Early access to all the Ex-RPGNet reviews coming in February: - Sailor Moon: Character Diaries - The Great Dalmuti - Mindtrap - Dragon Magazine Archive PDF Link: https://www.patreon.com/file?s=446910&h=1512495&i=62800
2015-01-17 06:56:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Spoilers for those who don't have early access: The hexmap approach doesn't really work. This series really does walk though a (slightly cleaned up) version of how my thoughts on urbancrawls developed. At the time I wrote this segment, I was still struggling to figure out exactly why the hexmap doesn't work. I think the key failure is that the hexes don't represent anything meaningful in the city itself. The structure is so utterly artificial that it doesn't click. There are a bunch of other p...
2015-01-17 00:17:52 +0000 UTC View Post
This is one of the dumber things I’ve written. It’s a proposal I wrote to FASA for a Battletech novel at some point between 1996 and 1998. The reason it was dumb is that I was trying to carve out my own little niche of the Battletech universe when, with the benefit of age and hindsight, I can see that there was zero chance that FASA would be interested in doing that. The reason I’m posting it at the Alexandrian is because it was obliquely referenced last month when I talked about the Alte...
2015-01-15 20:21:27 +0000 UTC View Post
I debated about whether or not sharing this step in my thought process in such detail was actually useful or not. But I'm very curious to see if other people draw different lessons from it than I did.
2015-01-14 18:17:18 +0000 UTC View Post
“Peril hides in the house of Aram Baskh!”
2015-01-12 18:16:23 +0000 UTC View Post
This PDF is an interesting blend of early access and... well, whatever the opposite of that is. Back when I was directing the Complete Readings of William Shakespeare, I wrote a whole series of essays about the plays as a form of viral marketing. As part of that viral marketing campaign for Richard II I also re-posted an essay that had originally appeared on the Alexandrian way back on July 3rd, 2008 (when I was performing in a different production of the play). For the sake of completeness,...
2015-01-11 04:58:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Breaking down the three basic elements of ‘crawl-based play and trying to apply them to an urban environment.
2015-01-09 18:51:15 +0000 UTC View Post
Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock lacks an ending. The attached zip file includes an essay discussing how and why I wrote an ending for the play, a copy of the new ending, a copy of the full script, and a copy of the production script we used in the Complete Readings of William Shakespeare. ZIP Link: http://www.patreon.com/file?s=446910&h=1486619&i=59808
2015-01-08 19:41:33 +0000 UTC View Post
This is a series I talked about being unable to finish in my initial pitch for my Patreon. Thanks to your patronage, I was able to dedicate a couple dozen hours to it over the past week and finish it off. When I first started writing this series (as you'll see), I was struggling to come to grips with the urbancrawl concept. I had a rough idea for how the series was going to wrap up (with a semi-structure that would work for dedicated groups but not open tables). Spoilers: I think I cracked it....
2015-01-08 02:38:03 +0000 UTC View Post
The attached PDF contains the entire "Thinking About Urbancrawls" series (which is scheduled to run through February 6th on the site). Apologies for this reaching you a few hours late. My intention was to get the early access PDF to you before the series premiered, but actually laying out and proofreading the full series took me 10 hours instead of 2 hours I had anticipated and I wasn't actually finished getting the last post scheduled when the first post went live. PDF Link: 2015-01-08 02:33:21 +0000 UTC View Post
As I mentioned last week, when I launched this Patreon campaign I was overjoyed when it took less than three hours for us to hit our first milestone goal of $10 per blog post. So I immediately sat down and started working on an article discussing what I refer to as the Principles of RPG Villainy. This article. By the time I finished writing the article, we were only $0.50 away from our second milestone goal. Now our third milestone goal is already in sight! If you're a $1+ patron then you saw...
2015-01-05 18:20:57 +0000 UTC View Post
Over the past few days I've been soft-launching and testing some of our pledge goals, but this is the official launch of all the Alexandrian's Patreon features. (Although I would not be shocked to discover some speed bumps as we move forward.) First, thank you. A very heartfelt thank you. I honestly thought it would be a struggle to reach my $10 milestone and instead you have blown us past that goal and blown me away. Second, milestone goals. As I mentioned a couple of days ago on the Alexandr...
2015-01-01 23:16:45 +0000 UTC View Post
Early access to the full Authorship of Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock. This Sunday Shakespeare feature started back in December, so most of this PDF is stuff arleady on the Alexandrian. But the thrilling (to fans of Elizabethan theater) conclusion is here first. PDF Link: http://www.patreon.com/file?s=446910&h=1448430&i=56885
2015-01-01 22:06:47 +0000 UTC View Post
Early access to all the Ex-RPGNet reviews coming in January: - Brawl - Devil Bunny Needs a Ham - Dice Wars - Government-Funded Robot Assassins from Hell (Mission One: Kill All Evil Game Designers) PDF Link: http://www.patreon.com/file?s=446910&h=1427042&i=56286
2014-12-31 08:45:13 +0000 UTC View Post
When we hit our first milestone of $10, I sat down and started writing this piece. I said that $10 per post was the point where I could start dedicating more time to the Alexandrian and this is the absolute proof of that. By the time I finished it, we were only $0.50 away from hitting our second milestone goal. I can't tell you how excited I am about what this will mean for the Alexandrian! We're still in soft-launch mode for the Early Access, so you can expect to see a few more posts at the A...
2014-12-30 08:38:51 +0000 UTC View Post
Salutations to my first patrons! I'm stretching my legs here at Patreon. This is a beta test for using Patreon to deliver the Early Access sneak peeks. A few points of interest: First, I'd prefer to just post the content here. Unfortunately, that isn't viable because of the limited formatting options Patreon provides. After some experimentation, it looks like what I'll be doing is posting PDFs that you can download. (So, extra perk: It'll be easy for you to save content that you like.) Secon...
2014-12-29 06:29:20 +0000 UTC View Post