Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Lost City of the Elders + Mood Music

I looked (that is, listened) around a lot over the years to find music that would typify a party's seeing the LCotE and then entering its mysterious environs.

Matt Uelmen is the composer of eerie and inspired music for the early Diablo games, and the  selection below for D2 fits in with my conception of the eeriness of the city.

I use a very intricate template to ascertain what "phase" or "phases" the city is currently in, which I will be describing in a future book on the subject of models and formats.

The current phase for the Garycon VI LCotE adventures is darkness and terror.  Think of these in terms of overall impacts upon the environment, the mind, the visuals and the emotive levels and you will start getting the gist.

Link to music

Friday, March 7, 2014

Just A Little Bit...

Here are some quickie updates:

I am hovering around 85,000 words on my first non-fiction book dealing with the pre-TSR to TSR's earliest days, roughly 1969-1977. A massive chore with at least five differing areas of converging content: historical, game design theory, play theory, creativity and the open form concept, the latter which I am describing in detail. I estimate the finish of this project at 130-150m words.  Black Blade has already agreed to publish it.  It will include about 10-20 diagrams, most of which are finished.

The Dungeons and Dragons Documentary crew will be around the area just prior to Garycon VI.  The weather has crippled their activities over the winter months but they will be filming an extended session with me at my abode days before Garycon.  They had suggested filming it at Yerkes Observatory; but we ultimately decided upon another clean, well-lit place--my home.

Black Blade Publishing might (greater than 50% chance) have Bottle City (2nd printing) ready for Garycon.  They are pushing on that schedule but I have yet to hear about how that might play out.

My seminar on Open Form at the upcoming GC 6 is about half full, a good sign for those eclectic DMs and designers out there who I guarantee will benefit by attending it.

My brother will be in attendance at the con and is running a Chainmail game there.  That's right, the first person offered a job at TSR in 1974 contingent upon his remodeling of the Dungeon Hobby Shop/TSR offices (rewiring, re-carpetting re-plumbing, etc.).  He's also been approached by the D and D Doc crew to give his story from those days.

These are very interesting times, but the weather sucks, so here's a pre-taste of warmer days ahead.