Updates on Swords & Shaman:

When I last published here, we had some things in flight and still do. Though it seems that it is probably time to share a little bit more.

Right now, the future of LRI seems uncertain. 

With only two sole content creators, and a career that requires most of my time and pays the bills, it really isn't feasible to try to keep up with the content creation required to support an independent TTRPG in the current day.  From a business perspective, it would have made more sense to just sell this as an addon for an existing system.

From a gaming perspective, however, we wanted to make something that was independent and could be played on its own. We wanted to give gamers the room to change and make the setting and rules their own. Much like we did when playing RPGs in the 80s, when not everything came with 100+ supplements detailing everything that already existed in the game.

Our play-testers have also moved on, making it challenging to complete any new rules or gauge 'what is fun'.

So where does that leave things?

The Swords & Shaman Game

Since early spring, I have been diligently collecting alternate and house rules for Swords & Shaman, to include in a 'Definitive Edition' of the game. The intention here was to polish some of the rough edges that we didn't like over the years. Like any game, it isn't perfect and there are still things I would probably change, but I think this will be where it 'lands'.

As it stands today, without art, it is currently over 230 pages of 10pt font for easy reading. I expect that it will grow significantly from that.

Other significant aspects:

• The book compiles rules from both the Player's and Game Master's books into one book.
• Levels were removed, instead PCs just accumulate raw AP to purchase improvements.
• Classes were removed, instead the AP costs become the limiting factor on character abilities. (Leading to more diversity of options while still making choices matter).
• Advanced Magic is formally implemented, no more spells per day. There is a magic pool to spend from that is replenished with rest. Every spell comes at a specified cost.
• Armor lists are more generic/simplified
• Additional Creatures added
• Improved stat block layout for creatures
• Additional Deities
• Updates/Clarifications/Revisions to spells and abilities
  

A Possible Graphic Novel

Earlier this year, I completed a manuscript for the first Swords & Shaman graphic novel. The proposed page count lands at 79, though I'm sure that some editing and revisions may still be necessary. 

Ideally, I would like to communicate stories in the setting that can be tied back into the game, perhaps even with stat blocks of individual creatures at the end. The stories are meant to be in keeping with the 'canon'.

Right now, it sits somewhere in a publisher's queue for review. We have no artist commissioned to work on the effort as we simply can't afford it at the moment. We feel that the artists should always be paid for their efforts, even if we are not

I hope to post more updates soon!

Elves are Lemurians?

If you have read or played the game Swords & Shaman, you know that elves have particularly mysterious origins and appear as the remnants of a people from a bygone catastrophe. In fact, elves are all over Swords & Shaman, albeit they don't appear as the traditional fantasy elves. Rather, they are tribal and neolithic, a far cry from the Quendi of Tolkien's mythology.

The fact that elves exist at all in the game is somewhat accidental. Originally, the intent was that everyone was just human. Humans are actually pretty interesting in their own right and and they make excellent allies and monsters all their own. Of course this wouldn't be a Swords & Sorcery style fantasy setting without some extraordinary monsters or beings. 

Of our initial gaming group, a majority of the participants had a vested interest in 'elves'. This was something that my wife took greatly to heart, and much of their existence, as well as the existence of various magic and spells are owed to her.

So as we are revisiting what 'defines' Swords & Shaman, so to are we looking at any of the prior canon with an eye to solidify those aspects of the game.

When we do publish the Definitive Edition, one of the first, most apparent things to stand out will be that 'elves' are now referred to as Lemurians.

This might seem like a 'retcon' on our part, but I believe in no way does this go against our existing canon.

Then why is the new nomenclature necessary?

It was necessary for two important reasons, both of which I have already alluded to here.

First, and I think importantly, in contemporary fantasy speak, 'elf' produces in the imagination an archetype largely of Tolkien's creation. This is further entrenched in fantasy gaming by the ever present shadow of D&D. Strictly speaking, any number of names can apply to a being with similar characteristics. Of course there would be other names in a world where modern english is not spoken. In the truest sense, most of the proper names in the rulebook wouldn't actually exist in Sonnegard.

For the record, these are not Tolkien's, Gygax's, or Arneson's elves.

Secondly, the Lemurians of Sonnegard are accidental residents of this world. The term 'Lemuria', goes back to old 19th-20th century theories about the origins of species before plate tectonic theories were widely accepted. It was a mythical place, coined by occultists and psuedo scientists of the time to explain the idea that a lost continent had sunken somewhere in the east which would have connected India and Africa.

As a literary device, it was often used in early 20th century pulp fiction as an alternative lost continent to Atlantis, complete with lost races of strange inhabitants. In this sense, the naming is a bit of a nod to those early fantasy writers.

In another sense, it establishes that these beings are from 'somewhere else'. Somewhere else that they cannot return to. 

This is important because the Lemurians are 'elves', but they don't belong to Sonnegard. In fact, their presence there is very disruptive and at times that disruption manifests itself physically, as it did during the Time of Shadows. The remaining Lemurians have reverted to a more primitive state bringing them more in harmony with the space time that Sonnegard inhabits. 

I hope to explain more of this if I ever have the opportunity to write the final series of the world ender, but that seems a long way off. In the interim, we're working on some fiction with shorter story arcs regarding a pair of treasure hunters, Leon and Tika, as they uncover some of this lost lore.

But that is another story. 

For now, I present you with Lemurians, who are of course elves, but not those elves. 

Casting Resurrection FIN: 2026

 2026

All of that said, we knew there were some aspects of the game that didn’t quite gel the way we wanted. We’re writing a new ‘definitive edition’ that should really set and mature the game as a whole.

The definitive edition features the removal of classes and the level based advancement system in favor of a point based character build system. Your GM awards points for your sessions and you spend them wherever you want to improve the character. You can mix and match skills and abilities to new combinations that aren’t possible with a class system.

There are some other more nuanced changes. I have been working on the world backstory and history of the elves of Lemuria as a set of separate projects that I hope to tie in with independent graphic stories.

In the meantime, we’re looking at the calendar and plan to book conventions again in 2026. 

I really have no idea if Swords & Shaman will ever have a large audience, but at least we can have fun.

Casting Resurrection PT 3: Getting Up Again

 Getting Up Again.

Nobody is shutting anything down for COVID anymore. It also turns out, quite a few people like us don’t want to pay money for or participate in entertainment that preaches down to us rather than bringing us together.

Someone once asked me, ‘what is different between this game and D&D?’. I was so thrown by the question that I didn’t have an answer!

The truth is that Swords & Shaman is not a clone. Its an adventure game built from the ground up for adventure simulations. We have ONE mechanic to memorize. This is to speed the game play and shift focus back to the setting and the action.

Dungeons & Dragons is of course an amazing game, it was built from strategic war-gaming to provide a tactical simulation of what happens with your character. By extension, it has a great deal of mechanics to support this.

If I’m being totally honest with how I feel, the OGL and D&D SRD was probably the best and worst thing to happen to tabletop rpgs. Nearly all ttrpgs today are clones of D&D rules, albeit repackaged and often times given new forms of setting content.

Swords and Shaman was not this, we started building the game we wanted to play, with its own system and its own magic system. If anything, not an impostor.

Casting Resurrection PT 2 : Tripping and Falling

Tripping and falling.

We were still writing and producing material somewhat consistently but between 2021 and 2022 I ended up moving jobs twice. I had to learn two new, vastly different languages in a short period of time and found myself working extra time to make up.

During the same time period, our play test groups splintered a couple of times and we also found ourselves without a regular gaming group.

Then there was COVID.

Conventions began requiring masking of all attendees, but worse requiring vaccinations and proof of status. It would be hard enough to socialize with a number of players at a noisy convention table, but I couldn’t take the vaccine.

We were able to find one convention that year that would accommodate us remotely running a game and the game went incredibly well despite that. Sadly, it would be our last convention.

Then there was a wave of ideologies and present day politics injected into everything gaming.

Publishers and distributors were all promoting these political trends and fundraisers. I was concerned about where the money for fundraising might be going as well. Often times products were promoted based on this social alignment rather than merit.

This also made participation hard.

Gaming was supposed to be about bringing people together and we didn’t want to lose sight of that.

Casting Resurrection on Swords & Shaman PT 1: Promotion is Hard

It has been a few years and I’ve been seriously looking in retrospect to the state of the IP, what we wanted it to be and where it landed.

Promotion is Hard.
One thing I didn’t realize was how hard it would be to put a product into people’s minds in such a crowded space. I thought, if we made a fun project that people could relate to, it would take off.

Between beta and go live we had to make a name change. We actually applied for trademark for a name (and were awarded it), but we found later another game had the same name. We basically ate the money for the trademark because it didn't feel right to take it. We sat up all night literally rebranding everything.

I also suffered a bit of impostor syndrome, devaluing our own work, which is not good. We worked very hard on this project, but I never felt confident or correct in crowdfunding. We even gave away hundreds of virtually free copies of the rules as ‘beta’. All this was on the hopes that the ‘merit’ would help carry the project.

Except we had no advertising venues, and the podcasts which I hosted weekly for a year were primarily targeting OSR players. Compounding that, I did very little self promotion on those podcasts. I always felt like I was being pushy.

That left conventions. We didn’t have physical copies to sell, the publisher was DTRPG, and so a booth was a waste of space. We had to get a gaming table and run the game.

This is where Swords & Shaman really shined. Our table always seemed to be the ‘fun’ place to be. People repeatedly told us that our game was the most fun they had at the con.

Except that we could only do a few conventions yearly, and some conventions weren’t receptive to indy games.

What is happening at LRI?

We've been pretty quiet the past couple of months and I know there is a long delay between publications. I thought I would publish an update to the blog here in case anyone is interested in knowing that we're still around!

We have been dealing with a couple of personal things (life, you know), and I have actually changed employers. Yes I have a fulltime dayjob, which is one of the reasons that my wife and I don't have more time to publish more material. However, it keeps the lights on so that's a good thing!

At present we are working on the following projects:

Game Masters Rulebook 

    The Game Master's Rulebook is complete and we have been in the art and layout phase for several months now. At present, the goal is to have it published by EOY which we are tracking to! Once we have all of the remaining content, we will need to: 

•     Finalize TOC
•     Finalize Index
•     Prep formats for publication
•     Submit material/Request Proofs
•     Approve Proofs/Publish to DTRPG

A small amount of material which was previously unpublished in the beta version will appear in the GM Rulebook.

•     2 New exotic playable races
•     Map of Hdathem

New World Map! 

    We have commissioned a talented map artist (Misjay Maps) to redraw the sample world map that was included with the beta rules a couple of years back. So far, what I have seen is a huge improvement of the existing map and will compliment the release of the Game Master's Rulebook immensely!

You can see Misjay's work on the map of Raven's Stand in the QuickStart Adventure!

New Character Sheet Forms 

    We honestly don't know what else we're going to change, but these will at least contain the information necessary to support the Advanced Magic Rules (Which are also appearing as an appendix in the GM Rulebook).

'Beasts and Lore' of Sonnegard compendium

    Currently this is only in the writing phase. I'm further behind than I would like. Depending on how the rest of this year goes, we hope to have this one ready for release in late 2022 but we'll see. The idea for this book really became an obvious necessity to us. Having finalized the rulesets in the first two books, we saw that new players and GMs would need a little bit more content to ground them in the setting before taking off and 'filling in the map' as it were. Don't worry, we're still going to leave plenty of blanks, but I think that we could stand publishing a little bit more of the setting content.

    This book will include:

•     More Creatures (I don't have an exact count, we won't know till we finish)
•     Additional background information on the setting
•     Reworked Stat Block for creatures (much easier to read than those in the GM Rulebook)

Other stuff

• Playtesting, never stop gaming!
• We're both evaluating writing some adventure material for other systems.(I won't say which yet though ;) We'll be sure to publish updates if this looks like it is going somewhere!

Coming up.. we'll talk more about inspiration and 'flavors' of running a game or campaign for Swords & Shaman of Sonnegard.