Month in Review – July 2017

Hello, everyone! It’s been an amazing first month for TBM Games – so far, for Primordial Power, I’ve published six articles of original game content, in addition to four reviews. To draw this first full month of articles to a close, I’d like to answer a few questions, explain some of my upcoming plans for articles, and thank you all for your support.

What are your plans for TBM Games in the long run? Upon completing Primordial Power, I’d like to continue to write new supplements for Fifth Edition. I am not entirely sure what specific subjects future supplements will cover, but at present, I know that I will not aim to produce a campaign setting, but instead additional smaller game supplements.

Another major consideration for the site is the upcoming school year – as classes begin towards the end of this August, I’ll have much less unstructured time to work on articles. I hope that by continuing to develop a buffer of articles, I’ll be able to continue with regular updates in August like I have for the majority of July.

Additionally, with the help of Patrons’ support and the proceeds from Primordial Power, I’m hoping to build a small income which will cover the time and love that I put into TBM Games.

What advice would you give new Storytellers? Regardless of which game system you’re running, aim to be surprised by your players! When possible, design your adventures and scenarios to have a clear solution, but remain open to unusual player ideas and out-of-the-box thinking. When designing adventures for my own campaigns, I’ll try and leave players with interesting tools and magical items. I may not have even the foggiest idea what the players will use these tools for, but will gladly congratulate them for their creative uses.

Five years ago, in the first campaign which I ran to completion, at an incredibly low level, as a present for services rendered, a king gave the party’s Fighter, Richter, an enchanted whistle. The whistle had a single use, and when blown, would summon whoever Richter wanted. Originally, I had intended to use this magic whistle as a plot device to reunite the group with a party member who had traveled elsewhere, but as fortune would have it, the party reconvened and I never informed them of the item’s intended purpose. Times came and went when Richter’s player considered using the whistle, but he held onto it, thinking he’d find a better use for it or even figure out what I wanted him to use the whistle for. At the very end of the campaign, the party learned of a disaster which only they were equipped to stop(coincidentally, a Primordial who will appear in Primordial Power), which required them to join forces years after they’d parted ways and travel back in time to the day of the event, a major historical point in the campaign. While they fought this Primordial, it occurred to Richter that there was one person above all others he trusted to help him in a fight – himself. Richter successfully summoned his past, slightly lower-leveled, self to the battle, and we had Richter’s player proceed to pull out an older copy of his character sheet to join the fray as an additional combatant.

At my table, creating stories like this is the reason we play, five years later – tabletop role-playing games are a unique medium of game in that you can accomplish almost anything, and your decisions aren’t narrowed down as they are in other kinds of games.

Hopefully, I can answer your future questions in this format regularly at the end of each month. If you have any questions for me to post publicly, be they gaming questions, questions about past or future(though I can’t make any guarantees that I’ll answer about the latter) articles, or otherwise, please ask them anonymously here.

As I write this post, I’m gearing up for a visit to Washington which will last for about two weeks. During this time, the website will update on Mondays and Fridays as usual but will be doing so automatically(with Patreon-early original content being released on Sundays and Thursdays). These articles will be a review for Demon Cults and Secret Societies by Kobold Press and stat blocks for a new monster, Mercury Elementals, and Zyagi, the Armored Tyrant. Additionally, Playtesters can expect the first Playtest article at the beginning of the month. This article will feature an experimental class which converts its Hit Points into a resource for wider utility.

Finally, I’d like to thank the Patrons who have pledged via Patreon so far – Your contributions mean a great deal to me, and inspire me to continue to do my best to provide interesting and unique content. In turn, I hope that you’ll want to help spread TBM Games to your friends to enjoy as well.

For those readers who aren’t yet Patrons but want to be, please click the link below – in exchange for as little as a dollar’s contribution each month, you can view each article of original content a day early, receive mini-updates on the goings-on in my own life, and help to support this blog in general. For five dollars a month or more, you can also gain monthly access to new articles in their playtesting stage and help to shape future content for TBM Games.

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