If you've looked at my profile, you may have already noticed that I'm part of a small game publishing company. The funny thing is that Peryton RPG, our best-selling product (although Troll Tunnels hasn't been out long and is showing a lot of promise) was kind of an accident.
Here's what happened. I wanted to introduce my gaming group, a bunch of Tunnels & Trolls fanatics, to the good things about the d20/OGL world but I was burned out on all the homework involved in D&D 3/3.5. I found a couple of neat adaptations that claimed to streamline the system and didn't do a bad job of it, but they were both nostalgia games. What I mean by this is that not only did they simplify the SRD rules, they reanimated things from first edition AD&D that should have stayed dead, like different XP charts for each class, and the habit of just saying "no" to breaking the old familiar molds (like wizards and armor) instead of working consequences into the rules.
So I thought, okay, fine, I'll just download the SRD and do it myself. I came up with the basic concepts, and then just threw in some fun stuff that I had been toying with, like a few new monsters, an experience point system that makes sense, a rudimentary alchemy system, and other tidbits. By then I had discovered Lulu, so I thought it would be fairly cheap and kind of fun to put this beast on the market and see if anyone likes it. I bought cover art and a few pieces of interior art, then had a ball digging around for appropriate public domain images to fill the rest. I did the layouts with OpenOffice.
The end result was a decent-looking book, despite the struggle to beat a good word processor into the shape of a mediocre DTP program. The biggest flaw was, remember, I wrote it for myself. It could be a great first RPG for new gamers, but it's not really laid out that way. Also, it's not designed to show off its best features. If you just flip through it, you see a lot of d20 with my original work almost hidden in the cracks. Despite this, a lot of people bought it, even though we didn't market it aggressively, and a surprising number of those got in touch just to say how much they enjoyed running it. And it's still selling.
But I think it's about time for a revised version. I don't want to call it a new edition, because everybody thinks that means "completely different game" and, really, the rules will be pretty much the same. All the stats will still work both ways. I just want to make it prettier (now that I have better design software and more experience with games), friendlier, and clear out some clutter to throw in a few more neat extras.
Shh. Don't tell anyone. We haven't announced it yet.
Oh, crap. I just did.
Tags: PerytonGamers D20 OGL Process
