Interview with Martelo Schwarz: How it all began...
Wednesday, November 04, 2026
Author:
Mike Taylor
Interview with Martelo Schwarz
How it all began...
by Mike Taylor
Around four years ago I finished publication of my very first D&D adventure on DMsGuild. Bugbear Awakening was set in the Forgotten Realms, I had a lot of fun writing and playtesting it and it was the time to think about what would come next. I like the Forgotten Realms, but it also felt sometimes too shallow and generic as a setting. The mystery was somehow missing for me. There also was the whole OGL controversy going on at that time which encouraged me even more to develop my own setting.
I wanted to do something really different and started with some base premises. I lived in Indonesia for a long time (and I like mountains) so I decided to give it a vibe inspired by south-east Asia and the Himalayas. I wanted the setting to feel dangerous, different and spiritual. I started drawing maps, sketching the landscape, cultures, creatures and metaphysics. I called the setting Uoru and the first realm explored Kaung Pi. With some friends I started a first full playtesting campaign, rewrote and refined many parts of the setting and then, maybe two years ago, I felt it was good and stable enough to share it with others. I asked myself: how do you go about rolling out a new 5e setting?
Splatbook or gamebook?
The most obvious way would of course have been to write a splatbook with 200+ pages, describing locations, lore, subclasses, species, monsters etc. I could not warm up to that idea though. Why would someone commit to a new setting that they never played in, experienced it, before? That's a lot of trust to ask for up front. For Kaung Pi especially, one aspect in particular sounded daunting. Kaung Pi is supposed to be mysterious and spiritual, that's something very hard to explain.
Then I remembered one of my own "formative events" when it comes to fantasy games: The Lone Wolf gamebooks by Joe Dever and Gary Chalk. I loved those when I was a teen. The setting, Magnamund, came really to life within their pages and they made me really want to play a TTRPG in that setting. I took that as an example for myself and started writing a gamebook.
The great thing about a gamebook, when compared to a setting book is that you can "show" how the setting works, without explaining all of it. A reader would feel the mystery and spiritual danger by playing through choices and consequences, something a lore paragraph can't convey. I wanted to give it a very distinct visual vibe, started sketching ideas and contacted an artist that I know for a while and whose style I really like: the very talented Gábor Orosz. While writing the book, I started to work with him on the illustrations.
Doing the work
D&D 5e was from the start the ruleset that I wanted to build upon. I like 5e (the 2014 version), not only because I think it has a nice balance of simplicity and realism, but it's also a game that many people know which makes it easier to find people to play with.
During the first playtesting campaign, I used an NPC that the players really liked. Ahu is a catfolk ranger (in Uoru terms she is a Harimauja Warden of the Path) and she seemed like a perfect protagonist for the book. I did not want a generic D&D-create-your-own-character gamebook, but something personal and atmospheric. A plot started to materialize in my head. As I wanted it to be 5e-based, I also started to create a streamlined, simple rules version that I could describe in the beginning of the book and added a Lone Wolf-inspired inventory system. The books started to grow and I liked what I was doing.
The kickstarter
Next I started preparing a kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marteloschwarz/ahus-first-patrol-a-5e-solo-adventure-gamebook) to get some budget for art and that was... way more work than I thought. The whole process, marketing, writing the book, figuring out how print-on-demand books are done on DriveThruRPG, working on the illustration was demanding.
The kickstarter year was intense and I sometimes wonder how I pulled that off considering that I have a full-time day job and a family as well. In any case, the kickstarter was a full success and I was able to pay Gábor for his great work on the illustrations without going into the red.
Wrapping up
The final phase was only finished very recently, it's now available on DriveThruRPG. Most important though was that I received feedback. Some people really liked the book! And, at least once, the magic that I hoped for happened: a friend of mine that I play D&D with asked me if there was more to know about Kaung Pi as he wanted to start a campaign there. I pulled all the notes that I already had collected over the years and gave him a first draft of the Kaung Pi: Adventurer's Guide and Kaung Pi: Beasts and Blessings (they are far from ready for being published, but in case you are interested in getting involved in playtesting, please feel free to reach out to me).
So, is this a success story? I'd like to think it is, albeit a small one. It's not like the income from the book sales is so far more than what I spend on marketing and distributing free copies. I am happy though with what I achieved as this world that I dreamed up over the course of four years, now seems to somehow exist and other people out there can experience it and, at least some, seem to like it. What more could I wish for?
P.S. I just published a free (PWYW) version of the book called "Ahu's First Patrol: prologue". If you are curious about Kaung Pi, check it out at DriveThruRPG.
About the Guest
Hey, I'm Martelo. I'm a long-time fan of TTRPGs and gamebooks heavily influenced by the LotR, the Lone Wolf series and 80's RPGs like Palladium and Runequest. I published my first D&D adventure four years ago, and I've been dreaming up my very own 5e setting called Uoru ever since. One of Uoru's realms, Kaung Pi, was introduced recently by the solo adventure gamebook Ahu's First Patrol. Be warned, I will write more about Uoru and Kaung Pi.
Website: marteloschwarz.com/uoru
Mailing list: Wardens of the Path
Mastodon: @marteloschwarz@rollenspiel.social
Threads: @martelo_black
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