Surveys away!
about 4 years ago
– Sun, Apr 19, 2020 at 12:26:38 PM
A few of the smoke test surveys have come back, and they're enough to give confidence that everything works well enough. So the rest of you are about to get yours. Remember, if you have to choose either Pathfinder or D&D for your reward, this is where you do it. I hope to hear from you by May 9.
In the meantime, Path to the Paladin Queen's Forest gets closer to layout. I just need to tidy up the 2E material, then write up the 1E conversion. The conversion may take a bit of doing, because the large random encounters section has to sync up with the old Bestiary. I'm not sure how much work that will require, but I'm sure it will be done during the coming week. It's not like I have places to go and other things to do, anyway, right?
In fact, if I wasn't losing track of the passage of calendar time so often these days, I'd be more confident that by the time your rewards ship, I'll be digging into module #10. I already have the premise in mind, and it has to do with animated objects. Not long ago, I saw a mention of a Japanese folk story — I think it dates back to the early Tokugawa period, when the economy was picking up after decades of civil war — in which newly-prosperous villagers upgraded their personal possessions and their discarded items came to life. This is a very Japanese notion, and those of you who know the Legend of the Five Rings RPG see this reflected in how items become magic when the spirit within them becomes awakened. In D&D and Pathfinder alike, the nearest equivalent is animated objects. I haven't decided whether it's going to be whimsical, or horrific, or some of both... or some other mood altogether. But I'm thinking that's where I want to go with the next module: You take your lumpy old couch out to the sidewalk, and the next morning it knocks on your front door.
Smoke!
about 4 years ago
– Sat, Apr 18, 2020 at 07:52:04 PM
The Backerkit survey is just about ready. According to Kickstarter, everyone's pledge has been processed successfully, so I don't see a point in waiting any longer. Shortly, some of you will receive your surveys as part of the smoke test. Once that's done, the survey will go out to everyone else. I set May 9 as the due date.
The Paladin Queen's Forest is still in layout and we're still waiting on the cover art, but I'm hopeful that we'll keep to schedule. Our printer has not made any announcements about cutting back or shutting down operations, so it looks like we won't have to wait on them.
I am currently working my way through Path to the Paladin Queen's Forest. I'm almost done reworking the random encounters section, and I can tell you right now that it's going to be noticeably different from the same section in The Paladin Queen's Forest because of differences between the Monster Manual and the Bestiary. Some of those differences are along the lines of, "What do you mean, there's no giant elk in the Bestiary?" Others fall under the heading, "What do you mean, basilisks are Challenge 5 instead of CR2?" But the bottom line is that those of you who plump for both the D&D and Pathfinder modules are going to get your money's worth, they will be that different.
I am also quite relieved that the Gamemastery Guide has so many pre-fab NPC options. This will make my job easier going forward, as it should mean fewer made-from-scratch NPC stat blocks. However, it does mean more sentences like this gem: "Treat each poacher as a poacher." No, dear reader, I'm not trying to be post-modern. Nor did I write it under the influence of cold medicine. But you do have to understand the context.
Sprint to the finish
about 4 years ago
– Thu, Apr 09, 2020 at 01:52:04 PM
88 minutes left, and counting....
I'm posting the usual campaign wrap-up in advance, is all. Thank you to everyone who supported this campaign, and thank you in advance to whomever may sneak in under the wire! It looks like we're going to end up at a level of support consistent with how we've done in the recent past, so I can't complain. We're all dealing with a weird set of circumstances right now, so I am all the more grateful to have you onboard.
Kickstarter will shortly collect your pledges, and I will open the Backerkit store as soon as I can get it set up.
The Paladin Queen's Forest is now in layout, and I am working on the Pathfinder version of the module, Path to the Paladin Queen's Forest. I can tell you right now that there will be some differences in the encounters; the mapping between the monsters I chose for the D&D version to their equivalents in the Pathfinder bestiary is not exact. Same for the random events section. But things are moving along, and there's not much for me to do right now anyway besides work. :D
I have also been giving some coffee-fueled thought to future projects, including Places by the Way/Found by the Way #10. I'll fill you in as part of the updates to come. Thank you again, and I'll be in touch.
A real campaign in a surreal time
about 4 years ago
– Mon, Apr 06, 2020 at 01:05:28 AM
There's only three days left in the campaign? Really? Where did the time go?
That's not entirely a rhetorical question. As much as I like to say that my normal daily life when I'm writing resembles a shelter-in-place order, I have to admit that the last two weeks or so have messed mercilessly with my sense of calendar time. Last weekend, I woke up certain in the conviction that it was mid-week. Just the other day, I was stunned to realize that it was Friday and not Thursday. Coulda sworn it was still yesterday....
So the days have drifted by, and I am just now polishing up the manuscript of The Paladin Queen's Forest. I had hoped to have it in layout by now, but I will send it out by the end of the day tomorrow. Looks like it will top out at about 12.5k words, which is about where I hoped it would land. Path to the Paladin Queen's Forest will run a little longer because of the Pathfinder 1E conversion notes.
The Easter Egg was the last part of the manuscript to fall into place, as is usually the case. It took me a while to settle on a subject, and ultimately I kind of regret using up my Yogi Bear material in the Sylvanhome/Path to Sylvanhome Limited Edition. Yogi and Boo Boo and Ranger Smith would have been a better fit for this one, I think — Ranger Smith would have worked as a retainer of the Paladin Queen.
[SPOILER ALERT: If you want the Easter Egg to remain a surprise, you can stop reading now; just note that I'll open the Backerkit store as soon as I can after the campaign ends so you can add on to your reward if you want, and thank you for your support!]
Instead, I settled on an older, but nonetheless quite familiar, set of characters from one of the most famous Brothers Grimm stories. It helped a bit that hags swap in reasonably well for the witch from "Hansel and Gretel," but there's actually no need to fight it; it's just a convenient shorthand. Instead, you find the two lost kids on a sugar-fueled rampage, tearing up the cottage and terrorizing the hag, who just wants them to leave her alone. This is hardly an original idea — I've seen elsewhere "Hansel and Gretel" spoofed so that the kids are the real menace. But I don't recall ever seeing it in a fantasy RPG context like this. So there you go.
Oh, *now* we're funded... :D
about 4 years ago
– Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 05:29:15 AM
Many thanks to the backer who went above and beyond to make sure that we hit our funding target! Now we're at 100% exactly. Looking at Kickstarter's metrics, I see an unusually high number of people following this campaign, but who have not made a pledge, so there is — as they say in the stock market — money sitting on the sideline. So I think the most likely outcome is that we end up with a historically typical level of funding, but at the very worst we can cruise to the finish and still fund.
I'm still working through the big random encounters section of the module, but I still like how things are going. I think I'm giving you more guidance than you usually find in random encounter tables, and that is to give texture to what is supposed to just stuff that happens. This requires some thought, but there's plenty of time for that these days. I've been referring to Wikipedia a lot for information that may seem trivial, but they're important for creating texture — stuff like, "Where do badgers shelter?" and "What is the incubation period for rabies?" Rabies — yeah, that's a teaser.
In fact, I'm starting to see my way clear to a possible future project — my own book of random encounters. What I have in mind is not just a collection of tables, but an essay on how I think random encounters should fit into RPGs and why I think that way. And the encounter tables would include explanations of each encounter as thorough as what's in The Paladin Queen's Forest. Coming soon to a Kickstarter campaign near you? Maybe, we'll see.
Today has been a good news day, so let's leave it at that. I ordered takeout from a local fried chicken joint for lunch, and chatted with the owner for a bit. He seems to be getting quite a bit of business despite having to shut down the dining room, and his biggest challenge is coping with all of the orders with his supply chain being kind of higgledy-piggledy. I'm glad he's doing that well; if he may serve as a proxy for this neighborhood as a whole, things aren't as bad as they look. When you're biggest existential question is, "When is today's shipment of Hawaiian bread buns arriving?" and not, "Can I stay in business another two weeks at this rate?" things are not going too badly.
