I just published the 20th anniversary edition of Trapped in the Museum, a solitaire adventure gamebook I first
released back in 1999. Back then S. John Ross gave me his kind
permission and much-needed encouragement to use his Risus: The
Anything RPG game system for the brief pulpy tale of a college
student who suddenly wakes up in a dark, locked museum. Another
mutual friend, Shawn Lockard – who for a while hosted the WEDGE
West End Games fan website – maintained a site for me where the
free solo gamebook lived for a while. At one point I even printed
copies to give away at the few convention appearances I was making at
the time. It was all in an effort to keep my name and game design
reputation in the public eye in the hopes it might attract some
freelance writing work. It was the unintentional launch of a 20-year
independent publishing career.
Trapped in the Museum capitalizes on my
love for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. When I was
a kid my parents took my brother and me there on occasional forays
into Manhattan. I gained my interest in medieval history from the
amazing arms and armor collection and my love for ancient Egypt from
the museum’s galleries, the largest collection of such antiquities
in America, including the rescued Temple of Dendur reconstructed
within the museum itself. I still have the picture postcard books
highlighting holdings in both collections. The museum further
expanded my interests in other historical periods, including ancient
Greece, Rome, China, and Japan. Certainly the idea of the Spartan
warrior statue came from the museum, which for many years displayed a
similar “Etruscan warrior” statue of dubious origin; the museum
later removed it when experts deemed the statue a fake. Many
illustrations in the revised Trapped in the Museum came from
the Met’s photographic collection of its holdings, part of an Open Access initiative placing such images in the public domain available
for use on a personal or commercial level. In some ways the solitaire
adventure gamebook stands as a small tribute to the role the Met has
played in enriching my interest in history.
I recently stumbled on one of those print copies
of Trapped in the Museum; looking back at the original
file and publication date I realized 2019 was the 20th anniversary of
its release. I was coincidentally developing another solo gamebook –
this one based on the OpenD6 system released under the Open
Game License (OGL) by one of West End’s later owners – and I
thought it might serve as an easy, commemorative project to entertain
fans of the company’s classic D6 System games (including the
Origins Award-winning Star Wars Roleplaying Game) and drum up
interest in my most recent, more substantial solo adventure. Such
“easy” endeavors often take more time and effort than one
assumes: I had to translate the material from Risus to OpenD6,
rework the character stats, update the layout, clean up a few
grammatical and stylistic tidbits, and give it some shiny new
graphics thanks to some public-domain sources I’d found. Other
things have changed in 20 years. Today I can upload the PDF as a
pay-what-you-want title at the Griffon Publishing Studio e-storefront
at DriveThruRPG where it might generate a little pocket change in the
tip jar. I can also upload it to Lulu for those like me who prefer
print versions of gamebooks, even for such a short piece as a 44-page
solo adventure.
I don’t care much for change, so those who still
want the “classic” version released 20 years ago can find it on
the Griffon Publishing Studio website “Free Downloads” page with
the original Risus game mechanics (as well as additional stats
for a few other games relevant at the time).
Now that this small, mostly promotional project is
off my desk I can return to the larger solo adventure gamebook, The
Asturia Incident. I veered off from other, more traditional
roleplaying game projects to merge my enjoyment of solo scenarios
with some science fiction themes I wanted to explore and a chance to
wander off and have fun with “gamemastering” an adventure in a
different format. I’m still fiddling with revisions, waiting on
artwork, and dealing with graphic design issues, but I hope to
release it in the coming months. It’s a bit more substantial than
Trapped in the Museum – almost 200 entries compared with
Museum’s 57 – and uses the OpenD6 system, complete
with a pre-generated character and game tutorial for newcomers or old
hands who need a refresher. In a way revising Trapped in the Museum has prepared me for the larger task of bringing The
Asturia Incident to publication. Perhaps it might briefly satisfy
D6 fans waiting for the larger solo adventure gamebook to
release.
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