I did it!

Annd we're in.

Entered as part of the OSR June Jam 2 with a minute to spare, Death Blades of Guanloth is (technically) live! I want to take some time to talk about what Death Blades is, what I hope it will be, and how I'll try to get it there.

Death Blades of Guanloth started with a dream I had - the idea that some monsters could share a link and grow stronger off each others' deaths. I'd tweeted about it here when I had it, and eventually made a blog post with intent to work it into a different project. But it's basically taking the Jet Li movie, the One, and turning it into a kind of magic tontine. 

In May of this year, I decided I wanted to start with that as the basis for a player group and began with "Death Blades Over Guanloth" - a Star Fox inspired game that took the Death Blade idea and applied it to aircraft sharing power. I couldn't quite crack air combat in a way I wanted so I stalled out from there. When OSR June Jam 2 started. With Over Guanloth, I'd given myself two challenges, but the jam prompted me to make some reductions and make something more familiar and usable, so I brought everything down to earth and into Cairn.

From there, it basically because a challenge to make the world of Guanloth. I'd recently read Phoebe Wagner's When We Hold Each Other Up and that really inspired the environmental theme (along with many ongoing climate crises). The Death Blade needed some more violence in it, so I kind of had fun with it from there. I made some goofy weapons, then a lot of the Monster Hunter and Horizon Zero Dawn elements just kind of fell into place. 

DBoG is definitely a bit off from being finished. I'd love to be able to hold a black and white zine in my hands, eventually, but I want to take it one thing at a time. There's a few more immediate elements I want to write and adjust, once that happens I'll switch this over to pay what you want (which I'd like to be the final price point for the pdf). Once that's switched, I'll probably try to figure out a real plan and explore some funding options on how to get it edited and everything.

For now I'll just keep writing! I need to add one more weapon to balance out the character draft at the very least, and then more monsters for the GM to play with.  More on the wishlist is something like magic and more GM tools for managing spaces. I do like Death Blades of Guanloth a lot, and it's definitely not up to its full potential. I'd also like to keep writing these devlogs, I've never kept them regularly before. Let me know if there's anything more you'd like to see me write about or any other questions about DBoG. Thanks for reading!