June 5, 2014
I received the post-development copy of my upcoming Paizo adventure, "The Choking Tower" over the weekend. I was not at all surprised to see it more closely tying in to the upcoming technology book and Iron Gods adventure path as a whole, but I was pleasantly surprised to see so much of my work tightened up to flow better. That is, the work I'd submitted is still very visible, but improved. I don't generally see how my freelance work looks until it actually appears in print, so this "post-development, pre-editing" look was illuminating.
The Choking Tower adventure hits this fall from Paizo!
Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Work with Other Publishers
May 22, 2014
Just a couple of nights ago I finished GMing a very good, long adventure called The Dragon's Demand. I'd collected a group of players who, for the most part, didn't know each other. Most of them hadn't played Pathfinder before, so they were learning the game as we went along, too. Eighteen sessions later, the brave band of heroes confronted the dragon Aeteperax is his lair and bested him--with only one character death!
I had a great time--an even better time than I expected I would have, actua...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen.
May 21, 2014
The layout for A Lucky Morning is all done, and I've uploaded the cover file and interior file for printing. They're being matched, and then the proof will be sent my way. If it's good, I'll open A Lucky Morning for sale in print and pdf (I could open it to sale for pdf right now, but I'm waiting until I can do both at once).
Meanwhile, I spent a little time on layout for Perils of the Broken Road. It's got less "goodies" than A Lucky Morning; it doesn't have any player handouts, for example, ...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Announcements
May 14, 2014
Just dropping a quick note to say that the layout of A Lucky Morning is nearly complete, and I'll be sending my proof version to the printer by the end of the week, I expect.
To my surprise, Perils of the Broken Road is nearly "caught up" to A Lucky Morning; my lovely wife is still proofing Perils of the Broken Road, but I've already begun layout. I still need to get the art back, but the last bits of the art order went out today, so I'm hoping this moves pretty quickly.
But I also have a new P...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Announcements
May 6, 2014
I just finished a recent project that I found to be exhausting, but quite fun: 13,000 or so words of magic items and other flavorful treasures. I did my best to give each its own story--we'll see how well those are received!
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Work with Other Publishers
May 3, 2014
I don't think I mentioned it on this blog yet, but I wrote quite a bit of Champions of Balance, the Paizo Publishing product about how to play neutral-aligned characters. Since it's not clear from just looking at the author list who did what, I thought I'd mentioned what I contributed to it--and what I contributed to it that never made it into the book.
I wrote
the chapter on Bastions of Balance (the neutral nations and the neutral planes), Neutral Organizations, the new spells (one of which, ... Continue reading...
Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Work with Other Publishers
April 28, 2014
I had a great time this last weekend playing Warhammer 40K at a local tournament, giving my Chaos Space Marines (with a Nurgle emphasis) a try. It was a three-game tournament all Saturday long. After the first two games I was tied for 5th place, and poised to leap into the top 3 if I did very well in the final game. I did not do well in the final game. Iyanden Eldar wiped me out pretty handily. Still, I was pleased to win the "Best Sportsmanship" award for, as the organizers put it, "being ca...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Announcements
April 10, 2014
So, Adepticon was quite fantastic. I played a small Necromunda tournament and did not particularly well--having three members of my plastic gang die in the first round put me at a disadvantage in the rest of the tournament.
In the Warhammer 40K combat patrol event, I did much better, placing 15th out of 44 participants--not at all bad for my first foray, I think. My combat patrol was a few Chaos Space Marines, a few Plague Marines, and an Obliterator for some heavy firepower. It was enough to ...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen.
April 4, 2014
Although I play, run, and write a lot of Pathfinder RPG stuff, I am a geek in larger spheres, as well. I'm off to a weekend at Adepticon--one of the larger miniatures games tournaments--where I'm hoping my Chaos Space Marines may win me a few games. Many folks I know are off to an RPG convention at the College of Dupage this weekend called CODCon, which will be featuring a lot of Pathfinder Society adventures.
The RPGers/miniatures gamers divide is never wider than when two conventions sit on...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen.
April 2, 2014
I was delighted to be approached by a company with a very interesting idea in organized play--they would take subscribers, and these subscribers would receive customized adventures that they can use to shape the world. A lot of "living" campaigns allowed some world-shaping to some degree: Living Greyhawk had special events and even adventures where the results of play shaped future adventures; even Pathfinder Society, the least "shape-able" of the big living campaigns, has gone back to set se...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Work with Other Publishers
March 26, 2014
So...that big Paizo project last fall that had me all tied up and giddy with excitement was my first Paizo AP adventure, Chapter 3 of Iron Gods, The Choking Tower. Paizo just announced it
right here. The Choking Tower itself is already a part of Numeria--you can read about it in the
Inner Sea World Guide--but my adventure has an awful lot more to it than just the tower--including a lot of surprises.
I'm excited to see this develop, and humbled to be among such great Paizo authors!
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Work with Other Publishers
March 25, 2014
Here's the final cover of A Lucky Morning. I'm most of the way through layout, and working backwards, in a way unusual for me but seems to be working here (I have all the handouts already set out, but not yet in the order the appear in the adventure, for example). Also, I have the full Thaven gazetteer through layout, and I think it works quite well. Since I'll be using it here and in at least one other (as yet unannounced) upcoming adventure, I wanted to give it special polish.
And, through...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Announcements
March 10, 2014
I've just been offered another project for Paizo, and it's one that seems like an expanded version of the work I did for the article at the back of #74: Sword of Valor. I'm excited to be digging in!
This project comes at a very good time, because I'm just finishing the text of both A Lucky Morning and Perils of the Broken Road. (In fact, I'm expecting the final piece of artwork for A Lucky Morning any day.) I can run those through editing while working on this next assignment, and get those t...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Work with Other Publishers
February 26, 2014
In revising A Lucky Morning, I've realized that one of the NPCs the heroes will meet is someone they won't likely fight. Now, players are a rambunctious lot, and they could pick a fight with anyone; in this case, however, this NPC is entirely helpful and is intended to be a bit endearing. So I elected to remove his combat statistics from the adventure as they won't be needed 95% of the time.
So they don't go to waste, though, here is Badger (not his real name), a friendly but simple-minded gn...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Hints and Teasers
February 8, 2014
A great five-star review for the most recent Run Amok Games product, the low-level adventure "Beyond the Serpentine Lock." You can see it right now at www.endzeitgeist.com. Beware, though--there are spoilers aplenty in the review!
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Announcements
February 3, 2014
Part of the reason I've been a bit silent recently--other than being sure I'm taking the time to work through 1,000 words a day, which is harder than I'd initially thought but keeping me very focused on writing--is that I'm also participating in a playtest of the next set of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, based on the Skull & Shackles pirate-themed adventure path. Our playtest reports are due today, and we've still got three scenarios to get through before I can make my final reports and...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Work with Other Publishers
January 17, 2014
I've had two projects percolating for a while that I'm glad to announce: Nasty Bastards, and the Emergency Villain Collection.
"Nasty Bastards" is intended to be a mini-campaign along the lines of Paizo's well-received "We Be Goblins" and "We Be Goblins Too." Nasty Bastards has a bit more serious tone, and is much bigger in scope, as it takes the brutal humanoid PCs from 1st to 5th or 6th level. This will be a more expensive product than our usual price point, as it's more than twice as long ...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Announcements
January 15, 2014
Here is one of the villains from "A Lucky Morning," the vengeful necromancer Nudd.
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Hints and Teasers
January 15, 2014
So, with all the jumping around I've been doing with my writing, I've realized I should put everything into a consistent, planned schedule. And then I should put that schedule here, in my Upcoming Releases tab. So expect that update soon. The order of those projects is likely to change, but I've been pushing forward on each, so they'll see the light of day sometime this year.
In the meantime, Blake Wilkie keeps turning in great work for 2014's first Run Amok Games release, "A Lucky Morning." P...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Hints and Teasers
January 8, 2014
I'm not normally one for New Years resolutions, but this year I've made a writing-related one: I plan to write at least 1,000 words each day. Normally, my writing is in spikes: several days without writing, then a burst of productivity of several thousand words. Trying to be disciplined about this will help even things out and, I suspect, make me more productive this year overall.
A thousand words isn't much: I can put together a few stat blocks to reach that, or kick through a chunk of an enc...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Hints and Teasers
December 29, 2013
As with many, I've been caught up in the joyous press of the holiday season: entertaining guests, last-minute shopping, and so on. I'm very appreciative of all my fans, and looking forward to 2014! Thanks to all!
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Posted by Ron Lundeen.
December 20, 2013
For those who get print versions of our stuff from Paizo, the print version of Beyond the Serpentine Lock is on its way there now, fighting upstream through the holiday shipping traffic, I'm sure!
Happy holidays!
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Announcements
December 14, 2013
Paizo's RPG Superstar 2014 contest just started. I've got mixed views on this contest, which you enter by submitting a magic item of your own creation. I've submitted a couple of times in the past few years, but I quit in an immature huff two years ago, after I saw the contest reviewer commentary for my item (I thought my item twisted the rules in a clever way, but the contest reviewer made some commentary that indicated he didn't actually know the rules I was bending for my item). His misund...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Work with Other Publishers
December 9, 2013
At last! I have just turned in my longest--by far--freelance writing project ever. 41,851 words. 73 pages. Whew.
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Work with Other Publishers
December 9, 2013
Paizo Publishing uses its blog for marketing, which makes a lot of sense. Usually they're announcing their new products, or upcoming games, and so on. Every now and again, though, they put up a blog post about the recent third-party publications offered in their online store.
They don't have to do this; in fact, there's some logic in saying that they
shouldn't do this. We third-party publishers aren't nearly Paizo's size, but we're technically their competition: if someone buys something from ...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Announcements
December 5, 2013
The print proof for Beyond the Serpentine Lock looks good, so I've activated it for sale from RPGNow in print and pdf. I'll get it up at Paizo and the d20PFSRD store shortly. Check it out!
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Announcements
December 3, 2013
I've got not quite one week to finish up my largest freelance project ever (in prestige as well as length!) for Paizo. Many thanks to my good friends who gave up part of their Thanksgiving weekend for a playtest--although I spotted more errors due to the playtest than I'd guessed there were, it was good to have them bared for me to see, so I can fix them before my final turnover deadline.
More details after this is publicly announced, of course!
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Work with Other Publishers
November 18, 2013
I've just sent off Beyond the Serpentine Lock to print, and hope to get a print proof before too long (usually, this is about three weeks). If the proof looks good, I'll put this out for sale. I'm hoping to have Beyond the Serpentine Lock available in the first week of December. I'm not too likely to get my next product out by the end of 2013 (I'm not even sure yet whether it will be "A Fortuitous Morning"--which has a title change coming, to something a little more euphonic--or "Perils of t...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Announcements
November 15, 2013
I keep an eye on the forum talk regarding my products
whenever I can, and I recently saw a couple of one-star reviews of my
Pathfinder Society adventure “PFS #4-07 Severing Ties.” A bit of spoiler
territory ahead (and in the title you already read—sorry).
The thing that seems to rankle people even now is the
encounter with the basilisk. The adventure covers levels 1-5, and people seem
fine with fighting a basilisk at levels 3 through 5. It’s the presence of the
basilisk at level 1-...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen. Posted In : Work with Other Publishers
November 6, 2013
Although I do all sorts of gaming, I've never really gotten very deep into superhero games. My friend Jake loves superhero RPGs of all kinds, though, and he convinced me to take a long Saturday and drive to a not-quite-so-nearby convention called GameHoleCon last weekend. We played three slots, all in one day: a rendition of the well-known indie game Lady Blackbird using the Savage World rules, which I know well; a Marvel superhero game using delightfully antiquated percentile dice and charts...
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Posted by Ron Lundeen.
