Pride & Shame

Today I celebrate a little, because I now have a credit in a published RPG project. Over the last 10 or fifteen years I spent some time on the edge of the line between the hobby and the industry, occasionally playtesting or looking over manuscripts for people and whatnot. But until now none of those projects reached fruition. My first actual published credit is in a free fan PDF, but I'm still very happy to see my name listed among the contributors. The name of the project is Hekatoteratos, the new monster book for Mazes & Minotaurs, the retro Bronze Age fantasy rpg from Olivier Legrand. I blogged about M&M previously when talking about what I call apocryphal games. My four contributions to Hekatoteratos are the Attack Kelp, Carnivorous Cloud, God-Shadow, and Hooded Horror. Click here if you want to download a copy of Hekatoteratos for yourself. The name of the book is pidgin Greek for "100 monsters".

The name of this post is "Pride & Shame" because I have a bit of a confession to make: I've never played M&M. I'm the first to harp upon commercial products that seem to be written by people with no firsthand knowledge of the game. I will offer a mild two-pronged defense of this indefensible hypocrisy. First of all, making monsters in M&M is easy, fun, and mechanically sound. You can whip up pretty decent monsters in much the same way someone with no play experience can build fairly acceptable Classic Traveller spaceships. Second of all, it's a free PDF for a free game. If my four critters suck I will offer a full refund to anyone who requests it.