Sean K Reynolds

Jim Ward (right) gaming with Gary Gygax (left) on Gygax’s front porch. Image from Goodman Games.​

In the last years of TSR (the company that owned D&D before Wizards of the Coast), every year on April 4th Jim Ward (VP of Creative Services) would tell a story about the day he got fired from TSR on that day in 1984. In 2014 I asked him to write it down so I could post it on my blog. He obliged … and we never got around to coordinating the blog post. Jim passed away last month, so I found his (unedited) written form of the story, and here it is.

=====

April 4, 1984: A Day of Infamy
By
James M. Ward

Listen my friends to my sad tale. It’s possible you might learn a “life’s lesson” or not. 

On April third, 1984 I was a very happy man. The month before I received a great job review as I was literally bringing in millions of dollars in profits to TSR through the novels I was contracting with relatively new writers in the publishing industry. In those days I worked 50 plus hours a week and that wasn’t bad. Today, looking back at that time, I do regret missing time with my three children, but I was making good money and the novel department at TSR was one of the solid cash cows. 

Unknown to me, the bottom fell out of the hand held computer game market that spring. The bottom was also falling out of the role-playing market. TSR was still way on top, but it was a smaller and smaller piece of the cash pie that the company was sharing with others. 

Kevin Blume was the president of the company at that time. Kevin didn’t like me at all. I had gotten him his only written reprimand because of the way he mishandled TSR starting in the dice fabrication industry. For several years Kevin would ask my supervisors how I was doing and they always gave him disappointedly glowing reports about my work and work habits. It wasn’t until a marketing man named Neil Bloomfield was hired as my supervisor that Kevin got the supervisor he wanted for the “idiotic” James M. Ward. That’s an ugly dice story for another time.

TSR was going through a period of great troubles. In ’83 the company had 386 employees and far too many of them were relatives of Kevin Blume and Gary Gygax. Don’t get me wrong, people like Gary’s son, Ernie were sharp and worked hard for the company. Many of those other employees didn’t know a thing about role-playing and didn’t want to know anything. 

TSR was partially controlled by the banks and the banks said the company had too many people and the numbers had to be cut. There were two purges of people in the fall of ’83 and the early spring of ’84. It got so every Friday was a grim day that no one enjoyed as people were let go in batches. I wasn’t worried because I was bringing millions of dollars in profits to TSR. Surely, I thought to my naïve self, that I would be one of the last people to get his hardworking butt fired.

I was having lots of troubles with my current supervisor. It was never that I couldn’t do the work he requested. The problem was there was always too much work to do. He would constantly give me several tasks at once and they had unusually short deadlines. Let me say now that I have some quirks. I really dislike authority figures I don’t respect. Along the same lines I hate to miss deadlines and really like to beat deadlines by as many days as possible. It got so that every new job commission he gave me I had to present him a choice. I explained in a “non-sarcastic” tone that he could have job ‘A’ done by the deadline or job ‘B’ done by his deadline, but he couldn’t have both. This infuriated him a great deal and he constantly tried to push me. He didn’t have the slightest idea how to get the work done himself. He didn’t know how long each task, he was giving me, should take. The situation was constantly tense as he doubled and tripled my work load.

On April fourth, 1984 the third of five purges happened. Eventually TSR would go from 386 people to 86 people. On that day of infamy 55 people were fired. I was very surprised to be one of them.[1] I didn’t sign the leave papers they demanded I sign. I was in shock. I’d never been fired before. 

Kevin put his secretary in charge of my contracting and managing author tasks. She quit three weeks later saying it was way too much work for any three people to do. 

From 1984 to the fall of 1986 I did a lot of freelance work for whoever would hire me. Eventually I was making so much money for TSR in the book trade that they hired me full time again in the fall of ’86. My first written products where several Laser Tag rule books that sold great. 

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. When I was back at TSR my friends and I would get together on April forth and talk about that day. My supervisors hated that we would dare to talk about that ugly time. I didn’t care; it was a lesson in what could happen. From that year on I would urge my friends at any job they worked at to upgrade their resumes every six months. It’s a lesson I still take to heart. 

THE END

===== Footnotes =====

[1] As I recall, at this point in verbally telling the story, Jim would play-act as his surprised and offended younger self, and say, “But I just had a positive performance review!” in a very funny tone.

Last week, Jim Ward passed away at the age of 72.

If you don’t know who he is, spell his name backwards.

D-R-A-W-M-I-J

As in Drawmij’s instant summons. Jim was a player in Gary Gygax’s game group, and he suggested the concept for that spell, and Gygax wrote it and named it after Jim.[1]

Jim wrote the Metamorphosis Alpha game, and the 1E AD&D Deities & Demigods book, and a lot more.

Here’s one of my stories that’s (tangentially) about Jim.

In 1995, the company that owned D&D was TSR, Inc.[2] In July of that year, I got hired as the TSR online coordinator[3] and moved there from California. On my first day at TSR, my manager (Rob Repp) showed me around the office, introduced me to famous D&D designers and editors like Jeff Grubb, Roger Moore, and Kim Mohan. And he introduced me to his boss, VP of Creative Services[4] Jim Ward.

In my first meeting with Jim, I remember him being a big man (he was tall and was built like a guy who played football in his younger days), with a big personality, and a bit of a jokester.

My second day at TSR happened to be the day that they were celebrating TSR’s 25th anniversary. There was going to be a big outdoor event, with catered food, tents, a speech from the owner, and some sort of celebratory gift. I got in very early[5], and Rob showed up around 9am, then left our large shared office for a meeting. An hour later, Jim Ward comes to my/Rob’s office to tell me that Rob had given his two weeks’ notice[6], and that the company had decided that Rob could just have today be his last day[7], and that now I’d be in charge of TSR’s online presence, and I’d be reporting directly to Jim.

I thought Jim was joking, or that this was some kind of very light hazing of “the new guy” to see my reaction. So I played along:
Me: Oh, okay, sounds good.
Jim: You don’t have any questions?
Me: Nope, thanks for telling me!
Jim: All right, then! (leaves the office)

At which point I realized he wasn’t joking around, my manager really was leaving that day, 24-year-old-me would be in charge of the company’s online presence, and I’d be reporting directly to a VP who was basically a D&D legend (enough so that one of the core D&D spells was named after him). Oh, and that I only actually knew two people at the company, and one of them just quit.

About an hour later, Rob wandered back to our shared office to tell me himself that today would be his last day. (Apparently the delay was because he made the rounds saying goodbye to various co-workers before looping back to tell me.) I told him, “I know, Jim already told me.” Good luck, you too, etc etc.

And then it was the afternoon and time for the big outdoor party. Where the only person I knew was a VP, and I couldn’t exactly mingle with him and the other executives! Fortunately, some cool people in the creative services department (namely designers Monte Cook and Colin McComb, editor Sue Weinlein, and Dungeon editor Michelle Vuckovic) saw that I was alone and didn’t know anybody, and they decided to take me under their wing.

Jim left TSR in 1996; as I understand it, the owners were planning on laying off a bunch of people because the company was failing, and Jim didn’t want them to do that, and when they insisted it would happen, he resigned in protest. Thereafter he remained active in the game industry, even up to this year and despite some serious health problems (diabetes and a heart attack). He and I often didn’t see eye-to-eye on things, but I respected his love of the game and how much he enjoyed telling stories of the earlier days of TSR.[8]

Jim’s Deities & Demigods was one of my earliest RPG references. Not only was it a peek into a bunch of pantheons I’d never heard of (Finnish, Newhon, Lovecraftian, Melnibonean, etc.), it was a fascinating book with really cool art (my first tattoo is DDG art), and probably is what got me started on the path of being the official “gods writeup guy” for Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Golarion. So I’m glad I had a personal connection with Jim. Teenage-Sean would never believe that he’d someday work at TSR, or work and game with big names like Jim, Jeff, Roger, Kim, and all the other cool people who worked on D&D.

For further reading, here’s Jim’s page on Wikipedia.

Rest in peace, Jim.

=====

[1] Gygax often made names out of the real names of his players and family members, typically by spelling them phonetically, making anagrams, or just spelling them backwards.

[2] In 1997, TSR was failing, and was bought by Wizards of the Coast. By now, Wizards has owned D&D longer than TSR did, so I understand if there are younger (under-40) gamers who don’t know what TSR is/was.

[3] Nowadays we’d call this job a “community manager;” the TSR online coordinator answered the main TSR email address, ran the TSR section of America Online, put together contests and promotions, and so on. We weren’t allowed to have an official TSR website (because the then-owner of TSR didn’t want one), otherwise that would have been part of my duties.

[4] Another company might call the department that does design and editing “RPG R&D” or something like that. I have no idea why TSR called it “creative services.”

[5] My early arrival wasn’t because of any goofy urge to “prove myself” as the new guy … California-latitude-me just wasn’t used to Wisconsin-latitude summer daylight starting at 5:30am, which woke me up, and lacking anything else to do in a new town where I didn’t know anybody, I went to work to start catching up on a huge backlog of 200 emails, with another 100 or so to arrive each day.

[6] Rob was really overworked, doing a marketing job and also saddled with all the online stuff (which wasn’t part of his job description and wasn’t something he wanted to be doing). He pushed to have an online coordinator position created, he did the interviews, he decided to hire me, and he waited until I arrived before putting in his notice. Which I gotta respect, he didn’t want to leave the company twisting in the wind by bailing without a person to take over.

[7] Apparently there had been some friction between Rob and some higher-ups at the company, so they didn’t see the need for him to stick around for the two full weeks.

[8] One of his favorites was “April 4th, a Day That Will Live in Infamy.” Every year on that date he’d gather together the creative services team and talk about the huge TSR layoffs that happened in 1984, which included him (despite his “positive performance review” the previous month) and over 200 other people. A while ago I asked Jim if he’d write out the story so I could post it for everyone to read. He said yes and gave me a file with the story. I plan to post it on April 4th of this year, just as he would have told it. EDIT: And it’s now posted at the above link.

I’ll be at GameHole Con this week in Madison, WI! I’m a special guest, which means I’m running several games and doing a few other things associated with the convention, and I have some MCG events as well. Here’s my schedule as I know it so far (and note that all three of the ••• bulleted games I have listed are sold out and several people have it on their wishlists … talk to the convention staff about adding them to your wishlist).

Thursday

••• 2-6 pm: Print Me Another Body (Numenera game, sold out, Balcony 253)

Friday

2–3 pm: Weird Gaming With Monte Cook (panel, Waubesa 500, Room A)

••• 6-10pm: Doppelganger Costume Party (Stealing Stories For The Devil game, sold out, Balcony 253)

Saturday

2–3 pm: What’s Around the Corner with Monte Cook Games (panel, Waubesa 500, Room A)

••• 4-8pm: Escape From The Dark Reliquary (Ptolus/Cypher System game, sold out, Balcony 256)

Other than those scheduled events, I’ll mostly be at the MCG Lounge, which is inside the convention center on the central skyway. The lounge is where most of the MCG games take place, it has comfy couches for sitting and chatting, and we have a retail area where you can look at and/or purchase our game stuff. (For the past two years, the coffee shop and ice cream shop are right underneath it, so look for those and go up the adjacent stairs … or ask where the elevator is, the elevator takes you to the far side of the MCG lounge.) Here’s a 2022 photo of the skyway from the ground floor and of the lounge—it’ll look similar to this!

Please note that I like talking to people at conventions, so don’t be shy if you want to talk to me, even if we’ve never met! I wrote a little blog about talking to me at conventions (mostly about not interrupting mid-game moments that are tense or exciting) that should help you decide to say hi. :)

A few months ago I talked here about starting a Patreon. At the start of March 2023, I did a quiet launch of it, and in the following weeks I posted a lot of stuff to it, including:

• Bonds of Magic: five complete NPCs from my 3E Bonds of Magic sourcebook, with stats and designer commentary, each including a unique spell, feat, or magic item

• converting all of those Bonds NPCs to 5E and Cypher System, with my commentary and explanations about how I chose to convert them

• converting the unique spell, feat, or magic item from each of those Bonds NPCs to 5E and Cypher System, with my conversion explanations

• Ghostwalk: stats and designer commentary on a medusa sorcerer NPC from the Ghostwalk book

• conversions of that medusa NPC to 5E and Cypher System, with my commentary and conversion explanations

• Blades of Faerûn/Blades of the World: two 3E magic weapons I wrote for my old website, including game stats and pricing info

• converting those Blades to 5E and Cypher System, with with my conversion explanations

• Battle maps I drew for a playtest using the old 1E Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan adventure

• Some musings on buying painted or unpainted terrain (kinda feeling out if people would be interested in seeing terrain-painting tips)

• Info on an abandoned d20 setting project called On A Steel Horse I Ride, which I might start up again using 5E and Cypher System rules

• An overview of the Ghostwalk setting, with the expectation that I’ll be posting more stuff (including NPCs, magic items, and spells) for it (which you could use for any fantasy campaign, of course)

I have tons more stuff in the hopper to post to the Patreon (Bonds of Magic has a total of 50 NPCs, Blades of Faerûn/Blades of the World has about 20 magic weapons, and I have dozens of older-edition books with lost/unconverted/cut material that I can re-present and convert to 5E and Cypher System), and a bunch of unfinished projects that I’ve never mentioned in public.

Having a Patreon definitely motivates me to post once or twice a week (as opposed to my now-defunct website or this WordPress blog, which goes quiet for months at a time). I’ll probably continue my Trivia and Anecdotes articles here on WordPress in a more limited form, with longer versions of the articles on the Patreon.

Here is my Patreon link—there are some articles that are public that you can take a look at, and even more stuff for patrons.

And, as always … good gaming!

This blog post is for people who like MCG’s Arcana of the Ancients stuff for 5E, and want more. :)

Back in 2021, MCG released a Numenera supplement called Vertices, a book of ruins for PCs to explore. Although Vertices is written for the Numenera game, if you have any of the books from the Arcana of the Ancients Kickstarter (which presents the weird science fantasy stuff from Numenera as 5E sourcebooks), it’s pretty easy to use Vertices in your 5E campaign—you just need to know (1) what the 5E monster stats are for the creatures living in the ruins, (2) the DCs for traps and hazards, and (3) what sort of 5E-style treasure the Numenera creatures have.

5E Creature Stats For Numenera Creatures

The following is a listing of all creatures used or mentioned in Vertices. If the 5E stats for that creature appear in Arcana of the Ancients, Beasts of Flesh and Steel, or Beneath the Monolith, the list includes a book and page number for that monster. For the remaining creatures, I’ll provide an equivalent 5E creature stat block.

AOTA = Arcana of the Ancients

BTM = Beneath the Monolith

BFS = Beasts of Flesh and Steel

Abykos: BTM 142

Anhedon: AOTA 145

Bandit: bandit, scout, or thug

Beetlecrab swarm: swarm of insects (beetles)

Big beetlecrab: giant fire beetle

Blue foam clone: animated armor

Brallik: giant fire beetle, opponents have disadvantage on their attacks against it

Broken hound: BTM 143

Caprimag: BFS 27

Chronal feeder: BFS 33

Culova: AOTA 158

Hodragog: ogre

Hostile lattice wall: black pudding

Hungry pennon: AOTA 185

Insect swarm: swarm of insects

Jurulisk: AOTA 191

Keltonim: BFS 87

Kond: axe beak

Large janitorial automaton: basic automaton type four, AOTA page 247

Margr: AOTA 197

Mastigophore: AOTA 198

Mot the Blood Witch: mage

Nalkor: lizardfolk, can use an action to transform into a gray ooze (no attacks) or back to its normal shape

Nepp: owlbear

Ogrin: Gibbering mouther

Red foam creature: bone devil

Roz the Warspear: gladiator

Sathosh: AOTA 232

Seskii: AOTA 233

Shinspinner: goblin, builds traps like a kobold

Slurge: giant frog

Small janitorial automaton: basic automaton type two, AOTA page 246­

Snoggog: yovok (AOTA 243) with advantage on attacks

Swimming automaton: basic automaton type six, AOTA page 247

Synth eater: gray ooze with advantage on attacks

Tangled spider: fire giant

Targo: culova, AOTA 158

Titanothaur: BFS 168

Tunnel seal: bulette

Tygnog: phase spider

Vadasko: dretch

Vape: BFS 177

Varanik: triceratops

Yovok: AOTA 243

DCs for Numenera Traps and Hazards

There are some locations that describe a force field, poison, trap, or other hazard as having a level (from 1 to 10).

Level 1 or 2 is about the same as DC 5

Level 3 or 4 is DC 10

Level 5 or 6 is DC 15

Level 7 or 8 is DC 20

Level 9 or 10 is DC 22

Awarding Treasure from Vertices

Most treasure in Numenera books are in the form of cyphers or artifacts (which AOTA calls “relics” because “artifact” already means something in 5E). Rather than individually trying to convert all the “treasure” items in Vertices to 5E, just use cyphers or iron flesh from Arcana of the Ancients. (whether you choose specific items that are similar to what’s in Vertices, or if you just want to roll on the random tables like AOTA page 42).

Time to Play

Congrats, now you can use Vertices with your AOTA 5E game. :D

Today, MCG launched a new crowdfunding project, Adventures in the Cypher System. One of the things we’re making as part of this project is a starter set for the Cypher System. Which I think is great, because right now people have only two ways to get started in CS: buy the Cypher System Rulebook, or get the free introductory Cypher System Rules Primer PDF … and it would be really helpful if there were a middle-ground sort of item for people who (A) need more than the bare bones of the Rules Primer, (B) aren’t ready to jump it by buying a big corebook, and/or (C) are looking for something they could gift to a CS-curious friend or family member.

I’m a teacher at heart, and I love introductory books/boxes for RPGs. Like, for example, the Pathfinder 1st edition Beginner Box[1], which I wrote, and which won a gold Ennie Award for Product of the Year. So we can assume that I at least sorta know what I’m talking about when it comes to designing a good starter set. :D

The goals for the PF Beginner Box were to:

• Teach people how to play the game in a beginner-friendly way.
• Set it up so they can run it right out of the box, with minimal prep.[2]
• Provide players with pregenerated characters so they can start playing right away.
• Give players some character generation options so they can see how to make their own characters.
• Make it clear that there are more options (classes, spells, equipment, magic items, and so on) in the full version of the game.[3]
• Teach a version of the game that was close enough to the full game that people transitioning from the starter set to the full game wouldn’t have to unlearn stuff they already learned.[4]

In a similar vein, the goals for the Cypher System Starter Set are pretty much the same as the above. Of course, part of the appeal of CS is that you can use it for any genre, so instead of just assuming a typical magical fantasy setting, we’ll need to talk about CS fantasy, CS modern, CS scifi, and so on—and letting the GM know that they’ll get to build whatever world they want.

I haven’t started designing any of this yet. We only had our first general design meeting about it yesterday, and it’ll be a few weeks before I jump in with both feet. Between now and then, and continuing through the starter set design process, I’ll be soliciting input from the rest of MCG, and probably asking some vague or specific questions on social media. We’ve already had some really cool suggestions from the design team and COO Charles Ryan, and I’m looking forward to more discussions about the starter set.

But overall, let me tell you that I’m really, really, really excited to be working on the Cypher System Starter Set. Excited enough that I told Monte I was “calling dibs” on it. :D

So please check out the Adventures In The Cypher System project, it’s already funded and hit several stretch goals on day one. :)

[1] I dunno if the 2nd edition PF Beginner Box is set up similarly (I have the PDF but haven’t looked at it yet).

[2] This means slowly introducing new concepts page by page, building on the previous concepts and adding depth. Breaking down information like this is one of my specialties.

[3] This is important because it’s great if people love the starter set and just create their own things, but we’d really like it if someone who likes the starter set considers buying other things we make for the game. And it would be a mistake to not inform the players/GMs that there are other things they can get for the game. I know some famous game designers who played for a couple of years with the classic D&D blue box because the blue box didn’t say “oh hey there are entire books out there of monsters and spells and worlds”… :D

[4] In general, this meant being restrictive in the Beginner Box and permissive in the full game. For example, the Beginner Box doesn’t have rules for attacks of opportunity, so anything that would provoke an AOO in PF (like casting a spell through an enemy, or moving through an enemy’s square) is just something you can’t do with the Beginner Box. But that way, when someone is ready to switch to the full game, we can say, “You know how you couldn’t do X thing? Well, now you can, and here’s how.” I think that’s cooler than if the BB was permissive and the full game was restrictive (like, “Chris, I know the Beginner Box let you cast a spell next to an enemy, but it’s not that simple in the full game”).

My friend and colleague Kim Mohan passed away today at age 73.

I met him when I joined TSR. He was one of the TSR people whose names I recognized[1], so getting to talk to him in person was a cool thing.

When Wizards of the Coast bought TSR, he and I were part of the group of people who migrated to Washington State to keep working on D&D. He was the developer on Slavers (and he is the one who brought to my attention the “ask-me-in-ten-years secret story” mentioned in that link). And managing editor of the 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. And of course he edited and managing-edited about a zillion other things, including the 3E and 3.5 core books, 4E D&D, Amazing Stories magazine, and some 5E stuff. And he designed the 1E AD&D Wilderness Survival Guide, the Cyborg Commando RPG, and more.

But for the most part, to me, he was just Kim. Tall, older guy, silver hair, beard. Soft-spoken, deep voice, dryly funny. Liked to jokingly tell me, “Get a haircut, you hippie!”[2] His name was sometimes a litmus test to see if someone name-dropping him actually knew him or not.[3]

After I left Wizards, I moved around for a few years for work, and eventually came back to Washington. Kim and his wife Pamela had been organizing the monthly “TSR alumni” get-togethers at the AFK Tavern, which is where I got the opportunity to hang out with him socially. And then COVID-19 happened, and we stopped doing in-person events like that, and unfortunately that means I hadnt seen him in person in a few years.

I’ll miss him. My sympathies to Pamela and Kim’s family.

Kim, whatever sort of afterlife there is, I hope they have cool jackets and smoke breaks, you deserve to chill and rest on your laurels.

[1] Kim was the editor/editor-in-chief of Dragon Magazine when I first got into AD&D, so I saw his name a lot as I crawled through all of the back issues from the late 70s and early 80s.

[2] Because even back in my TSR days, I shaved my head, so calling me a hippie (implying “long-haired”) is funny.

[3] A lot of people who didnt know him in person assumed that “Kim Mohan,” is a woman. So if someone ever said, “Well, I was at a Gen Con seminar with Kim Mohan, and she said blah blah blah,” we would know they were lying (Same thing happens with Tracy Hickman, BTW.)

Back when I still used Facebook, I used to argue politics on the internet. A lot. A lot a lot. Like, Id be late to a social event because I “needed” to reply to someones wonky political take on something. Or Id stay up late for the same reason. Or Id have trouble falling asleep because I kept thinking about it. Or Id review my “on this day” Facebook memories page to see arguments Id made the previous year. Im good at debating. I fight hard at it. I bring the receipts. Im ruthless. At the time, I thought I enjoyed it.

Around this time, I was married, and my wife was a fan of the TV show Once Upon a Time. At some point, the show creators were on Twitter and doing an AMA sort of thing. And instead of reacting to questions from fans of the show, they ended up spending the better part of two hours debating with … people who didnt like the show and were posting insults and pointless criticisms of it. This really frustrated my wife because she was an excited fan and wanted her chance to talk to the show creators, and instead they creators focused their attention on non-fans, perhaps in the hopes that they might convert some non-fans to actual fans.[1]

So the next time I was arguing on the internet and delaying something fun, she said to me, “Youre devoting time and energy to these people who dont care what you think and dont respect you, instead of the people who like your games and want to hear your thoughts about gaming and design. Or we could go out for some food, or play videogames, or whatever. Stop wasting your time on people who dont value the time you’re spending on them.”

Which was a really good point.

It was a hard lesson to take in, and it took time to get there, but I eventually weaned myself off of internet arguments. (Mostly about politics, somewhat about gaming.) I still had to do arguments on the Paizo boards [2][4], but I worked really hard to make my free time my own and to use my free time on people who valued my time.

I still try to practice this today in my internet interactions. Yeah, I still see contrary opinions [4] online, but I don’t engage with them; I mute or block them.[5] And I do read replies to the things I say, and I make a point to at least throw a like at someone’s reply, if not actually make a full response post about it. But if someone is obviously frothingly mad about something, or seems kinda unhinged, or not arguing in good faith, or relying on obvious fallacies (like the “slippery slope” fallacy), or obviously trolling or sealioning, or it looks like they want to have an argument instead of a discussion, or theyre being insulting, I don’t engage.

So I dont really care what RPGs you play, or if your favorite is something I dont like (or vice versa). I dont get involved in edition wars or system wars. I dont care if you dont like my leftist politics. Or if you hate cats. Or you refuse to use RPG consent tools and would kick out a player who asked to use them. Fine, whatever, it is really really easy for me to make sure I dont have to interact with you about such things.[6]

Each of us only has one hundred ten-minute blocks each day. Why use your blocks on people who are just trying to upset you, waste your time, or hurt you? Find something better to do with your time. (Hint: Almost anything is better than engaging with that sort of negativity.)

[1] Which, in the history of the universe, has happened like, twice.

[2] Because I was the most active member of the Pathfinder design team, and nobody else on the design team was willing to weigh in on rules debates.[3] In fact, I got so sick of being the one to do all of that heavy lifting (and FAQ-writing) that one point I just stopped doing it … and nobody else started doing it. And when publisher Erik Mona asked me “Why haven’t there been any new FAQs in a month?,” I said “I got tired of being the only person of the design team who’d put in the work to make these happen.” So instead of Erik making sure that the FAQ/boards duties were divided evenly among the three members of the design team, he ordered me to start doing the FAQs again, which meant I had to interact with people on the boards with rules questions. Note that this is after two annual employee reviews in a row where I was chastised for “arguing too much on the message boards.”

[3] There is no footnote 3!

[4] The Paizo boards were (and I suspect are, considering that most of the usual suspects are still active there) full of pedantic, disingenuous, and insulting posters. They made me miserable, they ruin the Paizo online community, and Paizo’s (minimal) moderation strategy did almost nothing to dissuade them. I was told I “didn’t know the rules,” “was drunk and overstepping,” or simply “lying to your face.” These people talk to employees like that, and somehow they havent been permanently banned yet. But hey, I was ordered to interact with them, so that’s fun.

[4] And offensive opinions, of course. It’s the internet, you know how it is.

[5] Hoo boy, my Twitter block list is probably about a thousand people blocked by hand, and tens of thousands of others mass-blocked by an app or macro (of the “block everyone who liked this racist tweet” variety).

[6] See point 5.

I’m gonna start a Patreon, probably in December 2022. Partly because I want people to be able to find me if Twitter stops working, and partly to incentivize myself to post more articles (I do post them here on this WordPress blog now and then, but I’m the sort of person who gets a lot of motivation from deadlines).

Edit 3/31/23: My Patreon is live! More info is on this WordPress update.

(In this article, numbers in brackets like this [5] indicate a footnote at the bottom of the article.)

Topics I’m going to cover include:

• Going through all 50 characters from my Skreyn’s Register: The Bonds of Magic [1] book, talk about the design choices I made in building those characters back in the day, then update them to 5E and Cypher System.

• Posting and commenting on “lost” snippets of old things I wrote, like the short-form “specialty priest” writeups I did for the 3E Living Greyhawk Gazetteer (this material got edited out of the book, but I still have my original files for it).

• Updating the game info from Anger of Angels [2] to 5E and Cypher System.

• Updating Blades of Faerûn [3] articles from my old website, converting them to 5E and Cypher System. And add notes and trivia, where appropriate.

I’m also considering the following topics:

• My takes on converting other old stuff.

• Insight about my process for writing/designing and for developing other peoples’ work.

• Insight on big weird projects like RPG Superstar (which I ran and judged for several years at Paizo).

• Tips on creating and painting gaming terrain, including battle maps. (I don’t really do this stuff any more in my home game, but I still have a lot of useful info in my head about it.)

• Tips on quickly and efficiently painting miniatures. I’m no A-level or award-winning painter, but I know how to do an “assembly line” paint job to get a bunch of minis done quickly (and have them look decent or even “pretty good”), and I’ve taught classes at PaizoCon about learning to paint minis and refining your technique.

• Advice and tips on making maps for your home game, and likewise for writers who need to include map sketches as part of their project turnover. (This is something I’ve had to do a lot over the years, and have taught a class about at conventions.)

• Advice and tips on designing monsters—both in terms of the concept of a monster, and implementing those ideas in its game stats. (I taught a class on this, too.)

• Behind-the-scenes stories from my TSR and Wizards days, like “How I ended up running a large area at Gen Con even though I’d never been to a game convention before and I’d only been at TSR for four weeks” and “What I did at TSR when my boss quit on my second day” and “That time I was between jobs at Wizards and filled in for Peter Adkison’s office assistant.”

• And more. I’m open to suggestions about stuff you’d like to hear from me, too. (Feel free to put suggestions as a comment on this article!)

• Overall my goal is to provide new game content for 5E and Cypher System, so even if you don’t care about old 2E/3E stuff, you’ll get things you can use in your current campaign.

You can find my (supporter) Patreon link here (that’ll convert to a patron page when I actually plug in all the data, convert it, and start posting stuff to it). I’m gonna get a bunch of things written in advance so I have a buffer for when the world inevitably gets complicated, and my goal is to publish two new substantive articles [4] each month.

(If Twitter goes away, I’ll still maintain this WordPress blog, so feel free to follow me here for occasional updates, including my Trivia and Anecdotes series!)

[1] Skreyn’s Register: The Bonds of Magic was two 3E D&D/d20 system 32-page PDFs books (subtitled Cabal and The Faithful), each with 25 one-page NPC writeups (and included notes on what magic items to add to them make them suitable as 3E PCs). All of them are spellcasters, and each has a unique spell, magic item, or feat. Published through Monte’s previous company, Malhavoc Press, and combined into one print book.

[2] Anger of Angels is a 3E/d20 sourcebook I wrote about “classical” angels, like cherubim, seraphim, and so on (with game stats for if you want to play them as PCs), geography of Heaven and Hell, game stats for archangels (Gabriel, Metatron, Michael, etc.), new organizations associated with angels (including groups that support and look after aasimar and half-celestials), prestige classes (Angel of Death is one of them), new domains and spells, and new monsters (nephilim, fallen angels, etc.). Like Skreyn’s Register, this was published through Malhavoc Press.

[3] This was a series of 30 web articles featuring a new, unique magical weapon (in 3E/d20 format) for each of the major deities of the Forgotten Realms setting. Because when I was writing these, how to price magic items for 3E was still a bit of a mystery for players and GMs, so I gave detailed explanations about how to calculate the gp price for these items (which obviously isn’t a thing any more in D&D 5E, but there’s still room to talk about whether a particular item should be uncommon/rare/very rare/etc.). At the time I was also fiddling around with CGI artwork, and I rendered images of all of these weapons, but I’m 99% sure that’s not what people want to see from me. :D

[4] As examples of “substantive,” I’ve already written the conversion articles for two of the characters from Skreyn’s Register, and each is about three to four pages long (1,500–2,500 words). I’ll probably also have shorter posts within these—as long as the topic needs—but I want to do two big articles per month.

[5] Hi!

(Trivia & Anecdotes is a series of blog posts about weird and sometimes funny behind-the-scenes facts about various books I worked on, in chronological order of when they were published. If you see a number in brackets like this [1], it’s referring to a footnote at the bottom of this post.)

Welcome to part two of my Trivia & Anecdotes articles about the 3E Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book. (If you missed the first article about this book, it’s here.) This article is mostly about Chapter 1: Characters (choices about your PC like species, class, region, and so on).

Dividing Up The Work

With four designers, and one of them in another country, splitting up the writing work for the book was a bit of a challenge. We had decided that Ed Greenwood would write about 32 pages of various self-contained snippets[1] of lore about the Realms, and the other three main designers[2] (Skip Williams, myself, and Rob Heinsoo) would split up the various countries and regions within the book. This made the design process a bit easier, because Ed could write his stuff and we wouldnt have to coordinate with him about how plot elements and such from neighboring regions impacted each other. (For example, if Ed had written Cormyr, anyone writing stuff adjacent to Cormyr would have to do a lot of back-and-forth with Ed, and given the time zone difference between Seattle and Toronto, that would make it a lot harder than, say, Rob or I walking over to Skip’s desk and getting an immediate answer.)

It has been 20 years, so I don’t have a strong idea of who wrote which countries and regions. I know I worked on Cormyr (having just finished writing the Cormy-heavy Into The Dragon’s Lair adventure and having read the Cormyr novel Death Of The Dragon for that project) and Thay (because I’m bald, ha ha?), and I think Skip worked on Sembia (since it was the playground for the Living City campaign, which Skip was heavily involved in), but other than that it is kind of a blur at this point. (Once I get to those chapters I’ll see if I have any notes left from that time about who wrote which … but I had a major computer crash and data loss a couple of years later, and I dont know what bits I have left from this time.)

Realms Species

The Realms have always been a little bit askew from the core D&D rules when it comes to its specific types of elves, dwarves, and so on. Instead of mountain and hill dwarves, FR has gold and shield dwarves. Instead of high and gray elves, FR has sun and moon elves. And so on.

IIRC, Rob and I did most of the work on this stuff, looking to the D&D core species for their bonuses, penalties, and abilities. One day when we were driving back from one of our weekly wallyball games[3], we were talking about halflings, and how both halflings in D&D core and FR lacked a “weird” option (compared to drow for elves, duergar for dwarves, and svirfneblin for gnomes), and started brainstorming weird ideas for a third halfling type. The silliest one was a type of halfling that could shoot lasers out of their eyes, but we decided to tone down the weirdness a bit and created the ghostwise halflings, who have short-range telepathy—the idea was this subspecies was reclusive and very secretive, kinda like wood elves, and their telepathy made it a lot easier for them to coordinate attacks and escapes when dealing with more powerful foes. But we were this close to putting laser-eyed halflings in the book, for better or worse. :D

(Speaking of ghostwise halflings, I gotta say Ive always thought it was kinda funny that in the illustration on page 17 has the strongheart halfling messing with the ghostwise halfling … what a jerk! :D )

Speaking of weird subspecies, this is the first book for 3E that had drow as an option for PCs. And there was a lot of debate about how to do it, mainly because drow get a LOT of special abilities starting out (particularly spell resistance[4]), which makes them more powerful than a typical elf, human, dwarf, or whatever. For a while we talked about making a weaker version of drow, one with weaker-than-NPC-drow abilities because of time on the surface world/away from the Underdark, but we eventually realized that people who wanted to play a drow PC wouldnt want to play a weakened drow, and putting weak-drow PC stats in the game just meant that eventually we would publish strong-drow PC stats and people would start using that for their PCs. We kicked around some other ideas for powerful-species PCs [6], but eventually we went with the idea of level adjustments–which originated in the 3E Dungeon Master Guide/Monster Manual as a way to explain the baseline level of a monster who you added class levels to (like “hmm, what effective level is a bugbear with 4 levels in rogue?”). But unlike bugbears and such, drow and similar PC-focused species didnt automatically include “racial hit dice,” so applying this to drow, right there in front of the players reading the book (instead of in the DMG where presumably only the GM was accessing it) was still kinda new. So, despite having only hit dice from class levels, drow level adjustment was +2, which meant your level 1 drow PC was “effectively” a 3rd-level PC, and the GM was supposed to[5] not allow players to play level-adjusted species unless the rest of the group was already at that level. Which was an annoyance, and really hurt spellcasters a lot (because your spell progression was behind equal to your level adjustment, which meant that a human wizard would be 5th level and your drow wizard would be a very sad and pathetic 3rd level), but it is what we decided to do at the time.[7] Likewise, duergar, svirfneblin, and genasi[8] got level adjustments. Which, mind you, means the FRCS was the first player-facing 3E book to let you play a PC of those species. Huzzah!

Patron Deity

The concept of picking a patron deity, even if you arent a cleric, druid, or paladin, is a thing we put in writing for FR. The Realms is a polytheistic/pantheistic world, meaning that regular people understand that the various deities exist, and that it is common to say a prayer to a relevant deity according to your current circumstances (such as praying to Tymora, goddess of luck, when gambling, or to Umberlee, goddess of the sea, when about to take a sea voyage), but most people have one deity that they prefer above all others—their patron deity. This is usually a deity relevant to their trade, profession, or way of life—most blacksmiths have Gond (god of crafting) as their patron, most farmers have Chauntea (goddess of agriculture) as their patron, and so on. And divine spellcasters had to have a patron deity, you couldnt be a divine spellcaster without one. This generally didnt restrict PCs or NPC from interacting with other faiths and temples, but it did mean that you would have a better relationship with the church/clergy of your patron deity. In other words, a fighter or barbarian might have Tempus (god of battle) as their patron, but that wouldnt mean they couldnt ask for healing at a temple of Chauntea, or that it would be weird for them to make an offering to Umberlee before a sea voyage.

Because the book tells you what deities are “favored” for each country and region, choosing a patron deity is also another way to connect your character to the setting. For example, if your PC is from Cormyr, and you pick Tyr (a favored deity for Cormyr), you can expect that when in Cormyr, you can expect to find temples of Tyr, meeting other people who worship Tyr is common, and so on.

Note also that if you die without a patron deity, your soul still goes to the afterlife, but without an agent of your deity to bring you to their specific godly realm, your soul basically wanders the Fugue Plane forever—or until your stole is stolen by a demon or devil, or built into the Wall of the Faithless as punishment. (However, we also specifically said that a player shouldnt be punished for not picking a patron for their PC, see page 290.)

The patron deity rules gave us another game-mechanic fiddly bit we could use in later books, like spells that had different or better effects if the target had the same patron as you (like a version of cure light wounds that heals the maximum amount for someone with the same patron, which is an incentive for an unaffiliated PC in the group to choose the same patron as the party cleric…). I’ll talk about that a bit more in my upcoming article on Magic Of Faerun, where it comes into play.

Monastic Orders and Paladin Orders

3E was a radical change from previous editions because it let any character multiclass (before, only nonhumans could multiclass, and humans did something not-quite-like-that called dual-classing). However, the monk and paladin classes in the 3E Players Handbook had a unique restriction in that you couldnt multiclass—or, more precisely, if you took a level in another class, you could never again gain levels in your original class. The idea was that monks required such discipline that deviating from that path meant you could never go back, and paladins required such focused devotion that dabbling in another class meant you couldnt advance as a paladin any more.

This was a problem for FR because there were certain deities that historically (in the setting) were totally fine with their monk or paladin followers multiclassing. So for the FRCS we created the idea of special monk and paladin orders that had looser multiclassing options. Frex, monks of Ilmater (god of martyrs) were allowed to multiclass as clerics of Ilmater (and other classes, not important to list them all right here), and paladins of Tyr (god of justice) could freely multiclass as clerics or fighters. While this was initiated as a mechanical option in the FRCS, it also led to some fun worldbuilding, as we created names for these various monk and paladin orders, and talked a bit about their philosophy and religious associations (if any). And it meant that in later sourcebooks, we could name-drop something like “Zorbo is a monk of the Dark Moon,” which immediately clued in the GM and players that that Zorbo is a follower of Shar (goddess of night) and probably mixes sorcerer and monk levels. So that was fun.[9] :D

For Next Time

This article is already longer than the first one, so Im stopping here and Ill continue in part 3! Sorry if these things get pretty rambly … as Ive said before, there was a lot going on behind the scenes with respect to this book! Part 3 is probably going to cover the following topics before the article gets too long and I have to start on part 4:

• Thunder blessing and the end of the elven retreat
• Prestige classes
• Favored region, regional feats, and regional equipment, and making that work without invalidating the Players Handbook
• Wizards vs sorcerers

[1] By these “snippets,” I mean things like “Folk of Faerûn” on page 10, “The Retreat And After” on page 14, “Orcs And Their Kin” on page 16, and so on.

[2] I say “main designers” here because one of the contributing designers, James Wyatt, wrote some monsters for the book as part of his work on the separate Monsters Of Faerûn sourcebook for the core D&D line (which is its own story).

[3] Wallyball is basically volleyball played in a raquetball court with a volleyball thats rubbery like a raquetball. The TSR gang used to play at the YMCA back in Lake Geneva, and after the Wizards buyout we kept it up for a while, but the place with the courts was far enough away from the Wizards office that it was inconvenient, and we eventually stopped playing.

[4] Oh, spell resistance, you pain in the ass. If you’re not familiar, in previous editions, spell resistance was a percentage chance (modified by the caster level of the character casting the spell) that a hostile spell wouldnt work on you at all, it could just be snuffed out even before the target needed to roll a saving throw. For 3E, this became a d20 roll instead of a percentile roll, so drow spell resistance was 11 + character level, and an attacking spellcaster would need to make a caster level check against that number to even have a chance of affecting the drow. Because an extra d20 roll to resolve whether a spell affects a creature is “fun” (sarcasm), and the existence of spell resistance in the game meant every spell in the game needed a separate stat block line for whether or not spell resistance applied to that spell—for example, a spell that conjures a blast of fire would be affected by spell resistance because the fire is magical, but a spell that creates a boulder, like above someones head, would not be affected by spell resistance because the boulder is nonmagical once created. 3E made a lot of improvements to D&D, but it still had its weird baggage.

[5] There’s literally a one-page sidebar on FRCS page 21 explaining level adjustments, the idea of “powerful races,” and modified XP tables for level adjustments of +1, +2, and +3. Sigh.

[6] One of these ideas was a % penalty to XP for these species, so instead of needing 1,000 XP to get to 2nd level, you’d need 1,100 or 1,200 or whatever. But I ran the math on this, and basically using an XP penalty like this only meant that your character was a level behind (compared to a human) a very small amount of time, and the rest of the time you were the same level as the human character. So it really wasnt a penalty except for about every fourth game session (when the human levels up and you are still a little behind). Since it didnt accomplish what we wanted, we dropped it as an option. And of course, nowadays we understand that it is okay if all the characters in the group arent the same level at the same time (and a related topic is that it is impossible to perfectly “balance” two classes mathematically, so worrying too much about this sort of thing is just an exercise in frustration).

[7] Jumping ahead several years, the existence of level adjustments is what allowed us to create various “monster classes” in the Savage Species book (like, “I want to play a weak astral deva at level 1, and level up to my full deva powers over time”), which is the section I wrote for that book.

[8] Genasi are humans mixed with one of the four genie-types, in the same way that aasimar are humans mixed with angels and tieflings are humans mixed with fiends.

[9] Obviously, later editions of D&D dropped this multiclassing limitation entirely, so “multiclassing freely” was no longer needed as a concept and likewise went away. Funny, though, how a restriction in “core” D&D had to be outmaneuvered in the setting book for the most popular D&D setting, and how that restriction eventually went away in core because people preferred the freedom to multiclass how they wanted.