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Doomstones 5 – What might have been
Hogshead’s 2001 title Heart of Chaos by Robin D. Laws was not the first attempt to wrap up the Doomstones campaign for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and solve the problem of what to do with the Player Characters now that they have all four Crystals of Power. When the campaign was adventures originally written for D&D, a concluding episode had gone unpublished.
While I was working on the WFRP adaptations at Flame publications, I started working on an outline for a fifth instalment that would tie things up nicely. I left it behind at Flame when I quit Games Workshop in 1990, and I had assumed that, like so many other things, it had vanished in the mists of time. But I was wrong.
A copy of my outline somehow survived in the archives of Marc Gascoigne, and recently made its way to me. I have no idea whether or not Robin Laws saw it while he was working on Heart of Chaos. There are some clear parallels between my outline and Robin’s final work (take that as a spoiler warning, if you will), but the similarities could be put down to the fact that some events and characters are obvious must-haves in a fifth and final Doomstones adventure.
Apart from saving the original Word file as a PDF, I haven’t done anything to it at all. It is just as I wrote it (though someone – probably Mike Brunton – turned it into a Word file from my original ProText file for Amstrad PCW and formatted it using Flame’s style of the time), so its integrity as a historical document is as good as it can be, for those to whom such things matter. Added later: But see the comment below about an earleir version on Gideon’s Awesome Lies blog.
Anyway, take it for what it is, make of it what you will, and I hope you find it interesting. Like everything else WFRP on this blog, this is completely unofficial and no challenge is intended to copyrights held by Games Workshop, Cubicle 7, or anyone else. Anyway, here it is.
Doomstones 5 GD outline – download PDF
And while you’re here…
Since 2020, I’ve been a director of Rookery Publications, a new indie TTRPG studio that I co-founded with some names that WFRP fans are sure to recognize: Andrew Law, Lindsay Law, Andy Leask, and Mark Gibbons. Our first product is available from DriveThru, and has garnered some good reviews so far. There is much, much more to follow.
If you like the idea of new, system-agnostic roleplaying products (which means that they have been designed to be used with any edition of WFRP, and indeed with any other ruleset) from our merry band, check the Rookery out on any of these platforms.
Discord is the the hub of a vibrant and growing Rookery community.
YouTube and Twitch each have a Rookery channel where you can find our weekly Inside the Rookery streams, where we chat with big-name guests from across the industry about all manner of things.
Inside the Rookery, along with the occasional Beside the Rookery streams, are supported by our Patreon campaign. If you like what the Rookery has to offer and would like to be part of our story, you can support us for a very low monthly commitment (and if you can afford more, we have higher tiers, too!), and get access to exclusive content like the Rookery masterclasses on game design and development and special publications like the just-released Mother Hoarfrost PDF.
And you can also find us on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RookeryPublications
Twitter: @RookeryP
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rookerypublications/
The Hillfolk Bundle of Holding
A couple of years ago, tabletop gaming luminary Robin D. Laws ran a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign for his DramaSystem game, and I was lucky enough to be asked to contribute a stretch goal reward. My “Series Pitch” (DramaSystem lingo for “campaign setting”) was called Pyrates (the “y” spelling makes it 20% more piratical), and I pitched it to Robin as “Firefly of the Caribbean.” Here’s a link to the blog post I wrote at the time.
Now, thanks to the Hillfolk Bundle of Holding, you can sample Hillfolk, Pyrates, and many more settings – and explore the innovative and inspiring design of DramaSystem – for a bargain price. Check out all the goodies here.
For my money, Robin is one of the very best designers working in tabletop RPGTs today. His ideas are always fresh and thought-provoking, and make for great games as well as pushing the art and craft of game design beyond the normal envelope. You won’t be disappointed.
The Lion and the Aardvark
Stone Skin Press’ anthology The Lion and the Aardvark has now shipped to UK bookstores, and just in time for Christmas. You can find it at Waterstones, Amazon.co.uk, Foyles, and other bookshops.
I can’t wait to see this, and not only because it includes my short-short The Lemmings and the Sea. I was intrigued by the concept ever since Robin Laws approached me to write something. I remember reading a children’s edition of Aesop’s Fables at the age of about seven, and being amazed at how insightful they were (even if I couldn’t have articulated that thought back then) as well as loving all the talking animals. I loved having the chance to try my hand at writing something in the same style. But mainly, I just can’t wait to see what the other 69 contributing authors have done.
The roster includes some big names from the gaming world like Greg Stafford, Ed Greenwood, Sandy Petersen, and John Kovalic, as well as writers like Matt Forbeck, Jonathan Howard, and Chuck Wendig. It’s a wide and eclectic group of people, each of whom is bound to come up with something great. I’m proud to be among such company.
The book looks nice, too – a satisfyingly chunky hardback with a lion and an aardvark gold-stamped into the cover underneath a simple but appealing dustjacket. Rachel Kahn’s internal art has a light touch that is perfect for the subject matter.
I’m told that an announcement about North American distribution is expected any day now. I really hope it will be in time for Christmas-gifting on this side of the Atlantic.
International Short Story Day
Today is International Short Story Day. Why today? Because it’s the shortest night of the year. Kind of cunning, don’t you think?
One of many events to mark the day will be taking place at The Book Club in London, starting at 7:00 pm. That’s where Stone Skin Press will be launching a preview edition of The New Hero, their inaugural story collection. Renowned game and fiction author Robin D. Laws has put together an impressive roster of writers (and a great cover artist) for this volume of iconic hero tales – and he also asked me to pitch in a story.
My airpulp yarn “Against the Air Pirates” features a rogue German zeppelin in the inter-war Pacific: I pitched it as “Disney’s Tale Spin written by Robert E. Howard.” More on my obsession with vintage aviation can be found here.
The story was a lot of fun to write, and I hope that some day I’ll be able to revisit Louie’s Place and see what Mike Finnegan and the other regulars are up to. Meanwhile, though, I can’t wait to hold the book in my hands and see what wonders the other writers have come up with.
Graeme Davis 