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| Not bad for a year's work |
Over the course of the year I managed to publish five game supplements on the Dolorous Exhumation Press imprint:
- Krevborna: A Gothic Blood Opera
- Cinderheim: The Land Under the Demon Sun
- Umberwell: Blackened Be Thy Name (comes bundled with Scardogs and Scapegraces)
- Hexmoon Sabbath: A Folk Horror Doom
All of those were done without Kickstarter or Patreon--I made them because I wanted to make them. They have been well-received. Krevborna is currently an electrum best-seller on DriveThru, Umberwell is a silver best-seller, and Cinderheim is a copper best-sellers. People I respect have said nice things about them; I met new people who wanted to tell me they liked my work. Thanks to everyone who bought a copy.
It was also important to me to get to work with artists that I love on these projects, so shout outs to Becky Munich, Michael Gibbons, Wayne Snyder, and Tenebrous Kate.
An additional shout-out is due to Heather, who edited Krevborna, Cinderheim, and Umberwell. And those books wouldn't have been possible at all without Katie handling the cover engineering for me.
It was always exciting to hear about how these supplements helped people run fun games. Aside from reading play reports of how games went in my settings (which I love, hit me up if you got some I haven't seen), I also got to watch some Cinderheim content see play on Jim Davis's Land Between Two Rivers stream and Krevborna in action in Technoskald's Dungeon World game. And excellent people like Anne have been using Umberwell to make some cool stuff I'm going to borrow for my own games.
The Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque blog continues to roll along. I wrote 198 blog posts in 2018.
I ran a bunch of games, but not as many as I ran in 2017. It is still amazing to me that I can put out a call as simple as "Hey, anyone want to play on Wednesday?" and will easily get enough eager responses to get an adventure going. My games aren't for every taste, but apparently I serve it up good enough to get return customers and new player alike.
I played in some other people's games and helped playtest both GRIDSHOCK and B/X MARS.
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So what does 2019 hold? Some thoughts:
- I'm not exactly sure what I'll do next for Dolorous Exhumation Press, but I've got some ideas for short supplements already in mind. At the same time, I'm never going to publish something just for the sake of having new content. If it doesn't hit my standards, I'll never ask you to pay money for it.
- At this point I'm happy to move away from earlier game stuff I did, such as the World Between. I'm fine with leaving that stuff out there to be used non-commercially, but I don't think any commercial products (mine or by anyone else) are in the cards for the future. The past is a foreign country.
- The death of G+ will probably hamper getting online games going, but as we learned from Mad Men, "When God closes a door..." Anyway, I can't get that emotional about Google shuttering one of its projects--that's just what they do.
- I started writing a short story and I'm going to finish it. I don't really even care if it's good or not; it's nice to knock the rust off and remember how to write fiction. If it turns out good enough, maybe I'll let you read it.
- This blog will continue for as long as it entertains me to keep up with it. I do wonder if the demise of G+ is going to cause my enthusiasm to flag a bit, but there's no predicting that. Either way, I've got enough future posts saved as drafts to keep it going for a ways.
- We've got a list of books to cover on Bad Books for Bad People that is long enough to sustain us for at least two years. The podcast is only in danger if we get bored with it.
- I'd really like to record the material from my Intro to Gothic Lit course as a podcast this year. I need to talk to people wiser about this stuff than I am, but I'd really like that to be out there in the world for anyone who loves Gothic fiction. If it works...maybe I record the material from my Oscar Wilde course after that.
