bones. It's up to the GM to put the meat on.

You're the sort of customer I love. I did eMail Meredith, and she did sort it. I'd tried uploading it against first and for some reason that hadn't worked, but it usually does, so I think I just got unlucky with the upload.

Darnit. I thought I had fixed that. For some reason, it doesn't always pick up which of multiple PDFs should be the one you're actually looking at. Or something. Or the wind is wrong. EDIT: AHA! There you are, dropdown box on a totally different page that I had never seen before! OK, that should now propagate, but you may need to clear your cache. Leave it 15 minutes for the database to catch up, and if it's not solved then by clearing the cache, I'll ask DTRPG.

The Gifts of Prax is now available at https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/344911/The-Gifts-of-Prax?affiliate_id=205935.

Beer With Teeth are delighted to introduce https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/344911/The-Gifts-of-Prax?affiliate_id=205935 - The GIfts of Prax, an RQG adventure suitable for any group of characters. It has anger, vengeance, bad life choices, and a very special condor. An Encounters appendix introduces multiple new Praxian problems. Help Erhehta the shaman have his entirely justified revenge, while gaining fame, fortune, and the things that Prax can bring you (if you don't take care). We estimate it'll take 2 sessions to complete, but there is enough there to make more without having to write your own adventure. It is englorified with art by Kristi Herbert.

We went with the Green Stripe Morokanth (thank you @Leingod) so that we could have a plot hook because they were out of their usual ranges. The Gifts of Prax will be launching soon.

Thanks, Nick. Yes, absolutely. Stone and Bone's sequel is written and waiting only on the last bits of art and proof-reading. Stone and Bone is about one session, while its follow-up is about two, and includes encounter tables and new animals and even a killer plant. It could easily become a short campaign if you wanted it to. I second the idea of getting Nick's index PDF. If you look up the current year's then you'll get a snapshot of 2020's issues, and also it will be updated all this year. It will still be a recent release on the Jonstown Compendium.

Sweeeeet. That's probably the one to use. I may also grab from David Scott's idea there to have nicknames. It's a smallish encounter, but I realised I didn't have an associated name, so that goes in now. The Bilos Gap clan is another way of referring to them.

Are there any known, canonical clan names for morokanth? Borderlands has 'The Morokanth of Bilos Gap'. Any others? Beer With Teeth thank you in advance - our next publication is very nearly ready to go.

Hmmm. Hopefully, all advice needed should be in the book, but I'd go with having pre-prepped any sorcery spells if you have a high-powered party and need your vampire to be over the top powerful, and to use Deveval for emotional impact. He should have plot armour until he's done his job, which is to tell people the problem. (It MIGHT also be to give them True Sword if that's the only way someone can harm a vampire in mist form, which I decided was possible with that spell.) However, he's obviously a kid who is doing what is right because it's honourable, and he's determined to be a good Humakti. He carries the emotional line until you find Alaryn, and he's polite, respectful, and utterly out of his depth when it comes to fighting what is there. When you find Alaryn, the ghost fight becomes the main point of plot, but it isn't for a while before that. So then use any emotional loading to make that be important; if they like Deveval, then he wants to do the right thing for the ghosts as well. If they hate the vampire or the thoughts of vampires, then you can remind them that the vampire means to hurt what is here, somehow. If you have any Orlanthi or Trolls (or Darkness worshippers), then make sure they know what the stakes are - they could save one of their people from a prison of eternity, if they interfere. The idea is that this provides a relatively simple plot, with emotional impact because sometimes a warrior is just a child out of his depth, sometimes the vampire is smart, and sometimes you've been imprisoned here for hundreds of years in the same long night. Don't be afraid to throw out mechanics in favour of that impact.

The Dragonewt Quick Draw skill in the bestiary might be a good model here. Bear in mind that it has a significant penalty for fumbling. That is, you can use the skill - but while you get an advantage it's not a flat advantage with no drawbacks.

As I recall, the Chaosium interpretation of this was that it's appropriate to wear Charisma as a spell when communicating. Don't worry about whether that sort of thing can be masked, so much as what happens if you don't wear it. It would be like not wearing a suit to an interview. Things like Bladesharp, that you might want to cast when in ambush positions, also have to be spoken out loud. (Spell-casting gets through the Silence spirit magic.) Rune Magic might be castable by an internal call to the god or goddess in question, but it's also got a visual component. I'd use that component to add to an attempt to Intimidate, for example - it's you demonstrating that you are willing to commit a lot of power to what you want to do.

'absinthe and a volcanic island'. It's shorthand.

What he says, but I believe what you get is a share of 5% - if someone has clicked on several links, DriveThru shares out the 5% between all the clicks, I think. It's definitely upped my enthusiasm for sharing, which is where DriveThru gets their extras. Because it sits outside our agreed royalty sharing, BWT have agreed to share ours. I'm the person who pushes it most, but I'm also the person who would profit most from it, only that wouldn't be right, because there are four of us. So, for that reason we dedicate it to the improvement of our work, and use it to buy assets.

Small notes: If you are on Facebook but not on the Jonstown Compendium Creators' Circle, look for it and join. Make sure you have an Affiliate link - you add your affiliate ID to the end of the URL. That way, when you give that out, you get a bit of extra money when people who have used it buy at DTRPG. Beer With Teeth use that extra money for group expenses like layout software, paying for fonts, and potentially our volcano island base which we have planned for the future. It's a handy little extra, and the money coming in from it is used to make our works better, but it could also be used to buy useful life things. Money is great like that.

Vectors are the reason I learned C++ by accident. I kid you not. I'd start by looking at how Inkscape does its booleans. That's likely to be open source, and if not, there is definitely at least one plug-in that does it - you can use a shape on your top layer to cut through all the layers beneath it, in one add-on I remember. This maths WILL have been done already. You just need to find it.

You SAY that... but in fact, there is, sort of. Drivethru RP allows you to split royalties. I had meant royalty share, so yes, you cannot guarantee profit share, but you can do a royalty share right from the start. Once you've given it out, you can't give it back, so it you're happy with a split right from the start, then that can work. It's how Beer With Teeth handle things, because it reduces complexity, means we don't even HAVE to trust each other, and gives us money right into our Drivethru accounts. I'm going to note that if you do do royalty sharing, you need to trust that there will be an end book to share the profits IN. So far, I haven't been in any projects that have failed to create one, though.

*drinks your tears* I think you can upload raster graphics with a stamp (see 'new') but I haven't actually tried. I think the background is a layer, and then the shapes you apply are solid in the middle (corridors/rooms) and apply a transparency map to the page outside ('drawing' the hatching. Beyond that? Magic.

If you want to do basic maps then https://dungeonmapdoodler.com/draw/ is worth a look. Credit plus joining the creator's patreon at $5/month is a good deal if you're otherwise terrible at drawing. An offer of a profit share might also work. It seems they're up for discussing alternative means of paying them, and the result is good for the amount of learning you have to do. I'm all in favour of giving people money to do art, what with being an artist myself, but the Jonstown Compendium is made with love as well as money, so I'm not so much in favour I'll sulk. @coffeemancer, do you have a portfolio or a deviantart? That's always good to show to a client, especially if it has more than one style in it, so they can tell what they like and whether it will suit them.

You, sir, are doing that Ambassador thing again. Thank you.

While I personally do use this, I'll warn you away for light use. It's essentially a macro language disguised as mapping software. This way, genuinely, lies madness. Kris and I are definitely available for maps (thanks Nick!) but you can also get good results from a search for 'free online dungeon mapper' or 'free online campaign mapper'. There is some good stuff out there if you want to do it yourself. Generally a map by one of Beer With Teeth would come in cheaper than art work, and we think it looks better than most people can do by themselves, but genuinely, don't underestimate what's online. If you have an art budget, putting some of it to work on maps is good.

Yelm will not always stand to be put out. And your wick might end up floating and fully exposed, or you might have dropped the oil somewhere that once, Yelmalio walked.