The Hobgoblin's Fortress
Are we there yet? Soon.
The first draft of The Hobgoblin’s Fortress is almost done, which means that I am almost ready to bring it to Kickstarter. It will be the thirteenth entry in my Places by the Way series of location modules for Dungeons & Dragons 5E. For a moment, I toyed with the idea of labelling it Places by the Way #14, as if I was building a high-rise and skipping from the 12th floor to the 14th floor. But I decided against it. I think I’m getting less superstitious with age. It’s not that I’m wiser and more rational, it’s stubbornness: If I want to do something, I’m just going to go ahead and do it and everything else is just peripheral.
The idea behind it hasn’t changed much since I posted about it back in April, so I’ll just link to that post rather than write a new summary. What has changed is that the Hobgoblin’s Fortress is coming into sharper focus now that I’m almost finished filling it out. It’s the first Places by the Way that I’ve written in a couple of years, and I won’t deny that there have been moments when I felt unsure of my footing as if I had forgotten the tried and true formula that I used to use. For one thing, it looks like The Hobgoblin’s Fortress will run a little shorter than its predecessors, topping out at about 10,000 words. Probably it will end up at 11,000 words, but it could also fall short of 10,000. It depends on how long it takes to explain what happens in Chapter 3.
Is it too skimpy? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s worth keeping in mind that I originally planned to keep each module to 5,000 words, the same length as AEG’s old pamphlet-sized mini-adventures from the earliest days of the OGL. The very first D&D-compatible product that I wrote, The Wreck of the Venerable Drake, came from that series so I took them as my model. But I had too much fun inventing goofball NPCs and writing scenes for the DM to read to the players, and the word count inevitably ballooned to twice or three times that. So even if I can’t brew up more than 10,000 words, you’re still getting more content than I’d originally intended.
I also realized that it’s kind of pointless to worry about losing my feel for the series because in fact, each Places by the Way is a little different. Rather than worry about discontinuity, I used to worry about doing the same damn thing over and over again. So I have always improvised at least a little in writing each module. The Hobgoblin’s Fortress is no different, I’m just shaking off a little rust since it has been almost two years since I wrote Into the Royal Tombs.
Finally, I’ll note that I found myself doing something in The Hobgoblin’s Fortress that I swore I would never do again after The Village of Darkharrow: build a narrative structure that gave the player characters too many different paths through the story, each of which I would have to account for in some detail. It’s something I still regret about Darkharrow. In order to not shortchange both the players and the DM, I had to think through various possible courses of action and not only was it complicated and confusing to write it all out, it probably looked and felt ungainly on the page.
But in this case, I felt that I had little choice given the premise that I’d chosen. After your party speaks with the rebellious goblin rabble-rouser Ninnik, they really do have three equally valid, more or less equally likely choices: They can rat out the mutineers to the garrison commander; they can aid the mutiny; or they can stand aside and let it sort itself out. There is also a fourth choice, also valid and as likely as any other. The party may decide that they’re in the business of killin’ goblins and business is about to get good. But even if they decide that they’re going to approach this as a pure hack-and-slash, I still have to think through how the garrison would react and write it out accordingly.
However, that is the last hurdle before we go to crowdfunding. Over the years, I have learned that it’s best to have the work at least somewhat solidified before I launch the campaign. I’m not nearly famous enough to get away with pitching the Kickstarter audience with nothing more than, “Oh, I have this thing I want to write. Are you with me?” Also, the farther along I am in the process, the easier it is to predict when we can deliver the finished product. So I don’t like to launch before I have the manuscript ready for layout. I’m almost there with The Hobgoblin’s Fortress; and then, while the campaign is running, I will work on porting it to Pathfinder (both editions). Stay tuned; I’ll post again before the Kickstarter launches!