Announcing The Secret Of Weepstone!

As a lifelong Tabletop RPG fan...

...this is the game I’ve dreamt about making for quite some time. I wanted to bring to life the bold black and white, cross-hatched art style of the late 70s and early 80s. Although D&D is, of course, cerebral by design, when we fought goblins, I was picturing David Trampier’s goblin. And, when we fought an owlbear, I was thinking of Roslof’s owlbear from the Keep on the Borderlands interior cover.

I typically took on the role of Dungeon Master when playing, and I found myself enjoying so much art that the players never saw. Even the classic blue and white map art was rarely or never seen by those brave adventurers sitting on the other side of my Dungeon Master’s screen. One of my goals with The Secret of Weepstone is to give players all that same joy, providing a glimpse of all the great art (and lore) that the DM is privy to.

To make this happen, I was going to need help from great black and white fantasy artists who are still creating art in this epic style. Illustrators like Tommaso Galmacci and Ian MacLean really helped me get this project off the ground, paving the way for incredible contributions from Ricardo de Gaspar, Jonathan Everett, Hugo Araújo, Carlos Castilho and Bill Harbison. There are so many more amazing artists that I really hope to work with as we continue developing the game. Please reach out if you specialize in this style and are interested.

With the art well underway, enter Hunter Bond, a lifelong Dungeon Master that I asked to “write this like you’re 16 again.” Hunter and I have played many campaigns together, and some of our stories have found their way into the three-module arc that makes up The Secret of Weepstone. Our goal is a pulpy, old-school dungeon crawler that completed the vibes and tone put in place by the art.

It feels soooo good to finally make this adventure public, and I look forward to sharing the process as we boldly march towards a complete experience. Huge thanks to DreadXP for taking a chance on me and believing in this project. Please make sure to wishlist the game! And remember, you can follow the Talesworth and DreadXP journey on the usual social media suspects for updates, sneak peeks of art and game progress.

-Sean Gailey

Talesworth Game Studio

When Sean reached out...

...and said that the idea he’d been chasing for a few years was ready to actually take form as a game, it was absolutely a dream come true. Anyone who knows me well knows I’m obsessed with Tabletop RPGs, especially what I’d consider the golden age of old-school roleplaying that exists from the advent of the hobby’s creation as an offshoot of tabletop wargames through about at or just before the release of AD&D second edition. It’s not to say that games outside of that range aren’t ones I love and play, but the early wave (including some lesser-known than D&D games like Traveller, Runequest, GURPs and the like) will eternally have a place in my heart as the first steps into what is now obviously a worldwide phenomenon. Just like the last game I worked on was a love letter to platformers of a certain era, I’m really excited to get to work with one of my best friends on a project that tries to do justice to a thing we both deeply love, and attempt to not slavishly recreate but instead pay homage