Hey there, folks. Been a long time, hasn’t it?
This is a long-overdue update, for sure. I’ve never been much for social media and straight up can’t be bothered with “marketing” so I end up with long radio silences like this. Not exactly good for Ascension Games, but at the end of the day I do this for fun. I don’t particularly care about like…market growth and brand recognition. I just want to make cool shit and hope someone else has fun with it.
But when I do make shit, I want it to be my shit, and it should stay that way, yeah?
The Open Game License Issue
I’m sure you've all heard about the new Open Game License debacle by now. I’ve been following it pretty closely, as you might guess; ALL of the Pathfinder stuff I’ve made is under the OGL. To be clear, I’m not some big publisher…I’m barely a blip on the RPG radar. Like I said before, I do this because I enjoy it; it’s a hobby. This will not affect my livelihood and isn’t affecting the future plans I have in store for Ascension Games (more on that below!). But I still think I should chime in a moment…
I will, uh, refrain from any choice language and try to keep up some veneer of professionalism here. So to put it politely, the new Open Game License is completely unacceptable and is a threat to the RPG space as a whole. It is short-sighted and profit-driven with no regards to the fallout it will have to content creators, from the big dogs at Paizo to the small hobbyists like me and you. I refuse to support Wizards of the Coast in their endeavor, and hopefully the backlash is enough for them to realize they’re going down the wrong path, but having seen how Magic: The Gathering has been going, I somehow doubt it. Don’t expect any temporary “we’ve heard you and we’re changing” messaging to be sincere.
Anywho…with that out of the way, I’m sure the like, dozen or so of you that read this blog might care about what’s going on next for Ascension Games.
A New Storefront
First off, I decided to upload all of our stuff to itch.io! If for some reason you, like, really wanted to hold out for that particular storefront, there ya go.
The Future for Ascension Games
Second, you might be wondering what I’m currently up to for new products.
To start, I don’t think I’ll be doing anything for Pathfinder 2nd Edition. I had started to, mind you. I have some half-finished class ports from Paths of Magic like the saboteur, elementer, and nightblade. But…to be honest I haven’t really been feeling PF2e as a system. I certainly can appreciate some things about it, but writing for it…it feels too restrictive. So I’ll be putting Paths of Magic 2e on the back-burner; if I find someone that I can trust to port it (and have enough to pay them to do it…) then I’ll revisit the idea, but for now it’s best to consider it on hiatus at best, and cancelled at worst.
So instead, I’ve been working on my OWN game. While I don’t want to go into too much detail because it’s still in the early stages, I can tell you that it’s a dark urban fantasy setting inspired by series such as Persona, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Chainsaw Man.
The goal is to have something to show (and hopefully a demo for you all to get your hands on) before 2023 is out. It’s a long way to go, but I’m working on it! Believe me, making a game from scratch is a much bigger task than making an add-on for an existing game. This has been a long-time coming and, coincidentally, is a good way for me to avoid dealing with any OGL foolishness in the future.
I know that’s not a lot to go on, but please do keep in mind despite the “brand”, Ascension Games is just me. I hire out artists, sure, but I do ALL of the writing. I wish I had the throughput of someone like Paizo or, like, Brandon Sanderson (the mad-lad) but this is done in my free-time, not as a career. This stuff takes a long time in that situation. I think the game I’m working on is cool as fuck and I think you all will feel the same way…once you can see it, anyway!
I hope you all can be patient with me as I get this new title rolling. It may be another chunk of radio silence until I have more to show (maybe by late spring/early summer). So until then!
Chris Moore
Ascension Games, LLC