Hello all, and welcome to the new look at joshjarman.net. Longtime visitors will immediately notice that there’s some new art gracing the masthead here at the site, and those in the loop might even recognize the artist as none other than the very talented Brian Patterson, of the d20monkey website and comic. If you follow me on twitter (@JoJa_rpg) you already know that I am a huge fan of Brian’s work, and of the web comic he produces about gamer life. So, when he announced a little while ago that he was going to make a limited number of art commissions available through his web store, I literally sat refreshing the page until the opportunity came up to snag one.

And I’m so glad I did. Not only was Brian awesome to work with, but he took my idea and really made something great out of it. He also said he had no problem with me using it as the header image here on the site. While that’s already enough cement him as a pretty cool guy, Brian went one step further and announced after he sold the last commission that all the money raised would be donated to a local Toys for Tots drive (as this was just before Christmas.) That’s some good Karma right there, and I was excited to have been able to take part in his donation of kindness AND score some sweet new art for the site. If you haven’t already, you really should check out Brian’s work at d20monkey, which now has a more than a year of three-a-week comics archived for you to browse. I promise it’ll keep you laughing for hours.

If I can ever afford it, I would love to be able to someday commission Brian to illustrate the final version of the Dragon Hack conversion guide. How awesome would that be?

Speaking of Dragon Hack, I thought this soft reboot of the site would be a good time to address what I’ve been up to for the last few months and talk about what’s in store for 2012 and Dragon Hack. A combination of work and personal issues really stymied my ability to devote myself to finishing up the final revision of the Dragon Hack rules last year, and now with the 3rd boxed set of the Dragon Age RPG just around the corner, I’ll be taking time over the next month or so to decide whether I should incorporate levels 11-20 into the final version. I had originally hoped to keep the system contained to the first two boxed sets and let the other DARPG hackers out there take their shot at taking it further if they wished. But now, with the Midgard project in the final stages, and only a few things on the burner for Kobold Quarterly, I think this winter will be the perfect time to dive back into Dragon Hack full steam and see what we can’t come up with.

The next stage is to convert several levels of Pathfinder spells to the AGE system, which will include deciding whether to add to the AGE set of spell schools, or work to fit the Pathfinder spells into existing schools. There’s a whole slew of new specializations to be written to bring some of the modularity of the Pathfinder game to AGE. Then of course I’ll want to get busy playtesting the box 3 rules, which Green Ronin has promised to release in draft form sometime this month. There’s a lot to look forward to!

AGE fans also will want to keep an eye on Kobold Quarterly this year, as Wolfgang and Co. are continuing their commitment to be the No.1 source of third-party AGE material. I already have one project lined up for KQ now, the Midgard appendix will go to the editor this year, and there’s even talk of a second Midgard AGE bestiary to follow on the heels of the one we put out last summer. So lots of great stuff coming down the pipeline, and I hope to make posting here a more regular occurrence as we move through 2012. I hope you’ll stick around for the ride.

P.S. As anyone not living under a rock knows, Wizards of the Coast announced earlier this week that they were working on the newest version of the venerable Dungeons and Dragons game. By an ironic twist of fate, I was visiting home this last week, and managed to get in a game of AD&D Second Edition with members of my old gaming group. The experience gave me a lot of fodder for thoughts about yet another edition of DnD, but I think I’ll save those for a future post, after some of the furor over this week’s announcement has died down. Plus, with the Set 3 DARPG playtest coming, we’ll have bigger fish to fry here at joja.net. So take care, and I’ll be back soon with more AGE-y goodness.