What a Long, Strange Trip...

Looking back on everything since 2020

When 2020 began, I was a children’s novelist with five books—a trilogy and a stand-alone set in my own world and one in the Star Wars galaxy. I was at work on my first adult novel, a “rise of a villain” tale that would fill in the backstory for one of my Big Bads, but the manuscript wasn’t writing itself as easily as I’d hoped. It was a real slog.

And then in March 2020, my father died.

On the first day of lockdown. Yup.

“Your father is dead. And by the way, you can’t leave the house.”

I found I couldn't write anymore. The well was dry. Isolated and needing an escape, I thought I'd try to rekindle the muse by penning a “short, 32 page adventure” set in Norrøngard, the Norse-inspired land of my first novel, just to see if I could do it.

I imagined I would take a month, maybe two, and I would create this fun little Dungeons & Dragons-powered adventure. And then I’d get back to novel writing.

Both the RPG project and the pandemic went on for a lot longer than I’d expected.

The Norrøngard Campaign Setting ended up taking over a year and being a whopping 232 pages!

I took the project to Kickstarter in 2021. It funded, and we unlocked Sagas of Norrøngard, a 138 page companion adventure book, with adventures by Yours Truly, Jeff Lee, Sarah Madsen, Ben McFarland, and Brian Suskind. We also produced a 3D printable board game, dozens of VTT map packs, an STL from Effincool Miniatures. All from that initial “32 page” adventure idea. We even had a soundtrack. (It turns out that Grammy-nominated composer David Joseph Wesley is a huge Star Wars fan. He sought me out, we became friends, and he created a whole album of music to accompany the RPG.) And suddenly, I was a games publisher with a company (Lazy Wolf Studios) and a line of products!

Subsequently, we released a short story anthology, a stand alone, dark epic tale called Vengeance of the Valravn, more map packs and extras. All from the initial idea to create a “short, 32 page adventure.”

Then the OGL kerfuffle exploded.

At the time, I'd been working for a Very Big Media Company—they actually hired me on the strength of the Norrøngard Campaign Setting, and I had just spent 11 months building them a massive fantasy world, working with a team of talented writers and artists, producing incredible material, and then the company pivoted…

Suddenly, I thought everything I had worked on professionally for the last 11 months was going to go poof, and everything I'd worked on since my father died was going to have to be removed from DriveThruRPG.

I was devastated. It was like the last several years of my life were being erased.

There was a period of maybe three to four weeks that was simply a nightmare.

Then Wizards surprised us all by releasing the 5e rules into the Creative Commons and Kobold Press announced that the 5e rules would form the basis of their own spin on 5e, Tales of the Valiant.

I pivoted and started producing material for Tales of the Valiant. Their system of lineages and heritages, rather than race, really worked for what I had already been doing in my world since before it was even an RPG. I had already written several things for Kobold Press, and it was a natural fit to take my RPGs into their new 5e-adjacent ruleset.

I had an adventure in Kobold Press' first Kickstarter, in the Adventure Pack.

This was followed by a second one in the second bundle for the next Tales of the Valiant Kickstarter. The adventures—Banner of the Bull and Keeper of the Drowned (Brian Suskind)—were meant to introduce new people to Norrøngard and form the beginning of a new loose adventure path. Troll of the Town (Kelly Pawlik) followed, as did a Player's Guide to Norrøngard specifically for Tales of the Valiant.

Recently, in a "first," I collaborated with Kobold Press in a crossover. Their Kickstarted Labyrinth Adventure Book will feature an adventure I wrote that goes from their multiversal Labyrinth setting to Norrøngard and back. This was really exciting for me, like an old cross-the-streams/cross-the-companies team up from DC or Marvel!

Now I'm gearing up for my biggest Kickstarter since the first one, with Fury of the Forsaken, a dark, moody epic written by Richard Pett and Yours Truly, that will launch in early 2025. I’ve been a huge fan of Richard’s work since I first got into 5th edition D&D, and I’m thrilled to work with him. And what he’s come up with is really something special. Dare I say it, a story worth of the sagas?

Part of the Kickstarter will be a hardcover compilation/expansion of the first three Tales of the Valiant adventures, called The Bense Trilogy. Between the two hardcovers, you can play a Tier One adventure path set in Norrøngard. Stretch goals may add two more hardcovers to the project.

But of my four original fantasy novels...only the first, Frostborn, took place in Norrøngard. The subsequent two books in the trilogy and the stand-alone all featured other areas of my world. And I've been itching to get there with the RPG. Later in 2025, we're going to see a lot of other nations/regions. Chronicles of Katernia will be a big hardcover featuring multiple locations from multiple designers. Stories are coming from Sarah Madsen, Kelly Pawlik, Richard Pett, Sebastian Rombach, me, others. It's going to be a THICK book, paired with a bestiary of 100+ original monsters. There's also a mass combat book in the works, and a dark fae adventure path for 2026. The world is set to explode!

All of this from that original idea for a “short, 32 page adventure” and a much needed retreat from grief. It’s been a heck of a journey, one I'm privileged to be able to take and to have so many wonderful people take with me. If you’ve supported my work in any fashion, to any degree, you’ve helped me along that path, helped me bring a world to life. However you choose to follow, support, or interact, I appreciate you being here. There's nothing I ever wanted more in life than to create and share worlds; thank you for letting me share them with you.