Greg A. Vaughan's page

Yeah, no stepping on Paizo's toes here. We're getting in on the new market but not abandoning the PF core. Everything should still appear in PF and S&W rule sets. They'll just have a new 5e little brother kicking around. :-)

The add-ons are not charged until the backer kit is locked, because you can change your add-ons up until the lockdown. So the charge would not hit until June.

And no, you have to have at least a book in hand to use your binoculars. You're either all in or all out.

Does it matter what book it is?

Can we show up outside of your home with binoculars and a book?

Or just binoculars?

It's just Step 1 boards, so you can only call me Doc Hopper 0.5. ;-)

And I second everything Bill said. You guys are the best!

I have some technical questions for the Frogs:

Are you guys reviewing the old NG boards for errata on this while in edit and layout? (Ex: Missing doors on the 2nd level map, wrong names for NPCs in different spots, etc)

Also this is kind of a strange one - in RA you had to substitute a few creatures because they were not open content - such as Mind Flayers and Umber Hulks.

So I have a question about a creature type featured in LCoB:

** spoiler omitted **

I didn't work on this one, so I can't really answer your questions (hopefully Bill or Skeeter will see this), but as useless as my response is as a result, I did want to let you know that grimlocks have reappeared in Tome of Horrors 4. Don't know whether they'll use those or morlocks in this book, though. (See what I mean? USELESS!!) ;-)

If the Barakus KS hits 55k, you will have the opportunity to buy the regional poster map that covers the area of Barakus (The Sinnar Coast Region). If you buy the Sword of Air later this summer it will include another regional poster map that covers the area just north of the Sinnar Coast (The Gulf of Akados Region--you can see an early hand-drawn version of it linked to Update 5 in the Barakus KS). Each of these two covers something like 2.25 million square miles I think (roughly 1500 x 1500), so they're big areas. Other regional maps will be coming out with other books in the future. However, to get the entire Lost Lands Campaign Setting map (encompassing the above-mentioned regions and much, much more) you'll unfortunately have to wait until the Lost Lands Campaign Setting comes out in a couple years. That material is all still under development.

Grimmy, I just checked my map. Quail Valley is 850 miles due west of Eamonvale. Just wanted to confirm it for you since I was just guessing earlier.

What can I say, I've been given excellent material to work with from what Bill and Clark put out back in the NG days. I just get to play with it and have some fun. :-)

Greg A. Vaughan wrote:

...So I'll keep firing back answers as long as my schedule will permit. :-)

Ok, if you really don't mind, I do have another one. How far will Quail Valley be from Bard's Gate?

I have started dropping hints about Larin Karn and PC's seem curious.

You caught me at school, Grimmy, so I don't have my maps handy. I'll have to go from memory to try and answer you.

Quail Valley lies in the Green Mountains of the Westmarches of the Grand Duchy of Reme. Its more or less due west of Eamonvale (which can be seen on the sample map linked to update 5 of the Barakus KS) and I'm going to guess its about 800-1,000 miles from there. The Grand Duchy of Reme is actually pretty big in its new treatment and Eamonvale is on its extreme eastern edge while Quail Valley is at its western end.

Like I mentioned previously in regards to the old NG titles, The Vault of Larin Karr will be one that gets an AP treatment. A cool thing about that adventure as an AP, though, is it finally gives us something to do with that cool stat block of Larin Karr that is in the back of the adventure and is way too high level to really use with the adventure very easily. Look for Mr. Karr to play a more active role in things when the Vault gets updated as an AP set in western Reme.

I'm looking forward to all of it!

Greg - Do you intend to incorporate new Pathfinder material (such as the upcoming class book) or are you going to stick to more traditional (core) rules?

The upcoming class book is certainly available for use in our stuff. I think we historically tend to stick with the more traditional stuff, but it certainly won't be off limits from our end. I would guess we would tend to use it sparingly, but you can certainly use it in your own campaign; it won't break anything in the Lost Lands as far as I know (haven't looked at all the classes yet, though). The only PF classes that I know of currently that are specifically not supported in Lost Lands are ninja and samurai, and that is because we don't have an Asian-themed area developed with which to support their background yet. I suspect that will change eventually.

And, what happens if...

D&D 5E is open?
Pathfinder 2E comes out during this time?

(Personally, I hope you stay away from D&D 5 and I hope Pathfinder 2E is a long way off.)

Those are good questions, and I don't know the answers to them yet. That would require a company meeting before we could make a determination. As of this time I do not know of any plans to support 5e, but I don't know what Bill has in mind for it. I don't believe we would abandon either PF or S&W for it, though.

(And I personally agree with you on both points.)

Finally, Greg, I noticed you are not an author for the Mummy's Mask AP. I was a bit saddened by that, but congratulations on your long AP run!

Yes, med school finally became too invasive in my life to be able to support writing two AP adventures each year. :-( The guys at Paizo have been super supportive about it though. I have ended my AP adventure streak but my overall AP streak stands. I wrote an article and one of the forewords for Mummy's Mask, so you'll still see me around. I wrote an ecology for Iron Gods, and I'm working on an assignment for the as-yet-unrevealed AP following Iron Gods, so that streak should continue into the foreseeable future. Thanks, though!

Thanks for all the updates, Greg!

Been a fan of your work for years and I like to think the few scenarios I did manage to get published would make you proud. Skeletons of Scarwall remains my favorite module/AP installment of the last 10 years.

Anyway, shameless brown-nosing aside, I'm already maneuvering my budget to be able to get Northlands later this year.

My big hole in the collection from the old stuff is Gary Gygax' Necropolis. Can you reveal if that is in the plans for a rework? Are you even able to? (No idea if that was a one-time license for his stuff or not)

You're making me blush, justmebd. ;-)

Necropolis is tricky. MY understanding from talking to Bill is that we do own the rights to the IP in that particular book but not, of course, Gary's name on the book. That said, I don't foresee us updating and reissuing it. Without Gary around to be in on it, it just doesn't feel right. Plus it is such a fully self-contained adventure of pure Gary feel, I just didn't want to disrespect it with an update, so it is one of the few NG titles that are not on our 5-7 year plan for an update. That said, Khemit is still a part of our world and there are even supplemental materials by NG that connect to it (Set's Daughters, anyone?). So we will be revisiting Khemit in the future and expanding upon it, probably with a reissue of Set's Daughters at some point, but I do not think we have plans to update and republish Necropolis itself.

You can always get the original pdf from us, but ebay or convincing Bill to open his personal vaults is probably the best bet of getting ahold of a physical copy. Sorry about that.

pretty much all of my campaigns are all Lost Lands all the time! The exception being Freeport, but even that is going to be located in the Lost Lands.

It fits! Per the sidebar we did in Razor Coast in cooperation with Green Ronin. Though it is not official canon, there is totally an official place for Freeport in your Lost Lands campaign. :-)

Anyway, thanks for engaging with your fans so directly, it's really cool.

My pleasure, Grimmy. I've had more opportunity to get on the boards more in the last month than I have in the last couple of years, so when I get the chance I like to be able to hit the nail on the head with questions and such. Plus the development of the Lost Lands has reached the point where I actually have a lot of things finally locked in and can answer those kinds of questions instead of it just being a kind of nebulous work in progress (which it has pretty much been to this point--I feel really bad for the rest of the FGG guys who are really just now getting their first glimpses of what I'm doing in the building of the setting). This thread btw is super exciting to me. Lost Lands has been so much on my m,ind for the last year as I try to make things fit together, getting a chance to expound upon it to people who are actually interested (my wife unfortunately is not a gamer and doesn't get much out of me telling her all the minutiae) is very personally fulfilling to me. So I'll keep firing back answers as long as my schedule will permit. :-)

Sure thing, Steve. :-)

And lest you think we intend to be a company of merely retreads, about 90% of my writing time (limited as it currently is) goes into new material. I've spent the last several months writing/doing development work on Northlands Saga in between classes and such. My personal passion is still writing. But if you ever followed my work in Dungeon Magazine, you might have noticed that about 4/5 of my material was set in Greyhawk...because I LOVE to write new material set in a classic mature setting (it's just my personal preference). Obviously we don't have Greyhawk to play with, but we do have a decade's worth of classic NG stuff (that's even more classic than that since much of it dates back to Bill's and Clark's games from their teenage and college years.

So you'll still be able to keep looking for new material from us (frequently on an epic scale as has been the case with Tsar, RA, SoA, RC, plus the upcoming Northlands and Blight), but it's always going to be grounded in the history of the campaign, because for me personally at least, that's where the richness of the game really shines through. Gary had Greyhawk, Ed had FR, JG had the Wilderlands, we'll have Lost Lands. I'm not implying it's on the level of any of those, but those are certainly what we look to for our example, and maybe 20 years from now people will look back and include Lost Lands on that list. That's my hope anyway.

So thanks for sticking with us. We'll keep doing new stuff while faithfully paying homage to the old. That's our plan.

Just to address the old versus new issue. Like Bill said, we have a planned mix coming out for the next several years. We're just too small of a company to be constantly putting out all new material at the pace that we put out books (which granted isn't all that fast anyway). But we've also got this vast back catalogue of great material that has never been fully developed and integrated. After the initial success of Tsar and TOHC, plus the release of a few "lost" NG titles (Eamonvale Incursion, Demonheart, etc.) we decided FGG was going to be a "for real" company and ultimately purchasing NG's IP decided our course for us. WE determined we wanted to combine all of that content, both old and new, into an epic campaign world that was both exciting and new but also felt old and familiar, and we had the perfect materials to do that.

Just so you know, our plan is to eventually over the years reissue pretty much all of the old 3.0 and 3.5 stuff NG but reformatted and updated to feel new and worthwhile as well. My goal is to make each of these releases to be exciting and interesting as both a new product but also give you all the classic content of the original. It's a difficult balance to strike. Many of the old NG products didn't get as much love as others. But I think it was not because they were necessarily "bad" so much as lacked context or cohesion. So that is my mandate: make all of those old adventures relevant and make them work with all of the new stuff as well. We don't want to invalidate anyone's old NG collection, we want to revive it.

For some insight into the process, I'll share some of my task. In addition to making all of the old products (which are an incredibly diverse lot if you really look at them) fit with all the new products to make a coherent campaign world, I've also got to inject new life into those old titles to make them work as a part of the campaign world. That's where the update and reissuance of old titles comes in.

A few months ago I submitted to Bill a list of 10 future products for the next 5-7 years that will encompass about 90% of the NG catalogue. My goal is not only to make them fit into the world, but to take them together in groups to form adventure paths. But not only must the adventures work as far as levels and themes go, I've had to make them work regionally as well. So with each reprint of these collected old materials you not only get an updated, coherent adventure path you can run, each one will also highlight a specific portion of the Lost Lands. No picnic, that, but an interesting process I went through.

Some of the combinations are obvious, Stoneheart Valley is an obvious example that had actually been designed as more-or-less a regional adventure path. So that one was easy. Hawkmoon and Eamonvale both provide that kind of ease as well. Beyond those, though, they get a bit harder. You can see hints of how some of them will lay out based on the clues on the regional maps we've been creating. What is situated near what...that sort of thing.

For our next reissue of pre-existing material, it will be one of these collected adventure paths (Some will be full adventure paths going from levels 1-14 or so, some will be mini-adventure paths like from levels 3-10 for instance). So the one we're talking about next is likely to be either Legends of Hawkmoon (you can guess what that one will cover, I'm sure) or Cults of the Sundered Kingdoms (a little less obvious). Both, though will have an AP updated and fleshed out for PF/S&W and for the Lost Lands, and both will have expanded material giving some detail on that region of the Lost Lands and how it fits in with the rest. These will not be a substitute to the campaign setting but will be a supplement to it.

Whew, okay that was way longer than I had intended. So there's a lot of the plan in a nutshell. Bard's Gate is probably going to be one of the last ones we do because a) it's got a ton of crunch material to update (stat blocks and such), b) it's going to change quite a bit as some of it is going to going directly into the campaign setting book instead (like the gods chapter, for instance), and c) we've got some super cool plans for it that I think you guys are going to love, but I can't say more about that part yet. But yes, Bard's gate will certainly get its due (along with another little town called Reme, I'm sure).

Grimmy,

Freegate is about 400 miles east of Bard's Gate. Endhome is about 900 miles southeast of Freegate. You can see the actual distance relationship between Freegate and the Bard's Gate/Stoneheart Valley area on the sample map that is linked on Update 5 of our Barakus Kickstarter. Endhome is not shown on that map though.

You're too kind, EZ. :)

Anything you or Lou write (*cough* Sinister Adventures-swamp-themed-mega-module /*cough*)

Don't have that one in the works at the moment (but the idea is not unattractive, certainly as a tie-in for our upcoming Swamps book as a part of our terrains line), but Lou and I do have the detailed outline for a nautical mega-adventure that nicely ties Hawkmoon (of old NG fame) with Razor Coast, that we designed a few years ago and is still floating around in my hard drive. We're giving piratey things a rest for awhile, but hopefully the stars will align correctly in a few years to allow us to bring that project to life.

Plus "The Haunted Hills of Harrowfar", my own Dunwich-esque contribution that was to be made to Sinister Adventures still sits in outline form as well. Then, of course, my own "Sword of Air" (well, actually that would probably by Slumbering Tsar) but an AP outline that I pitched to Paizo back in the Dungeon days called Empire of Ashes shortly before the plug got pulled on the magazine. I'm not sure I've ever mentioned that one in public before, so that may have been its first official teaser.

I hope that FGG stays around for a lot of years, because there's a whole lot of stuff that we still need to write and/or publish.

Someday...[gets dreamy look in eye]

Just as with everything Nick has ever written.

;-)

lastgrasp, they are neighboring states, but Dunes does not directly involve Khemit.

Can't wait to see the new one, Tom!

FGG has discussed Ebon Shroud with Richard and Nick, and we're ready to publish it whenever they're ready to write it. I've already got it's location included in our Lost Lands campaign setting. Between Razor Coast by Logue and Agresta, the forthcoming The Blight by Pett (he's nearly done with the writing), and eventually Ebon Shroud by Logue and Pett I'm pretty happy with where our world development is going*. :-)

So, while Ebon Shroud is not on the product schedule yet (they've still got to write the pesky thing), FGG is committed to publishing it whenever they finish it.

P.S. Endzeitgeist, as Lou said, thanks much for the review! When I read your reviews they make me want to buy the products, and I already have them! So you're definitely able to capture their essence as well as give a great rundown on their pros and cons. What you do is invaluable to the industry as a whole. Don't ever stop!

*Plus Bill's forthcoming Sword of Air (this summer), plus Ken Spencer's forthcoming Northlands Saga (later this year), plus Bill and Clark's Rappan Athuk, plus a little mini-dungeon I like to call Slumbering Tsar, etc...

Zherog wrote:

Chapter Nine: Faiths of the Desert

So is this an exploration of an Egyptian style mythos? Mesopotamian? pre-Islamic Arabian? Islamic? A new fantasy desert pantheon? Something else?

How big is this section?

We've got Egyptian and Mesopotamian/pre-Islamic covered in other FGG/NG titles. I'd call this one closest to Islamic in feel. It w3ill of course fit in with the other desert pantheons in our Lost Lands setting.

I don't know the page count off hand, but it's a good-sized section. It also summarizes the Egyptian and Mesopotamian pantheons at the end as well.

Greg,

I love this adventure and I think overall you guys did a great job in updating it.

However, if you are planning on putting out a free pdf with errata on the FGG website, it should also include the map of the shrines to Muir and Thyr which is in the original Tomb of Abysthor adventure but is missing from Stoneheart Valley.

Got it. I have forwarded this info to Skeeter to see if we can get that done. Thanks!

I have generally been impressed with the ONS series having run Scorned for one party already.

Scorned! (ONS5) is a pretty cool adventure by Nick Logue and Lou Agresta. I was super happy we were able to save it from the slush pile of the old Dungeon Magazine and get it into print. It's a lot of fun (for those who haven't seen it).

Yep, definitely another shameless plug.

It's on page 9. It's kind of subtle, so I can see how it got missed during the art order process, but the more I look at it, the more I think furries. Check out the shady one hanging out round the corner. Is he a lookout? Is he selling drugs? I just don't know.

The Caliphate is 2 or 3 thousand miles due east of Tsen across the Isthmus of Irkainia in the Ashurian Desert. It's just across the Free Sea from Khemit.

My base assumption is that all players take my name in vain. If they don't, they should. ;-)

I think those are reasonable assumptions. The only question would probably be on the Chaos Rift, which I think could be considered mountain terrain in places too, depending on where one is standing.

I allowed my players to teleport out but only after putting in a full day's work as it were. Since they didn't have to slog across the Desolation to reach safety, they didn't have to worry about holding back resources and withdrawing early. How did I get them to put in a full day's work? Through a combination of shaming them personally and making sure life was hell for their PCs whenever I thought they were phoning it in. :-)

Thanks, tempestorm!

If you look at the faces especially the warrior they just look a bit too european and not arabic to me is all. Yes, it has the Arabian Nights feel, I agree, but more Disney with pale skin and eyes and noses that are more 1954 than 2014. Even the pictures of the men with beards reminds me of a 1950's movie. I am not saying that the art isn't VERY GOOD, it is. It just looks Disney to me rather than a Iraqi/Afghani appearance. Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to be PC here. He just looks more like Aladdin than Saladin! Please, I am not trying to make an issue of it, just answering the question. The people look more gentile than semetic is all. But if Lawrence of Arabia is what they were going for, OK.

You never know how an artist is going to interpret an art order, and while the art is great, I agree with you, it's not a straight semetic feel. Though I think many folks would not even think to notice that level of detail, and when you're simultaneously reviewing dozens of art pieces for multiple projects sometimes if you even notice something like that you just sigh, say good enough and move on. So your observation is legitimate, it's just probably beyond the scope of what our budgetary and staff limitations are capable of.

For an especially hilarious WTF example check out ONS2: Death in the Painted Canyons by FGG (yes, this is a shameless plug). It's a GREAT little desert adventure set in our Lost Lands region called the Caliphate -- pure Saladin, in other words. The cover art is, of course, our generic ONS series cover, so I'm no talking about it. So let me begin with I LOVE this adventure. Ken Spencer (of Northlands Saga fame) did a great job in capturing the culture and environment, and developing it was a lot of fun. The art order did not go through me, so I never saw the interior art until I received my own copy of the adventure. I start thumbing through it and notice one picture that catches my eye. What do I find? FURRIES!!!!! I kid you not. I don't know if it was intended as a joke, was a mix up from an art order from another company, or what. All I know is that there is an illustration in the Arabian-themed adventure I developed that can only be described as furries. Don't believe me? (Of course, you don't!) Go here and buy it to see for yourself. (See how I did that?) ;-)

Greg

Dang it! I thought we got all the supplemental stuff added in when we published that book. Sorry about that. We may need to add a free pdf to the website to cover it.

On another note, when this book first came out some Necromancer Games purists very legitimately took umbrage at the title because the Stoneheart Valley is not a geographical feature that had been mentioned before in this or any other product by NG.

Just in case you were interested and hadn't heard how that was explained, you can see the (very rough draft) of the Gulf of Akados map that shows what the Stoneheart Valley is and how it fits in relation to the other Necromancer Games and Frog God Games products at the current Frog God Games Kickstarter (the link is here). It is provided as a sample of what the regional map coming out as a stretch goal with the Lost City of Barakus KS will look like, though it is actually a part of the previous book Sword of Air due out this summer(Barakus will have a map showing a different region just south of the sample one).

brvheart wrote:

As far as I read grapple you can move someone at half speed when grappling and need not pin them. That is just my read though. Even with all the clarifications, grapple is still a mess!

Yes, that is my understanding as well, but can only move after the grappler has maintained the grapple (i.e. used a standard action to maintain once a grapple has been established). There is no need to pin, although (just to make this more confusing) it says in the dark custodian entry: "Once the dark custodian has an opponent pinned, it attempts to drag him away to devour him in peace." Ugh.

The dark custodian was originally 3.5 before being converted to PF, so the grapple confusion/fun got expanded to encompass both systems during the conversion process. I'd recommend ignoring the word "pin" and replacing it with "maintained the grapple".

Dangit, Tom! I've been working up a The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly game as a con event for a few months, and now you've gone and beaten me to it. It's okay, I was wanting to use it a Reaper Con (I think their theme is Old West this year), but I don't think I'm going to be able to make it. So you can have it I suppose. :-)

Guess I should have mentioned it earlier. ;-)

I think that sounds about right, but Lou or Nick could probably say better.

Oh, and by the way Greg, I love the sample Gulf of Akados Region map that you drew by hand.

Thank you! And while I appreciate your compliment, let me just assure you that the final version from Robert Altbauer looks A LOT better. My goal on these campaign maps is to channel the old Greyhawk folio maps in their look and feel, and Robert has nailed it. Can't wait for you all to get to see the final versions!

I own the original Barakus book, but the reason it is confusing is that the book has two versions of the same Wilderness map, one with tags (p. 58) and one without tags (p. 6).

That's a good point. I was thinking the poster map that came with Barakus was a wilderness map. I just went back and checked and realized it is the city map that is on the poster! I had forgotten.

So let me revise my early statement:

For the color regional wilderness map, it will be much the same level of detail as on the sample Sword of Air regional map that is linked to the KS update.

For the black and white poster map, my assumptions were incorrect. I don't know what exactly is going to be on it (whether surrounding wilderness or city or what). That is a decision that Bill will make, so I'm not sure.

Sorry about the confusion.

Will the maps be player friendly (i.e. not show any secret DM stuff) or is it designed mainly for DMs to use when they are preparing the adventure?

Personally, I'd be more interested in a player friendly map.

Assuming you're talking about the regional map, that's a difficult question to answer at a regional scale, since we're not talking about secret doors and traps at that scale. The map will be primarily a GM map but should still be fairly player friendly. It shouldn't show any secret citadels or anything, but most adventure sites tend to be known by local cartographers. It'll show labelled areas but won't have numbers areas.

The Endhome area poster map should be the same one from the original book as far as I know.

Belishan sucks the life out of everything, doesn't he?

That's just how he roles.

(See what I did there? Because it's an RPG and that's how he roles? Oh... okay, nevermind...)

;-)

DaveMage wrote:

justmebd wrote:

You'd be surprised at how good the WiFi is in Rappan Athuk. Tsar, not so much.

Probably due to Tsar's stupid pall!!!!!

:)

It is annoying - you need to get all the way to the top of the Black Gate just to get a signal. Problem with that is once I get up there I find myself staring out east into the wasteland and begin having daydreams of conquest.

Go figure.

It's because Belishan is hogging on the bandwidth on the wifi.

(Way late, I know...sorry)

Then there's whispers that the Ebon Shroud could bust out in the relatively near future. I also hear that Northland Saga stuff is good. I'm almost overwhelmed in a good way!

Hi KDM, just a quick update for you. Ebon Shroud is still on the table as a future project, but I don't think I'd call it anything like the relatively near future. Let's say it's on my wishlist and Nick and Rich have both expressed interest, but there are still a lot of ducks to line up in a row. I'll keep people posted for further developments, because I really want to release it but it's still in a "don't hold your breath" phase at the moment. I am committed to it though. Razor Coast establishes Ebon Shroud as part of the same game world, and Razor Coast is in our Lost Lands setting, so I have already created a place for Ebon Shroud there as well even though the book hasn't been written yet. So it's got an official placeholder as a future product and is a part of our long-term plan.

We should have an announcement about the Northlands Saga this fall after we've got some of this summer KS stuff off our plate, and I am currently actively working on it so it is not on the backburner or anything.

The product lineup that I'm personally working on right now in order is:

Sword of Air (specifically Lost Lands development of it)
Barakus (specifically Lost Lands development of it)
The Northlands Saga (still about 50-100k words to go with over 300k written--I think, going off the top of my head)
The Blight (Richard Pett is still hard at work on it)
The Lost Lands Campaign Setting (work in progress)

As for being overwhelmed in good way? Yay! That's what we like to hear!

So I wish the owners of Frog the best, and suggest there's a growing market out there for how to run and manage a successful Kickstarter from the gaming angle. Or better than that...courses and classwork combined, and it's never bad to hire the occasional consultant.

Just a quick clarification in case there is any confusion on this thread.

There are two companies being talked about here that have very similar acronyms.

FMG = Fire Mountain Games - producer of Way of the Wicked and the KS about which this thread was started.

FGG = Frog God Games - producer of Rappan Athuk, Razor Coast, etc. and has been mentioned a few times on this thread as well.

It looked like Ruggs may have gotten them mixed up (unless I'm misreading his post, which is a possibility), but either way I just wanted to make sure folks recognized the distinction.

Thank you, that is all. :-)

What I really need, thanks to the deadliness of FGG adventures, is a PDF listing pre-made starting equipment packages for all levels and classes.

It's funny now that you mention it. Whenever I want to run a really old-school campaign or run such a game at a con, I like to go to the foldout map of the old Basic adventure B4: The Lost City and make the players select one of the three pre-generated equipment packages for themselves. I don't know how well that translates to assisting vs. FGG deadliness, but I think it's really cool and prevents a lot of the Batman effect that can pop up with a PF game even at 1st-level.

3) The party has no idea as to what the statue is for. They've done there best to destroy it with no luck. It might be that I've missed giving them some hints but I don't think so.

Is there anything before the Crooked Tower that would help them clue into needing the statues?

The pentagram on the Plateau of Orcus and the whisperings of the midnight peddler are what should clue them in on needing the statues, plus the fact that they seem to be popping up over and over again. But if they don't take them the first time, the statues shouldn't be going anywhere. They can always come back later to pick them up (hopefully they took good notes on where to find them).

The names on that list are all top notch. You should try and get Neil Spicer in on this as well, I've really enjoyed his AP stuff since he hit the scene.

Good thing I budgeted for FGG "Big Books" this year.

I'd love to get Neil, but between writing for Legendary Games and Paizo, I think he's pretty booked up right now.

Greg, I wrote the 2002 D&D Open at GenCon, and the original version of the final encounter with the Gargantuan Red Dragon was so deadly, the guy running the tournament leveled the whole encounter down and took out the surprise attack from the Dragon.

I think you and the other FGG guys would've been proud of the design.

A man after my own heart.

And it was a dragonnel that ate Skeeter, not a black dragon. Sheesh!

Question about the map... there's a good sized map in Splinters of Faith... does that reside somewhere in the Lost Lands? Or is that a setting of it's own?

Splinters is Lost Lands.

He then ruled that I drowned though when I swam down the wrong tunnel afterward and the that the rest had never happened.(buzz-killer)

Thanks Laric, I'm really just dropping in between boards study sessions, but it's good to check in.

Coup de grace in their sleep...how unimaginatively Philistine. ;-) No, I turned one of Bill's patented super-complex, party-killer traps against all of them in such a way that it left only me alive. Good times. [snicker]

Greg is the lead developer on both. Richard wrote Blight, and Ken wrote NS. But Greg is making them "froggier"

Rich wrote/is writing about 95% of Blight. He's got a few guest writers for specific adventures. I did one, a couple yokels by the names of Logue and Hodge may have some involvement...

Ken Spencer wrote about 75% of Northlands Saga (the campaign guide and 6ish adventures). Since he started his full-time gig at Cubicle 7 he gave me his outlines and left it to us to complete the last adventures. They will be done by a combination of me and a few other writers. Owen Stephens was looking at being in on it but then had the big switch to Green Ronin so I've had to do more shopping around, but it will all be faithful to Ken's original vision and writing.

I'm estimating both books at around 500,000 words at this point, which is roughly Slumbering Tsar size (550,000 words).

By the way, if you liked Ken's Caliphate setting in Death in the Painted Canyons you'll see it getting more love in our future "Desert Kingdoms" book along with Khemit, Ashur, maybe Alcaldar, and Khartous from the new Dunes of Desolation book (coming out in June I think), though that one is still a ways out. All are, of course, part of the Lost Lands.

Khemit and the Mesopotamia stuff are both Lost Lands. It'll make sense when you see how, don't worry. Really the only things that aren't are the JG stuff and Rob Kuntz's Maze of Zayene series.