allgeektout

Berin Kinsman (you might know him better as Uncle Bear) has been turning out a lot of cheap PDF RPG supplements on his blog recently. Here’s some of what he has out right now:

• There’s Imagination’s Toybox, which is his system that uses a very simple ranking of 1 through 10 to explain everyone’s abilities; he’s currently offering the playtest of the system for $1, though he’ll eventually be releasing the final version free. I highly advise picking up the playtest though, because he’s also releasing mini-settings to go along with it on the playtest discussion group.
• He also has out Damn Fine Pi, which is a systemless coffee shop for only $2. It has a set of interesting NPCs, as well as a way to import it into any genre, even fantasy. Definitely worth the low price.
• Finally, there’s Five Dragons, which is $5 for five different NPC dragons. This is the only one I haven’t purchased of the three, but it promises three-dimensional characters that have good points to contrast their flaws.

I asked Uncle Bear if I could ask him a few questions about some of his upcoming projects for Small Press Week, and thankfully he said yes. Here’s the interview, below:

You’ve said that originally you didn’t want to publish under the Uncle Bear name because it had all kinds of baggage you didn’t want to deal with. Now that you have anyway, how do you feel about it?

The original issue had to do with another business in Arizona that had “Uncle Bear” as part of its business name. Now that I’m in New Mexico, it’s a non-issue.

I didn’t want to go with Uncle Bear as a publishing company name because people don’t see it as a company name or  website name, they see it as me. Yes, there’s a lot of sweat equity that I’ve invested into the name over the years, and it’s an identifiable “brand”, but it screams “one guy self-publishing”. While that may be true now, I’m hoping it won’t be in the future. I’m afraid it’s limiting. I’m also seen as a blogger, and no offense to any of the RPG bloggers out their who turn out fantastic stuff, bloggers are generally thought of as amateur writers. Bloggers give their stuff away for free. I’m going to have to battle the perception that I’m now charging for stuff I used to give away for free.

[Since I did the interview, Uncle Bear's already rebranded his site as "Berin Kinsman's Uncle Bear Blog". Here's what he had to say about it:

Did I talk to you about my desire to rebrand? That's the compromise: Berin Kinsman's UncleBear Blog. UncleBear will remain the company name. UncleBear is company/blog/website. Berin Kinman is the person who runs those things. The site will soon include things I'm involved with other than gaming. Thus rebranding "Berin Kinsman" over "Uncle Bear".

Thanks for answering the last minute question on Twitter!]

With Imagination’s Toybox, you’ve decided to go an interesting direction – charging for the playtest and giving away the final product for free. Why did you decide to go in this direction?

People kept telling me that my work was worth something, and that I should get paid. Basically, that was a challenge to those people. It was also a feedback filter. I have a hard drive full of free playtest PDFs that I’ve never looked at. They sit on my hard drive. I know Paizo boasts that the Pathfinder beta got over 50,000 downloads, but I have to wonder what percentage of people did more than glance at it and provide any useful feedback. When I buy a PDF, I’m more inclined to read it. I’m invested. That was my goal, that if people spent  buck on something they’d be more inclined to read it and tell me whether they got their dollar’s worth or whether they felt ripped off. It worked, I think, because I’ve received good feedback so far.

If you’re giving Toybox away for free, how are you planning on making money off of the system?

Settings. I’m not interested in writing rules, I’m interested in designing setting and mini-games. One shots and short campaigns. Toybox is being designed as my house system, easy to tweak and adapt, easy for me to write settings for. I can focus on the stuff I like to write, the fluff, and ignore the crunch. I could do this with any number of open systems or license an existing system, but what I’ve seen is that when you link yourself to third party rules your products tend to go along with the ebb and flow of those rules. This week System X is hot, so if you’re publishing for System X you’re on the upswing. Next week it’s not so hot, so your sales are down. If you’re lucky, the core publisher of System X dies and you end up being the primary source for System X material. I’d rather control my own destiny there, and live or die by my own accomplishments. There’s nothing wrong with tying in to open systems, but my creative choice is to have a house system of my own.

So far, the products you’ve released (besides Imagination’s Toybox, of course) have all been systemless. Once you get Toybox out, will that change, or do you plan to continue to release them all systemless?

Future products will be for Toybox, but because Toybox rates things on a scale of 1 to 10 it should be simple to convert to other systems. So they’ll be kind-of systemless.

You recently announced on Twitter that you were going to do a series of systemless adventures called (I think) “Bad Movie Adventures”. What kind of format are these going to take?

BADFILM Adventures. These are one incarnation of those one-shot adventures and mini-campaigns I was talking about. They’ll all be inspired by public domain movies, most of which can be found loitering around the internet for free. The gamemaster can watch for inspiration, but the plots will vary from the movies a bit in case a player has seen the film.

Besides “Bluebird”, what other movies are you planning to adapt?

Bluebeard was the first one. I chose it at random. I hadn’t even seen it before I set out to adapt it, because it was really a test of Toybox’s strengths and weaknesses. Which was good, because I want to get this down to an art form before I start adapting films I really love. Three that I really want to do are The Killer Shrews, Attack of the Giant Leeches, and Carnival of Souls. The last one in particular will be a challenge to turn into a setting and adventure, but I have an angle in mind.

Any other secret plans or upcoming projects you have for Uncle Bear publishing that you want to share?

Toybox is going to have a twist ending. That’s all I want to say.

One last question – Rolpunk. Where on earth did that come from, and what do you think of the way people reacted to it?

I’m tired of the faction wars. You like that game? Good for you, go play it and extol its virtues in an attempt to win over new players, but don’t tear down some other game to do it. You hate that style of play? Fine, don’t play that way, but don’t spend incessant hours bagging on people who enjoy playing that way. People make me nuts. It was me screaming SHUT UP ALREADY to the internet haters. But it was also written as parody, because I took on some of the aspects of the factions I was addressing to do it. The people that got the joke enjoyed it an moved on. A few people have written pieces that take it seriously and are critical of it, which just makes me laugh. It was meant to make a point, but it wasn’t intended to be taken seriously as a movement.

Uncle Bear, if you see this post, thanks for the great interview!