gaming

Let’s talk to Michael Weems: the Dungeon Master building the future of roleplaying with AI

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Michael Weems is a lifelong Dungeon Master and entrepreneur, longtime Chief Digital Officer of Heritage Auctions, and creator of ZapGM: an AI-powered tool looking to explode how tabletop worlds are built and experienced. We’re going to dig in with him today and talk about tabletop roleplaying, the potential and the risks of AI tools, and what it takes to build a mind-bending evening in a game.

Welcome back to our ongoing series of interviews with innovative creators in science fiction & fantasy storytelling, art, and gameplay! We call it the Inspiration Creator Series.

Michael, thanks very much for spending some time with us! Dungeon Masters are one of the great unappreciated treasures of the world. If no one ever said so, let me just thank you for the long nights googling folklore, drawing maps, printing off cool handouts, and practicing your weird voices. That’s awesome, and we all appreciate it.

That’s a great intro. Glad to be here.

Q. Let’s get your nerd credentials out of the way so we have everyone’s attention. How far do you go back with D&D or other RPG’s and which ruleset do you prefer?

I’ll explain by way of a trek down memory lane for us, um, more seasoned gamers. I was first introduced to OD&D by my friend’s older brother, I think around 1980-82. That would make me maybe 13 at the time. That friend started running for us soon after, and he got the Basic set with the dice you had to color in yourself with the provided wax pencil. I became a Dungeon Master in high school around ‘83, and a Game Master in college in ‘92 when I got hooked on Gurps and Champions for their one system, infinite worlds approach. Champions turned into Hero Games and I ran that and 3.5/Pathfinder mostly for a few decades. However, some of my favorite experiences have been with the Conan official D20 RPG, Warhammer Wrath and Glory and Eclipse Phase game systems. Those provide nuance that is hard to replicate from an “everything” system, and I highly recommend.

Q. What were your biggest creative inspirations growing up?

This may be cliché since everyone around this time was heavily influenced by them, but my influences came from shows like Star Blazers, Battle of the Planets (Gotchaman), Conan, & Star Wars. Literarily, books like the Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison (I have a very dry sense of humor) and later by Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and The Neutronium Alchemist by Petter F. Hamilton (I love hard sci-fi). It’s almost embarrassing how normal that is.

Q. In the prep for this chat, I saw that you mentioned having created several RPG’s, even selling 50 copies back at a convention in 1990. Let’s pause on that – pitch that game to me now. What made it different?

I’ll get the boring one out of the way first. I made a game adaptation of the movie “TAG: The Assassination Game”, from 1982. In this game, called Slayer, the players really hunted each other to the death for sport and profit, while the cynical public spurned them on through prizes and ad revenue. With that out of the way, here’s the sale pitch:

You’re a high school junior, your girlfriend Julia just broke up with you, and you are drowning your tears with your buddies down behind the bleachers late one Friday night. As the third beer is just starting to hit, your friend starts telling ghost stories about the local hermit that’s been hanging around campus lately. It’s absurd gossip, and it gets more fanciful as he spins the tale, but you’re loving it. Suddenly, you hear your name screamed from the woods. Not called, but screamed. It’s Julia, you’re positive, and you don’t know what to make of this. A cruel prank. Real trouble? Doesn’t matter, you have the disadvantage “must investigate strange occurrences alone”, so you tell your friends to wait there while you see what’s what.

The game is called Tales of Terror.  It is a very simple game meant for the rules to take a back seat to the role playing. You play a character in a horror movie, which could be a victim aspiring to be a hero, a monster or a villain. You build your character with advantages and disadvantages that that were all about flavor. For example, a victim might have an advantage of “scream that can be heard a mile away through solid rock” (Julia), but a disadvantage like “must split from group when in danger” (Julia again) or “car won’t start when in danger” (let’s hope that’s not you, because you feel that urgency to investigate). A villain might have “surprise appearance”, but also “must lecture victims for X rounds”, etc.. The game works great with both seasoned role players, and total novices equally well. Thanks for asking, as now I have a strong desire to break it out again.

This was 1991, and I was inspired by “It Came From the Late, Late, Late Show”, which is similarly themed but very different gameplay.

Q. My personal most memorable RPG moment was back in the 90’s playing Call of Cthulhu with my buddy, his semi-girlfriend (which I thought might have been better off as my girlfriend) and some folks I didn’t know. There was this book that drove you crazy if you read it, and my character tore off a page to carry it around and weaponize it. Anytime somebody gave me crap about something, I just showed them the page. Anyway, as I was descending into a basement researching weird noises, my buddy killed me with some floating whirling blades. She begged him to resurrect me. Yes, he won and I was dead. But she was impressed, and that’s what mattered more at the moment.   

How about you? What’s your most memorable tabletop moment?

Not joking, I just laughed out loud. I didn’t think I would have to compete with the interviewer, but here goes. I love stories, as they are why we play, but I will limit myself to two and I hope you have room for both.  

In the first, I was running D&D in college with people that are mostly still in my group today. One of them got an amulet of missile attraction in loot and thought it was missile deflection. The next fight was against a bunch of bugbears, many with bows. This player was a pin cushion by the end of the fight, and I was ready for him to lay it on me. But when the dust settled, I swear he said out loud to the rest of the group, not even remotely ironically, “just think how many times I would have been hit without this amulet!” I had no choice but to tell him the truth; it was too cruel at that point to continue. In his defense, to this day, he swears that I had previously stated that I never give out cursed items. I may have lied.

The second story is much more recent, same group. I was running Warhammer and the players were led by a rogue trader and solving a massive mystery involving all the gods of Chaos, with a universe shattering artifact. Throughout the story, the party would encounter subplots relating to one god or another, and discover how these disparate encounters were starting to weave into something larger. The one god that they had not had even an inkling of was Tzeentch, the god of plots and manipulation, among other things. Even though we have some real Warhammer fans in our group, they didn’t take notice of this, so they weren’t as suspicious as they should have been.

My master plot involved getting a Tzeentch spy onto their ship, and this spy was a servitor that they encountered named Solon. He still had some of his faculties and so could communicate better with the party, and they found him at an abandoned ancient research site for the Mechanicus Adeptus. I really hadn’t figured out how I was going to get him to weasel his way onto their ship, and so was going to have to just role-play it based on how they reacted to him. It turns out that their reaction should not have surprised me, because “party see likeable NPC, party adopt NPC”, which is what they promptly did. I was floored, but I knew that when the reveal happened many months later, nobody would believe that I had planned for him to be the spy all along. So I called another close friend, explained to him what happened, and let him know that I would one day call upon him to reveal my secret.

6 months passed, dozens of games where the party was harassed, outmaneuvered, and backstabbed to the point that they started questioning everyone and everything… but inexplicably, not Solon. And then on the final night when the time was right, I stopped and made a phone call without preamble. As the phone rang, I put it on speakerphone and the party started asking what I was doing interrupting the game like that. I just raised a finger and waited. The other friend answered the phone and I said, “I’m here with the group, and it’s time for you to tell them your secret”. When he explained that Solon was a Tzeentch spy and that Tzeentch had orchestrated the entire campaign, the groans and guffaws were like precious food for my soul, and we all laughed until we cried.

I should note here that I don’t think I could have orchestrated such a complex plot over such a long time and with such detail without ChatGPT. I was not a big Warhammer fan prior to running, and so ChatGPT would not only council me on the rules, but also the lore as I went.  Together, we brainstormed and created the whole thing with way more detail and accuracy than I could have mustered alone.

Q. What is it about roleplaying games that inspires you? Yes, escapism is nice, but is there something more to it?

I play games for the fellowship and the memories that enrich my life. I lost a friend to a heart attack (sorry for the downer), and what I have left of him are those memories. Maybe they aren’t better memories than playing golf or going clubbing or whatever other people do together, but they feel more intimate to me. Role playing is the kind of shared experience that non-gamers are missing IMO.

Q. Why be the Dungeon Master, though? What made you gravitate to that role rather than just showing up to eat somebody else’s Dorito’s?

I run games for the creative outlet. I try to create universes, plots and NPCs, which lead to interactions that are immersive and fun. I like for the games to be mentally engaging. When I craft a story arc, I never figure out how the players will overcome it. I have realistic events and adversaries with their details and motivations, and the fun for me is seeing how the players solve the problems. Besides apparently lying about cursed items, I have built a level of trust with my players that I run realistic worlds with realistic NPCs, such that they can be creative in their problem solving.

A recent game in Eclipse Phase is a great example. The goal was to save a commune of people who refused digitization from being forcibly uploaded and made into indentured servants for a corporation that held a legal debt claim against them. To the system, it was debt repayment; to them, it was death. The players only had to delay the hired mercenaries long enough for the legal wrangling to work its way through the system.

Since there is no real death in this game when you have a backup of your ego, I thought the players might simply fight the mercenaries. Instead, they uncovered rumors that the commune’s youth were contemplating suicide to avoid being digitized (a throwaway comment I made during role playing off the cuff). The players latched onto that, decided to spread the rumor further, then fake the commune’s suicide pact by collapsing the tunnels they lived in on the moon. In reality, they hid the commune in a secure bunker and let the clock run out while their legal maneuvering took effect.

I adore that sort of outcome.

Q. Tell me about how prepping for games has changed over the years. I imagine the 90’s, the 2000’s, the 2010’s, and now. So we can see the contrast, what was all that like in those different periods?

In the 1990s, prepping for a game meant a pad of notebook paper, a pad of graph paper and a no. 2 pencil. I might occasionally have a printed module, some artwork or other collateral from a Dragon Magazine, or perhaps something I made with Mac Paint on my Plus, but the ideation was all me, and the props were severely limited by my art skills (see the Tales of Terror cover above as proof).

Later, Google helped with the collateral, although I was still limited to my own experience and creativity. I don’t know of many game masters that have a confidant that they can bounce ideas off of, nor artists volunteering their custom art. It’s usually us alone, doing our best. That said, Google Image Search at least gave me a way to visually show what was going on in the game.  

More recently, we got AI for both brainstorming and artwork. As it’s gotten better, it’s become an expert on my games and my worlds and is a springboard to take my games to new heights. Not only has my game prep been cut dramatically, but at the same time the game materials have gone way up in quality.

Now, I use my own tool, ZapGM.

Q. And what will it look like in the 2050’s?

About 20 years ago, I saw Ray Kurzweil speak about the singularity and the future of society. Mind blowing stuff that is coming to fruition in the next 5ish years IMO. And more recently, Elon gave an interview where he said that once we hit ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence), that all bets are off, and I tend to take that approach. So 2050’s, tough to say.

But in the shorter term, I think we’ll get AI and robotics to the point where nobody has to work. And I think that, possibly after some turmoil during the transition, we’ll end up with universal high income, where it feels more like retirement than unemployment. As someone who would like to retire in the not-too-distant future, I like to think of it that way. When people tell me they’re retiring, not once have I thought to offer condolences. Instead, I congratulate them on being able to unshackle themselves from the work week just to survive, and on finally being able to thrive by doing whatever they find valuable.

Q. You’re building something exciting right now. Tell us about that.

As I optimized my processes for prepping my games, I started coding ZapGM just for myself. There are prompting techniques, as well as agent scaffolding that can be applied to get levels of consistency, accuracy and creativity that the chatbots can’t do on their own at this point. As I honed that system, my youngest son asked if I could add some features to help him run for his friends. None of them wanted to GM, and he didn’t feel confident enough in the rules, much less the creative side of making new campaigns… so I added more features. Eventually, my party encouraged me to finish out the feature set and launch it for public use, which I recently did. As a long-time entrepreneur, the experience isn’t that new to me, but the fear of failure and rejection is just as real the last time as the first. The site just left early access, so we’ll soon see.

Q. I see exports to Roll20, Foundry, supporting Pathfinder and D&D simultaneously – it seems you’re interested in integrating with what’s going on rather than replacing. Am I wrong about that?

Because I made this tool to be helpful to me, I never saw it as competition for what’s out there. In some respects, it supports whatever game masters are currently doing. One way it does this is with pre-made maps that can be exported to those other systems. I even wrote what I think are the best online guides for importing maps with vectors into Foundry and Roll20, better than their own documentation. Another is with map editing tools that have much easier to use vector creation/editing, square and hex grid support, plus AI inpainting for tweaking maps. I encourage my visitors to use those tools to improve what they’re already doing elsewhere.

Additionally, ZapGM is a different way of viewing the world building, maintenance and hosting than other systems. It aligns with the way I create and run games, so time will tell if that appeals to a broader audience. You use it in three stages. The first is to brainstorm with Zap about the world and generate rich Lore Cards (Settings, Plots, NPCs, Adversaries, etc.). The second is to broadcast to your players with a shared canvas, where uniquely the players can come back and interact not just with their PCs, but also read the shared lore, create new PCs and Summons and more. And lastly, as the game master hosts the game, the AI can help generate unique narration with text to speech where each NPCs gets their own voice. And one of the coolest features IMO is that there is an AI overseer that watches the narration and automatically suggests and makes approved edits to the Lore Cards. So if the players anger an NPC, the Overseer will suggest noting in the NPCs Lore Card that disposition and that the players get disadvantage on future rolls. And if the game master decides to roll that back or regenerate the narration, the Overseer puts the lore cards back to the way they were before that encounter.

Maybe that sounds just technical, features in a website, but that is some of the most fun I’ve had creatively lately. Figuring out what features to add and then designing them is fun, and I even invented two new features (I have two patents pending). At some points in developing this site, I got so focused that I worked 20 hour days for several weeks straight… and promptly got sick. So I can’t say that I recommend that, but it does illustrate the level of creative energy I was pouring out.

Q. I sometimes see people pushing back on AI like a little guy with a sword wading into the waves swinging left and right and shouting to get off their beach. Yet there’s a lot of passion around this topic. I think AI slop is real but avoidable. Artists should be compensated for their work, but image generation tools are almost certainly going to be a tool in the workflow of future generations just like stock images, filters, 3D nodes, and asset libraries. My take, anyway.

What’s your position on AI in creative arts and particularly, roleplaying games? How do you address some of the valid concerns?

I agree that there are real issues around AI taking jobs, and as I said above, I think society will change in many ways we can’t predict, but we can act humanely and empathetically as we progress toward that new future.

As for game masters and players, I am thrilled with how AI can empower us all. No game master is going to commission artwork for their weekly game with 3 friends, or commission a writer to brainstorm or hone their plots and narration. AI filling this gap is enriching everyone involved IMO. For decades, this has been an unsolved need, and the improvements for me and my players are tangible.

PS. I have a friend that flirts with Grok. Let’s not go there.

Q. You’ve got a great take on Non-Player Characters in games, insisting that they be believable and not “quest dispensers”. Tell me about that.

I almost got a writing degree, and out of that came my passion for storytelling. Good stories are populated by real people, with real motives, that behave in realistic ways. I want my players to be so immersed in role playing their character, that they feel like the world they are inhabiting is real. When that happens, it’s magic. One of my players ended up so drunk in the Conan campaign that they woke up married to the daughter of a local merchant, dowry included (a goat). The wife and the goat stayed with them for the rest of their adventures and were the subject of many shenanigans. I live for that.

Q. All right – let’s wind it up with a banger, then. Tell me your absolute ideal experience you imagine in a roleplaying game. Get crazy.

The year is 2038, my brain is integrated with my AI assistant and my personal humanoid robot is integrated with that. Each of my players, my lifelong friends that have been with me for 50 years or more by now, have the same setup. As we cast a portion of our consciousness into our physical avatars, they step forth both in the real world and into an alternate reality with the aid of AR/VR. Although we are each in our various comfy spaces with our real bodies, me on the shore of Interlaken Switzerland, Brent in his mountain cabin, Matt in a permanent renaissance community, Bill sailing the deep blue and Duane in a Tokyo high-rise, our avatars step into the Conan universe yet again. Something about that world keeps drawing us back.

Your readers might think that I would be only a player now. But something I think many players don’t realize is that game masters do it because they love it, not because they have to. So, I imagine that as we step into the game again, I am both orchestrating the adventure with my AI assistant and also getting to be part of the adventure to boot.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to share my story. I hope your readers will check out www.ZapGM.com and more importantly, find it useful.

*

Thanks again for your generous time today, Michael. It was a blast, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of what you’re up to as things take off for you.

Till next time,

Classic D&D Adventures Revisited: Dungeon Magazine Experimental Podcast

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Here at Grailrunner, we chase imagination as craft. Anything we can bring you that lights the fire of your creativity is fair game, with a special bend towards speculative fiction and fantasy. If you’ve got a willingness to tinker, you should find something here you can use, remix, or otherwise refine for whatever literary, roleplaying, or artistic wonders you’re cooking!

Today’s freebie is a really interesting one for the tabletop crowd, especially anyone who gets that nostalgic, electric feeling when you crack open old-school adventure content and your brain instantly starts building rooms, traps, villains, and bad decisions.

What’s the idea?

We wanted to turn classic modules from old Dungeon Magazine issues into a listen-able conversation

So, we generated a podcast-style episode using Google’s NotebookLM “Audio Overview” feature: one of those “wait…this is actually useful” tools that can transform your source material into an audio discussion format.

And the source material we fed it is a proper slice of RPG history (which you can download for free thanks to the folks at the Internet Archive – links below):

That’s the on-ramp period: Dungeon Magazine still finding its voice, still doing that early TSR-era thing where the tone can swing from earnest peril to delightfully oddball in the space of a page. It’s an incredible “creative compost pile” for modern GMs: hooks, maps, structures, pacing tricks, and that evergreen lesson that adventures are engines.

What is this (and what is it not)?

This is not a replacement for reading the magazines. It’s not “here are the adventures word-for-word.” Think of it as:

  • a guided audio tour of themes, adventure structures, and GM sparks
  • a way to re-encounter old material when you’re driving, cleaning, sketching, or prepping
  • a fast way to ask: What’s in here that I can steal, remix, and make new?

We like AI tools as levers: ways to turn raw source inspiration into momentum, while still being upfront that AI was used.

Why Dungeon #1–#5?

Because they’re early enough to feel like a time capsule, but polished enough to still be usable at the table. The first five issues show the magazine’s core promise: a buffet of adventures with different moods and play styles. Exactly the kind of variety that keeps a campaign from turning into one long corridor.

Also, if you’re the kind of creator who likes grabbing one great detail: an encounter concept, a villain posture, a dungeon rhythm, and letting it domino into a whole scenario, these issues are loaded with that stuff.

Why NotebookLM for this?

NotebookLM’s Audio Overview is basically a “make my sources talk back to me” button. Google describes it as turning documents and other materials into an “engaging discussion.” blog.google

And that’s the magic. The format doesn’t feel like a lecture. It feels like you’ve got two curious nerds in the room pulling interesting threads out of the stack. For RPG prep, that’s gold because prep is often just asking better questions about material you already have.

What’s the Grailrunner angle?

If you’ve read our recent posts, you know the theme: build year by year, make interesting things, share freebies, keep the creative engine running.

This podcast episode is exactly that energy and another little proof-of-concept that says:

What if “reading old RPG material” became listening to it think out loud and THAT sparked your next session?

Smash the Podcast Announcement image below to give it a listen for free:

I’d love to know what hits you:

  • Which issue had the best “I’m stealing that” moment?
  • Did the audio format surface anything you’d normally skim past?
  • What should we feed NotebookLM next: old Dragon editorials? a run of White Dwarf? classic sci-fi pulp?

We’ve got a lot cooking for 2026, and if the last year taught us anything, it’s that the best stuff often starts as a weird little experiment you almost didn’t try.

Till next time,

A lost card game of the wild American west

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A “bunny trail”is defined as a digression or tangent in a conversation, writing, or research that strays from the main point, often hopping from one related but different topic to another, like a rabbit darting through fields; it can be a useful, curiosity-driven exploration or a time-wasting distraction.

I sometimes feel like that describes me a little too well.

Anyway, happy new year! Let’s kick 2026 off with a new bunny trail and some freebies! This one’s for card game enthusiasts, folks interested in gaming history, and I’m adding a twist for game masters of RPG’s that would like to add some authentic wild west gambling into their next campaign.

Cool?

Before the holidays, I read a biography of legendary lawman, Wyatt Earp titled Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend by Casey Tefertiller. Great read, by the way, but not my point today. I catch odd things in between the lines sometimes when I’m supposed to be paying attention to the main storyline, and one thing that snatched my attention early was Earp’s passion for a card game I’d never heard of called Faro. It sounded awesome; I was surprised it wasn’t more popular now. They used to call it “Bucking the tiger” because some card decks had tigers on their backs. And of course that only makes it more awesome.

How do you play?

The main mechanic of the game is as follows:

One dealer, multiple players. Standard 52 card deck with no Jokers. Before them on the table is a spread of cards on which they’ll place their bets representing one each of a suit (so Ace is 1, then 2-10 and the face cards). The particular suit on the table doesn’t matter – just what kind of card it is. This layout is just a spot for players to put their chips as they bet on which cards the dealer will draw next each round.

The dealer draws one card at first to “burn the card”, which means nothing other than there needs to be only 3 cards in the final hand so this makes the numbers work. Nobody bets on that one.

After that, the dealer draws two cards at a time, the first being the “losing card” and the second “the winning card”. If you’ve got chips on a “losing card”, the dealer takes them. If you’ve got chips on a “winning card”, the dealer pays you out that many chips. The dealer doesn’t place any bets.

The plaque labeled “High Card” is a bet you can make that the second card will be numerically higher than the first card. Again, if you’re right, then the dealer pays you out however much you bet. Dealers can entice you to take advantage of that bet by upping the payout ratio (“High card’s paying out two to one next hand!”)

That abacus device was called a “case keeper”. You slide the beads to keep track of what cards have been drawn so players can know better what’s left in the deck to be drawn. It makes the game much more exciting towards the last few hands as you have better information.

The final hand of three cards is handled differently: players put a penny on the card they bet will be drawn first, then their chips on the card they’re betting will be drawn second (with the third and final card assumed).

Sounds fun. Why don’t people play this anymore?

It appears the house odds aren’t sufficiently in their favor to make this as profitable as poker or some other games. I’ve played it fairly many times now as dealer and can vouch for this – my family broke the bank more than once. Any ties where the dealer draws the same type of card twice go to the house, but that and the probabilities of the game just don’t pay enough, it seems.

And the cheating, which we’ll get to shortly.

So cowboys played this?

Oh yeah, big time! Anybody moving cattle to sell them in the bigger towns and with a little extra money in their pocket couldn’t wait to get as drunk as possible and play Faro. The house knew when to give out free drinks to shift the odds more in their favor, and when to send pretty ladies over as well for more distraction – offering rooms upstairs of course.

You mentioned cheating?

Oh, man was there cheating! Have a look at this book titled Faro Exposed: or The Gambler and His Prey by Alfred Trumble. It was published in 1882 and details the wildest machinations and sleights of hand that dealers would employ to make it all but impossible for players to win. And I heartily recommend this book if you’re at all interested in this game because it’s an incredible read.

The introduction of a mechanical means of dealing called a “dealing box” was supposed to give the gambler a sense that he was dealing with a fair game as it doled out cards one at a time through its apparatus. Supposedly, this took the sleight of hand and manipulations of the dealer out of play, but Trumble walks through multiple chapters worth of how that was also nonsense.

Here’s a funny quote from the book:

“But the reader will ask. Are there no honest gamblers? I answer no. Emphatically no. The sun shines not upon one honest gambler in all this broad land.”

Where did you get the stuff to play?

Here’s where today’s freebies come in! I made everything in Photoshop so it can be printed out on regular 8.5 x 11″ paper and assembled on the table. If you have a card deck, printer, scissors, and tape, you’re good to go. I included poker chips and pennies just for completeness but unless you have a Silhouette Cameo or a lot of patience, you’ll probably just use tokens or coins instead. That’s fine.

I wanted it to look cool and authentic though. The cards came from a Wiki Commons reproduction of 1880’s era cards. The coins too.

There are several pdf’s in the download:

  • A: The Faro card layout itself in several pages for accuracy on size – print and place per the instructions.
  • B: The Faro case keeper in 2 pages – just print and assemble per the picture. You’ll use pennies or tokens in place of the abacus beads and just slide them along the dowels in the image.
  • C: Some tokens to use (if you choose) on the Faro case keeper as well as the Tiger logo
  • D: Some poker chips and pennies (if you don’t have any handy yourself)

That looks great, thanks! Anything for roleplaying gamers?

Trumble’s extensive descriptions of cheating methods made me wonder if this wouldn’t be a lot of fun in a roleplaying campaign – something quick to drop in to a wild west scenario in the ruleset or storyline of your choice where players could actually play the card game, gamble authentically, and be cheated. The game master could drop clues that cheating was happening, and dice rolls could decide how obvious that is and which authentic cheating methods were occurring.

Here’s what that wound up looking like:

Roll two D6’s to decide the situation from the table, then use Perception rolls (or whatever your ruleset uses for that) to decide whether it’s noticed or not. If it is noticed, then the table offers details on the clues to drop and also the consequences if the player decides to do something about it (first notice only – after that, guns come out!)

Here’s that table in a printable pdf as well if you think that sounds interesting:

If you’d like a high resolution 24″ x 14″ jpg of the Faro table to have a playmat printed (like I did), just click the image below for that. I used Frogigo (link here).

And that’s what I wanted to bring you today. I hope you’re as intrigued as I was – it really is a fun game, and the images of sly dealers and drunk gamblers, the ensuing gunplay, that all was just fuel for my imagination. We played this like crazy over Thanksgiving and Christmas. My dad especially loved it.

Anyway, till next time,

Merry Christmas from Grailrunner!

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Best day of the year. No doubt at all. I love Christmas in all its crazy-train, circus-riot, flashing chili peppers. I’m sorry if it’s not your jam, and I completely get that for some people. But for me, it’s a warm, crackling fire and pumpkin pie, making the dog wear a goofy sweater, eating at Harvey’s in Kansas City at Union Station, snacking on exotic candy and cookies from World Market, and just enjoying family.

I hope yours has in store for you whatever warms your heart.

2025 was another fun building year for Grailrunner. We published our bibliomancy RPG Salt Mystic: Book of Lots in the Spring and submitted to the Ennie Awards. No dice on the Ennie’s (see what I did there, bibliomancy fans?) but a good experience nonetheless. Following that, we rebooted the Grailrunner store, including the Discovery Series of t-shirts and also started selling our first art prints there. Click the “Shop Now” button to check that out.

Upcoming, we’ve got two Grailrunner novels still in the works: Mazewater (set in the Salt Mystic universe) and a horror novel likely to be titled Line (set in what we hope to launch as a series of blues-saturated highway terror stories we’ll call Highway of Ashes).

We’re also refreshing the art on the Salt Mystic tabletop skirmish game. That’s particularly exciting because feedback has always been that people wish we hadn’t gone with the 3D art of the original. We’re fixing that, so be patient. So far, they look fantastic – there are just a lot of them and only so much time in the day (and budget).

I’m hoping in 2026 we can at least get started on a marvelous idea that’s been bubbling around the Grailrunner creation station for a few months now: a fantasy fishing roleplaying system to be called Dreamwater. If we can get this put together, and if you at all see the attraction of sitting by a beautiful lake with a fishing rod in hopes of catching a magical fish that speaks and possibly changes into a fighting beast, then we’ve got your back with this one. Will be amazing.

Anyway, thanks for hanging around with us this year and stopping by to see what nonsense we get up to. I’m always interested to see where people are that read our posts – drop us a note here or on the Facebook page to stay in touch. Let’s hope we can keep finding novelties of history to tell you about, fascinating creators to interview, great pulp science fiction of the past to highlight, and amazing freebies to send your way. Have a look here to see if you missed anything cool.

Anyway, in celebration of the year and this holiday season, I wanted to point you to some beautiful and nostalgic Christmas illustrations to enjoy.

To honor Christmases of the past, I came across a few vintage Christmas illustrations and links to their sources that sent my mind reeling. I love the windey-turney path by which we got so many of our Christmas traditions, and these really caught my eye:

In 1821, a small illustrated paperback titled The Children’s Friend: A New-Year’s Present, to the Little Ones from Five to Twelve was published. It contained quite possibly the first mention and illustration of Santa’s reindeer and sleigh and predated Twas The Night Before Christmas by 2 years. It may have even inspired Clement Clarke Moore to write that poem, which of course gave us the core of our modern Santa Claus.

Here’s that image (if you’re curious), and a link to the entire book in which it was published.

And of course the famous cartoonist, Thomas Nast fine-tuned the Santa we know and love today in his wonderful illustrations, many of which are compiled in a book titled Christmas Drawings for the Human Race. Here’s a link so you can take a look at the entire book. It’s a real treat to see some of these masterworks and know as you appreciate the craftmanship and warmth that these very pictures are what taught us how the jolly old elf looks and makes his way. In many ways, Nast described all this for us, and he did it to help heal America from its wounds from the Civil War.

Here are a few of those gorgeous illustrations, which are hilarious and charming. You really should take a few minutes to go see the full series of art pieces. They’re important history, but also just magical.

That’s what I wanted to bring you today. I wish for you all the joy that you can wish this Christmas and for a shining, prosperous new year.

Till next time,

Let’s talk to Mateusz Lenart: award-winning game director and modern-day pen & ink master

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At Grailrunner we thrive on conversations that sit at the crossroads of imagination and craftmanship. Mateusz Lenart doesn’t just know the place – he’s set up shop there and is drawing crowds! From his role as Creative Director at Bloober Team (Layers of Fear, Observer, Blair Witch, The Medium, and the Silent Hill 2 remake) to his own powerhouse artwork – especially in traditional pen & ink, Lenart brings an artist’s eye, a comic reader’s energy, and a storyteller’s genius into the ever-shifting worlds of modern games and illustration.

Welcome to Grailrunner, Mateusz! And welcome to our ongoing series titled:

1. When we spoke to game designer, Jake Norwood (The Riddle of Steel), he mentioned a fascinating Polish RPG called Dzikie Pola. Polish fantasy author Krzysztof Piskorski (Tainted Grail) is a long-time target of ours for an interview to cover his incredible fantasy worlds. And if we’re talking Tainted Grail, we’re talking illustrator, Piotr Foksowicz – also Polish. And here you are, scaring the crap out of us with groundbreaking psychological horror in video games! Is there something awesome in the water over there?

Well, I can’t reveal too much just yet, but what I can say is that at Bloober Team we’re very much committed to pushing the boundaries of psychological horror. We’ve recently announced another remake in the Silent Hill franchise – this time going back to the very beginning with the first game – and not long ago we released Cronos: The New Dawn, another horror experience from our studio. Our portfolio has always been about exploring the darker corners of the human mind, and we intend to keep building on that tradition with future titles.

2. You mentioned in a previous interview that American comics from the 90’s were a big inspiration for you to get into art. Can you elaborate on which comics or graphic novels stood out for you, and especially tell us why that was?

A lot of what inspired me came from whatever I could find in the newsstands in Poland — Kioski Ruchu and the like. As most of the kids I devoured the Spider-man and Batman series in particular, even though it wasn’t always easy — my parents weren’t thrilled about me reading them! Those American comics were flashy and visceral, with dynamic art, dramatic panels, and strong emotions. Todd McFarlane’s Spider-man work was unforgettable — the exaggerated lines, the energy of the webs, the theatrical villains.


Beyond the American stuff, European comics played a big role in shaping me, too. I was deeply influenced by Thorgal by Grzegorz Rosiński, and also by the Yans series from the same author — their storytelling, the textures, the atmosphere — all of that showed me other ways comics could work. And then there were lighter, fun reads like Asterix, which taught me humour, caricature, and the power of visual pacing.

3. If I’d peeked over your shoulder as a kid, what would I have seen on the page—spaceships, monsters, superheroes, or something stranger? Why?

Honestly, a bit of everything. I was a pretty meticulous and disciplined kid — I somehow knew early on that learning anatomy would help me in the future, so you’d probably see a lot of sketches of hands, muscles, poses, often copied from anatomy books. At the same time, for fun I was constantly drawing fantasy characters — monsters, elves, knights — usually with little RPG-style stats written next to them for strength, dexterity, and so on.

You’d also find plenty of comic book pages. I loved inventing huge worlds and epic storylines, though most of them lasted maybe two or three pages before I’d abandon the project and jump to the next idea.

And, of course, there was always a darker tone in what I created. I don’t really know why — maybe because the darker stuff always felt more alive to me: more dynamic, more energetic, more full of contrast. That fascination with atmosphere and intensity stuck with me and never really left

4. Polish art, architecture, and history thread through your work. Can you share a specific real-world reference or point of inspiration, maybe even folklore, from your country that shows up in your illustration or concept art?

To be honest, there weren’t that many Polish references in my earlier work. Occasionally they appeared — for example, in The Medium I illustrated the towers of St. Mary’s Basilica in Kraków — but Polish architecture or folklore was never my main source of inspiration. At that time I was probably more fascinated by the topography of Middle-earth than by Poland itself.

That has changed a bit in recent years. I’ve become much more interested in Slavic mythology, and it’s starting to influence the way I build my own stories. One small experiment was a short comic I created called MURKALURK, which tells the story of an unlucky bard who crosses paths with Slavic demons. Right now, I’m also working on a bigger project — a fantasy world that draws heavily from Slavic myth and culture. So you’ll definitely see more of that in my future work.

5. Awesome. Simply awesome. Why traditional pen & ink? I’ve got to say, when you mentioned 19th century master, Franklin Booth in a previous interview, I got incredibly excited. The guy was on a different level of genius! You also cited Gustave Dore, Bernie Wrightson, and Joseph Clement Coll. What is it about that kind of art that attracts you?

There’s something incredibly powerful about telling a story only with line and value — no color, just light and shadow, rhythm and texture. For me, pen and ink has always felt like the purest way of drawing, where every stroke is deliberate, every line carries weight.

I’ve also always been better in black and white than in color. When I discovered artists like Franklin Booth or Joseph Clement Coll, it opened my eyes to how far you could go with nothing but ink — whole worlds built out of contrast, atmosphere, and detail. There’s a timelessness to that style that I find endlessly inspiring.

At the same time, I was very drawn to traditional printmaking techniques such as aquatint and linocut. I remember being deeply impressed by the works of Józef Gielniak, especially his Variations for Grażynka, and by Mieczysław Wejman’s aquatints like The Cyclist. When I was a student, I actually imagined myself working with those techniques professionally. But life took a different turn, and I didn’t continue down that path. In a way, pen and ink became a perfect substitute — it gives me a similar sense of precision, rhythm, and texture, without the technical limitations of printmaking.

6. Re-cycle

Your animated short Re-cycle is a striking, personal work. What first inspired the idea, and what challenges did you face in bringing it to life? Looking back, how did it shape or grow you as an artist?

I’ve always been someone who can’t focus on just one thing at a time — which is both a blessing and a curse. I started out as a concept artist, but quickly became fascinated with 3D, animation, design, lighting, and filmmaking. It was also a period when Polish short animation was experiencing a renaissance, with creators like Tomasz Bagiński, Damian Nenow, and Grzegorz Jonkajtys making work I deeply admired and wanted to create myself.

I honestly don’t remember exactly where the idea for Re-cycle came from, but, like many of my projects, it carries rather somber tones rather than cheerful ones. It was an interesting project — had I finished it in two years, it might have completely changed the path of my career.

In reality, it took seven years to complete because I kept being pulled into other work. By the time I finished, I was very tired of it, and the technology I had used was already outdated. Looking back, it taught me a lot about perseverance, about balancing multiple interests, and about how long-term projects shape your patience and vision. I do want to return to animation, but to do it properly I’ll need a lot of dedicated time to fully immerse myself in the craft again.

7. Our readers will kill me if I don’t ask about The Medium and Silent Hill, for which you served crucial creative and director roles. What can you tell us about those experiences bringing true psychological horror into the world that made you better as a creator? Did anything from your ink drawing practice or comic-book eye make its way into these massive productions?

Working on The Medium and Silent Hill was incredibly satisfying, but also very different experiences. On The Medium I served more as an art director — helping to shape the Other World — and getting to build an environment inspired by Zdzisław Beksiński’s work was a deeply powerful experience. Trying to translate that kind of surreal, decayed atmosphere into something the player could actually move through taught me a great deal about tone, detail and restraint.

Silent Hill was a step up in both scale and responsibility: the stakes were higher and my role covered design, art and direction. Revisiting one of the most iconic names in horror history is never easy, but it was hugely rewarding. The biggest challenge there was balancing respect for the original material with the need to bring something new and playable to a modern audience — and doing that across a large, multidisciplinary team forces you to be both precise and flexible.

My ink-drawing practice and comic-book eye absolutely found their way into those productions. The lessons of black-and-white work — composition, the economy of line, the power of contrast and negative space — translated directly into how we thought about lighting, silhouettes and level composition. Likewise, the way comics use panel rhythm to control pacing informed how we staged encounters and revealed information to the player: timing, framing and the gaps you leave for the audience’s imagination are universal storytelling tools.

Finally, these projects made me a better creator because they pushed me to scale my instincts. Working on a single illustration is a private act; working on a game means sharing to others your visual language, iterating under constraints, and learning when to cut or simplify for the sake of atmosphere. Film, comics and games aren’t as far apart as they seem — they share the same fundamentals: composition, emotion and the building of tension — and those cross-medium influences keep feeding my work.

8. When you need to design something truly frightening, what rituals or shifts of perspective get you into that mental space—and do you step back out of it deliberately, or carry it until the work is done?

It really depends on the situation. Very often, the things that frighten me most are those that aren’t meant to be frightening at all — finding that uncanny element in an otherwise ordinary scene creates the strongest tension. When you work on horror for a long time, though, you almost become numb to it. Stepping away and then returning to the work helps a little, but you can never truly see it with fresh eyes again. That’s why outside feedback is so essential — we rely on it constantly.

As for rituals, I don’t think I have any special ones. Creating horror, for me, is like any other kind of work: it’s a mix of knowledge, experience, and ideas. To paraphrase Stephen King, most of the time I feel more like a craftsman than a visionary — applying what I know to get the job done. Of course, there are moments of revelation, flashes of inspiration, and when they come you have to grab them and use them. But most of the process is simply the hard, patient work of solving problems over the course of a long production.

9. When you start concept art for a new character or environment, what’s your first step—gesture, thumbnail, written note—and how do you know when that early sketch has ‘spark’ worth pursuing?

It’s a difficult question, because the process can vary a lot. Technically, I almost always start with silhouette, shape, and energy on the page. There are countless tutorials that talk about the power of form, proportion, and so on, and those things are important — but for me the idea itself is what really pushes you forward.

Sometimes a written description of a monster or a character is already enough to spark something interesting. Other times, you have to brute-force your way toward a good idea through dozens of iterations, hoping that at some point something will ‘click.’ References also play a huge role in this stage. Collecting and studying them often triggers unexpected solutions — they can turn a generic design into something unique.

Recognizing the moment when a sketch has enough spark to move forward is always tricky. In my role as creative director, I often have to make that call, and it’s easier when you’re not personally involved in the painting itself. In my personal work, I usually just follow what excites me most, even if I can’t fully explain why. Sometimes it’s purely instinct — you sense there’s something worth pursuing, and you trust yourself to chase it. I’m also aware that, in doing so, I may be overlooking ideas that others would consider stronger.

10. Anything else you’d like to tell us about, including how we can see more of your work?

I try to stay as active as I can creatively. As I mentioned earlier, my biggest problem is that I always want to do everything at once. I’m still working at Bloober Team on our next title — it’s a long process, and one I’ll only be able to share more about in the future.

On the personal side, I recently released a comic/illustrated album called Murkalurk, which was received warmly and motivated me to start working on a larger comic project, loosely inspired by Slavic mythology. Right now, I’m deep in the stage of building characters and writing the story, which is why I haven’t shared much new work online lately.

There’s also my ongoing series The Knight’s Tale, created in traditional pen and ink. I hope to find the time to add new chapters to the story of that lost knight. As always, there’s never enough time and far too many ideas.

Hopefully, you’ll be able to see some of these new projects soon on my social channels — mainly on Instagram.

Thank you for the talk.

Thanks for your time and the wonderful art you’ve sent along for us to appreciate! Hopefully we can connect again in the future to see what you’ll have been up to!

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Mateusz Lenart is an impressive bridge strung between ink and pixel, between the quiet scratch of a pen and the thunder of a horror score. His work reminds us that the best creators aren’t defined by tools but by vision: a sketchbook line that can grow into a world, a half-remembered comic that becomes a camera angle, a personal short film that seeds a new way of seeing. At Grailrunner, we often say “Dreams are engines. Be fuel.” In Mateusz’s hands, those engines are ink-black, smoke-stained, and unstoppable. And we can’t wait to see where they carry him next.

Till next time,

Yes, there’s a Grailrunner theme song now

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Since we kicked off Grailrunner around 2016 or so, I’ve intentionally left out references to me personally or the contractors I work with. My thought was to keep this super professional and focus on inspiring ideas and cool tools or giveaways that prod other people’s imaginations. Grailrunner Publishing is just a network of like-minded folks that help me put new things into the world, with the potential for other like-minded folks to (hopefully) catch a spark here and unleash their own.

I’ve noticed, however, that a lot of Youtubers are finding these days that their audiences seem to want to know more about them personally, beyond whatever terrain building tips or historical curiosities they talk about. Then occasionally, we get asked the magic question:

Who is Grailrunner?

So for giggles, I’ve rewritten the ABOUT page to tell the origin story and shed a little light on that, specifically recounting the strange experience I had in a rock gorge in Oman in 1997 that poured jet fuel into what became Grailrunner and our signature property, Salt Mystic.

No fairy tales. No gimmicks. That happened. Go read it to see what I mean. Over a decade later when I read that C.S. Lewis had a similar experience that turned into the Narnia series, it struck a chord with me big time. But anyway, in order to celebrate this slight shift in the Grailrunner approach to you guys, I thought it would be awesome to have something cool and free for you to enjoy.

So I wrote a Grailrunner theme song.

I was going for Springsteen/Bob Dylan-style poetry with a modern rock vibe, and I wanted to include a variation on our slogan: “Dreams are engines. Be fuel.” Not an easy task, I’ll grant you. It wasn’t a pretty process. I’m also bad about mixed metaphors, so if you detect any traces in the lyrics of shifting imagery, just be cool about it.

Here’s a link to hear it.

Here are the lyrics, by the way.

And no, that isn’t me singing. I used Suno, an AI app, to take the lyrics and generate a bunch of variations – all in a rock & roll direction but with some tweaks on other styles to get something nice that didn’t sound like everyone else. I think it turned out fantastic.

Anyway, let me know what you think about all this. And if you liked the song, I’d especially appreciate hearing that as my wife thinks it’s too loud and fast. We kind of all need to tell her how wrong she is about that.

Till next time,

One Month Into Book Launch: How’s That Going?

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It’s been a month since we published SALT MYSTIC: BOOK OF LOTS, a solo roleplaying game based on our multi-media Salt Mystic setting. There are some bright spots, some hopeful notes, and a world of pain. Overall, we’re still incredibly proud of the product and seeing and hearing people appreciate it in the wild is an experience like nothing else!

We thought it would be helpful for anybody thinking of putting your own book out to see what we tried: what worked, and what didn’t…and what still might. Care to come along?

Way back in 2016, I wrote a short article defining some indie publishing principles based on lessons from the launch of my first book: TEARING DOWN THE STATUES. The principles were consolidated into the acronym “MCGRAW”, suggesting the key elements necessary for publishing success (Mainstream recognition, an eye-catching Cover that looks like it belongs with books like it, a popular Genre, as many Reviews on major listing sites as possible, Awards to add validation that the book merits attention, and Word of Mouth.) We kept these in mind this launch and tried to incorporate what we could, although the genre of tabletop roleplaying is so saturated and so dominated by Dungeons & Dragons that we were working uphill and digging holes from the beginning.

Still, hope springs eternal, and this is a product we believe in mightily, knowing from its ideation that nobody else was doing anything like it.

What was the pre-launch like?

February was a hot mess, finalizing the proofs and shaking trees to try and get attention from bloggers and gaming news sites. Short of providing free pizza delivered by cosplayers who do magic tricks, I’m not sure what else we could have done to get mentions from some of these guys – we reached out to 20 and got one “No, Thanks” and absolute crickets otherwise. That’s offering a free physical copy for review, by the way. Local gaming store wasn’t interested, and I didn’t have the heart to cold call others. My ego can only take so much bruising!

I pushed my Photoshop skills to the breaking point generating ad assets to use in social media and ad campaigns, stirring up some images that I think really popped! Here’s my favorite, though we had to switch it out to juice the click rate after things got rolling.

I’m a big fan of Absolute’s 3d cover generator and Envato’s PlaceIt – both to generate mock up’s of the cover in various places. We generated this one below for banners through RPG Geek and some other sites:

We came SOOOO close to hiring an artist we’ve been targeting for years now, and he might yet come on board for a promotional poster, so I won’t jinx anything by saying more. That would be amazing, so wish us luck! Anyway, he was swamped with other things, so the heavy lifting on graphics was still in-house.

How did you handle distribution setup?

The book is available at booksellers globally through Ingram Spark, and also on Amazon thru Kindle Direct Publishing, as well as the pdf on Drivethru RPG. We got the barcode direct from Bowker to retain full distribution rights – there are strings attached to the freebies. Honestly, setup was fairly painless for Kindle Direct, but I thought at one point Ingram was going to leave me with facial tics!

The cover file was a high res jpg I’d built in Adobe Illustrator, and it included some transparent png images (the title and the Grailrunner logo). The art was done with Daz Studio for the figures, some Blender and Photoshop filters for the forearm weapons, and some AI help for the background, everything composited and color graded in Photoshop then dropped into Illustrator for the text and placements. This is what that looks like, front and back:

Weird white outlines were appearing in the digital proof around anything that was a png in the image. Maddening! Nobody at Ingram Customer Service was responding, and internet advice was kind of all over the place. I tried various export presets and never resolved it, at last approving the digital proof even with the outlines in hopes that it was in fact a screen artifact only (as some advice suggested). Thankfully, the issue didn’t show up in the physical version.

As for offering a physical version through Drivethru RPG, I basically gave up. They seem to be saying they use the same print house as Ingram, though a different division or something? I dunno. Anyway, much worse issues with anything that was a png, including the interior art! A true disaster! I’m sure they would say it’s my fault, but I bailed entirely and just offer the digital version through them. My blood pressure thanked me immediately!

How did you advertise?

We ran campaigns on Facebook, through Google, Amazon, and on RPG Geek. The book is also listed this month on Ingram’s home page and in the World Reader, iCurate Connection, and Indiewire newsletters, all via Ingram (~28,000 circulation for the newsletters). Through the Independent Book Publishers Association, the book will be represented at the American Library Association conference in Philadelphia this June. We’ll see how all that works out, but here are some initial experiences:

Meta (Facebook) started at 2.1% click rates with tens of thousands of impressions as well as loads of shares and likes and bookmarks. It all felt great until we saw that precious little of that was converting to sales. Internet research was suggesting a good click rate was 2% for search ads and 0.1% for display ads like banners, but for us it was just a lot of activity with poor conversions. By changing the graphics out to a grinning gunslinger and tweaking the copy a bit, we doubled the click rate to 4.2%. We’ll see if all those bookmarks and shares pay off down the line!

Google Ads was impressive, as their algorithm learns as you go, tweaking things to improve the reach. We wound up with a 5.1% click rate by the campaign’s end, which we view as solid. We even had one day peak at the end at 8.1%! All campaigns led to the same Amazon listing, so we can’t separate sales by campaign but I thought a lot of this experience overall.

RPG Geek was a little disappointing. Multiple banner and display ads dominated the site for a month. The thinking here was that this site entirely specializes in roleplaying games, so you couldn’t find a more on-the-nose target audience! Still, click rates flatlined at 0.1% for two weeks, till the same changes as above doubled that to a paltry 0.18% by campaign end.

Amazon: We only launched the Amazon ads in the last week or so – it’s a little early to report any results. I’d also never added any A+ content to a listing before, so that was new. Of course, I added that gunslinger since he seems to catch eyeballs, along with a very short description of the book.

So, was it a good launch?

Could have done more on pre-launch to get some mentions, honestly. We need to work on a solid email list and social media following though the new content required for that is a bit threatening when everyone has day jobs. Reviews remain super difficult to get, though some favorables have popped up that we didn’t arrange. Overall, sales are ramping up very slowly. Glacially, you might say.

What’s next?

I submitted SALT MYSTIC: BOOK OF LOTS for consideration in the 2025 Ennie Awards, which is the Super Bowl of RPG’s! Any mentions at all would be high octane fuel for me. That’s a long shot, of course, just because of the ridiculous amount of talent in the field these days. Still, you never know…

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I hope some of this was helpful or at least entertaining. Warts and all, this is how things have gone so far and the plan going forward. I’m sure the outside observer can find all manner of beasties and stinking swamps herein, but from the inside, it’s a wild, crazy bucking bronco we’re just happy to hold onto!

Till next time,

Science Fantasy Adventures Fueled By A Bibliomancy Oracle

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Back in October of 2023, we celebrated being at the halfway mark in completing a thrilling new project at Grailrunner. Incredibly, and I can’t believe I’m finally typing this, we’re finished! This puppy is ready to run!

March 1st, 2025, we are launching SALT MYSTIC: BOOK OF LOTS, a roleplaying game & supplement aimed at the solo player providing western-themed science fantasy adventures through a bibliomancy oracle.

Who are we?

If you’re new around here, we’re Grailrunner, an indie publisher of science and speculative fiction fiction and games. Our driving passion and special emphasis is on the creative process – innovations in immersive storytelling. Read about that here.

What is the BOOK OF LOTS?

The spirit behind the whole project was to provide the thrill and danger of exploration and adventure inside the cover of a book and to open a fully realized world accessible through the fortune-telling mechanics of bibliomancy.

Contents of this 265 page book include an introduction to a far-future setting (western-themed, so plasma-gauntlet dueling cowboys delving pocket worlds), a simple, streamlined set of rules enabling a player to use no ruleset at all or even dice outside of the book, and a 40,000+ word set of short passages, consulted via bibliomancy to judge outcomes and events, adding story prompt flavor to judgements. Also included are a map and atlas descriptions of locations in the setting, 13 traditional nested oracle tables to further drive events in the story and a detailed index.

How does it work?

We walk you through it in a prologue with a detailed Quick Start example, but the general idea is to use the setting descriptions, the atlas and map, and the oracles tables to build out the skeleton of a character and story following a framework we call the Five Questions. Then, either use the roleplaying game rules of your choice (like D&D or Free League’s Year Zero system) or use the barebones, streamlined rules of this book to start experiencing your story.

Either once per in-game day or as you see fit, consult the lots by holding a specific question in your mind and turning to a random passage on a random page, locating a 1 -3 line passage (called a “lot”) and its number. A question might be “What will I find on the other side of this hill?” or “What happens when I try to climb the walls of these ruins?”

The rules provide for YES/NO answers as well as more sophisticated outcome judgements, but, more importantly, add a layer of story prompt-style chaos and randomness to what happens.

Where will this be available?

Available on Amazon here. Available globally through Ingram, so hundreds of booksellers around the world (though all in English). On Barnes & Noble here. On Drivethru RPG here.

How about the cover?

Here are the front and back:

What next?

Shoot me a comment here on this article if you’d like to know more or if you’re interested in a review copy.

Since we’re a teensie little indie publisher, it’s super hard to get attention and drum up interest in new products, especially if they’re very different or not related to dungeons. If you’re willing to post something for yourself linking to this announcement, it would be tremendously appreciated!

Every little kind word helps!

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Anyway, that’s the big announcement. I hope you can feel some of the excitement here on our side. This has been an incredible and life-changing amount of work. It’s nice to start telling people about it.

Till next time,

A Celebration! We’ve Hit The Halfway Mark!

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Oh boy, has this been harder and infinitely more rewarding than I’d thought it would be!

A few months ago, we announced an exciting new project we’re working on at Grailrunner, expanding our Salt Mystic setting into tabletop roleplaying through a bibliomancy-style oracles book. The core idea is to provide a simple engine for exploring a fully realized science fantasy world with its rich history, colorful people and cultures, and the quirks and dangers of exploration contained in the covers of a book. The innovative twist on standard roleplaying oracles, which typically take the form of dice tables, is it will be constructed in a bibliomancy format.

We’re calling it:

I’m the guy writing it and it’s been life-changing. Seriously. I’ve had to stretch my imagination till it hurts to build out a realistic but fantastical world interesting enough to merit exploring and complex enough to come to glorious life for a solo player as well as for groups with a game master…all while avoiding contradictions with stories and materials we’ve already published.

What is bibliomancy?

It means foretelling the future by interpreting a random passage from a book.

How does that relate to roleplaying games?

In well-constructed roleplaying games like Shawn Tomkin’s Ironsworn or Starforged, there are layers of dice tables you consult to surprise and throw new encounters and situations at a player. Shawn is a master of this, providing a first impression of a person, then a name, then a more revealed aspect of their character as you get to know them. In Starforged, he provides similar layering for a star system, a planet seen from orbit, then more revealed aspects of settlements as you land your space ship and learn more. This randomness and immersion makes magic happen when you’re trying to avoid a blank page staring back at you (if you’re playing solo) or, worse, a table of players waiting on you to be creative.

More to my point today, he also provides “Action” and “Theme” tables intended to set the scene for a new area you’re exploring or some new situation your player is entering. They’re a bit vague but Shawn has described the marvelous imaginative process we follow in consulting tables like this as “creative interpretation”. What he means is you bring your own thoughts and ideas and filters to bear when you roll for these random descriptive words and make sense of them to drive the story forward.

Apologies if you see the I Ching as reflecting a deep reality but I do not and view the creative interpretation process as similarly at work figuring out what a hexagram has to do with a given situation.

So this new book will be a one-stop shop for a roleplaying adventure then?

Yes. I’m being careful to design for use with any roleplaying system (as people are a bit judgey about this) so it can just be an oracles supplement for other systems. However, there are some intriguing things you can only do with bibliomancy mechanics which make it necessary to provide very streamlined rules a solo player or game master can use without any other system (or even dice) at all!

What sorts of new things in the Salt Mystic setting will we see in this?

Wow, it surprises me every week! In another project (called Ruinwalker), we already had designed these massive naturally armored rhinos called “towerbeasts”, bio-engineered for ancient wars but still lingering about. Here, as towerbeasts pop up in various places it struck me that they didn’t have the kind of personality dragons do, jealously guarding piles of treasure and breathing white-hot flames.

So…

In Salt Mystic, we have all these abandoned gates to pocket dimensions of artificial space, inside which can be all manner of wonders. Suddenly, towerbeasts got taller in my imagination, and curious, fond of idly poking at and lingering about these gates. They might even jealously protect them, creating ugly encounters for adventurers looking to take a peek inside.

And I had them hiss lightning too, just to make it more interesting.

Fantastic! What else?

Oh, it’s something cool every week or so. My background imagination is always running on this. Let’s leave it for now.

OK, what is the creative process for this? What are your influences?

I wanted this to be on an epic scale, with shimmering cities in the distance and a long, rich history that gets glimpsed but maybe not exhaustively explained, giving the feeling of a world that’s existed a very long time and in which terribly and mighty things have happened. I’ve been rotating at random through several classic epics and transforming a randomly selected phrase into something that makes sense in this setting.

These, so far:

  • The Iliad
  • The Odyssey
  • The Ramayana
  • The Mahabharata
  • Greek mythology
  • Metamorphoses
  • Lucian’s True History
  • Calvino’s Invisible Cities
  • Dante’s Inferno
  • La Morte D’Arthur
  • The Aeneid
  • Beowulf
  • Gilgamesh
  • The Kalevela
  • Lugulbanda
  • Louis L’Amour books
  • The Persian Book of Kings
  • Arabian Nights
  • Parzival
  • Ring of the Nibelung
  • The Raghuvamsa
  • The Song of Roland
  • Pigafetta’s diary
  • The Lives of Saints

For example, if a phrase or encounter from a King Arthur story has a betrayal and a virtuous knight, I’ll keep the betrayal and turn the knight into a famous carbine gunslinger. Magical objects become abandoned & mysterious machines.

I’ve also recently started flipping to random pages in ImagineFX magazines and to interesting images on Artstation for inspiration.

What about the game mechanics?

I’ve spent a lot of time researching the best mechanics of various games to translate into a bibliomancy implementation. For exploration, there isn’t a game system better than Free League Publishing’s Forbidden Lands. I’ve taken a spark from them and eliminated dice and the map but tried to keep the general feel of how they treat encounters, story fragments, inventories, and experiences while exploring.

Right now, I’m trying to crack the code on a combat mechanic that doesn’t involve clueless bashing and smashing to grind down hit points. I’m super intrigued by an old, out-of-print game called Riddle of Steel, which contains an innovative and brutal set of rules for realistic combat simulation.

I’ve recently gotten touch with the designer of the game, a fantastic guy named Jake Norwood. We’ll be chatting later this month (I’ll write up the interview for our Inspirational Creator series). Hopefully, I can streamline from the spark of what he has there into something easy but with similar tactics and feel that leverages my format.

Anyway, I just wanted to celebrate a bit and catch everyone up on what’s happening here. I’m targeting 60k words for the text of this, a middling sized novel word count. When I crossed 30k words this week, I felt like cheering. It’s fun, but a real stretch.

I hope this intrigues you, and that you’re okay getting the occasional update as things evolve. Till next time,

New Salt Mystic Lore Card Available For Free Now!

/ grailrunner / Leave a comment

It’s always exciting when we can bring you another lore card: those new bits of the expanding Salt Mystic setting delivered in a unique fusion of flash fiction and original artwork! And they’re free!

You can download any or all of the Lore Cards at the Story Arcade by smashing the button below:

One thing we’re hammering home with the Salt Mystic line, and which will always remain core to it, is this:

In the Salt Mystic universe, cowboy-clad adventurers with ball lightning carbines slung to their arms bravely delve terrifying and thrilling pocket dimensions. The backstory of the Infinite Republic and its collapse, and the unlimited range of possibilities lying in wait out there behind sparkling dimensional gates is the (intentional) engine behind the adventures we’re trying to create.

Read all about the setting here.

So this lore card, called “Newb”, began with the image. I was touring an art museum in Kansas City. And I came across Claude-Joseph Vernet’s “Coastal Harbor with a Pyramid: Evening”, an oil on canvas from 1751.

Here, let me zoom in to the part that struck me:

I just kind of stopped and stared at that part. I mean, what was a pyramid with Roman columns doing on a seashore? And a functional one, at that? It sent my mind reeling, and of course ultimately (as always with me), made me think of sparkling and sizzling gates to artificial pocket dimensions where boundless adventures awaited.

Doesn’t that happen to you?

The artwork for this lore card was based on this, then. I wanted ruins beside a seashore with dudes working their gear along the lines of an exploration party, and I imagined the oriel gate as a shimmering window to another world up on the ruins.

The piece that heads this article is the end result: a paintbash of numerous elements, some of which were drawn from an AI art generator using prompts relating to what I had in mind. Once I composited all the pieces and bits together in Photoshop and color graded everything to match, I tried another trick.

Take a look at this work by Milan concept artist, Edvige Faini:

I am not great with color palettes. In Photoshop, you can match an image to another image’s color palette fairly readily. What I had produced so far in my process was too brown, too plain. It didn’t stand out like I’d hoped, and my adjustments to color and vibrance and hue weren’t giving me the result I wanted.

So I used Edvige’s piece here for the color scheme, matching my art to her color palette. I don’t know what you think, but to me, it’s wonderful. I’m a little overly attached to turquoise, so I’m biased. But still, I like the final product quite a bit.

This was the first lore card where I added the text over the image magazine-style. I’ve been reading a lot of graphic design books so wanted to experiment a bit.

Download the new lore card here.

Till next time, guys: