.jpg)
Courtesy Evil Hat Productions.
I recently interviewed Fred Hicks of Evil Hat Productions and One Bad Egg. Fred's a busy man; he has two different entries up for ENnie nominations in the Best Electronic Book category, one entry was nominated for Best Writing and Product of the Year, and yet a third entry was nominated for both Best Setting and Product of the Year. For those of you keeping track at home, Fred's companies are competing with each other in not one but two categories.
MT: Man alive, Fred you are busy! This has got to be a new record for the ENnies. Tell us a little bit about your entries.
FH: Don't Lose Your Mind (DLYM) is a supplement for Don't Rest Your Head written by Benjamin Baugh, focusing on Madness in your game: the powers it gives you, how it changes you, and the monster you'll become if you don't tread carefully. Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies (S7S) is Chad Underkoffler's game of swashbuckling adventure, musketeers, courtly intrigue, and sky pirates. Death Mother is a collection of a half dozen undead monsters for D&D 4E. I uncorked the nightmare bottle that is my brain and spilled out some real nasty stuff in this one. Hard Boiled Armies talks about how to use the techniques you already know from playing D&D 4E to scale up your game for massive military conflicts -- quickly, easily, and with a lot of flexibility.
MT: Don't Lose Your Mind from Evil Hat is up for Best Writing and Product of the Year ENnies. What's it all about?
FH: DLYM isn't so much a supplement as an experience, in some ways -- the book itself is afflicted with Madness, from the way it's laid out, to the things seeping out through the ink. It has no ending and two beginnings. If you're a fan of Don't Rest Your Head, you absolutely need DLYM. It's the missing piece.
MT: Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies by Atomic Sock Monkey and Evil Hat is up for both a Best Setting and Product of the Year ENnie.
FH: S7S is a half setting, half system book -- and the setting was tightly tuned to deliver maximum gameability. There's no filler, here. Plus, its system represents a major evolutionary step forward for Chad's trademark lightweight PDQ system. A player who wants zippy rules that really nail what swashbuckling adventure is about will feel at home, here -- and folks who love RPGs for the ideas the settings inspire will not be disappointed.
MT: Under the One Bad Egg name, there are yet even more nominations. The Death Mother and Hard Boiled Armies are competing against each other in the Best Electronic Book category. Tell us more about them.
FH: Even with the stellar Open Grave supplement to D&D 4E, there's plenty of room out there for creepy, inventive undead. We've got all kinds of nasty in Death Mother, from the Death Mother herself, a creature that eats corpses and births undead on the battlefield, to the Bloody-Bones, a sinewy serpent of bone and gristle that's hard to kill and even harder to shake off once it wraps around you. Hard Boiled Armies really comes out of my love of Glen Cook's military fantasies, and it not only delivers on that promise, but also I think unlocks a perspective on using some of the "secret flexibility" of D&D 4E to its maximum potential. It's a technique that can be used in so many ways. Primarily D&D 4E DMs will find these products of interest, though Hard Boiled Armies could land in player hands as well as a guidebook for everyone to get involved in the design of large scale military encounters.
Comments