Matt Funk is back with another adventure on Kickstarter. I wanted to highlight that this week, especially since it needs some more help to get funded! Fastidious readers may remember my previous interviews with him (here and here) about his two previous adventures Pilgrims of the Goblin Road and Champions of the Goblin Road. This adventure is for level-2 PCs and in the third entry in that same line of adventures. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Matt Funk about Pirates of the Goblin River.
First, tell us a little about the adventure premise and what makes it unique.
Pirates of the Goblin River sews together centuries of seafaring tales and tropes into a high-action melange of mystery, mayhem, and melee combat. It shows that pirate tales aren't just set in the Caribbean, but have a continuity that extends back through the Vikings of Beowulf's time and into the era when Odysseus was helping raid Troy. It does so by allusions to these works and by featuring tropes, such as sirens and cave battles and tavern brawls, that echo through those tales. And like those tales, it's packed with excitement, immediately plunging the players into a savage fight to the death, then drawing them along plotlines of revenge, brutal betrayal, and rampant greed. We also included opportunities for players to swing on rigging ropes and chandeliers, swim shark-infested waters, and solve musical puzzles like in the modern pirate classic, Goonies. In short, we packed together highlights from a few thousand years of pirate stories and turned the intensity up to 11, as befits a Dungeon Crawl Classics game.
The main villain of this adventure seems to be a character naemd Eyesnatcher, but you've got some other interesting monsters, like the zombie sirens. What encounter is your favorite to run?
The first encounter is my favorite, as it caught the players by surprise, took them right to the edge and kept them there for most of the adventure. As intended, it set the tone. It's a surprise, so I don't want to give away too much to potential players. My second favorite is Eyesnatcher's private chambers. It features a golem made out of candles and a chest that, if not opened properly, turns one of the characters against the others in an insidious way. The result is a combination of inspired roleplaying and a unique combat, all set in a room replete with magical items. That said, I do like the final encounter, not only because it's absolute calamity but because its elaborate nature inspires players to come up with many ways of resolving it. I've never had the same result twice.
You've got an excerpt from Beowulf in an Appendix for this adventure. How did Beowuld help inspire this adventure?
Three ways, hence its inclusion as the choice excerpt: First, on the long spectrum of pirate tales, Beowulf's takes place in the era equivalent for the campaign setting, the "Alfredian era" of the late Dark Ages. Some forget that Beowulf, the hero himself, is first described as a "sea-crafty man" and hails from a culture that regularly pirated other countries. Vikings were, in essence, pirates organized on a mass scale, and I wanted the work to highlight that. By that token, the pirates in Pirates of the Goblin River are more akin to Vikings or Saxon marauders, and their aesthetic and cultural identity emphasize that.
The second inspiration is that Beowulf's plot is very similar. It's a tale of a hero getting swept up in a situation that turns out to be supernatural and that culminates in a cave fight. He faces Grendel's mother rather than Eyesnatcher, but the journey of having a brutal battle in a hall and then ending up swimming into a grotto to face an inhuman menace is quite similar. Finally, the language of Beowulf is an inspiration, in how grandiloquent and ferocious it is. I encourage every DCC player, especially Judges, to read Beowulf for the descriptions alone, as they're phenomenally vivid and dramatic. Featuring the excerpt served to reveal that to any readers who haven't read the work, in the homes of continuing that kind of epic communication.
Now that you've got a couple Kickstarter campaigns under your belt, any tips you'd give prospective creators out there?
The most important tip would be the one Douglas Adams is known for: Don't Panic. They may seem intimidating, but just about anyone can do them. I've not used BackerKit, but Kickstarter is a supportive platform that gives a significant boost to any marketing efforts. They require a lot of fields to be filled out and updates to be issued, but almost zero technical know how. And in my experience, something always goes wrong, but so long as you learn from it, look to your allies, and stay positive, it works out well. My second Kickstarter was going to fall short of its goal, so I cancelled it and retrenched with a lower goal, and I ended up surpassing the performance of the first Kickstarter in every regard.
Other than that, I have a ton of tips, which I'd be glad to go into greater detail for anyone who cares to contact me at witchpleas.com. They would be: Use color art samples as soon as you can. Budget for all your costs plus at least a 25% profit margin, because one never knows. Look to other successful campaigns for their format and emulate it, then look to your own successes and test how to improve them. Use other marketing channels to support what Kickstarter alone does. Update regularly, but don't feel you have to do so daily. Only promise what you can deliver. Don't feel you have to stack up a ton of extra swag, but instead focus on providing quality items people care about.
Thanks for sharing with us, anything else that you want to share before we close out?
A lot of exciting things are happening and I'm always grateful for the opportunity to share them with you and your readers! For one, Pirates takes place on an inn formed by two floating ships, plus underground tunnels, and a map of that complexity demanded a salty veteran to draw it. Will McAusland agreed to do so, which has me elated, as I've long wanted to work with Will. Also, I spoke with Stefan Poag today about the fourth and fifth modules of A Tale of Two Sisters and confirmed that he's down to provide his phenomenal art for them.
Meanwhile, I began a DCC campaign with players from the Chaotic Queer and AltRole Discord servers, to extend the awesomeness of DCC to a wider audience. I'm recording it and should have it ready as a podcast soon on Witch Pleas YouTube, and ultimately an actual play with video. We started with Sailors on the Starless Sea, of course, and should tour through some of the classic locations that old-school DCC players know and love well. It's exciting to see a new crowd discover the system I've come to love, and to run my first recorded game! Lastly, speaking of recordings, Joey Royale was generous enough to invite me to the Pizza Party next week, June 19, and I'm absolutely psyched for that. (editor’s note: That was yesterday! Go check it out over here while it’s still on Twitch! It’ll later go up on Youtube.) I hope to share a screen with you one day soon too, my friend!
Let’s have some folks who’ve played one or both the previous adventures leave some comments! What are your opinions on them?
What else is going on?
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