Already There
Today, we are pleased to announce the release of S.D. Hilderbrand’s collection of poetry, Already There.
Stephen D. Hilderbrand is a data scientist, poet, linguist, photographer, storyteller, juggler, musician, father, friend, and husband living in Austin, TX. On occasion, he finds moments of solitude to write poems.
Written over five years of his life, Already There is a collection of thirty-two poems around the subject of searching for home. From St. Lucia to Maryland, to upstate New York, to Austin, he walks us through a real and imagined past in the hope of settling down amidst dense lines and rhyming meditation.
This book is the first poetry collection he has published with Inverspace Press.
Order a copy of Already There.
We hope you enjoy them.
Is There Honor Amongst You?, Tournament-ready Dungeon Delve
We are pleased to announce the release of our latest adventure, written by S.D. Hilderbrand and Leo Monaghan of Dungeonstone. From the introduction:
Is There Honor Amongst You? is a tournament-ready dungeon delve for 6-8 5th level rogues. We have provided eight pregenerated characters at the end of this module, half of which are straight rogues, and the other half of which are multi-classed characters with a few levels of rogue.
Living on the streets of Waymar is a difficult task for those who would live in the shadows. Without the protection of the Guild it seems only a matter of time before your luck runs out, you take one risk too many and end up in either the city’s dungeons or its gallows.
Members of the guild however almost never seem to suffer such fates, even when caught they tend to be seen again out on the streets or in the local taverns mere days after their arrest. As such, membership into the Guild is the goal for all those who work outside the law.
Unfortunately, they only recruit once every two years and even then potential applicants must past a rigorous review in order to even be considered for membership…
…And then of course there is the final challenge…
As presented by the guild leader:
“Your goal is to pilfer the most loot from this city lord. We have bribed his guards and convinced them to take up residence in the local tavern for a period of two hours and not a minute more. Understand that anyone still inside the underground when the time expires will have failed the test and be left to their fate.
…”
Download the adventure from rpgnow.
The character sheets for these characters are available in a separate document available at clawclawbite.com.
The Art of the Session Recap
We are pleased to announce the release of The Art of the Session Recap, 28 pages of creative roleplaying session summaries, featuring selected submissions by Don Hupp, Panzer Leader, Oneinchsquare, Matt Harris, Lt. Col Colin Callahan, and 3 entries around a race of sci-fi beings known as the Watchers from S.D. Hilderbrand, Tom Walton, and Frank J. Kim. Get it here for free!
Introduction
Many of today’s gamers, especially those with young families, can’t make every session of a weekly, multi-year roleplaying campaign. I find it much easier to keep up with and interested in a campaign if a fellow player or the DM posts a recap on a wiki, a bulletin board, or even sends out a summary via email. In addition to keeping players in the loop, these recaps provide players with a chance to digest the session’s material and to prepare for the upcoming session. Furthermore, session recaps provide a more in-depth description of events, allowing the players to add the richness of the story, either in character or taking their turn as the narrator.
I find these journals, logs, and correspondences to be great time capsules of the campaign and memory logs when remembering adventures with friends. These annals provide additional flavor to the campaign world, and add perspective. After all, no fun roleplaying world is purely the thought of one individual.
Unfortunately, in most campaigns, not every session is logged, transcribed, or otherwise captured by the DM or players. DMs are often swamped making sense of dice rolls and character actions, while planning the next moves of the challengers in a given encounter.
Here are a few methods and ideas for inspiring players and DMs that you game with to keep an ongoing log of the adventure.
- Set up a blog, wiki, or bulletin board (or all three!) and make sure your players have accounts and tutorials.
- Take turns acting in the role of scribe of the session, ensuring that the key moments are covered. Different players will cover the events differently, and this is fun to see play out. Players may even challenge one-another to come up with increasingly creative and interesting session recaps. Offer XP, perhaps even on a per-word or per-ten-words basis, to dispel the curse of writer’s block.
- Players playing characters who are bards, historians, politicians, or others of the “literate class” of the campaign world have a natural stake in ensuring that the story is correctly told. These players make natural scribes, allowing their characters to use these opportunities to feed back into the history of the world and potentially affect change by increasing the popularity of the party, or by casting the ruler of a land as a tyrant, etc. This provides another avenue of agency.
My favorite session recaps are those written in character, or with the constraints, openness, and information dissemination methods of the campaign world in mind.
Thanks to all who entered or contest, and congratulations to those selected to appear in the collection.
Cover of Darkness
Inverspace Press is pleased to release S.D. Hilderbrand’s Cover of Darkness, a 54-page Pathfinder/d20/3.5 Dungeons and Dragons fantasy module for 14th-16th level characters. Originally written in 2008, the module has undergone a number of refinements and improvements over the years. It is part 2 of 3 in the Time Out of Mind trilogy, a series that takes the PCs in a journey through time and space as they chase down a party of false heroes who wield a powerful artifact.
The adventure also ships with five 15th-level false heroes to serve as the party’s nemeses.
From the Introduction:
This is a continuation of a story starring the False Heroes the nemesis and your players’ party of 15th-level adventurers as the heroes. In Stealing Moments, a unique artifact known as the Silver Orb of the Ages was unleashed from the bottom of a mountain cave, carried forth by the False Heroes.
These False Heroes have traveled the land, burning villages and causing trouble. In time, and as covered in the concluding module, Time Out of Mind, the party will chase the False Heroes to the Dream Plane, the only place where time is relative and thus out of reach of the power of the Orb.
But first, the party needs to learn more about the Orb. In this module, they will follow a trail of clues into the Plane of Knowledge and then track down a collection of tomes, through which they will become informed of the history of the Orb. However, the since the Plane of Knowledge is a sprawling library of endless passageways and sections devoted to obscure subject matter, it is full of peril in every section.
The False Heroes are comprised of a collection of characters of a similar makeup as the party. They have taken on the party’s persona and have made their way across the world, using the Silver Orb of the Ages to wreak havoc on the many peoples, and have brought shame to the party’s name. This has forced the party to travel in secret, following the many tales of the False Heroes’ exploits, keeping abreast of the local bardic lore, and have hunted them down throughout the multiverse.
Recently, they have heard a bard’s tale that the False Heroes have been sighted in the merchant quarter of the large port city of Chaurille. Upon visiting the quarter, they locate a bookstore, where they learn that a rare book collector as been inquiring about a book describing a silver orb.
This is where the action picks up!
Upcoming Releases in 2012
In addition to a few role playing adventures, our next release will be The Art of the Session Recap, a collection of creative summaries of role playing sessions. Look for the release in February!
We are hard at work on pulling together a book of short haiku-inspired poetry by Phoenix-based Carolyn Hinderliter and a book of fast-paced hacker flash fiction by San Francisco-based J.M. Hacknee. These two writers couldn’t be further apart in their styles, but they both fit the inverspace mould because we can’t seem to find an easy way to categorize their work. Hinderliter is known to work space themes into her poetry, and Hacknee drops references and wordplay like a 21st-century Joyce.
Kristin Harrison is working on a collection of speculative fiction, and S.D. Hilderbrand is completing Tales Alone, a 150-page collection of ten short stories in the speculative vein.
Follow our progress as we release these exciting new works in 2012!
What’s Mine’s Yours
Inverspace Press is proud to announce the release of another role playing adventure, S.D. Hilderbrand’s What’s Mine’s Yours.
What’s Mine’s Yours is a 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons adventure for 1st level characters. This adventure begins in the marketplace in the town of Fort Wood, where the players are approached by representatives of the Guild, a Merchant collective heavily invested in mining operations.
They are escorted to a courtyard at the Guild headquarters in Fort Wood, where they are provided with the setting. Kobolds have taken control of a mine of great importance to the Guild. Their task is to free the mine of the kobolds.
The party travels to the mine, where they take stock of the situation from afar. It appears the kobolds have taken control of the mine. However, once the party encounters the kobolds, they discover there is a more sinister story surrounding the Guild’s doings in the mine. This adventure easily serves as the first adventure undertaken by a new party of 1st level characters.
Download for just $1.99 from rpgnow.
Future adventures from Inverspace Press will provide follow-on adventures to this introductory adventure.
Stealing Moments
Inverspace Press is pleased to release S.D. Hilderbrand’s Stealing Moments, a Pathfinder/d20/3.5 Dungeons and Dragons fantasy module for 10th-12th level characters. Originally written in 2005, the module has undergone a number of refinements and improvements over the years. It is part 1 of 3 in the Time Out of Mind trilogy, a series that takes the PCs in a journey through time and space as they chase down a party of false heroes who wield a powerful artifact.
The adventure also ships with five 10th-level false heroes to serve as the party’s nemeses.
From the introduction:
FALSE HEROES
A group of rogues has moved into a cave up in the Silvermist Mountains a few miles uphill hike from the local town of Farreach. These false heroes were once noble and devout, but have become corrupted by loot, lust, and the desire for greater power. They are now working for (or more accurately controlled by) begotten of the old ones, who in turn are working for a stalking eye.
They have been performing experiments on the Silver Orb of the Ages, a magic artifact made of magesilver, a magic metal which amplifies arcane magical power. The Orb can help control the flow of time, making it a powerful item indeed. However, the stalking eye knows not how to wield the Orb’s power, and must rely upon the false heroes to learn its secrets.
Buy a copy from rpgnow, or send us a note if you would review the product and we’ll send you a copy for half price!
Check back for more releases, and keep up with related role playing developments at clawclawbite.com.
Chasing Kerouac With My Credit Card
We are pleased to announce the release of a new 114-page book of poetry from Edward Austin Robertson, Chasing Kerouac With My Credit Card.
Carrying only some belongings, an STD, and a credit card. Our “hero” embarks upon a journey through America, searching for answers but doesn’t like what he finds. Going from misadventure to misadventure, he takes a trip of deconstruction in hope of finding a place where he can reconstruct his identity.
Order a paperback copy for the low cost of $8.99 or download a PDF version for $2.99 from Lulu: Chasing Kerouac With My Credit Card. Look for more of Edward Austin Robertson’s work in his other collections and in issues of Inverspace Quarterly.
Edward Austin Robertson works with the nation’s youth in Tulsa, OK, and travels to give poetry readings nationwide. His two acclaimed collections of poems, Supplication and Masturbation and Instant Exchange of Recognition are available from Inverspace Press, and his upcoming book, Blooming Bursting and Burning with Color is due out later this year. Chasing Kerouac With My Credit Card is Edward Austin Robertson’s most recent book of poetry.
High Water Marks
Inverspace Press is pleased to begin bringing you role playing games and supplements starting in 2011 with the release of S.D. Hilderbrand’s High Water Marks, a 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons session delve for 5th-level characters. From the introduction:
EXILE ON MAIN STREET
The party saw the newly-carved sign when they first entered the mundane village of Riverfork – “No magicks allowed.” Something strange was clearly afoot; arcane power preceded them too the town and was not welcome.
Two brothers, Herman and Franz Finn, have been exiled from the village, after they were caught practicing the dark arts. They have since holed up in a cave upriver, where they stumbled upon an ancient shrine to Tharizdun.
Corrupted by their dark worship of Tharizdun, they have since taken on the identities of Germ and Vras Vrimm, and have recently conscripted a tribe of local bullywugs to build a dam to control Riverfork’s water supply. With the bullywugs’assistance, they have been engaged in systematically poisoning the village’s water supply and causing shortages and floods to exact revenge on their exile.
This work has pleased Tharizdun, who has sent them a Barlgura to assist them in their efforts of chaos and evil. They are currently recruiting more bullywugs and other forces with the intent of razing the village in the name of their dark god.
Check back for more releases, and keep up with related role playing developments at clawclawbite.com.
Accepting Submissions for Issue 7
Issue 7 submissions are due by the end of October, 2012. Get ‘em in and let’s put together another great issue!
