Should the big beasts of TTRPG publishing get all the media coverage? Geek Native Patreons who vote in the RPG Publisher Spotlight select an indie publisher, creator or curator for us to shed some light on each month.
The winner of the July RPG Publisher Spotlight is OG GM Adventures.
In this interview, we talk about Black Flag as a way to push the established TTRPG paradigm in new and weird, wonderful ways, about space goblins (and cowboy goblins), and read as I trip over myself trying to be clever in a question about superheroes.
Introducing the OG GM of The OG GM Adventures
Michael Straus, the OG GM, was kind enough to give me time for an interview. Until recently The OG GM was a one-person publisher, but that’s only true if you do not consider cats to be people.
Who are the OG GM Adventures?
The OG GM Adventures are my cat Steve and me. Recently, I have begun a creative partnership with the Dungeon Janitor, Aaron Cornelious.
What would you like to be known for, and what do you think you are currently known for?
I think most people know me as the “Wretched Vigilantes guy” or the guy who worked on GURPS Supers.
I would like to be known for creating fun silly game books, remember at the end of the day this is juts a silly game and sometimes we forgot that so I hope I can reenergize that sense of willy wonder that TTRPG should be.
If nothing else, I hope they appreciate the research and the facts. They learn something that would be cool.
Do you think RPGs should be sillier as a rule? There does seem to be a lot of grimdark out there.
Grimdark has been overdone to the point where it has become a meme; there are far too many grimdark games, so of course, I am writing a parody grimdark game.
As for silly games, the game is in of its self-silly-Its goblins with sticks. Too many people have forgotten this.
That said you cannot force a silly game to happen, any more then you can force a grimdark game to happen, you just have to play and these things will happen naturally.
What’s fair?
The OG GM Adventures as a DriveThruRPG shelf and at a glance you can see Michael isn’t about strong-arming the community into paying big bucks.
In fact, the OG GM often trusts his buyers to name their own price before downloading one of his supplements.
You’ve published some minion supplements as Pay What You Want downloads. Do you find people pay a fair price?
I have no idea what fair is, and I do not think it is fair for me to charge $10.00 or $90.00 for a 20-page book on goblins. I charge what I would pay.
Black Flag and D&D 2024
Black Flag is a 5th Edition compatible tabletop roleplaying game system developed by Kobold Press, which came about in response to the OGL drama. That drama was all about WotC trying to mess with the publishing rules lots of 5e content that had been created under. They’ve since retreated from that idea.
It’s also D&D’s 50th anniversary, and Wizards of the Coast is doing a new-but-also-the-same edition trick for D&D, which is getting called D&D 2024.
So, that’s your background context.
Are you excited about D&D 2024?
D&D in 2024, no, absolutely not. WOTC has done nothing to make me excited!
But I am excited to see how the industry responds to D&D 2024 and we are already seeing that with the direction people are going, so many companies are coming out with the D&D killer (DC20 is an example) while others like Shadowdark are looking to take the hobby in new directions. And then ether is my stuff. I make setting books, and I want people to enjoy them.
Do you think D&D 5e will be the peak of popularity and that interest will come down a bit or perhaps even out across different RPGs now?
WOTC D20 D&D will never be as big as it was between 2018 and 2021; it cannot. The popularity is already starting to dwindle, and as hard as they try, the various players cannot force another popularity surge. There will never be another Stranger Things or another Critical Role.
Will people try other games? Yes, always. No game will ever be as big as D&D unless the entire paradigm of the industry changes, but D&D will never be as popular as it was over the past 5 years.
A Fistful of Goblins is a Black Flag project. How do you think Black Flag will change things for publishers and buyers?
I hope it will make people comfortable creating D20 products without fear of WOTC. It was the best choice I saw to make D20 Goblins available to as many systems as possible.
I hope Black Flag can provide a format for people to explore D20-type products and push the established paradigm in new, weird, wonderful ways.
If you do not want to do D20, there are other open-source systems out there, and I hope to use those in the future, but D20 is a good place to start, and Black Flag seems to be the best.
If anyone knows of a better one, I am open to suggestions.
The OG GM Adventures books and settings
That’s enough about talking about other publishers’ books and projects. Let’s focus on some of the quirky publications from The OG GM.
How do Goblins fit into the Wild West?
They do not. That is the whole point. I knew I wanted to do weird west; the goblins just evolved on their own.
Which is your favourite prison in the Supermax and why?
Area 52.
That place is amazing! The amount of stuff I learned! You do not have to believe in the UFO stuff to see how weird this place is, and its history of top-secret shenanigans is just a ripe location to mine for any modern-day TTRPG.
I am surprised Area 52 does not make its way into more TTRPG pop culture.
It has been argued that superheroes use their great power to maintain the status quo, but that is wrong because we need Big Bad Stuff to happen now and then. Do you agree?
I have never heard that argument.
Would you want to see a comic that’s just Kid Sidekicks’ everyday life? Tag robbing a bank is exciting, Tag using the money to do her laundry is not that exciting.
Superheroes can do anything; you can tell any story with supers, from Horror to comedy to action. That is why I love them.
I love what they represent, and I love writing about them, the world of superheroes, and how they affect the everyday. That’s what I tried to do with Wretched Vigilantes, anyway.
Absolutely! I read comics to escape from household chores like laundry. In your example with the bank, though, has Tag just deterred innovation in security technology, eroded the public’s trust in institutions like the police or bank security or prevented a lapse in security created by corruption from being exposed in the aftermath of a successful robbery?
Knowing how I write Tag she did it on a lark. People say that Tag is a rip off of Harly Quinn, but I wrote her as a homage to Lorie Petty’s portrayal of Tank Girl.
What next for OG GM Adventures?
Next up is Goblin Space Patrol, a game about goblins in space prospecting asteroids.
After that I will be revisiting beasts/minions for the next issue of the Seths Gear and Ammo catalog. Then, there will be more superheroes, more goblins, and more fun.
But I love doing research, so if someone came up to me and said let us work together, you do the research. I would say yes.
I am not a five-year-down-the-block kind of guy. I focus on what I can control that is in front of me. I do not know what the future holds other than what is for lunch.
The OG GM Adventures
- The OG GM Adventures on DriveThruRPG.
- The OG GM Adventures on YouTube.
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