So… I have written and rewritten this introduction over and over, trying to find a helpful way to talk about what is going on in the world right now. But I don’t think I have anything new or clever to say. For right now, I just want to say that I’m grateful for all the wonderful people and things that I do have, which includes this community. And I hope you are all safe, healthy, and happy/content in whatever fashion you prefer. And I hope your games are thriving, because let’s face it, games are important too.
So let’s talk about Dungeon Age.
Releases
This has been a big year so far! I’ve had a bunch of releases in the last 6 months:
- 2020-01: Ragged Hollow Nightmare
- 2020-02: Recurring Fantasy NPCs
- 2020-04: Escaping Edgewild
- 2020-06: The Obsidian Keep
- 2020-06: Solomon’s Screaming Tomb (French translation)
Reviews
I am grateful to all the folks who have posted ratings and reviews of my work, and I want to offer some special thanks to reviewers Bryce Lynch (TenFootPole) and Thilo Graf (Endzeitgeist) for their thoughtful, detailed, and occasionally glowing reviews of my adventures. I mean, what am I supposed to say when someone says this about my work:
Tremble! Tremble in the presence of Joseph Robert Lewis. You are not worthy! None of us are worthy. Fuck you Joseph Robert Lewis! Fuck you for writing this! Now, for the rest of our days we will all live in this shadow of this work. Now, every fucking adventure I review, every fucking adventure I ever pull out to run at a con has to be measured against this one. What kind of life is that? What terrible future lies ahead for us all, knowing that this exists?
(Bryce Lynch’s review of The Obsidian Keep)
Well, I definitely said thank you!
I also want to thank all of you players and DMs who have taken a chance on my adventures and books. I know I don’t have a big presence in the community or a long track record, and I really appreciate your support. Mostly, I just hope you’re enjoying the adventures!
Gaming
The last six months have been very busy for me as a TTRPG gamer. At the very beginning of the year, I finished playing in a 2-year-long Curse of Strahd campaign (spoilers: we got him!). After that, I started DMing regularly for adults for the first time ever (it was only kids and one-shots before that).
We ran Ragged Hollow Nightmare, and transitioned that into Grave Titan Harvest. In the middle of that mini-campaign, my players asked to play yet another session in the middle of the week, so I put together Escaping Edgewild for them. Then we did The Obsidian Keep. (Check out the session reports!)
Along the way, overlapping with everything else, I also played in a play-by-post Vampire: The Masquerade game, and a play-by-post Witchburner campaign, and a play-by-post GLOG game. All excellent!
And now I have finally launched my own long-form epic campaign! (More on that below.)
The Part Where I Ask For Your Help
Really quick! I promise!
I just want to ask, if you have gotten one of my adventures on DTRPG, to please take a minute to post a rating (or even write a review) of it.
Besides the obvious part where it helps me to get sales and attention, it also helps me as a writer. It’s important to me to know what sort of content actually works in the real world. More of X? Less of Y? I really don’t know unless you tell me, and I really want to keep getting better at this.
Moving on!
The Future
I have plans! So many plans!
Here’s the thing. I have recently started DMing a new campaign for my regular players. It’s a big story, but it’s got a beginning, middle, and end. And I want to publish it. Eventually. The plan right now is to publish the three major parts of the campaign as three separate adventures, each similar in scope to Ragged Hollow Nightmare.
Each one will come out after my players finish “playtesting” the section. And then, after all 3 modules come out, I will then create a full campaign book that includes those modules as well as all the connecting material to run them as a campaign. And maybe also a campaign supplement that you can get alongside the separate modules? I need to think about that.
The campaign is called Long Way Home. Part One describes a journey across a Siberian-style forest full of witches and ghosts inspired by Slavic mythology. Parts Two and Three dive deeper into Eastern European and Central Asian lore, but I won’t describe them yet (just in case my players are reading this!).
Hopefully I will publish the standalone version of Part One in the early autumn.
Last Notes
That’s all for now! Thank you again for your support. I’d love to hear from you if you want to talk about game design, or world mythology, or cats. Comment here, or shoot me an email, or you can find me on the D&D discord or the OSR discord as “jrlewis”.
Stay safe, take care of each other, and keep having fun!
