Managing a TTRPG project, 16 weird Curios for your games, and the Goblin as our Shadow
Some tips for coordinating an RPG creative team, a list of weird artifacts for your OSR games, and some opinions about the unnerving relevance of Goblins in our culture
How to Manage a Project Without Becoming a "Florida Man" Headline
You've developed your idea for a role-playing game, somehow secured the necessary funds, and now it's time to produce it. While creating an RPG manual is exciting, unless you're one of those rare multi-talented individuals who can do everything, you'll need a team of competent and well-coordinated people. Here are some key tips, especially if it's your first time.
Now, coordinating a team requires that incredible thing that, in the working world, is usually called “roles” and that other incredible thing known as hierarchy. I know this might sound obvious to some readers, but trust me, after a decade of collaborations with TTRPG companies, I can assure you it’s not.
If we add to this the fact that, in many cases, the project’s author also handles most of the production, and we mix this with the creative world—where the real business would be working as a therapist for people with obvious God Complex issues—you can understand why knowing what we’re talking about is crucial.
So, first of all, what title best defines an essential role in a project, one that often goes unmentioned in favor of terms like author, creative director, and all those other titles Italians fight over as if their lives depended on it? The Project Manager. I know, it’s not as sexy as more creative-adjacent roles, but it’s as important as it gets.
But what exactly does a Project Manager do? Let's make a list so it sounds more true:
Encourage your team to work together by sharing ideas and solving problems collaboratively. A good practice is always accompanying criticism with an explanation and an alternative proposal.
Recognize individual and team successes—express appreciation for their work publicly and privately.
Understand your team's tasks as much as possible. While you don't need deep expertise in every field, clearly communicating your needs and understanding their requests will make everything run much more smoothly.
Remember that you have the final say on every aspect of the project. However, this authority comes with responsibility. You'll erode trust and lose credibility if you blame others for every mistake. Conversely, don't overly forgive those who fail to meet their obligations.
The first step in building and coordinating a team is identifying the key roles of the people responsible for ensuring the manual is created accurately and comprehensively. This phase is especially critical in RPG development since each game may have unique and specific requirements.
Don't skimp on professional quality to save money if you have a reasonable budget. Beyond talent and expertise, you're also paying for someone's reliability in meeting deadlines, ability to communicate and cooperate effectively, and skill in anticipating problems before they arise. Quality and experience come at a price.
Now, determine what role you will play besides being the author. This is important because a fundamental rule of project management is to avoid handling more than two roles simultaneously. While managing every aspect of your creation may be tempting, constantly switching responsibilities can lead to confusion and miscommunication within the team.
For example, when providing feedback on an artist's work, are you speaking as the author, the art director, or the project coordinator? How much freedom does the artist have to push back? Are they talking to their employer or creative lead with whom they might discuss more passionately? This distinction may seem trivial, but you'll soon realize how crucial it is to maintain clearly defined roles with well-defined responsibilities.
Communication must always be clear and consistent to inform everyone about deadlines and goals.
Alongside traditional emails, you can use messaging apps like Discord or Slack. Consider more robust platforms like Trello, Basecamp, or even Jira if the project is complex. Of course, if you're managing a budget big enough to justify professional onboarding on these tools, there's a good chance you won't need our advice.
Keep all communications and project files centralized, allowing easy cataloging, searching, and archiving. If you start discussing the project on multiple channels, you'll get out of sync, and people will work on tasks without having crucial information, lost and forgotten in some DMs. Use file versioning, especially for documents, and always give files descriptive names so your art director doesn't have to search years later for an art of a Zo’Hamir you saved as "musclyboi.jpg." Yes, it happened and our Art Director hasn’t forgiven us.
Whenever possible, favor asynchronous work. Avoiding real-time communications reduces stress and avoids the dreaded "Can we jump on a quick call?" syndrome. Asynchronous work also allows for better task scheduling and lets team members focus on their work without constant interruptions.
Ensure your team understands that immediate responses aren't required; emergencies only arise from poor time management. After all, you're making games, not performing heart surgery.
That said, occasional video meetings can be helpful for general updates. However, not everyone is comfortable with this form of communication, and anything beyond 30 minutes is usually a waste of time, often just serving as a platform for someone to enjoy the sound of their voice.
Always find a balance when communicating: don't overload your team with too many messages, but don't be too absent. As the author and project coordinator, you need to stay as informed as possible about progress.
It's also critical to designate precise working hours from the start. The typical office schedule (9 AM to 6 PM) is the most efficient, but if your team is international, try to agree on at least a four-hour daily overlap to ensure availability for communication.
Of course, be flexible regarding the needs of your team members and the project itself. Some roles may require extra work if you're just days away from sending files to print.
Of course, this short guide can't cover every challenge you'll face when working with a team on a complex project like an RPG manual. So, don't be too hard on yourself when mistakes, misunderstandings, or conflicts arise.
Sometimes, you'll lose team members along the way. Sometimes, you'll face disappointments. But other times, you'll discover long-term collaborators or hidden potential in people you hadn't noticed before.
Building trust and camaraderie within a team isn't an exact science. But with good organization and a willingness to collaborate efficiently, you can create a high-quality and successful RPG manual.
A Curio Table for your OSR games
Sometimes, you want the characters in your adventures to discover marvelous artifacts of immense power, capable of changing their fate and perhaps of an entire kingdom. Other times, however, you want them to find a magically enhanced mud potion that looks incredibly potent, but it is just, well, mud.
In the first case, we can’t help you, but if you’re looking for that splendid and utterly useless concoction—along with fifteen other magical, cursed, terrifying, or just plain silly items—you’ve come to the right place.
The Curio Random Table is made with Blood Engine Essential in mind, but you can use most of this weird artifacts on your favorite OSR game. Just remember to feed Jimthony before you roll the dice!
You can download it by clicking the yellow button below.
Get Blood Engine Essential on Itch.io and DriveThruRPG.
Small, Green, and Evil (?)
Let’s talk about goblins, one of the most beloved creatures in the world of games, yet rarely given significant screen time in cinema. Some historians say they first appeared in the Middle Ages as monstrous beings common in many European cultures. They were often endowed with magical powers and depicted in various ways, ranging from mischievous household spirits to monstrous beasts.
The original and most traditional depiction of a goblin is that of a small-statured being that, often under cover of night, kidnaps children to replace them with its monstrous offspring. Goblins are weak individuals, so their strength lies in numbers.
With the rise of fantasy culture, goblins slowly evolved, becoming one of the most recognizable creatures in pop culture. While they still adhere to the original archetype, their modern appearance has changed significantly. They are humanoid beings of short stature, generally scrawny and frail, yet they exhibit greater variety in physical form, powers, and abilities.
Typically, goblin societies are portrayed as cruel, barely civilized, and technologically primitive, though many variations exist.
The modern goblin's origins can be traced back to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the cornerstone of all subsequent fantasy. However, the true revolution for these creatures came later, with their introduction into the Warhammer Fantasy Battle universe.
In this world, goblins, including orcs, belong to a race broadly known as “Greenskins” (named for their skin color). The Warhammer goblins are small, frail, and mean-spirited. They compensate for their physical weakness and cowardice with malignant cunning and an almost nonexistent instinct for self-preservation.
This vision of goblins, heavily inspired by cartoons like Tom & Jerry and Wile E. Coyote, helped shape a new image of these creatures, emphasizing their slapstick, almost comedic nature. The goblins of the Warcraft setting further reinforced this trend. The Warcraft goblins are ruthless opportunists, unscrupulous capitalists, and mad scientists, willing to experiment with explosives and forbidden substances without regard for their own safety or that of others.
Another great example is found in Magic: The Gathering. The goblins are known for their reckless behavior, chaotic nature, and love of disorder, and they have become a recurring presence in every world tied to the game. They also exhibit significant cultural diversity, such as the Mercadian goblins, who serve as a ruling class engaged in constant backstabbing and political maneuvering, perfectly embodying the species’ inherent cunning.
But what do goblins truly represent? Why have they become such an iconic and essential part of pop culture?
Like zombies, goblins embody one of humanity’s most primal fears: the fear of the masses. While zombies, beloved by fans of George A. Romero, represent a mindless, animalistic horde driven by pure instinct, goblins elevate this threat. Their combination of cunning, malice, and lack of self-preservation, alongside a society built on betrayal and self-interest rather than genuine alliances, paints them as the dark mirror of power and the tyranny of the rabble.
It is no coincidence that, over time, goblins have evolved into mad scientists and ruthless capitalists. Nor is it a coincidence that they have grown in popularity, concealing, beneath their cartoonish grins and slapstick cruelty, the spirit of an era still struggling to reckon with the dangers of mass movements of any kind.
Goblins are like a swarm of locusts with sinister intelligence. They are mercilessly political in their hunger for power at any cost. They are colonies of rats, weak as individuals but powerful in numbers. They seize what they desire before inevitably betraying one another, driven by the same instincts that once united them.
Pure greed, disguised beneath goofy hats (perhaps blood-red) and garden-gnome attire, goblins serve as a constant reminder that our society is not so different from the Yahoos in Gulliver’s Travels, only we prefer to pretend that this is all just a joke, a dark comedy in service of the bitter laughter of a world racing headlong into the abyss.
Modern goblins are both the offspring and victims of our collective unconscious—small-time bullies, whether on the streets or in the offices of multinational corporations and governments, whose only strength lies in their numbers. They are the cowards who rally behind the latest social media troll, the voices that flood the internet with insults and slurs against those with fewer rights than they, their cruelty amplified by the deafening cacophony of their own ranks. When faced with the consequences of their actions, they either flee in cowardice or claim victimhood, crying about injustice while casting blame on everyone but themselves.
They are the ones who justify their actions with “everyone does it,” the ones who hide behind “that’s just how the system works,” “I was just following orders,” or “nothing personal.” As long as they have a group to back them up, they never stop realizing that the group only cares about its survival—where everyone, including the so-called leaders, is expendable.
“One laugh will bury you,” someone once said. But in this gray, postmodern world, where utility has long since eclipsed pleasure, goblins rise from the depths of our collective unconscious to remind us that we are living inside a joke that stopped being funny long ago. And perhaps—just perhaps—what we are witnessing is not a laugh at all, but a sinister grin that we desperately hope is more innocent than it truly is.
Speaking of Goblins, we’ll publish our second newsletter about our first paid-only game next week. The first part is here, where we talk about its tumultuous pre-production phase. It has some hilariously bad experiences inside, so we suggest you give it at least a cursory look and laugh at us.
The next free product will be available to our subscribers in two weeks, so here’s a quick reminder: Cookie Crime Time will no longer be available anywhere when the other is out. So, if you’re interested in trying it, I recommend subscribing to our Substack within the next 15 days. It’s free, after all!