[BMJ] Comeback Inn Adventures: Journey Series

[Havard]

This thread is split from this one.

The basis for this thread is the idea that the members of this forum could write our own Blackmoor adventures and share them here at The Comeback Inn. The adventures are to be divided into two series, the Blackmoor Journey Series and the Blackmoor Crossroads Series. This thread is about the Blackmoor Journey Series.

BLACKMOOR JOURNEY (BMJ Series)

The goal of these adventures is that it should be possible to drop them into any Blackmoor Campaign

• The modules should feature the BMJ logo on the cover (To be designed later).
  
• This line of adventures all conform to a specific set of restrictions:
  
• All adventures in the Journeys Series should be written so that they can be set in the Year 1025-1030.
  
• The adventures should not make references that tie the adventure to a specific version/continuity of Blackmoor
  
• The adventures should not by design introduce dramatic changes to the setting (kill off official NPCs, destroy locations, organizations etc).
  
• The Journey Series should be usable for parties of level 7 of lower.
  
• Links to the Comeback Inn website must be included in the module.
  
• A standard paragraph describing the BMJ and BMX Series must be included with each module.

I don't know if in this post you didn't mention about rulesets purposefully or not. My gut feling is that it would be more suitable for the Journey series having a ruleset broadly similar to original Dave Arneson's adventures / modules (probably some sort of OD&D or d 20 or BECMI retroclone or maybe something broadly compatible with them all, as mentioned earlier...), while for the Crossroad series every author can pick his/her favourite ruleset or the one that they believe is most suitable for their story and flavour.
Does it make some sense?

Note that the requirements listed under each series is just a rough draft. I want you guys to give me input such as you are doing right now

For the Crossroads Series, I completely agree. Authors should have complete autonomy on rulesets.

For Journey we could decide on something specific, although I really like your idea of something that is compatible with multiple editions. Perhaps listing things like HD, Alignment etc which is more or less the same in every edition. AC could be presented both Ascending and Descending for quick conversions.

Just tossing out ideas.

Everyone, feel free to make suggestions to possible changes to the requirements of this series. Either about rulesets or the general requirements.

Would the Journey Series be something that any of you would be interested in contributing to or would your main interest in the series be reading/playing these modules?

-Havard

[Yaztromo]

Hello, I have some experience with similar kind of community projects (as you can see here: http://www.librogame.net/index.php/down ... ibrinostri - don't mind that it's in Italian and it's gamebooks instead of plain adventures... the kind of development needed is similar) and I know that you really need to team up to complete the projects. Of course there will be just an author for each adventure (or maybe two), but you need a group of readers / testers / betatesters, somebody taking care of the images (better original but even the ones freely available in internet need to be cropped and adapted), a cartographer taking care of the maps and a final responsible that goes properly through the finished job and gives thumbs up. Of course all this work can be done by the sole author (maybe with the help of an editing template), but best results, as far as I can see, come from some level of collaboration. This also ensures that projects are not dropped when most of the work is already done or sidetracked all the time, as the group creates a positive reinforcement.

Personally, I don't think that I'm ready to be an author at the moment, but I can help reading the text (not really proofreading, as my English is pretty poor) and coming back with suggestions and observations. I may be able to help also with betatesting, if deadlines are extended enough.

[RobJN]

As I said in that other thread, I have a few ideas rattling around in my noggin, but they are skeleons. And I have quite the full plate with the TC adventure path. So many ideas, so few fingers with which to type them up...

[Havard]

Hello, I have some experience with similar kind of community projects (as you can see here: http://www.librogame.net/index.php/down ... ibrinostri - don't mind that it's in Italian and it's gamebooks instead of plain adventures... the kind of development needed is similar) and I know that you really need to team up to complete the projects. Of course there will be just an author for each adventure (or maybe two), but you need a group of readers / testers / betatesters, somebody taking care of the images (better original but even the ones freely available in internet need to be cropped and adapted), a cartographer taking care of the maps and a final responsible that goes properly through the finished job and gives thumbs up. Of course all this work can be done by the sole author (maybe with the help of an editing template), but best results, as far as I can see, come from some level of collaboration. This also ensures that projects are not dropped when most of the work is already done or sidetracked all the time, as the group creates a positive reinforcement.

Personally, I don't think that I'm ready to be an author at the moment, but I can help reading the text (not really proofreading, as my English is pretty poor) and coming back with suggestions and observations. I may be able to help also with betatesting, if deadlines are extended enough.

That is great! I didnt know you had been working on projects like this. I think that your contributions could be very valuable to this project. At the same time I don't think we should get too ambitious either. We don't have a lot of people available at the moment, but perhaps this is the sort of thing that will make people want to pitch in.

Given time we could have a team of people working together to complete these adventures. Untill then, we will just have to make do with the ones we have and help eachother out.


-Havard