Hey there!

When we started to create the Arcverse, it became clear pretty quickly that our fledgling universe exists in a crowded field. The WOTC open licence has created an explosion of D&D start ups, just at the moment we thought we were really special.

Bah!

It’s never a bad thing to recognise that as an artist you are in essence, a vain little twerp with an inflated sense of your own importance. Once we can be honest about that one, life is a lot more straightforward.

So how did we attempt to square the circle and make the Arcverse special and different?

We created spellforging, which handed over a huge chunk of the actual creativity and direction of things to you guys.

Magic stopped being something we created for you to use, and became something you created, unique to each character.

It was the smouldering ember of an original idea! Hurrah! we cried, we’ve cracked open D&D and will feast upon its entrails (grotesque image, but you can see where I am going with this one).

This hubris lasted until about December 2019 when someone at Dragonmeet said: “This is so cool, it’s like that system Runequest/GURPS/some other system came up with in 1994! So glad you guys are bringing it back.”

In all likelihood, the last truly original idea in all known culture happened in about 1937 (and probably nobody understood it either). Whilst this is temporarily bruising to the precious ego to admit, it’s important to get past.

We’re really in the story telling business here (with dice), and if nobody can do completely original things, then the trick is to focus on doing good things.

We always wanted to create something for you guys to use, adapt and hack, which is why feedback like the above tweet makes everything we do worthwhile.

Even for vain little twerps such as we.

Take good care friends and we will see you at a convention soon.

Nick

PS: If you want your physical copy of the Spellforgers Companion, you can order your copy here