Audiobook Add-on! New Stretch Goals!
over 2 years ago – Mon, Sep 06, 2021 at 11:48:08 AM

Greetings Backers,

We just passed 90K which means we'll make an audiobook!  This will be narrated by Tracy Hickman¹, and recorded in a local studio. If you've pledged at the Legendary XDM level, the audiobook is included in your pledge. If not, the audiobook will be available as a $25 add-on. We've also added a pledge level for people who only want audiobooks.

New Stretch Goals

Entering this final week of the Kickstarter, we've got a few final stretch goals to reach for.

$100,000: X-Stream Dungeon Mastery! Howard will stream the creation of the new illustrations for XDM2e. This is kind of a big deal, because it means that for a couple of months, Howard's studio will be live on Twitch for a few hours every day. 

$120,000: So Shiny! We will add spot gloss to the cover of the book. We'll also be able to pay our contributors (editors, writers, artists) more! As a thank you to backers, everyone at PDF level or higher will get a pdf copy of Assault on Santa’s Workshop (The XDM module created by Tracy and Curtis prior to partnering with Howard and Sandra Tayler. View their glorious clip art.)

$3,000,000: Stretching For the Clown Shoes... Tracy, Howard & Curtis will travel to the Bahamas and host a zoom seminar for all backers. Also, we'll give our contributors another pay raise. Maybe not enough to drop everything they're doing and join us in the Bahamas, but it'll be significant. (Note: In XD20 terms, the difficulty of this final stretch goal is "Clown Shoes Ridiculous." Success at such an endeavor requires a natural 20, followed by another natural 20. Low odds, then.)

The Final Week Has Begun...

The project closes in just five days. When it closes, we'll have firm numbers for our budget, and we can have conversations with the printer and the bindery about exactly how many of these books we get to make. We'll print more than we need to fulfil all our backers' orders, but "more" means "about twice as many," and a decent percentage of those extra books will get reserved for conventions in 2022. 

So... if you've got friends on the fence about this, the only way for them to be sure they get a gloriously hard-bound, toothy-papered, new-book-smell copy is for them to back the project.  

But please don't feel any pressure to evangelize this project. You've already done your part. You're getting YOUR book (and a bunch of other stuff!) and it is going to be amazing. You don't need to burn a bunch of social capital for this. It's just that if you know you have a friend on the fence, you may want to give them a gentle push. Hopefully toward our side of the fence, but they're YOUR friend, so it's your call..

Thank you for your support. You're the reason we get to do the things we love².

—Team XDM2e

———

¹ We're unsure how, exactly, Tracy will go about narrating the illustrations, but we're excited to find out what he does.

² As much fun as it might be, "going to the Bahamas" is not actually a thing we love. It's just a thing we'd be very, very surprised to be able to do.

New Add-On: Game Chief Screens
over 2 years ago – Wed, Sep 01, 2021 at 05:49:32 PM

Greetings backers!

We're coming up on the end of our funding run with only nine days left. Our next stretch goal is for an audio book version of X-treme Dungeon Mastery. Once we reach that goal, it will be available as an add-on to backers at every pledge level. 

We've reached 300 quote tweets and retweets for this tweet from Howard. If we reach 500, then everyone at pdf level or higher gets a printable pdf of character stand ups.

Today we're announcing an add-on that is available now to any backer who is getting a physical package: Game Master Screens.

Game Master Screens

These screens were the result of a Kickstarter that Howard and Sandra ran back in 2017. (You can see that Kickstarter here.) 

Click this video to see the screens in action. Note: we were branding them as "Handbrain screens" to fit in with Planet Mercenary RPG.

The screens are made of hard ABS plastic and are designed to hold half sheets of A4 or US letter paper.  This means you can print out charts, monster stats, maps, or lists and have them ready for you to reference in a way that is not visible to your players. The back side of the screen is usable as a whiteboard. They also disassemble to store or transport nearly flat.

Originally priced at $25 for three screens, we're now offering a set of three for $15. Quantities are limited to the number we have in stock. 

You can add them on to your Kickstarter bundle by updating your pledge to include this add-on, or you can get them sooner by purchasing them in our online store. 

Whether or not you need shiny new GM screens, we're really glad to have you as part of this project. 

Thanks for supporting Team XDM2e!

The Halftime Show
over 2 years ago – Thu, Aug 26, 2021 at 01:54:45 AM

Greetings Backers!

According to the calendar, we're halfway through! You've almost carried us across the $75,000 mark, where we'll get printed end papers for the book, and we're eyeing that $90,000 stretch goal in which we to produce an audio book add-on. 

Stretching for the Stretch

The best way to hit these goals, and to ensure that all our backers get the most out of this project, is for more people to join you in backing the project. We need to put the word out, and we only have two weeks in which to win the hearts of a wider audience. To that end, we're asking for a little bit of your social capital. 

This tweet from Howard? If it gets 500 retweets, Howard will create a PDF of XDM character art suitable for making paper standups in your game, and this PDF will be available to all backers at the PDF level and above. 

How many pictures? Let's put it this way: Howard will be spending all of September and October illustrating XDM2e, and now that we've warned him, he can make sure everything is layered, oriented, and vectored properly for quick conversion and export. The 1st edition had over 150 illustrations, so it's entirely possible that a hundred or more pictures will be suitable for standups, with as wide and inclusive a variety of illustrations as Howard can come up with.  

Retweets don't automatically translate into new backers, but every shout-out helps. Of course, it also helps to set a goal based on how many of you there are... 

Game Time With Tracy Hickman

 When we reach 1100 backers (just 50 more as of the time of this writing), we'll open up a new pledge level.  This limited, $300 pledge level, is for backers who want legendary XDM rewards plus a virtual seat at Tracy Hickman's game table for an XDM-exclusive session.  We can't say much about that session just yet, but we're quite sure that it will be amazing¹. 

X-Treme Apparel 

Some of you have asked whether we will do XDM apparel. We will! Print-on-demand (POD) technologies have served us well in other projects, so we're comfortable deploying them here.  There's a catch, however: in order to get all of the advantages of POD, like a wide variety of items in different sizes, styles, and colors, all apparel has to ship directly from the apparel printer. This means that apparel orders will be separate from this Kickstarter.  On the down-side, that means there won't be a reward level for apparel. On the up-side, it means that as soon as we finish some designs, you can order shirts, hats, or whatever, and have XDM2e apparel well in advance of the XDM2e book. 

You There! You're Awesome!

It's true. We can tell because you read all the way to the end of this update. Thank you! We're very excited to have funded, and that makes it much easier to grind away at some of the non-sexy tasks like editing, wordsmithing, proofreading, merging edits, and checking for continuity of terminology across a dozen chapters and close to eighty-five-thousand words². 

This book is going to be amazing, and it's happening because of you. 

Getting back to work now,

—Team XDM2e

———

¹ Howard Tayler and Jim Zubkavich have both had the opportunity to die at Tracy Hickman's KILLER BREAKFAST. Casting a spell by cracking open a fortune cookie? Not as magical as they hoped.  Delicious, but ineffective.

² The 1st edition weighed in at around 60,000 words. Mathing the mathy-math, it does indeed look like the 2nd edition will be 50% longer, and about 200% more X-treme.

Progress Report: August 11, 2021
over 2 years ago – Wed, Aug 11, 2021 at 02:56:48 PM

In the previous update we explained a bit about what we’ve got planned. Now we need to tell you how things are going. In doing that, we’ll also provide you with some details about the changes. 

NOTE: This update is over 1,750 words long. We’re being pretty transparent, and telling you everything we can short of pasting 80,000 words in here. Also, we learned to our dismay that we can't disable notifications for updates. So, yeah... sorry for the spam.

Big Reorganization Notes

The biggest change, the one every owner of the 1st edition will notice, is that we moved pretty much everything from pages 5 through 22 into other places in the book. That stuff is fun, but it’s too silly too early. We’re putting the super-useful stuff much earlier in the book. So, let’s talk about how the “super-useful” is coming along.

Text-Complete

The following chapters are text-complete, and have been handed to copy editors:

Introduction: Path of the XDM — We took the tale of Tracy’s barbarian from p114 of the 1st edition, and reworked it as a framing story to carry us through the book. We had this idea back in 2009, but we didn’t have it until four days *after* we’d sent files to the printer. Now we’re doing it!

Ch 1: Everything is For the Players — We’ve revised and expanded this, providing additional information on adapting to player needs, updating the techniques for juggling story elements, and done so with 80% fewer sweeping generalizations.

Ch 2: Story is Everything — We revised and compressed the monomyth explanation, and are contrasting it with three-act, seven-point, and kishotenketsu story structures. The “mystery and surprise” sections went into a new chapter, and the Random Story Generator was moved to the appendices

Ch 3: Designing for Story — This chapter almost tripled in size. We’ve provided lots of practical information about using matrices and flow charts for story design, how to lay story structures from Chapter 3 over your closed-matrix game design, and how to ensure that player choices are reflected in the story.

Ch 5: They’ll Never See This Coming — This new chapter is an expansion upon the “mystery and surprise” material pulled from Chapter 3, focusing on how an appropriately-deployed pattern of deception and revelation enables a storyteller to delight audiences without cheating. Also included: a set of table-top, game-time techniques you can employ for that “surprising yet inevitable” reveal.

Ch 6: X-treme NPCs — This is an all-new chapter, which takes the concept of Impact Characters (terminology borrowed from Dramatica) to explore how the XDM can build non-player characters who help drive player character stories in satisfying and fulfilling ways. It also provides patterns for creating good antagonists & villains, a “rogues gallery” of NPCs (this bit is still under construction), and a speedy guide for “filing the serial numbers off of” movie and TV characters when you need to steal them for your game.

Ch 7: Selddir — Yes, we’re keeping the anagrammatical mini-puzzle in the title of this chapter about riddles, puzzles, and traps. We’ve removed a couple of superfluous riddles, added a bunch of information on puzzles, along with a few example puzzles, and okay we wanted to include some example traps, but the book bindery wouldn’t let us put traps in our book. (Yes, that joke is in the book. SPOILER ALERT.)

Ch 12: Wonders of the Gods — This 10,000-word chapter got a bit longer, then a bit shorter, ending about where it started in terms of word count. Mostly we clarified the wording to make it a bit easier to learn the contact juggling, card forces, and flourishes contained herein. The “this trick is worth the price of the book” trick is still here.

In Progress

These chapters are in active revision and should be complete within a week or two.

Ch 4: The Tale and The Territory — This all-new chapter is being written to expand upon some delicious nuggets of wisdom about map-making in service of the story. That info was hiding in the 1st edition’s “Thou Shalt Prepare” chapter, which was weird. Why was it there? Dunno. Let’s move it. Oh, and let’s get some more map-making goodness going on in here!

Ch 8: Some Assembly Required — Used to be called “Thou Shalt Prepare.” When we yeeted the map stuff down into Chapter 4, this poor chapter dropped to less than 2000 words. We looked at what was left, and realized that it was sorely lacking the instructions for how to actually prepare and organize and assemble things for a game session. So we raided the “Killer Breakfast To Go” chapter for a Beat Chart, and yeah, there’s still some writing going on in here.

Ch 9: Conflict at the Table — Mostly new, and super-relevant, this chapter contains the shrapnel which remained when we blew up “Living Through the Revolution” in order to be a bit less dictatorial. We yoinked the “in-game consequences” section from “All the Game’s a Stage,” and added explorations of several topics, including who has authority and why it should be used, being the arbiter of rules, reducing during-the-game litigation, and how to handle that uncomfortable moment when someone really does need to be ejected from the game. All of this is framed on stuff from the first few chapters, because genuinely understanding the purpose behind your game can prevent conflict.

Ch 10: All the Game’s a Stage — Revision here is focused on reorganizing information to read more smoothly, especially after the yoinking of “in-game consequences” to feed the hungry maw of Chapter 9. Added a section on using improvisational theater techniques to encourage more—and better—role play.

Ch 11: Ambiance, Atmosphere, Asplosions — Moment of clarity here. The 1st edition’s pyrotechnics chapter was just one long joke about how Smokey the Bear had redacted all of the juicy stuff about how to make giant fireballs. We don’t need to spend six pages on that joke when it can be told in a couple of paragraphs. Those paragraphs folded nicely into what used to be the “Atmosphere” chapter, to which we’ve added some bits about candles, lanterns, and fire pits. We also included some accessibility information related to “atmospheric” choices. 

Ch 13: Killer Breakfast to Go — Revising for tighter wording, and better delivery of the assorted Killer Breakfast anecdotes. The new version should make it easier for XDMs to understand how to run a performative game at a large event where player characters are killed off every two minutes or so.

Ch 14: The Path of the Player — Revising and expanding the player-specific principles, including an exploration of character knowledge vs player knowledge (which only got three lines in the first edition, how did THAT happen?!) Also included: embracing failure joyously, making your character interesting, and being a better citizen of the tabletop. 

Appendix: Accessibility — An all-new appendix packed full of information on how to ensure that everyone, regardless of ability, can play on equal ground. We’re including safety rules, and specific information about the needs your players may have, and how you can accommodate those needs. The first draft of this is done, but it still needs a couple more passes.

Awaiting Our Attention

Here are the chapters we’ve looked at, and made notes about, but which we haven’t yet actually opened up for editorial surgery. Hopefully these will be done in three to four weeks. Maybe sooner! It depends, because until we open the patient up, we just don’t know.

Introduction — This will be completely re-written, and gets written last, after we know what’s in the rest of the book.

Ch 15: XD20 Basic Game — We expect lots of wording changes for clarity.

Ch 16: XD20 Advanced Player’s Guide — Some reorganization, and some wording changes for clarity.

Ch 17: XD20 Dungeon Mastery Handbook — Probably just reorganization and wording changes for clarity, but it’s possible that this whole chapter is doubling down on the Basic vs Advanced D&D versions, and can get rolled into “XD20 Basic.” Which we’ll obviously call XD20 3.5. (HAH! Also, no, we’re not keeping that joke.)

Ch 18: XD20 Creature Codex —Small wording changes, and some new creatures, including the crocodoggodile.

On the Roadmap

These are things for which we’ve made plans, but haven’t begun working on. We don't have chapter numbers or appendix names yet.  This stuff is probably four weeks out. Probably.

Bibliography — ALL NEW! We’ll provide reference information so you can continue your XDM studies with deep dives into the things we only have room to touch on.

The Secret History of XDMs (public version) — This was one of the first chapters  in the first edition. It’s fun, and silly, and belongs in the BACK of the book. It will get revised, because revising a secret history is fun.

DIY Initiation Rites — These will be rewritten and updated to better fit a reading audience. The original text was essentially a script for the GenCon Indy XDM presentations.

XDM's Guide for Smooth Conversational Storytelling — New to you. It’ll only take half a work-day to write, but we have to get there first.

Random Story generator — Moved this into the appendices. Will be revised/reworded for clarity

The Comic Drop and other Humor Info — Yet to be drafted and condensed for XDM, but we have dozens of pages to pull from.

Waiting for Gygax —This brief essay by Tracy will either remain mostly the same, or it will get folded into the new introduction. We’ll know more when we’re text-complete on the first 14 chapters.

Illustrations

Yeah, we can't even THINK about them until we have final text. It's safer that way. Right now the plan is for the illustrations to start happening in a couple of weeks, when Howard isn't needed for wordsmithing, and when copy-edits are complete on some of the chapters.

... aaand DONE!

Which is to say we're done writing this enormous essay about the book we're revising.  Yes, we could have spent all this time writing book stuff instead of writing ABOUT book stuff, but then you wouldn't know what's going on, and half the fun of crowdfunding is letting you peer under the hood while we work.

The other half of the fun is, of course, funding. And then there's a third half which is the fun part where we finally take delivery from the bindery, and realize we actually did it despite being bad at fractions.

Thank you for your support, everyone!

—Team XDM

The What and the Why of XDM2e
over 2 years ago – Wed, Aug 11, 2021 at 10:55:15 AM

 What is XDM? Why Does it Need a Second Edition?  

These two questions can kind of be answered at the same time, but let's start with the second one. Why a second edition? 

We’ve learned a lot in the last twelve years¹, and we want X-Treme Dungeon Mastery to have that stuff in it. When we stepped back and did some critical examination of the first edition, we realized that the material wasn’t ordered correctly. The book was fun, and amazing, and absolutely x-treme, but it required readers to buy into some serious silliness before getting to the meaty parts.

We regret nothing. The first edition will always delight us. But we can do much more to enable game masters and players to have amazing sessions at the role-playing table.

But what is XDM, really? Well, let's tackle that by going into more detail on the "why" question, and letting you read a couple of pages.

Here's a first look at an XDM2e page spread: (clicking on the image will take you to a full-size version in Google Docs.)

By way of comparison, here's the narrative bumper pool stuff from the 1st edition. Again, click on the image to see it full-sized in Google Docs.

The 1st and 2nd editions tell mostly the same story here, but the 1st edition is missing at least three important things:

1. The 1st edition sample story did not reference the cells in the illustration.
2. It didn’t categorize the bumper types.
3. It didn’t explore how the party’s arrival at the castle would differ depending on which route they took to get there

Most importantly, however? The 1st edition’s “Designing for Story” chapter ends about a paragraph later. We dropped some big knowledge, sure, but when you turn the page it’s done.

In the 2nd edition, we’re spending another 4,000 words  on this! We'll be exploring how to map a story structure onto a closed matrix, and how to go about actually sitting down and writing these materials so that you and your players can play them. And yes, there will be more pictures, along with some very useful diagrams.

The first edition is about 60,000 words long, has 180 illustrations, and 160 pages. The second edition is shaping up to be 208 pages long, and the additional 48 pages will include around 50 new illustrations. And we’re not adding pages just to make it longer, or bigger. We’re editing, reworking, re-stating, and tightening things up as we go, so the 2nd edition is going to be richer, and more useful to you.

Watch this space!

Our next update, which Howard is still working on, will be structured like a progress report, but it’ll also include a breakdown of what’s new and what’s changed, chapter by chapter.
   Thank you for supporting us in this. We’re thrilled to be working on XDM again, and look forward to putting this 2nd edition in your hands.
   —Team XDM²
   --------
   ¹ We've learned a lot, but we have not outgrown our adoration of good footnotes. As evidenced by this footnote about footnotes.
   ² Alphabetically: Curtis, Howard, Sandra, & Tracy