Mythic Hero Chat (Wednesday, February 22)

Let's talk mythology!

This Wednesday, February, 22, beginning at 9:00 PM Eastern (6:00 PM Pacific), I'm holding a Mythic Hero chat in the Chat Rooms at the Hero Games website. We'll talk about the contents of the book, which gods and subjects I'm covering, stuff about Kickstartering, whatever you're interested in as it pertains to the MH project.

Hope to see you there!

30%, And Beyond

Thanks to some generous donations in recent days, including one backer who snapped up the "Leader of the Pantheon" reward, Mythic Hero has now crossed the 30% line toward full funding. That's statistically significant, since Kickstarter claims that projects which reach 30% at any time during their run are 90% likely to succeed in the end.

However, 30% isn't a guarantee of success by any means, and I'd definitely prefer to avoid falling into that unfortunate 10% that end up not making it. So please tell your friends and anyone else you think might be interested -- MH can definitely use all the support it can get!

On other fronts, I'm continuing to acquire new books on mythology for purposes of researching MH. Some of my recent purchases have involved some of the more unusual or obscure mythologies and may allow me to expand MH's coverage. They include:

—Persian mythology (or if you prefer, Iranian mythology). I don't want to delve full-force into the rich, complex religions of the region, but I think I have enough useful information now to give proper coverage to Persian myth.

—Australian Aborigine mythology. I shied away from this initially because it's not only complicated in its own way, but damn strange to the Western mind. But if the books I got recently live up to their promise, I think I've found the right sources to let me include an Aborigine mythology chapter in MH.

—Scythian mythology. I'm not sure we know enough about this subject to merit a whole chapter (and what we do have may be too filtered through the perceptions of Herodotus to be truly useful). But at the very least it should make a nice entry in the "Miscellaneous" section. ;)

—Bantu mythology. Depending on how my research pans out, I'm thinking that I may end up doing an "African Mythologies" chapter that's similar to the American Indian Mythologies chapter I've already written, in that it would cover major cultural groups within a larger framework. Aside from the Yoruba, I'm not sure any one tribe has enough mythology (or at least enough readily available to me in English) to merit a chapter of its own... but I'd be quite happy to be proven wrong, if the research pans out.

—Baltic mythology. This is part of Slavic/Russian (it's basically "western Slavic"), but it's good to have more sources for that chapter. I think the book I acquired also has some info on Finnish myth, and more sources on that are also welcome.

So keep those pledges and messages of support coming in! It's gonna be a great book. :)

Where Does The Money Go?

As you’ve probably seen, I’m asking for a lot of money to get Mythic Hero written, printed, and published:  $33,000, which I think would be a Kickstarter record for an RPG supplement (not an RPG — the record for that’s over $40,000 — but a supplement for an existing RPG). Since I’m asking for so much of your support, I figure it’s only fair to show you where the money’s going.

Salary:  MH is going to take a lot of time and effort to write, layout, and shepherd through printing. I estimate 3-5 months, and it could easily take more. During that time I need to pay myself something for the work involved — a salary, if you will. Otherwise MH becomes nothing but a fun ride to bankruptcy.

To calculate what I should pay myself, I’ve assumed the project will take four months. That seems reasonable to me, and will encourage me to work hard to get the book done as quickly as possible. Given the work and skill required to write MH, I think a salary of $3,000 per month (before taxes, alas!) is fair. So, four months at three thousand dollars a month = $12,000.

Layout-related fees:  Since I’m relatively new to doing layout, I want to budget for the possibility of having to hire someone to help me out with the hard parts, or things I haven’t done before. I’m also likely to want to buy some fonts and suchlike to make the book look better. For all that I’ve budgeted $500.

Art:  MH is going to be a very art-heavy book because it has so many character sheets for gods, heroes, and monsters. Based on the four chapters already written, I’m estimating that it could easily require 250-300 individual quarter-page illustrations, plus of course a color cover. Based on the prices quoted to me by the artists I have lined up, I’ve budgeted $7,500 for art.

Printing:  Since I don’t anticipate having to print large numbers of MH, it’s not likely I’ll be able to go the traditional printing route — I’ll probably have to use a print-on-demand (POD) service, which is significantly more costly per book (especially for a book as large as MH, which could run to 400 pages or more). Based on the various estimates I’ve obtained I think I can print 500 books and cover the additional associated costs for $6,000. (If it turns out I need more books, or that I can find a way to print traditionally, the savings will either go to cover other MH-associated expenses, or get salted away in support of my next Kickstarter.)

Shipping:  Books don’t get shipped around the world for free; the Post Office wants me to pay for postage. And I have to pay my fulfillment service for the shipping materials and work involved. Based on the information provided to me, I’ve budgeted $2,550 to cover such expenses.

The Cut:  Then of course there’s Kickstarter’s and Amazon’s cut, which typically comes to 10% of the total amount raised. I can’t calculate that for certain, but I know what everything else comes to and can use that to calculate the final figure.

So:  $12,000 + $500 + $7,500 + $6,000 + $2,550 = $28,550. Given that, I set the Kickstarter goal at $33,000, since $33,000 - $3,300 = $29,700, giving me a bit of a cushion.

I realize $33,000 seems like a lot of money to produce a single RPG supplement, but as you can see from the numbers above I’m not expecting my backers to fund a trip to the Bahamas for me or anything. Pure and simple, that amount is what it’s going to cost to write, produce, and publish this book. RPG companies have historically often priced their books below the cost of production because consumer perception has forced them to — which is why so many of them go out of business. I can’t afford to make that mistake. If I’m going to produce MH, I have to have the money to cover the associated expenses.

And even at that I’m technically not covering all of them. For example, I’ve allotted nothing for research expenses. It’s cost me thousands of dollars over the years to build my mythology library, and a good chunk of that expense has been incurred in the past 6-8 months as I ramped up to write MH. All those costs essentially come out of my “salary.” Similarly, if someone chooses the $2,000 reward tier and I travel to his home to run a game, the travel expenses also come out of my “salary.” Those are expenses I’m willing to bear personally to help the MH project succeed... but I can’t carry the rest. I hope all of you out there reading this, who want to see Mythic Hero come to life, will help me do the carrying. ;)

My Mythology Library

Just to prove I ain't kiddin' when I say I have a large mythology library, here's a picture of it I took awhile back. It's grown (and been re-arranged) since then, but this should give you some idea of the scope of the research materials I have on hand for writing Mythic Hero. Currently I'm at 324 mythology, legends, and folklore books... and I imagine that number will continue to increase as I work on MH. ;)

Introduction

Howdy folx! I’m about to launch a Kickstarter for my book Mythic Hero, and I figured it might be a good idea to set up a page where I could tell you more about it. ;)

Describing MH is simultaneously easy and a bit tricky. The joke tagline we sometimes used when describing it around the metaphorical Hero Games water cooler was “Steve’s version of Deities & Demigods.” That’s a pretty good one-phrase pitch, but it doesn't really do the book justice. The key words are “Steve’s version.” As someone who (a) got into geekish pursuits via reading mythology, and (b) is a D&Der from way back when, I loved the “DDG” (as we called it) from the moment it hit the hobby store shelves. When it occurred to me that I could write such a book for the HERO System, I immediately fell in love with the idea (as I hope you will too).

Thus, at its core MH is a review of a lot of mythoi for gaming — descriptions of gods, heroes, monsters, and more from the great (and not-so-great) mythologies of the world. They’ll all be written up in HERO System terms, of course, but the raw information is useful for any game. In that sense, MH is a lot like the DDG — but because this is “my version,” it’s going to go waaaay beyond that.

Generally speaking the DDG didn’t provide much beyond character sheets, aside from a few paragraphs of introductory information. Well, that’s not how I roll (as the kids say). When I describe a mythology, I want to cover more than just the gods, heroes, and monsters (though those are unquestionably the key element). I also intend to discuss:

—the cosmology. How does this mythology view the world (and the otherworld)? How was it created, what’s its “history,” how can characters get from one part of it to another? Do any special “rules” govern how characters live and adventure in this mythology?

—the magic. Some cultures have distinctive ways of viewing and using magic, and these affect or become a part of their mythologies. Where I can dig up this information with relative ease, I intend to include it. This won’t be a full-on HERO System Grimoire sort of treatment, but I’ll provide enough to inspire you, help you create a character, and so on. 

—well-known myths. Obviously I’m not setting out to write a book filled with all the world’s myths; there are entire encyclopedias and libraries devoted to that. But I think it really helps gamers understand a god — his abilities, his weapons, his personality, how best to interact with him in a game — if some of his best-known stories are at least briefly summarized. So there’ll be plenty of that sort of thing in the book, and the Bibliography will show you where to go if you want to know more.

—last but not least, if there’s any other cool information I uncover while doing research (like special spells, enchanted items, or types of spellcasters common to a culture or mythos), I’ll shoehorn that in somewhere — details like that are always fun and useful for gamers.

Chapter By Chapter

The first chapter of MH will feature a bunch of useful introductory material. There’ll be plenty of “crunch bits” such as “Templates” for common divine abilities; that kind of stuff is always useful. But beyond that, this chapter will cover what I think of as “mythic roleplaying”:  different ways to present/use the gods in a gaming campaign (and the implications for each); how characters interact with gods (and even fight and trick them — as ridiculous as that may “realistically” sound, it happens a lot in myth); and even how to play gods in mythology-based campaigns. This isn’t going to be a huge chapter; the book’s already long enough and I don’t want to get too bogged down in this sort of thing. But I feel it needs some coverage.

The rest of the chapters cover individual mythoi. The basic structure is:  introduction; cosmology and related information; gods (major/important/fun gods get full character sheets; lesser deities just get textual descriptions); heroes; and lastly villains and monsters. For example, the Norse heroes section has einherjar, Sigurd, and valkyries, while the monsters include Fenris and Jormungandr; the Russian/Slavic monster section has character sheets for vodyanoi, domovoi, rusalka, and other such spirits. Here’s the list of mythoi I’m currently planning to cover:

American Indian (split into six sub-chapters covering major cultural groups)†

Armenian†

Assyro-Babylonian

Aztec and Mayan

Canaanite*

Celtic

Chinese

Demonology (medieval Christian demons like Belial, Moloch, and so on; may also include some angels)

Egyptian

Etruscan*

Filipino*

Finnish

Greek and Roman

Hawaiian and Polynesian/Oceanic (possibly split into two chapters)

Hindu

Hittite*

Hungarian*

Inca

Japanese

Maori*

Masai*

Mongolian/Turkic*

Norse†

Slavic/Russian

South American* (possibly combined with Inca)

Sumerian†

Voodoo

Yoruban

Miscellaneous

(Entries with a * after them are subject to being demoted into the “Miscellaneous” chapter based on how my research goes. Entries with a † are already written, or nearly so.)

As you can see, the list includes all the old favorites (like Greek, Norse, Egyptian, and Chinese) along with quite a few more obscure mythoi, many of which have never been covered for gaming (as far as I know). The general guideline about which pantheons get a chapter is whether the subject has good, approachable resources in English that I have or can obtain. One reason gamers tend to emphasize/know about Greek and Norse mythology is that there are such excellent resources available on them. I have an extensive personal mythology library (you can see it in the Kickstarter video), and that will form the foundation of the research required to write the book. (And no doubt my collection will grow as I create MH!) It’s going to be a lot of work... but also a lot of fun, and in the end it will create a really great gaming supplement.

Lastly, I plan to include an appendix in the book discussing how you can create your own pantheons and mythologies for your games. If all goes well with the Kickstarter, some backers will have the opportunity to help me create the gods for the example pantheons I’ll include in this part of the book. I expect it will be a fascinating exercise in mutual creativity. ;)

Conclusion

Obviously this isn’t going to be a small book! The American Indian Mythologies chapter itself is over 30,000 words long (about half the length of more than a few gaming supplements I’ve written), and the Norse chapter exceeds 20,000 words. My guess is it’ll be somewhere in the 300-400 page range, though that depends on art density, my layout skill, and other as-yet-uncertain factors. It could easily be longer. Getting the rest of the book written is going to take a lot of time and work...

...and that requires a lot of money. So I hope you’ll check out the Kickstarter, pledge your support, and help me make Mythic Hero a reality!

If you’d like to know more, or have a question or suggestion, you’re welcome to post a comment here, or you can use the Message Boards (you’ll find a link in the right-hand menu). I’m sure there’ll be a lively discussion going on over at the Hero Games message boards as well. ;)