Will and his girlfriend Stacey operate the blog, a truly amazing mix of great 4e design and world-class artwork. Someone on a forum somewhere mentioned it to me a few years ago, and when I checked it out, I was pretty overwhelmed. "How has nobody heard of this guy?", I wondered, as his blog is really heads and tails above a lot of what you see. Well, it seems WOTC took notice as well, because in the year since I first asked Will about contributing to my zine, he has had not one, not two, but three adventures appear in Dungeon, with another possibly on the way. All of his adventures have gotten rave reviews for their creativity. I am not surprised in the least.
When I approached Will about printing one of his articles in the mag, he was total class. He let me make edits, answered questions, and he is really a super-nice guy who deserves all of the success he is getting. You will be seeing a lot more of this guy, I promise you that.
Will was nice enough to answer some questions for me:
1. How did you get into gaming?
I was first introduced to roleplaying games in 1984, when a relative gave me and my brother a boxed copy of Call of Cthulhu. I was nine, so it was way above my head, but I remember liking the pictures! Eventually one of my brother's friends ran a short campaign of Dragon Warriors, and we finally understood how it all worked - and were pretty much hooked. That led to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Paranoia, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, D&D and dozens more. Nowadays I mostly play D&D and Call of Cthulhu, with occasional forays into other systems. My girlfriend is a keen player, and we both work in video games, so there are plenty of opportunities to game!
2. Can you talk a bit about Beholder Pie? How did you get started with it?
Beholder Pie was born when my 4th Edition campaign began developing lots of housebrew content: a mass combat system, unique monsters, magic items, and artifacts. Most blogs seemed to focus on GM-advice, so I thought a "crunch-heavy" site could stand out from the crowd. I also played with a group of video game artists, who were always drawing pictures of their characters, so I had lots of original artwork available. Over the months the blog has become less crunch-based, but I still try to provide something mechanical every once in a while.
3. I know you have had some stuff published by WOTC recently. Anything else on the horizon you want to share with us?
Over the last year I've written four Dungeon adventures for Wizards of the Coast. The first two - "Tears of the Crocodile God" and "Glitterdust" have already been published, and there are two more in the pipes. I can't talk much about them until they're been announced, except to say they were a real blast to write and playtest! Two of the adventures I've written have been based on concepts they've asked me to develop (rather than ideas I pitched to them), which in some ways I prefer - it's more of a challenge, as it puts you out of your adventure-writing comfort zones!
I am not going to spoil what Will contributed to my zine. All I will say is that it is a game changer, plain and simple. You do NOT want to miss it. Thank you SO MUCH for your help Will!
You can pretty much click at random on Will's blog and find something awesome, but I think I will leave you with a link to some of his recent ultra-creative stuff, "The Drowned Kingdoms". This is a killer new campaign setting, a world completely flooded...kind of like Waterworld without the urine drinking and cigarettes. Here are the posts about it, scroll down to start at the beginning.
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| One of the awesome locales of the Drowned Kingdoms, Fathomdeep |
Thanks for the kind words frothsof! Really looking forward to the mag!
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