Design Diary: GaryCon and DnDiaC (Patreon)

I'm planning to do more with Patreon in 2025. As EbEx gets underway I'll be sharing previews of that content and asking for your opinions on things. But even aside from EbEx, I thought you might be interested in hearing about the things I'm working on and the thought process that goes into those things. If you enjoy this, I'll post more of these in the future; let me know either in the comments or by liking this post. So, what am I working on right now?

EBEX: PLANNING

I'm in the early stages of the next Eberron book. We've identified the topics the book will cover. The next step is to create the plan for the book: a spreadsheet that breaks down the contents—how many pages will be assigned to each topic, anticipated mechanical elements, estimated amount of images for art—and then making a basic timeline, assigning dates and deadlines to each section. I expect to be done with this early next week, and then I plan to hit the ground running.

HOUSE ORIEN

House Orien is going to be this month's Dragonmarked House. I've done an overview of the article with key points I want to hit, as well as sketching out the mechanical elements I'll be posting as bonus content for patrons. As I started writing the article I ran into points that needed to be covered generally—the presence and capabilities of dragonmarked NPCs, the nature of Lesser and Greater Marks—which led to the article I just posted. My goal is to release this article toward the end of the month, between the two Q&As.

GARYCON

I'm going to GaryCon on March 17th. I arrive early, because I'm helping run the Descent tournament, a two-day event that takes people through all the editions of Dungeons & Dragons. In addition to serving as a DM at the tournament, I've been designing and playtesting the Fourth Edition adventure for this tournament. That adventure is specifically tied to the evolving storyline of Descent, but I'm planning to do an Eberron conversion of it that I'll run as a one-shot for patrons in April, so stay tuned for more on that next month!

D&D IN A CASTLE

At the end of the month, I'm going to run a D&D campaign for six players at Lumley Castle in Northern England. This includes 24 hours of gameplay—six four hour sessions. My story is set in Atur, the City of Night. We've already determined the basic nature of the characters people will be playing—class and species—and last weekend I kicked off an online session zero, presenting people with the basic concept and asking key questions about their characters. I thought I'd share that with you, so you can all see the way I start off a campaign...

There's also these bonus details, regarding the patron of the adventurers...

This is just the beginning of a conversation. It's a chat with all the players, and as each person presents their ideas we'll all work together to see how we can establish connections between the characters. There's also going to be a conversation about player safety and lines & veils, which is especially important in a game with horror elements!

SECRET PROJECTS

The are my personal projects. But I'm usually working on projects for other people, which I can't talk about because of NDAs. I have two such projects underway at the moment. So, there's a few irons in the fire...

That's all for now. Let me know if you'd like to see more of these articles in the future!