Greetings, Lost Dreamers!

Let's talk about the origins and processes for creating this project and delve into what makes The Painted Wastelands.

Two and a half years ago, I was browsing Facebook and stumbled across an amazing piece of character art. It was a weird pink-skinned sorcerer smoking a giant pipe, by an artist named Tim Molloy. I decided to email him out of the blue. I took that image and wrote up a sample encounter. I wanted to show him what I could do.

The original idea was, "Hey, I could take art you've already drawn and make up a story for it." Then he told me, "Actually, there's a world and setting that already exists in my head. All of my paintings, comics, drawings, and Instagram captions are connected to each other."

OK, let's do that instead!

Tim and I have an amazing working relationship. We literally talk every day, yet had never met. Tim lives in Australia, and I live in Arizona. However, just ONE WEEK AGO, we met in person for the first time in Tokyo, Japan!

 

Why 5th Edition?

The original Painted Wastelands was written for Old-School Essentials, but I always knew we'd convert our books for other rulesets in the future. The reason I began with OSE is that I feel it is very straightforward and easy to convert to your preferred system, and I love Gavin Norman.

The TTRPG world is splintering into many different rule systems, and through my many discussions with many Dungeon Masters, I've seen that most DMs run a mix of games or homebrewed rules. Generally, I am not trying to focus on game mechanics too much. I am here to sell an all-new world that utilizes familiar rules. This is why we have not made our own bespoke rule system. There are so many that already exist.

The reason I decided to convert The Painted Wastelands to 5th edition now is due to several interactions I had with gamers at Phoenix Fan Fusion, our local comic con. These are enfranchised gamers (although less so than the ones at Gen Con), and the number one question I would get was, "Is this for 5th edition?" And then I'd say, "No! This is for Old-School Essentials, which is Basic and Expert D&D from the '80s and uses THAC0!" Then I would just watch the light fade from their eyes.

Switching to 5th edition has been a controversial decision, and there has been no shortage of people rushing to their keyboards to tell me all about it.

 
 

However, I push back against this view. At the end of the day, they're all just games. There's no such thing as the perfect game system. If there were, it would be the only one, and no other game systems would exist. I think 5.5e D&D's value is the fact that it is a powerful introduction to roleplaying at large. It's a good first step into the wider world of TTRPGs. I imagine most of us began with RPG books published by TSR or Wizards of the Coast.

Thinking About The Painted Wastelands Differently

Besides serving as a powerful Rosetta Stone to trick unsuspecting new gamers into trying weirder RPGs, converting The Painted Wastelands to 5.5e D&D forced Tim and me to think about the world differently. For example: subclasses.

In the original Painted Wastelands, we created a few new OSE classes: the Oneiromancer and the Cat. Eventually, we added the Nightmare Slayer. These are all integral parts of Tim's world. When I converted to 5.5e D&D, I wanted to make a subclass for every class. This required Tim and me to sit down and think about each class and its role in the setting. Some came easily, like the Wizard (Oneiromancer) and Warlock (Pact of the Skinless Ones). Some were more difficult because we simply had not thought of them. What are fighters doing in The Painted Wastelands? Where are the monks?

The Cat did not have enough mechanical distinction to serve as a subclass in 5.5e D&D, so we converted it to a species. OSE allows for both race-as-class and race standing alone.

I've gotten a lot of questions about some of these new designs feeding their way back to OSE. The answer is yes, 100%! Agamemnon Press is not turning away from OSE. Our next project, coming this spring, is The Hundred Year Coast, and it is written for OSE. I plan on finding an interesting way to introduce some of the new character options to the OSE version. These will be classes, races, and equipment that maintain the spirit of the design while also feeling balanced. I'm not trying to set out to make a class called "The Fighter but Better."

The creative process of Agamemnon Press is about learning. We are constantly learning and developing ways to improve our products. One of the earliest flaws I ran into with my very first design was the fact that I had to hand over my copy of The Painted Wastelands to players so they could copy their spells or read the descriptions. After our first book, I decided to try and separate player-facing info from DM-facing info.

Tomorrow we will delve deeply and greedily into the two new books!