I know that my updates have been a bit slow. As a one-man marketing team, I’ve scattered myself across several platforms of social media in order to connect with readers and other authors. The beginning of 2023 has seen some far-reaching changes to the online and information landscapes, which have led to a shift in my pace at the same time that I’ve diversified my project count.
Twitter had its userbase meltdown which led to a lot of people looking for new platforms. I tried out Mastodon (@irross@universeodon.com) but it seems pretty slow and even more politically polarized than Twitter ever was. I fear it’s destined to go the way of its namesake.
As a bit of a counterweight, I’ve set myself up on Minds (@ianrross) and have enjoyed the engagement as a new user, though I’m not established enough yet to give it a thorough analysis.
At the end of the day, you’ll still find me on Twitter (@ianrross), as well as the old stand bys of Facebook (IanRobertRoss) and Instagram (IanRobertRoss).
Roleplaying Revisited
The other big unexpected happening of early 2023 was the massive drama around the sudden change to Wizard of the Coast’s Open Gaming License (OGL) for Dungeons & Dragon. Even writing that sentence might have been enough to imperil me under the original changes proposed. Public opinion ended up prevailing and the pendulum has shifted to what appear to be great liberties protected under Creative Commons.
How did that affect me? Funny you should ask.
I started playing Dungeons & Dragons with the red box when I was just about to turn ten years old. (It was a birthday present from my cousin that I opened early.) I immediately fell in love with role-playing games and spent the next years devouring numerous other systems from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D, 1st ed.) to Traveller, Middle Earth Role Playing (MERP), Marvel Super Heroes, and Steve Jackson’s Fighting Fantasy. I had a stack of books for Palladium’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, which we merged with their Robotech offerings to create mutant animals piloting mechs. I had the motion picture-inspired Ghostbusters RPG, most of what was published for Victory Games’ James Bond RPG, the Indiana Jones RPG from TSR, a few books from the Star Wars RPG that West End Games did, and FASA’s original Star Trek RPG. That doesn’t count all the actual table-top wargame we also played, Larry Bond’s Harpoon to Frederick the Great, the Campaigns of the Soldier King 1756-1759, by Avalon Hill. Suffice to say, I tried out a lot of systems in my youth.
After all these years, I decided to jump on the bandwagon and return to gaming. I picked up the requisite texts to begin playing Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons and started working through them. This is when I became aware of the vast library of homebrewed adventures and supplements that the gaming community had created since the advent of the OGL. When I learned of it, I thought it was an incredibly forward-thinking way to build back the community even bigger, which it did. There is a tremendous amount of untapped talent out there, and this became a vehicle for extremely gifted creators to grow the franchise. I was likewise consumed with the idea of adapting my novel, ‘Crown of Caphedra‘, to a D&D-based system then generating adventures based upon my own worldbuilding.
Incredibly, it was the night before the changes to the OGL dropped that I laid out a Table of Contents for a proposed Caphedra-themed gaming supplement. Talk about a reverse Midas touch. I awoke the next morning and the whole gaming world was in arms about changes to royalty structures and a policy which would have seen a supplement like mine grant full access to all my characters and intellectual property (should they ever choose to act on them).
In answer, I expanded my ambition. With a background in lots of different systems, I started working out mechanics that would provide a core framework by which players could adventure in the city of Caphedra.
Now, I’m juggling the sequel novel, ‘Kings of Kramwen’ (currently at about the 60% mark for the first draft), the audiobook for ‘Crown of Caphedra’ which is about half recorded by a very talented narrator who has signed up for the project, and now an RPG game system and world guide to Caphedra and Almahria, which I hope to market alongside the works of fiction that inspired it.
All in all, that’s why my blog-posting time has been a bit scarce. I hope this serves as a good update. If you have a moment, check me out at the above social media links and send me a note to say hello. I’ll do my best to answer. And keep reading this website. I’ll be sure to give more detail to my Caphedra RPG project, hit a few wavetops as far as concepts go and give you some updates on how playtesting goes.