Silent Titans - What Did and Didn't Work?

Reviews are mixed.

It doesn't work.

No, wait, it does.

IT DEFINITELY WORKS.

Ah crap, no it don't.


So, not quite a bullet in the head, but no triumph with laurels either.

So for anyone who has tried to actually run it, what parts did you find worked and what didn't?

Also if you have questions I will try (?) to answer them.

Also please be civil, I realise experiencing these intuitive differences in perception can be frustrating but the intention here is more of a neutral forum.

And I meant be civil to each other but now I think about it be civil to me as well please.

Deoth - for Eldritch Foundry

If you want to skip ahead and see what these dudes actually look like, and take a look at some of the other races, the Eldritch Foundry has a 'Lore' section now. Link is at the bottom of the post. Click through and Lore is on the top right.

Also we have an initial-area continental map coming with clickable backgrounds and descriptions for everything on there, if I can ever finish the writing for it.

.............

Writing - the main challenge for the EF stuff is that, at least initially, its driven by the market, or by what the market is assumed to be. Which to begin with means Elves, Dwarves, Half-Elves (maybe the most popular PC choice) Halflings, etc.

And then later, animal-people and tiny Fey, who are apparently major desired products for 3D printing as models for them are not well served by mass produced plastic-injection moulding.

So this is me trying to interact with, or at least approach, the general public. (Those who know me are sniggering behind their hands reading this). 

I knew this going in, it was one of the reasons I took the job.

One of the general race-concepts for Uud is that everything is very slightly more pseudo-scientific than usual. Several of the 'races' are meant to be alternate versions of Humanity from parallel planes, trapped together when Yggsrathaal started to decay this one. 

So the mind states of Aeth and Deoth are imagined as them having subtly different cognitive architecture, literally a different sensorium, biology, perception of the world and not just different biology in human terms but operating under the shadow of very slightly different natural laws.

Most of these 'races' have almost completely forgotten that they are from different versions of reality.

As to 'Humanity', essentially its defined by the majority. Somon, (Homo Sapiens) are from this reality. (This is also why they have only one name when encountering extra-dimensional beings, hence the name 'Somon'. As fast-breeding agricultural omnivores, there are a lot more of them, so they get to decide what it means to be human. Which mean Aeth, Deoth, Homon and a handful of others are *in*, and 'monsters', 'orcs' and definitely the Children of Yggsrathaal are definitely *out*.

I haven't got round to 'Orc' yet, but essentially, from the perspective of human cultures, its "Looks-Kinda-Human-But-Not", someone, or something, that is in the uncanny valley of human perception, human-seeming enough to freak people out but without some essential quality of 'humanity'.

So, this is both a physical, and in a way, a legal definition. Who or what is or isn't an 'Orc' can depend a lot on how the people around them perceive them.

Anyway, here are 'our-Dwarves-are-different' Deoth.

.............................................

ALIENATED FROM NATURE

Imagine if, when you looked at a tree or a flower unfurling, or a cloud crossing the sun, you felt as if you had seen a spider crossing your hand.

Or if, when you saw a green shoot in fresh soil, or a baby lamb, it felt as if you were looking at a skull, picked quite clean by insects and time.

These things aren't necessarily awful, or even inherently ugly or monstrous, they can be said to have their own strange beauty. But they are Other; alien and strange. They are not like you.

The Deoth feel and intuit nature, in its immediate forms; trees, plants, forests, weather, wind, rain and storms, the sun (but not the stars) as something alien.

For them, a meadow surrounded by flowers is like a field of crawling insects. Not evil, but not fun, and they feel the same way about natural growth as you do about decay. It’s necessary, but you wouldn't want to sit there staring at it.

Wherever they come from or however they were made, those things were not natural to them and no matter how long they have been here, those things remain other to them. This instinct never fades, or abrades with time. They are not at home.

This bone-deep alienation from the natural world cascades up and down the Deoth state of mind, affecting their culture on every level. If they were ‘at home’, somewhere they intuited as ‘normal’, would they seem more ‘human’? Or even stranger?

BODY AND FORM

If Somon (Human) proportions are roughly 1 by 3 by 9, i.e. three times as wide and nine times as tall as they are thick, then Deoth proportions are more like 1 by 2 by 6, twice as wide and six times as tall as they are thick.

They have slightly denser mass and roughly the same amount of flesh, just differently proportioned. This makes them heavy, wide, and strong.

The range of morphology crosses over with the edge of the Somon range. An unusually short, dense or squat Somon and an unusually tall, lithe and gracile Deoth could look very similar.

At the other end of the range, the extraordinarily short, wide and thick Deoth look almost like creatures from legend of children’s tales.

Their blood is denser than water and crystallises into cuboid prisms, like salt, when it dries. Their bones, skin, nails, teeth and hair follicles are thick, towards the end of the Somon range.

They are omnivores, and can survive on very little, but they like to eat a LOT, especially of carbs. They are happy if they can add in extra carbs as drink at the same time. Thick foods, thick drinks.

They like booze, because their extremely fast calorie conversion means they have to work to get fat, and perhaps drinking aids them with their mild and continual alienation from the 'natural' world. Low-level alcoholism is common to many Deoth cultures.

They also sometimes nibble small pieces of metal and mineral, and can often identify them by taste. They aren't getting nutrition from them, but they may integrate trace elements into their senses.

SLEEP AND DREAMS

Deoth almost always lucid dream. They are aware they are dreaming, can change the nature of the dream and recall it afterwards. These dream-states are of enormous precision and exactness. If a Deoth dreams of writing a book or sketching a plan, when they fall back asleep the same plan or book will be there, exactly as it was before.

Deoth spend a lot of time in dreams, planning and building, making and shaping. They have a near-perfect memory for objects so every Deoth has a kind of internal catalogue of plans and built things which they have developed from childhood.

They do not fundamentally need to sleep, but they can and they enjoy it. Their dreams of craft are one of the few pleasures they are afforded in their strange world and they are opportunistic sleepers.

Sleep also re-energises them a great deal, a regularly-sleeping Deoth will seem to have a lot more energy than a Somon on the same schedule and will usually wake up full of plans.

Tired or poorly fed Deoth don't dream, which is distressing for them, and their para-senses and craft skills suffer. This isn't very noticeable to other races - to an outsider their gross physical actions remain the same. This is where part of their reputation for tirelessness comes from. This lack of dreaming makes them grumpy, which is where part of their reputation for being arseholes comes from.

Deoth find humanities formless, memoryless dreams in which the dreamer not only cannot control what is happening, but does not even know they are dreaming, really weird and mystical. For them, lived experience is the strange, formless and uncontrollable part of existence, and the dream a refuge from that.

A Somon waking up afraid from a nightmare, or talking in their sleep, is a slightly magical experience for Deoth.

“Where did you go?” they ask.

SENSES

Deoth have a range of partial senses that Somon do not. These vary a great deal by individual according to lines of descent, personal aptitude, diet, culture and sheer randomness.

They have a partial magnetic sense, like a pigeon or migrating bird which they describe it as a kind of 'tightness' in the air.

They have a very precise pressure sense in their sinuses, like the Somon experience of quickly gaining or losing height, but much more exact. They generally know how deep or how high they are.

They have a blotchy and imprecise short-range infra-red sense, they will often see living things glowing slightly in the dark at close range.

They can sense (but not 'see') the presence of ultraviolet light and even more high-frequency particles. Birds and flowers have a ‘brightness’ to them which Somon do not see. The irony of Deoth being able to see this when they cannot appreciate its beauty has not been lost on generations of poets and ironists.

The combination of these sense, plus a complete absence of claustrophobia or of any fear of being trapped in a small space, means Deoth are very comfortable underground or in enclosed spaces of any kind.

Somon become uncomfortable in these situations relatively quickly and Aeth even faster but Deoth are completely happy rambling about through narrow tunnels for days, months, forever really. There are no 'infinite' depths for them since they always know how deep they are and they never have the sense of being crushed or buried.

CULTURE

There have been Deoth in Blackriver since anyone can remember.

It’s widely thought they built the Grey Cities. Under the eons of decrepitude and grime, beneath the tattered flags, collapsed icons to forgotten faiths and crumbling spires, many of the key buildings, and much of the core design of Galdor, Vocht, Declension and Yga is clearly their work.

Today, they are massively outnumbered by Somon and are usually allowed high-status functionary roles that minimise social interaction. Anywhere from Blacksmith to Bureaucrat to Executioner. But they are often are kept out of Somon hierarchies. Their usual low sociability and disinterest in social position means they barely object.

A local Deoth might be the village blacksmith, money changer, house builder, night watchman, village drunk or all of the above.

They can do well in the military, where social roles and reactions are all written down and their enormous capacity for work is rewarded. There are no Deoth Emperors or Kings (in Blackriver at least), but you might find one acting as the Marcher Lord of a watch-tower on the margins of the Waste, a mix of military commander, colonist, monster fighter and feudal lord.

Its standard for most Deoth to have at least one or two of the personality traits we associate with Aspergers; difficulty with facial expressions, literalism, trouble with eye contact or metaphors. They are not necessarily very deep on the spectrum but it’s rare to meet one that has none of these markers at all.

Just because they have difficulty in social situations does not mean they are necessarily anti-social. They can draw as much pleasure from the company of others as anyone, but their strange relationship to the world, strange mentality, intense focus, object obsession and long lives (300 to 400 years usually) mean they find it hard to maintain social bonds.

Generally as they age and get more familiar with Somon they find ways to adapt to the surrounding culture. They live so long, with such regular habits and private interests that to generations of Somon they seem almost to fade into the background.

GENDER

Deoth are less into Gender than Somon.

They like to have something on their face, either a beard, tattoos, piercings or some other body modification or mask.

The classic Deoth look is a bearded male and a tattooed and pierced female, but with Deoh you never really know since males do shave occasionally, women sometimes grow facial hair and they often don't signal gender much.

Its entirely possible to spend a long time with some Deoth without ever really knowing what gender they are. They might not think to bring it up themselves.

It's theorised that they have a breeding season or some specific thing that activates sexual desire, with it being low or neutral the rest of the time. Whatever it is they don't talk about it much and others are often too embarrassed to ask.

In theory Somon and Deaoth can cross-breed, with a low likelihood of producing young and a near-impossibility of producing fertile young. But since almost no human wants to sleep with a Deoth and they have little interest the other way, half-Deoh are extraordinarily rare, and usually just look like short Somon.

THE STEEL KEEPS

For the Deoth Blackwater the Steel Keeps are legendary places. They are described as mountains of steel or huge towers of metal, mistaken for shining castles but growing deep, deep into the earth, with mountains and forests grown up around them.

Deoth legends place the Steel Keeps at the centre of all their origin myths.

These all differ, in a few the Deoth were created in the Keeps. In most the Keeps are what brought them here, to Uud, from wherever they were before. In some legends they fell from the heavans, in others they were summoned or rose up from the ground. The tales all differ except to say that the Steel Keeps pierced the world and the Deoth came forth.

All the Keeps are lost, except for one. The Waste of the world and the Ash of Yggsrathaal has consumed and folded over them, lost to monsters or time, or the children of Entropy, or to cultural change, abandoned, ruined, sinking.

Except for one. In the most distant of the Mountains of Reality, on the border of the Cataclysm and with the ruins of lost Phosphorfall just visible from its peak, stands the Beothoborg, a sky-piercing shard of steel that shines like ice, with black scree-slopes gathered around it like blankets.

Few Deoth live there and those that do are considered even stranger that Blackriver Deoth. High-minded and difficult to deal with and extremely unimpressed. They hold to what they claim are ‘older ways’ and wield ‘pure’ runic magics. It’s said they make food by alchemy and nothing grows inside.

Most Deoth have some kind of vague dream of repairing or reconquering, re-inhabiting the Steel Keeps, or a specific one, though to exactly what effect they either do not know or will not tell. A vision of shining walls on a distant horizon hangs before their eyes - a dream that mutes the loneliness of a world that never feels quite right or makes sense.

THE AWAKENING

Every month there seems to be some report of Deoth springing into unlikely action.

Striding into the ash to seize back names from Name-Takers, leaguing with Somon or Aeth to fight spindlelimbed taxmasters, troubling, or even directly defying the authorities. There have always been a few radical monster hunters, easy enough to divert into pointless or low-success missions out in the ash, but now things are getting really out of control. Who would have thought it, from the Deoth of all people?

Silent Titans - Now on DrivethruRPG

If you want to buy the PDF from Drivethru RPG then..

Here it is!

Other than that, this is pretty much the same post again!

(But if you read to the end there is some new, or archival, material.)

In case you don't read blogs on the weekend. Silent Titans, an idea that was conceived of back in 2016, has been printed and is available to buy

If you are in the U.S. it should be arriving in the warehouse as you read this, if you are anywhere else, here's Jacobs copy;

(tldr, if you order before April 22nd then we ship a big pallet to the U.K. and then ship worldwide from there. If you order after the 22nd its gonna cost more.)

"International Orders

If you live outside the US, a pallet of books is being held in limbo until April 22nd. From now, until April 22nd, we will be pre-selling books for international customers. At the end of that window, we will ship the books that have been sold (and some spares, just in case) to the UK. Once they arrive in the UK they will begin shipping out around the world. 

International shipping rates from the UK to the world are much much better than international shipping rates from the US to the world, so if you have any friends who missed out on the Kickstarter and don't live in the US, this pre-sale period is the time to jump on and grab a copy! Once the pre-sale window closes on April 22nd, all subsequent international orders will ship from the US, and shipping prices will increase accordingly.

We are considering doing some international friendly pre-sale events two to three times a year, so if your friend can't pick up a copy now, don't despair, there will probably be another opportunity at some point in the autumn".

Below is all the sales links, aaaaand if you want to read right to the end I will put in the very first file I ever opened (or the oldest one I can find anyway) about this project."

What is Silent Titans?

An adventure, a game, a work of art, a mystery, a book of post-singularity dream-imagery and local history, a luxury product at a price you can afford and a sensory feast for the eyes.

It's an Adventure.

Silent Titans includes an overland area isolated by mysterious phenomena, a central town, a scattering of settlements and five unique non-Euclidian dungeons. Brave the strange environment, investigate the dungeons, get the treasure and you can escape. If you are familiar with the general conventions of old-school play or light d20 mechanics, you should be able to expand Silent Titans to any of the main OSR systems.

It's a Game.

Silent Titans includes the stats and character generation you need to run it in the book itself. The book contains advice on creating encounters, an interview with Chris McDowall about his design goals and creation of the ruleset, slimmed down simple character generation that gives everyone a vivid and engaging character to interpret and play right away and an opening encounter designed to kick off the adventure and teach the basics of conceptualisation and play at the same time. So if you have never played or run an RPG before, you can probably run this, all on its own.

It's a Mystery.

The players are thrown immediately into conflict with a twisted antagonist who has stripped from their minds all recall of their mission and purpose. As they discover the world of Wir-Heal, and the sleeping Titans who make up its strata, they must find out what is going on; why do wavering dreams from a blizzard of ruined futures poison the air? Why is a medieval world threatened by drone war and extradimensional beings? Why does the Marcher Lord in charge of this frontier town own a sub-machine gun? What are the Titans, where did they come from? And most importantly, who are the players and why are they here?

It’s History.

Silent Titans is set in a world wracked by time spasms and dimensional collapse. In its geography, society, environments and characters are warped or alternate versions of the Wirral Peninsula in North West England. Driven through this like needles through skin, are terrifying shards of a distant, ruined, high-technology reality whose broken weapons and poisonous ontological waste has been dumped and hidden in its own past. It has both sword fights and robots.

It's a work of art.

Silent Titans combines the fervid, intensely vibrant, escher-like artwork of Dirk Detweiler Leichty and the strange dream-vision prose of Patrick Stuart on every page. Its dungeons are also heraldic glyphs, its monsters and characters sprawl across double-page spreads like the figures of an illuminated gospel from a fallen post-singularity world.

It's a Luxury Product at a price YOU can afford.

Printed by Friesens (printers of Maze of the Blue Medusa and Hot Springs Island), Silent Titans includes printed endpapers and dust-jacket, ridiculously thick and colour-absorbent paper, a foil-stamped cover, the deepest possible blacks to counterpoint the brightest possible colours and a ribbon bookmark. For the small price of $50, you get everything above, an adventure, a game, an original work of art, a mystery story, a dark science-fantasy paraverse, a sombre warning about the dangers of letting hyperdimensional giant robots run the world and an off-kilter guide to the Wirral Peninsula, so if you ever go there you can freak out locals by pointing out places where you were murdered by a mad pig in a mask.

And, since you got this far, here are some images of the oldest file I could find about Silent Titans, 10th of September 2016 at 16:27.

Silent Titans Pre-Sales are Live (early morning edition)

(This is probably going out again in the evening for the U.S.A.'ns so sorry in advance for the spam.)

The text below is just a rip from Jacobs update but TLDR, you can now click a link to buy the thing.

The Book.

The Book and Bonus Bundle

THE PDF

"Books are on their way to the US warehouse, and are expected to arrive on April 8th, 2019.

If you live in the US, and only want the book itself, they should begin shipping out shortly thereafter. It may not be immediate (see below), but it will happen rapidly.

International Orders

If you live outside the US, a pallet of books is being held in limbo until April 22nd. From now, until April 22nd, we will be pre-selling books for international customers. At the end of that window, we will ship the books that have been sold (and some spares, just in case) to the UK. Once they arrive in the UK they will begin shipping out around the world. 

International shipping rates from the UK to the world are much much better than international shipping rates from the US to the world, so if you have any friends who missed out on the Kickstarter and don't live in the US, this pre-sale period is the time to jump on and grab a copy! Once the pre-sale window closes on April 22nd, all subsequent international orders will ship from the US, and shipping prices will increase accordingly.

We are considering doing some international friendly pre-sale events two to three times a year, so if your friend can't pick up a copy now, don't despair, there will probably be another opportunity at some point in the autumn"

What is Silent Titans?

An adventure, a game, a work of art, a mystery, a book of post-singularity dream-imagery and local history, a luxury product at a price you can afford and a sensory feast for the eyes.

It's an Adventure.

Silent Titans includes an overland area isolated by mysterious phenomena, a central town, a scattering of settlements and five unique non-Euclidian dungeons. Brave the strange environment, investigate the dungeons, get the treasure and you can escape. If you are familiar with the general conventions of old-school play or light d20 mechanics, you should be able to expand Silent Titans to any of the main OSR systems.

It's a Game.

Silent Titans includes the stats and character generation you need to run it in the book itself. The book contains advice on creating encounters, an interview with Chris McDowall about his design goals and creation of the ruleset, slimmed down simple character generation that gives everyone a vivid and engaging character to interpret and play right away and an opening encounter designed to kick off the adventure and teach the basics of conceptualisation and play at the same time. So if you have never played or run an RPG before, you can probably run this, all on its own.

It's a Mystery.

The players are thrown immediately into conflict with a twisted antagonist who has stripped from their minds all recall of their mission and purpose. As they discover the world of Wir-Heal, and the sleeping Titans who make up its strata, they must find out what is going on; why do wavering dreams from a blizzard of ruined futures poison the air? Why is a medieval world threatened by drone war and extradimensional beings? Why does the Marcher Lord in charge of this frontier town own a sub-machine gun? What are the Titans, where did they come from? And most importantly, who are the players and why are they here?

It’s History.

Silent Titans is set in a world wracked by time spasms and dimensional collapse. In its geography, society, environments and characters are warped or alternate versions of the Wirral Peninsula in North West England. Driven through this like needles through skin, are terrifying shards of a distant, ruined, high-technology reality whose broken weapons and poisonous ontological waste has been dumped and hidden in its own past. It has both sword fights and robots.

It's a work of art.

Silent Titans combines the fervid, intensely vibrant, escher-like artwork of Dirk Detweiler Leichty and the strange dream-vision prose of Patrick Stuart on every page. Its dungeons are also heraldic glyphs, its monsters and characters sprawl across double-page spreads like the figures of an illuminated gospel from a fallen post-singularity world.

It's a Luxury Product at a price YOU can afford.

Printed by Friesens (printers of Maze of the Blue Medusa and Hot Springs Island), Silent Titans includes printed endpapers and dust-jacket, ridiculously thick and colour-absorbent paper, a foil-stamped cover, the deepest possible blacks to counterpoint the brightest possible colours and a ribbon bookmark. For the small price of $50, you get everything above, an adventure, a game, an original work of art, a mystery story, a dark science-fantasy paraverse, a sombre warning about the dangers of letting hyperdimensional giant robots run the world and an off-kilter guide to the Wirral Peninsula, so if you ever go there you can freak out locals by pointing out places where you were murdered by a mad pig in a mask.

SILENT TITANS KICKSTARTER IS LIVE AND BREATHING

IT IS HERE

THE GREATEST BOOK IN THE WOOOOORLD

(THIS IS A MOCKUP)

It took two years to get to this point. Remember THIS post from the middle of 2017?

(This is also a Mockup)

And THIS post about crazy-ass Hugh Lupus?

Well now you can finally encounter Hugh in RPG form. I'm sure he never imagined that would be happening in his future.

Here's every post on the subject. 

This thing has been through so many changes and taken so long, its kind of mind-blowing. (It's still been twice as fast and Veins of the Earth.

A lot of crazy, crazy crazy shit happened to get us to this point. So look out for that documentary on whatever has replaced YouTube in 20 years time.

A great deal of thanks from me to Dirk Leichty, Christian Kessler, FM Geist and Jacob Hurst (And Chris McDowall for creating the rules), together we made something that is utterly unlike something we would have done alone.

This might also be the last, or one of the last, big massive project to come out of the G+ OSR community which will probably not exist in the same form in a years time.

This community, if it indeed is a community, or whatever it is, has got quite a lot done. 

(Stage One; the Lab. Stage Two; A Lifeless Underground, Stage Three; Worldwide.)

Not quite 'life from lifelessness' but a lot nevertheless.

Knave, Black Hack, Into the Odd and a dozen more rulselights all exist, easy to play and easy to explain.

There are writers, artists, a massive choke point regarding layout and Kickstarter to finance things.

The growth and distribution of the technology, the democratisation of financing and payment through Kickstarter and Paypal, and the linking together of talented people worldwide means that small groups of itinerant individuals can now do what previously only corporations could attempt.

And because small groups of people can do it, we can do it in the manner of people, rather than that of more-exploitative (because every relation has some power in it) capital.

For instance you get give artists more freedom and find ways to make that work so that hopefully the dominant form of art slides back to being actual art, rather than digital blurs arranged by art directors.

And with a small group you can have much more equitable (but not perfectly equitable, becasue nothing is perfect) arrangements of payment and ownership.

And because the world is what it is, the dark side of humanity comes along with it and changes with the technology. Many of the large personalities driving the movement have feet of clay, the American base that makes up the majority of the market and creators is very focused on t̶e̶a̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶p̶a̶r̶t̶ momentarily adjusting its culture, the social networks that facilitate it are decaying into, or revealing their nature as, profit driven byzantine automata, slowly falling apart, interpersonal relationships are no less flawed for taking place outside the structures of a corporate authority.

NEVERTHELESS

It should not be forgotten that things have been, and can be, achieved. Its harder than it seems and harder than we might hope, and it displaces the moral contest for decency from a distant authority, where we can all sneer and mock it, to our living rooms and bedrooms, where we all have to come to grips that we are possibly, at times, each the bad guy. But things can be done.

Eh, just listen to Carl Sagan;

"It's easy to imagine skeins of historical causality. There were many possible historical paths. 

Our ancestors walked from East Africa to Novaya Zemlya and Ayers Rock and Patagonia, they hunted elephants with stone spearpoints, they walked the Moon a decade after entering space.

It is beyond our powers to predict the future.

Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware.

Your own life, or your band's, or even your species' might be owed to a restless few, drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds.

Each victory is only a prelude to another, and no boundaries can be set to rational hope.

Our particular causality skein has brought us to a modest and rudimentary, although in many respects heroic, series of explorations.

But it is far interior to what might have been, and what may one day be."

PLEASEFUNDMYKICKSTARTER

Get the Stripper Pole Out

We have a cover! (uncoloured).

We are still (please Jesus) on course for a launch on or around the 1st December. And you know what that means. It means me pimping myself out on this blog every goddamn day  of December.

This is the lair of the Prismatic Demon

Because if there is one thing people love - IT'S REGULAR UPDATES.

So, there you have it, I will BLOG EVERY DAY OF THE KICKSTARTER.

And that means you get to request things/harass me/make demands etc.

So if there is something you have always wanted me to blog about and if its possible to write a reasonable post about it in one day, then I will try to cover it during the Kickstarter.

God knows this blog is full of unfinished projects, half ideas, vague notions etc etc. So if there is stuff you want me to go back to, to finish or add more, or stuff you want me to make. Then you can ask, either here in the comments, on Facebook, G+ (may she rest in peace) or the Subreddit

Questions you can ask me at Dragonmeet on the 1st December

What happened to that Kickstarter you were doing? Did you have another meltdown?

ITS STILL GOING TO HAPPEN. BY THE TIME DRAGONMEET HAPPENS IT SHOULD BE EITHER UP, OR JUST ABOUT TO GO UP.

LOOK UPON THESE BEAUTIFUL IMAGES! MOST/SOME OF WHICH YOU WILL FIND WITHIN! SEE HOW I STUMBLE ACCIDENTALLY INTO AND THEN MINDLESSLY EXPLOIT THE ARTISTIC GENIUS OF OTHERS?

IN THE WORDS OF DR DUROC HOG; 

"NOTHING CAN STOP THE TITANS’ RISE!”

 “REALITY SHALL DANCE TO MY FUNGAL CLAVICHORD!”

When is Broken Fire Regime coming out?

ITS. IN. DEVELOPMENT.

ACTUALLY, IT WILL BE COMING OUT AFTER DCO2.

So, when is DCO2 coming out?

ITS... IN DEVELOPMENT? JACOB HURST IS WORKING ON IT. EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE FINE. AT LEAST TWO SPREADS ARE DONE. ARGUABLY.

LOOK YOU HAVEN'T SEE THE TEXTURES I'VE SEEN. THE TEXTURES.

Didn't your blog used to be good?

AT ONE POINT YES. MAYBE IT WILL BE AGAIN ONE DAY? PLEASE DON'T STOP READING I LITERALLY HAVE NOTHING ELSE.

Haven't you alienated everyone in this community yet?

MAYBE NOT EVERYONE? SOME PEOPLE DO NOT KNOW WHO I AM.

What's this I hear about you being a racist now Patrick? Are you going 'alt-right' did you take one of them red pills lad?

LOOK, EVERYONE KNOWS I LOVE THE WELSH PEOPLE. SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS.. OK, NONE OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE WELSH. BUT SOME OF MY FAMILY ARE? I HAVEN'T ACTUALLY SPOKEN TO THEM IN YEARS. ARGUABLY MY MUM IS.

I HAVE NOT GONE CULTURE WAR SCHITZO YET. GIVE IT TIME.

Hell of a thing about G+ eh?

YES. HELL OF A THING. I EAGERLY AWAIT THE NEW GO WHO SHALL RISE.

Why are you standing facing the corner?

I HAVE DIFFICULTY PROCESSING LARGE CROWDS. I AM SORRY. I MAY BE 'ON THE SPECTRUM'.

What's up with you dumping all these small projects on us for money? You gouging us son?

I AM RUNNING OUT OF MONEY AND TRYING TO AVOID THE BISCUIT FACTORY AND CALL CENTRE. SURELY THE WORTH OF MY REASONABLY-PRICED PRODUCTS CAN BE SEEN IN THE JOY OF THOSE WHO RECEIVE THEM? MY PROFIT SHARING ARRANGEMENTS ARE HIGHLY EQUITABLE PLEASE FUND MY KICKSTARTER.

I've seen your Instagram, aren't you just spending it all on Warhammer Toys?

I CONSIDER THAT A MENTAL-HEALTH EXPENDITURE.

Do you even play D&D anymore?

I RUN A GAME ONCE A WEEK. 

My Ignite talk on the Wapentake

Here am I.

This is the five minute talk I did at Ignite about the Wapentake of Wirral, (soon to be featured in Silent Titans pleasefundmykickstarter).

GREETINGS FELLOW COMMUNITY MEMBERS

AS A VERIFIABLE FELLOW HUMAN WHO SHARES YOUR CULTURAL AND AESTHETIC VALUES, I AM EAGER TO ADVANCE OUR *ENTIRELY-REAL* PARA-SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP.

WHATEVER YOU BELIEVE, I ALSO BELIEVE. WHATEVER YOU DESIRE I CAN PROVIDE. THIS IS TRULY A "CULTURAL MOMENT". PLEASE FUND MY KICKSTARTER.

Some of you might remember a project on this blog, variously called, 'Wir-Heal', 'Silent Titans of Wir-Heal' and then just 'Silent Titans'.

It's getting to the point where it is nearly a real thing and I am here, as a Validated Community Member who is neither paranoid or terrified of his own fanbase, to BUILD HYPE towards the (hopefully) coming Kickstarter.

Can you feel the hype train coming? CAN YOU?




THE INITIAL CONCEPT

The vague genesis of this began a long long time ago when I realised that, with modern, robust but very short OSR rulesets, and modern fancy adventures that had a lot of the specific mechanics built-in; (prepare yourself for the mind blast)...

********You could just put the rules in the adventure.*********

Raggis LotFP rules, the absolute core, are not that long, and shorter in A4.

Something like Into the Odd or the Black Hack, or Troika, or whatever Ben Milton is doing now (Knave I think?), could be incorporated directly into the text of a reasonably large adventure, and if you include bespoke elements of the most text-heavy parts of a rulebook, like character gen, magic and items, that come specifically from that adventure or that world, then its even more neat.

And you can hand it to someone at a Con and say 'this is a whole game'.

And to people who just want the adventure its still pretty simple to hack, as most OSR-esque adventures put most of their innovation and complexity into the imagined world, specific generation systems etc.

And that, broadly, is what Silent Titans is meant to be. And adventure, and a game.

More specifically, its a Patrick Stuart (+Christian Kessler & Dirk Dietweieler Leichty) adventure, stapled to Christopher McDowalls Into the Odd ruleset.

In storygames they might say 'Powered by Into the Odd'. We really need a better phrase than that. Maybe an 'Odd-Engine' product?

WRITING IT

Initially, this was going to be an add-on for DCO2, but that didn't work out.

Then it was going to be a multi-person project, with me and three others, with us each doing a section of a timelost future North West England, but that didn't work out.

Luckily(?) I had massively overwritten my section, so it was now unimaginably massive, unless contained within its own book.

Conceptually, the core of the idea came from walks I took around the Wirral, where I grew up and now live again, and from looking into its history.

Like a lot of Britain, the Wirral is a crazy mixture of ancient history, timelost, transformed, broken down industry, cozieness and strange, deep alienation. Plus, during WWII much of its records were moved to Liverpool for safety, where they were bombed to bits by the Luftwaffe, thereby erasing its history even more.

Combine that with the smallest possible fragments of 'Gawain and the Green Knight' and with Titanic post-singularity artificial intelligences sleeping beneath the earth like giants, influenced somewhat by Nick Bostroms 'Superintelligence' and you have the basis for Wir-Heal;

"Chronos and his kin became the earth, the seas the sky and the stars, fire and flint, bone and bark, dreams and dust. But those Titans of the future could not die, for they had not been born. Paradox was banished from this world, order ruled. They must wait, wait and sleep. Wait till waking when time would allow them to be. Wait and dream of worlds unborn. Under the earth but not of it, sleeping just under the turf, oak roots tangled in their hair, bogs in their nostrils, rabbit warrens just beneath their finger-nails.

Sleeping and dreaming and turning just under the grass, their dreams escaping, staining the air, transforming the land, filling it with memories of millennia to be, dreams of industry, dreams of long decay, mechanical, indifferent and absolute. Long sorrows and the wash of dark forgotten wars, scars before the wound.

They lie tangled with each other like drugged men. Their entwined and sleeping limbs make the bedrock of the peninsula. It was there the powers dumped their somnolent forms, piling one upon another, hurling them into the sea between the Rood-Die and the Afon-Mor. Sleeping in Wir-Heal where the myrtle springs up from the bog, salmon nosing wisely in its root, the Ouzel, bird most knowing, in its branch. A peninsula bounded by the rivers of the gods, fronted by cold seas, a place where few would wish to go, and from which few return.

Yet men do go to Wir-Heal, for the minds of those Titans are labyrinths of gems and gold. And men know greed above all things."

I only discovered much later than a Greek historian had actually placed the sleeping place of Kronos somewhere in the deep north west of the Greek world, assumed to be primitive Britain.

THE ARRIVAL OF DIRK

This all took about a year to get to the first-draft point;

I think we contacted Dirk around August 2017. So it has taken roughly a year to 'write' and roughly a year to 'draw', however you describe such a complex interpenetration of elements.

Fortunately for you, and for me, Dirk is probably a genius, so this thing should be worth the money based purely on that.

Here is where I tell you to look to the left side of the blog, where you will see a link to a G+ community where Dirk will be putting images of art for this project. If you like it, join and take a closer look.

We may work out a tumblr and instagram later on if you are into that.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Our current plan is to have a print-ready file ready by the end of November, and to run a Kickstarter through December 2018.

*If* everything goes well, we should be able to get the book printed and shipped out early in 2019, hopefully by the end of February, with all the Backer Levels and stretch goals coming afterwards.

Obviously, watch this space for more information about the Kickstarter and what will be available, which we will dribble out as more details are firmed up and become certain.

WAIT - WHAT ACTUALLY IS THIS THING?

Ok, I've had trouble describing this myself, which is a problem I should try to start solving now.

It's an adventure-slash-game from Patrick (Zero Gold Ennies) Stuart, Christian Kessler and Dirk Detwiler Leichty.

If you are even half a grognard, you can hack it to play with most old-school rulesets, but it is also an 'Odd-Engine' game. It has the full rules to the game inside, along with bespoke character generation and some other elements. So you can play this on its own like a full game.

This isn't an official tie-in or Chris McDowall product, but it does have some passing references to Bastion, his ItO City, so if you want to incorporate it into his paracosm then you can.

So something between an Ennie-bait high-production-values OSR Adventure/Setting and a hyper-focused you-just-do-one-thing Indy game in concept. Or something new. An experiment.

Its fully and beautifully illustrated across every page and every spread and we have tried to include all of the OSR-related advances or ideas in layout and informational integration (that we could remember in time).

WHAT DO YOU DO THO?

In Silent Titans you play timelost figures from a range of possible futures and parallel worlds who fall through reality and end up in the plughole of the multiverse - Wir-Heal, a shattered version of the Wirral, a land made, literally, from the backs of comatose Titans who were dumped into the sea in ages past.

Wir-Heal is cursed, so that humans who live there eventually degenerate into Woodwose, and populated largely by Mask-Men; animals given bipedalism, grasping hands and self-awareness by the gift of strange masks.

It is ruled from the City of Legions, a twisted version of medieval Chester, by Hugh Lupus, a pretty-much-accurate version of the real Hugh D' Avranches, the obese, clever, murderous marcher lord installed in Chester by William the Bastard to suppress the Welsh and maintain the border.

Wir-Heal is in trouble. The Titans who make up its strata are slooooowly waking up. If they do wake, reality is screwed. But more immediately, the time-space fluctuations and horrifying post-singularity nightmares of the Titans dreaming minds are making Wir-Heal even more insanely twisted than usual, and preventing anyone from getting in or out.

What would be really handy would be for someone to go out into Wir-Heal, survive the Titans Nightmares, break into the hyperdimensonal spaces of their sleeping minds, and steal their thoughts, which, as well as being regenerating pieces of incomprehensible deep-future dimensional technology, are also literally gold. As in gold that you can sell.

If someone could steal those thoughts, the Titans would go right back to sleep, for another thousand years at least. And they could even keep the gold, or trade it for a ticket out.

Enter Our Heroes.

Of course, as well as the manifold dangers of Wir-Heal, Hugh Lupus and the local criminals. Someone else may also be interested in entering those dreaming minds, and not for the best of reasons...

WILL THIS GO CATASTROPHICALLY WRONG

I hope not?

The initial idea was to make something simple and fast enough that nerds could play it with their normie friends. In terms of its *rules*, I think it does that (thanks to Chris McDowall), but the concept is so goddamn odd, I have no idea what normal people will think of this.

In terms of running a Kickstarter, none of us have done this before. But we are committed to not starting until we have and actual print-ready file for the final book, and a printer and fulfilment centre lined up. So, whatever happens, you should get the book, and hopefully fast.

None of the stretch goals will be additions or changes to the main book. This is to keep it neat and also to make sure we can get that out without fucking up.

Other backer levels and stretch goals will hopefully be just as fast, but the book is the priority.

There is also the possibility that we have delved too greedily and too deep, just gone waaaay off the reservation and produced something unplayable, or just too strange to be easily comprehended.

I honestly think we haven't.

But, what I think I can absolutely promise you, is a really strange, intense, very very beautiful (thanks Dirk & Christain) work of art that is like nothing else that anyone has made before.

We have two months to miss our deadlines, so keep your eyes peeled here, on the Collection and anywhere else we start building hype, to see if the whole thing falls apart.

If the Fates are willing, the Kickstarter should launch December 1st, 2018.