Greg A. Vaughan's page

Greg A. Vaughan wrote:

Plus I don't know what WEG means (because I'm terminally unhip).

West End Games, of course! Paranoia for the win! :P

Wow! Then I'm worse than terminally unhip; I'm just kind of dense. I totally don't understand his use of the WEG reference in the context of that post.

What news on the Lost Lore product line?

I cracked the whip on John Ling not three days ago. He gave a kind of pathetic whimper and then motioned like he was moving faster. It may have all just been an act, though. John is crafty like that.

John had to do some emergency fill-in work on Sword of Air along with the rest of us at FGG to get it out the door to the printer, and he's still wrangling Fields of Blood, but he's also churning away at Lost Lore (hopefully for our big release soon). He'd have to tell you the exact time frame though. I find it distasteful to get the blood of the developers on my shoes when I'm in the whip-cracking mood, so I don't get that close (plus not to mention the smell down in the gulag cells...whew!).

Very cool, Greg! One of my new PBP players is having fun with the Hanged Man, Zors. Look forward to this:) My Friday night players still think you are a bit touched with Tsar though (WEG)!

They're probably just thinking of Marc Radle (see above).

Plus I don't know what WEG means (because I'm terminally unhip).

Good stuff! :)

Thanks, Marc.

As someone who is largely responsible for the advent of FGG with Slumbering Tsar, I try to throw as much blame as possible at Marc whenever I can.

According to a post above, Marc, I think brvheart's players think you're touched. That's my interpretation anyway. :-)

Awesome! I'm glad to hear you're excited about them and thanks for your support! Despite the fact that our books sometimes require a bank-secured mortgage (not to mention special shelving), I don't think you'll be disappointed. :-)

So what is the ETA on the various kickstarters so I can plan my finances since I obviously have to get in on them all. :)

Hi ladydragona,

Probably April(ish) for Cults of the Sundered Kingdoms (we're waiting to get some previous Kickstarters delivered before we launch another one)
July for Northlands Saga
Fall for The Blight
Winter (I think) for Bard's Gate
Sometime 2016 for the Lost Lands campaign setting

That's how it's looking right now anyway.

One of those rare days -- a Saturday when I don't have anything to do other than sit and look at game stuff.

So what did I do on this oh so rare of a day? I decided to sit and take a look at how the Lost Lands pantheon of deities is taking shape a create some organization. And for those who are interested in the development of this ongoing mountain I'm making a mole hill out of, I thought I'd give an update.

I've been keeping a spreadsheet for a couple of years now as I comb through every Necromancer Games and Frog God Games product to keep track of every single deity, demon lord, elemental prince, etc. that has been introduced. And in the course of creating our cohesive campaign setting I've added a handful here and there to fill in gaps as needed.

To date the list of gods for the Lost Lands stands at 264 deities. I know of a half-dozen more than I haven't added to the spreadsheet yet and will probably find a few more, but I'd guess the total number will come in somewhere under 300. With these 264 identified deities I began organizing them and came up with 13 pantheons/sub-groupings so far. Of those, there will also likely be a few more, but they represent the main of what we'll have in the campaign set. So here's how they come out so far (don't crunch them numbers too close because there is some overlap here and there).

Hyperborean Pantheon:
This is the primary pantheon of the campaign world. These are the "classic gods" that pretty much everybody knows about and are largely still revered to some extent or other. These have a Hellenistic vibe to some extent in that the Hyperborean Empire is the "classic" empire of our game setting and has a very Alexander's Macedonia feel to it. This also includes most of the classic Necromancer Games gods from Bard's Gate, Rappan Athuk, etc. even though many are in decline.
This group includes 36 members to date. For this group think of Thyr, Muir, Hecate, Tykee, Arden, and others. Interestingly this also includes Demogorgon (from his appearance in Milton, not his TSR/WotC incarnation), Mitra, and Hel. Both Hel and Thyr are transplants from the Aesir-Vanir pantheon that were adopted and acculturated by the ancient Hyperboreans (Thyr is Tyr to the Heldring and Tiwwaz to the Northlanders) while Hel is of the Ginnvaettir. Mitra is a newer addition picked up from the Gohtra pantheon that has largely supplanted The older Hyperborean sun goddess Solanus.

Gods Common to Akados:
This is a mishmash of the most commonly revered gods on the continent of Akados (our primary campaign setting continent). There are 47 gods in this group with most or all of the Hyperborean pantheon and Foerdewaith pantheon plus a few odd pick-ups here and there that have found their way into the mainstream. This would include the most common nonhuman deities (elves, dwarves, and such) as well as the odds and ends that primarily adventurers have picked up over the years: Gromm the Thunderer, a barbarian god of the Gohtra; Fraz-Urb'luu, a fairly common "secret" cult among the corrupt elite; Mithras, the Gohtra war god adopted by the ancient Hyperborean legions; and The Green Father, a primeval nature deity that has remained in the public consciousness down through the ages.

Foerdewaith Pantheon:
The Kingdoms of Foere was the "empire" that rose in the place of the fallen Hyperborean Empire. It rose from the small kingdom of Foere that was one among many of the indigenous tribes among the greater empire that rose to prominence in the void left behind. In the current day, it is a post Kingdoms of Foere world, with Foere still strong and in control of a central care region but most of its client nations having calved off into their own polities. However, during the time of Foere's rise, that kingdom's own small pantheon of gods rose to some international prominence in an among the old Hyperborean holdings. This pantheon numbers 8 and is mainly still held to among the "old nobility" of the Foerdewaith (as the people of Foere are called). Examples include the great sea god Quell (who is easily the most prominent among this pantheon, having a near-universal appeal upon Akados), the god of magic Belon the Wise who is slowly surpassing the Hyperborean Jamboor, and most importantly the near-ubiquitous Freya, another transplant of the Aesir-Vanir (Frejya to them) that has found universal appeal on Akados, supplanting the Hyperborean amazon goddess Diana.

Aesir-Vanir:
The Norse-style pantheon of the two far separate yet strangely related cultures of the Heldring and the Northlanders. These are 12 deities, not including the evil ones found in the Ginnvaettir, such as Hel). The Northlanders name them by the older titles Wotan, Donar, Baldr, etc. while the Heldring use the more familiar Odin, Thor, Balder, etc.

The Ginnvaettir:
The foul occupants of the Ginnungagap, a rough analogy to the Lower Planes, these include not only the Norse-style evil gods and giants but also includes all the demon lords, archdevils, daemon lords, and every other sort of foul entity. Even Great Old Ones would get lumped into this catch-all for the mortal mind when it comes to evil powers. This group numbers 69 so far, and its membership is pretty fast and loose as mentioned above. Frog God (and Necromancer before us) has its iconic baddies Orcus and Tsathogga in this crew which also includes such notables as Demogorgon (mentioned previously); the Lord of Ice and Cold, Althunak, of Northlands Saga fame; the shark god Dajobas; and the Great Old One/Qlippoth Lord/Demon Lord Dagon among others. Plenty of opportunities for evil cults here.

Hawkmoon Pantheon:
Culled from the many works of Lance Hawvermale for Necromancer Games, this unique pantheon found specifically in his many adventures are found almost exclusively in the Domain of Hawkmoon. He has stated that there are 27 of these odd dualistic powers, but I have only found a total of 15 in his combined writing, names like: Elmarran, Hanijma, and Cavacendo. Ideally I'd like to employ Lance to flesh these out and introduce us to the other 12, so that's on my wish list for the future.

Barbarian Gods:
Another catch-all, this category is made up from the decidedly ethnocentric sensibilities of the run-of-the-mill citizen of Akados who looks at these crazy barbarians running around and wonders what has them so upset. These 42 gods are varied in their origins from the previously mentioned Aesir-Vanir lords of viking raiders, to the deities of the Tibaz of the plains-riding warriors of the Sea of Grass, the peaceful animistic powers of the Tulito islanders, the mysterious Loa of the islanders off of southern Libynos, Gromm the Thunderer of the Gohtra, and the enigmatic but frequently encountered Bowbe, who is a pantheon unto himself. Lots of fun gods here to give your barbarian PCs something to make thrir battle cries to.

Nonhuman Deities:
Another big catch-all, these 100 or so gods are divided among a dozen or so pantheons dedicated to sentient beings other than the humans who wander the surface of Akados. Subcategories include: Elven, Dwarven, Gnomish, Halfling, Giant, Orc, Goblinoid, Gnoll, Reptilian, Serpent, Draconic, Beasts, Birds, Frogs (bet you can't guess who rules this one, but there are actually two in this category), Rats/Vermin/Oozes, Lycanthropes, Fey, Elemental, Shadow, Devils, Demons, Daemons, Alien, and Plutonian (referring to gods of the subterranean lands that are called the Under Realms in our campaign setting).

Sects of Mah-Barek:
This enlightened philosophical religion to arise in the eastern deserts of the Lost Lands is detailed in our Dunes of Desolation book. The 8 sects of this religion are included here.

Pharonic Pantheon:
You guessed it, the old Egyptian stand-bys can all be found in our Kingdom of Khemit as detailed in the adventure Necropolis. These deities (Ra, Osiris, and the rest) can also be found listed in Dunes of Desolation.

Anunnaki Pantheon:
The old gods of the desert, rivals to the Pharonic deities and in some cases even older than they are, these are the deities of ancient Mesopotamia that can still be found in the eastern deserts and mountains of the Ammuyad Caliphate. They were originally detailed for Necromancer Games by Morten Braden and reappear in Dunes of Desolation.

Gohtra Pantheon:
This strange pantheon from the land of Far Jaati is our take on the mysterious East and includes such familiar names as Mitra, Shiva, and Vishnu with the addition of less-familiar names like Rhiann, Zors, and Rachiss.

Phoromycean Pantheon:
This is perhaps the most mysterious of all, a pantheon from an epoch long before even the Hyperborean Empire. These gods are little more than rumors of legends and correspond to a legendary society that lived in what is only known as the Age of Kings. Only 6 names remain known of these distant peoples' gods and what the true import of names like Kringa the Temptress and The Master truly mean remains unknown to even the most learned sages of today.

So there you have it. A little glimpse into the ongoing madness of the Lost Lands. I hope this was informative or at least mildly interesting. Let me know who your favorite gods of NG and FGG have been and I'll let you know how they fit in to the big picture.

Greg

Okay, can we just agree that for a band that had a major identity crisis between hard rock and weird Broadway-esque musicals that Styx was the greatest in its totally made-up genre?

I know, I know...David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Elton John...but I didn't really think of them as hard rock of likes that James Y. or Tommy Shaw would throw down (okay, maybe Rush). Styx was like one part Ted Nugent and one part Duran Duran. Maybe we could throw The Who in there, though, and have some competition. Man, you gotta' love the 70s and early 80s.

Haven't We Been Here Before? I've been trying to figure out how to keep this thread going so we Don't Let It End. But the Heavy Metal Poisoning I suffer from is making it too hard to be creative. I guess it's High Time to give it a rest. I hope I can Just Get Through This Night. Hopefully this thread Styx around for awhile.

I probably have Too Much Time on My Hands (yeah, wrong album, but my favorite song)

You renegade, you had it made...then you made that ridiculous post. :-P

Best. Thread (and store blog). Ever.

Yakman, to fully appreciate the many nuances and creative uses of the rules, then PF is your way to go...including the wonderful ship-to-ship fighting rules of Fire as She Bears. However, some people just want to game and not get caught up in all that. And if that's how your table likes to roll, then S&W would be your thing. As an example, the ship-to-ship rules were not translated into S&W, so there is no S&W version of Fire as She Bears (unlike the other books, which all got converted) because it was deemed as unnecessary for that game style. S&W can do free-flowing, loose ship fighting stuff without getting all hung up on the rules. But if you like the idea of rules for it to give an unarbitrary sense of winning and losing, strategy, tactics, advantages, etc. then I'd go with PF.

Not much advice, I know, but you've really got to decide based on the type of game you (and just as importantly, your players) will want to be in. I think S&SW is great, but I'd pretty much pick PF every time. I really enjoy the added depth it brings to my table. Bill or Matt? Not so much.

One final note: It's a whole lot easier to convert on the fly from PF to S&W than vice versa.

Anyway, it's pagan, not heathen...

If he burns when the holy water touches him, it's all the same to me.

That's awesome brvheart? Halfway through in a year-and-a-half? Who are you, Quicksilver? You're making me and my paltry record of 7 years look bad. :-) Glad you're enjoying it, even RAW.

Ha! That's great Shem. I'll have to try to be a little more creative and proliferative with posts so you can have a better variety of reading material. :-)

That said, I can give some updates.

I think I had mentioned previously that we wanted to get this backlog of prior KS cleared out and delivered before we launched anymore. And we're getting close.

Sword of Air is already at the printer.

Quest of Doom is through layout, and I just spent the last weekend looking over the final proofs and making corrections before they go to the printer. So I think we'll have all of that stuff shipping within the next month or so in time to launch Sundered Kingdoms followed by Northlands Saga. Sundered Kingdoms is done except for the art, I just received the turnover for NS6 for Northlands Saga, and I'm a third of the way through NS10 (the final adventure in Northlands Saga...the campaign setting and all the other adventures for it are done), so we're in pretty good shape there for a summer KS I think. Fields of Blood by Tom Knauss should be through development and ready for release around that time.

Richard Pett has told me that he'll have The Blight turnover to me by Easter, but considering I doubt that heathen even knows when Easter is I'm not holding my breath. Regardless, he seems to be pretty close to done, which fits nicely within our release timeline for 2015.

Tom Knauss has turned in his final adventure for Mountains of Madness and is now working on the environmental rules portion, and Matt Finch is currently hacking away at The Lost Lands: Perils of the Borderlands Provinces (oooh, I just snuck in reference to a new title that we hadn't mentioned yet), a gazetteer for release with one of the late 2015 KS that provides world information for the areas surrounding the portion covered in Cults of the Sundered Kingdoms. Between Perils and Cults they should pretty much fill in all the blanks on the Sinnar Coast Region map that was released with Lost City of Barakus.

And I think they probably takes us to about the end of the year.

So all in all, things seem to be progressing nicely. Stay thirsty, my friend...(Can I say that? I think I can say that...it's probably open content, right?)

Greg A. Vaughan wrote:

I doubt you can still get it in hard copy, but a pdf of Morten Braden's Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia by Necromancer Games (3.5) would be an awesome addition to any Middle Eastern type game.

You can get it from Frog God Games here.

Or on Paizo here. :)

Oops! I didn't realize Paizo had it too, I figured it was too old and didn't even think to look. Sorry, Liz! :-)

I doubt you can still get it in hard copy, but a pdf of Morten Braden's Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia by Necromancer Games (3.5) would be an awesome addition to any Middle Eastern type game.

You can get it from Frog God Games here.

Thanks, Doc!

City of Brass...Mythic Rules...you just made my head hurt. :-)

Libertad, it will realistically take parties from 7th up to 22nd or 23rd level, if you don't cap max levels at 20 and just keep using the same math iterations for XP, etc. If you do cap at 20, then they will get there no problem and get to play at that level for a good while before they get to the end of the adventure. In the playtest I ran, the PCs all ended up around 23rd level (I didn't cap).

Thanks for the kind words, DaveMage. I consider that high praise coming from you. :-)

Awesome brvheart! I look forward to it.

In addition to the recent good news of learning that I will be able to attend PaizoCon this year, I also will be able to attend North Texas RPG Con June 4 - June 7. I bring it up now (and may actually start a thread of its own later to get word of mouth out if necessary) simply because NTRPG Con is an "old-school" con running primarily older iterations of D&D, Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, stuff like that. In other words, it is not principally a Pathfinder crowd.

That said, in the past Doug Rhea has been kind enough to let me run some Pathfinder games (in particular a couple years ago I ran Bloody Jack from the upcoming release of The Blight) that went well. However, I am always conscious that Doug is allowing me to use up precious table space at his con that could otherwise go to the main games being run there, so I always want to make sure that the tables fill so he doesn't regret it.

So, if you're going to be in the Dallas/Fort Worth area June 4 - June 7 and might like to play some Pathfinder at an otherwise "old school" con (it is really an awesome con heavily attended by the classic names in the business from its early days [from the website guest list]: Bill Barsh, Wolfgang Baur, Bob Bledsaw Jr., Stephen Chenault, Chris Clark, David 'Zeb' Cook, Liz Danforth, DARLENE, Jeff Dee, Jeff Easley, Larry Elmore, Matt Finch, Joseph Goodman, Allan Grohe, Jeff Grubb, Ernest G. Gygax Jr, Kevin Hendryx, Jennell Jaquays, Timothy Kask, Doug Kovacs, David 'Diesel' LaForce, Steve Marsh, Frank Mentzer, Mark Nelson, Erol Otus, Steve Perrin, Merle Rasmussen, John Rateliff, Lawrence Schick, Dr. Dennis Sustare, Jeff Talanian, James M. Ward, Bill Webb,Steve Winter - who run games and mingle in general), then please come by and play at my table so I don't get run out of town as a noob by these old guys. ;-)

Also if you're already going to the con and like to play PF in addition to the classic games (I know we've got some of those folks on these boards), then drop in as well. Bill and Matt Finch always run their Mythrus Tower S&W marathon through the whole weekend, but they don't have any trouble filling their tables so you can come play with me instead. :-P

Seriously, though. If you're available and interested, here are the games I will be running there:

(P.S. - I will be running at least some of these games at PaizoCon as well, but I don't know my schedule there yet, so I can't say for sure which ones at this time.)

*****

Raven Banners over Gatland (Friday June 5, 6pm - midnight)
Moderator: Greg A. Vaughan
Game System: Pathfinder Roleplaying Game
Number of Players: 4-8
Pregens/Level of characters: 9th-level Northlander pregens provided
World/Setting: The Northlands of The Lost Lands campaign setting (by Frog God Games)
Game Info: The marriage of Njal Magnuson and Sveni Gatsdottir will finally end the centuries-long blood-feud between the Hrolf and Gat clans. But the bride has disappeared on the eve of the wedding, and somebody wants the groom dead. Both clans blame the other and prepare for war even as the fathers of the wedding couple, Jarls Magnus Hrolfsblood and Ljot Gatson, seek heroes to save their children from whomever is behind these deeds before it is too late. It is up to the PCs to brave unknown perils and discover the truth before the raven banners of war march from Gatland and the Northlands run red with blood. This adventure is a sneak peak of The Northlands Saga Complete being released by Frog God Games in Fall 2015 in both Pathfinder and Swords & Wizardry versions (this event is from the Pathfinder version). Raven Banners over Gatland is the 6th adventure of that Adventure Path and takes place following the events of NS4: Blood on the Snow, previously released by Frog God Games.

Shades of Yellow (Saturday June 6, 11am - 5 pm)
Moderator: Greg A. Vaughan
Game System: Pathfinder Roleplaying Game
Number of Players: 4-8
Pregens/Level of characters: 5th-level pregens provided
World/Setting: The Sundered Kingdoms of The Lost Lands campaign setting (by Frog God Games)
Game Info: Sir Bartols of Trebes has gone missing somewhere on the Lonely Moor while traveling through those desolate plains. Originally hired as couriers to carry a message to the famed knight, the PCs quickly discover that all is not well. The only thing resembling civilization nearby is the ancient monastery known as the Chapel-on-the-Moor, and the goodly Brothers in Yellow say they have no word of the missing knight. But why does the chapel’s bell toll at odd hours, and how come all the initiates among the brothers have their mouths sewn shut? What secrets lie within the monastery’s crumbling walls that must be so closely guarded, and what might have brought the famed Sir Bartols to this region to begin with? Only the PCs can find out as they explore this lonely place. This adventure is from The Lost Lands: Cults of the Sundered Kingdoms being released by Frog God Games in Summer 2015 in both Pathfinder and Swords & Wizardry versions (this event is from the Pathfinder version).

The Crooked Tower (Saturday June 6, 6pm - midnight)
Moderator: Greg A. Vaughan
Game System: Pathfinder Roleplaying Game
Number of Players: 4-8
Pregens/Level of characters: 12th-level pregens provided (or you can bring your own with preapproval)
World/Setting: The Desolation in The Lost Lands campaign setting (by Frog God Games)
Game Info: The Master of the Tower invites you to enjoy his hospitality. The Bloodmage, as he is called, is well known as a mighty wizard and powerful man in the wilds north of Bard’s Gate, and he is rumored to be a blood-drinker as well. He has heard of your heroic exploits and has issued you a challenge. Come to his tower and best him, and you can claim his treasures. Or like so many would-be heroes before, come and fall before his power and add your own treasures to his hoard. The challenge is simple; do you dare take him up on it? This adventure is taken from the classic Frog God Games release The Slumbering Tsar Saga. It is a simple enter-the-dungeon, see-how-far-you-can get scenario. If you have previously read or played Slumbering Tsar, many of the details herein will be known to you, but be warned—everything is subject to change and all might not be as you remembered.

*****

Okay, there you have it. Registration for the actual games doesn't start until 4/15, but I wanted to get this out ahead of time in case anybody needed to plan their calendar in advance. Registration for the con itself can be done now at ntrpgcon.com

Hope to see you there!

Greg

I have NS1-4 and am overjoyed that the Northlands Saga will be appearing in full someday.

I'm glad you liked them. In addition to the 7 all-new adventures and complete campaign guide, I think you'll like the additional material we've added to NS1-4 as well. :-)

Sorry! I was mainly previewing the KS stuff that I have oversight of. I don't have all the details on the other stuff sometimes. :-)

Greetings,

Man, there is good stuff on the way. I really appreciate the possibility of doing a full version and a maps/stripped down version. I would really go for that. I love the setting and maps, don't really need the AP.

We're looking at doing something along those lines for some products in 2015. If it works well, we could see The Blight get the same treatment.

I am also wondering (and may have missed) if Cyclopean Deeps vol. 2 is still on the way? Is there a timetable-ish? Because of the nature of the layout (that I really like) it will help to have the whole thing as PCs tend to pick strange directions to go....

It's still chugging along. It will either be released at the time of the Cults KS or the Northlands KS depending on how soon it gets finished. So Q1 or Q2 is the current estimate. We haven't forgotten about it. :-)

Good news from Richard Pett today. He thinks he'll probably be able to get me all the completed manuscripts for The Blight by Easter. If that is the case, then an end-of-year release for The Blight is much less speculative. Still no guarantees as the manuscript is still sight unseen, and we'll have to do all the development work from our end as well, but it fills in a lot of blanks on where we're at in the process exactly. So, woohoo!

Badumbum.

Okay, now you've got me going. But I'll limit myself to just one more.

True-true story. Yesterday afternoon I'm in a professional writing class that is a part of my program. (Yes, I know, there are many jokes that can come from this, but I'm going to stick with the nerdy med school one). It's a mixed class with med students and students in other graduate programs.

The professor (an attorney) says, "Can anyone tell me an example of a transition."

Nerdy med student/part-time smarta$$, "The cervix."

(In my defense, all of the med students laughed.)

Badumbum! Okay, I'm outta' here.

Quick maybe-true story related to above post.

Med student working at free clinic comes upon the above-mentioned mess. The clinic doctor hands him a mop and says, "You feel that? Part of your brain just died. It's the part that holds your soul...and the ability to ever eat again."

Dumb med student in classic Simpson's teenager voice, "The hypothalamus?"

I'm sorry, Itchy. Sorry for having said it, and sorry for you loving what I said. (shudder) ;-)

P.S. Clean it up once, and you won't love it anymore...

Edit: Itchy just edited his post upstream and added some additional comments. He's giving me a real run for my money here. Well done, Itchy. :-)

Awesome!

About the gods, though, 250 does not surprise me.

As I was setting up my Tsar campaign, I thought it would be nice to include the deities from the NG/FGG products as part of a campaign guide for my player.

After getting to about 50, I stopped and just decided to use the ones mentioned in Bard's Gate and Tsar itself. :)

I know, right! It seems like there can't be more than 50 or so, even if that many. I mean how could they have crammed that many into those products. And then you keep reading and there's more, and more, and more, and more. It's crazy. I will be happy to have them all catalogued and available in one place for players and GMs to reference.

My one hope to add to them is that we can get Lance Hawvermale to write some more for us. He brought Hawkmoon to Necro and as he wrote additional products (he ended up writing something like 6 or 7, I think) you could see the geography, culture, and deities of Hawkmoon developing further in his mind until at one point he mentions there's an entire unique pantheon in the Domain of like 27 gods or something. And they are WEIRD (in a cool way). They each have a dichotomous and seemingly unrelated portfolio (like being the god of fire and horses or something) Anyway, they're very unique and interesting. The problem is that he only names and describes around 7 of them. I'm hoping we can get him to give us the bare bones of the rest for us to flesh out or to even be willing to write the material himself. This is on my to-do list. I just hope Bill still has his contact info.

Greg, as a certified specialist in spirituous liquors, and a Scotch enthusiast myself, might I recommend a Single Malt or a blend for you?

Better than a steatorrhea with an extra dose of stercobilin. Sorry justmebd, that was completely uncalled for on my part. Yours definitely sounds much better. :-)

Please, for the love of God, people don't look that up!!!!!

Thanks Shem and EZG!

THanks for your posts Greg, you (in your NO MORE GODS etc ranting) are doing nothing more than increasing our appetite for more! So well done and we can't wait :D

I assure you that outcome was entirely accidental and unforeseen. ;-)

(I'm glad it's as exciting to you as it is to us.)

GreatKhanArtist, I can neither confirm, nor deny...but you may be very happy with it.

Greg, what do you envision the Lost Lands setting physical product/products being? One book, multiple volumes, box set? How about the maps? Thank you for spending the time to update us. I always enjoy hearing about the design process and behind the scene peeks.

Probably a big book version and a stripped-down little book version (like Gygax's Greyhawk folio) for people that don't want to spend as much, if we manage to do with KS what I was talking about in a post upstream a little ways. Maps will be big, full-color posters larger than those that came with SoA and Barakus (once again, probably Greyhawk size) but with 250-mile hexes (it's a super big world). It will include all of the continent of Akados (the site of most FGG/NG adventures), a tantalizing slice of the continent of Libynos (where can be found Khemit and Ashuria [aka Morten's updated Mesopatamia] and some other stuff), and a tiny hint of Boros where it comes down as the Shadwolands (the polar continent that connects to the Far North of the Northlands series) where it comes down to the Haunted Steppe as the Shadowlands. What the map will not include is Razor Coast (which is too far south across the mother ocean, Oceanus, though Razor Coast will be mentioned in the gazetteer). The Far North also does not appear on the map, but the Northlands do.

Our plan in the future is to have supplemental campaign releases to fully detail Libynos, Boros (and a little place some people like to call the Ebon Shroud--if I can ever get Logue and Pett off their lazy butts), the southern ocean and its islands, and an Under Realms book to include the Cyclopean Deeps stuff. And probably some more stuff I'm not going to mention yet. But that is all projecting far,far out into the future.

No boxed set. Too expensive, too much hassle/expense to put together, and too fragile for shipping all over the planet considering the greater risk of damage and greater cost to replace. Solid books tend to travel better. I love boxed sets, but I don't see us ever doing boxed sets again. It just doesn't make sense financially for a company our size.

I second what Steve just said. Take the time, and do it right! That's one of the things I like about FGG...you guys may not release stuff as often as some publishers, but you always deliver quality. (And it sometimes seems that you also deliver in large batches....you sometimes seem to go through several months of a dry spell, and then release a good half-dozen products all at once.)

We sometimes have people working on different things and they all come together at the same time. Sometimes this is by design...sometimes it is not. It's sorta what happens with a garage-and-basement publishing company I guess.

UPS used to have these commercials where they would sing about "logistics". Having worked with Paizo many, many times I am in awe at the grasp that they have on the logistics of their production to bring out all these excellent products more-or-less on a constant schedule (and even THEY sometimes get stuck by a slow boat from the printer). Around Frog God I sometimes think logistics is a four-letter word that we punch in the mouth whenever we see it. :)

It's not the med school. ;)

I think I asked that we forget that part... ;-)

Thanks, Shem. My hand-drawn colored pencil maps are nice (I think), but the real credit for their outstanding look has to go to Robert Altbauer, our cartographer. He does an excellent job translating our raw stuff into art.

Awesome! However, I don't understand how the map can be a problem to include in an upcoming (pre-campaign setting) KS, as it was a stretch goal for the SOA KS more than a year ago?

Had that stretch goal been reached we would have released it based on what we had at the time (iirc I think the map was even called a preview map or something). Anyway, it would not have included all the changes, additions, and corrections I have made since then and continue to make based on the materials. The map with the actual campaign setting would have been/will be substantially more detailed and complete. The main land forms and nations and stuff won't change, but a lot of little stuff has.

Q4: The Lost Lands Campaign Setting

Shem mentioned this above, and this is really the trickiest one. This is the compilation of ALL of the old Necromancer Games products AND the FGG products into one coherent campaign setting. I've been slowly working on this nonstop for the last 4-1/2 years ever since we formed Frog God. (Okay, let's be honest, just like everyone else I've really been working on this for my home campaign since Necromancer Games started publishing in 2000).

Anyway, it's been a long, slow, tedious process. I love reading our stuff and the old NG stuff, but I've had to read through every single product with a fine tooth comb and a highlighter in hand to mark every single instance of something that affects the campaign world as a whole (yes, I committed the sacrilege of marking up all my old Necro stuff--but hey! it's the design edition for the Lost Lands, so that ought to be worth something someday, right?), be it a geographical feature, a nation, the names of nobles or neighboring nobles, population types and densities, particular races, languages, snippets of history, original spells, magic items, feats, religions, technology levels, even types of plants in particular regions. Then I add them all to my big binder full of sheets of notebook paper that hold all these little peaks at the larger world. From these I have to reference and cross reference to create a coherent world map that encompasses all of the previous products plus review and account for all new products to create this giant picture to hold all of the older smaller pictures.

My goal with the campaign setting is to allow people to use their old NG stuff without having to change anything for them to set them in the Lost Lands while staying true to the intent of the original authors. If you've got the original adventures, you shouldn't HAVE to buy the updated versions to be able to use them in the Lost Lands.

NG put out something like 80 products, mostly by all different authors, with very little to hold it all together beyond the First Edition Feel philosophy and some individual attempts as interpreting and connecting some of the iconic areas (Bard's Gate, Rappan Athuk, Barakus) while giving tantalizing but uncoordinated hints about other places (Reme, Tsar, Tircople) without ever providing any real detail. These were all considered to be plug-and-play for dropping into the GM's own campaign, so there was very little if any organizational oversight of how they were all developed. You can still use our stuff as plug-and-play for your own campaign, but the setting will give you the option of using ours if you want to.

Some things I learned during this process:
1. Orcus is everywhere (no really, he's everywhere). I like Orcus. He is cool. He is iconic. He is representative of Necromancer Games. And he will continue to enjoy that status with Frog God Games. But, seriously, he's everywhere.
2. Where Orcus isn't, there Tsathogga will be (and sometimes even where Orcus is--I'm looking at you Tomb of Abysthor). It's almost like the founders of Necromancer Games personally identified with Orcus and Tsathogga or something. I don't know; I don't really get it. Anyway, fortunately we at Frog God Games have no such strange predilections. :-P
3. Almost every adventure takes place on the frontier, somewhere at the very edge of civilization. But hardly any actually take place in or describe this alleged civilization. I get it, The Keep on the Borderlands and all that. The edge of civilization is a great place to put the action. But for there to be all this frontier there has to be a civilization somewhere that's encroaching in all this wilderness. To make a complete campaign setting, you really need to have this alleged civilization. So either, all of these adventure-laden frontier areas are within like 5 miles of each other (one seriously bada$$ place to roll for random encounters) or the campaign setting is HUGE with lots of areas for frontiers to exist and lots of civilizations, ex-civilizations, and quasi-civilizations that have encroached upon the wilds enough to create these myriad frontiers and also enough wild places left over for them to be frontiers of. We opted for the latter, so the Lost Lands is a really big place with all the attendant issues and details that accompany that (hint, these don't speed up the development process).
4. There...are...a...ton...of...gods. I think every author created a half-dozen gods, or something like that. Sometimes a fully fleshed-out pantheon and stat block and sometimes just an throwaway reference. (Yes, this is an idol to another forgotten god...no not that forgotten god, another one). Don't get me wrong. I love this hodge-podge of crazy unassociated deities that have been thrown into the mix over the past 15 years. They give the campaign world a real sense of depth and age, but man, they've got to all be catalogued, given descriptions (if they haven't already), placed in some kind of pantheonistic context (or determined to be outside such a context), and have enough diverse cultures, epochs, and landmass to justify these apparently super-religious folk. This leads me to a small request for current and future FGG writers...NO MORE GODS! PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF THESE SELFSAME OVERABUNDANT DEITIES, NO MAS!!!! That's not entirely true. MY spreadsheet is sitting at somewhere over 250 unique divine powers introduced in NG and FGG products. For the most part we're good on the number we have, but there are actually a few pantheonistic holes to fill. WE'll figure out how we want to fill these remaining few slots, and it'll be cool. But that's going to be a seriously huge chapter with even only short write-ups for these deities.
5. If you like evil cults, the Lost Lands is the place for you. There's other stuff for PCs to kick the crap out of, but there are definitely plenty of evil cults to sharpen your swords on. This is not a negative in my opinion, it is just a fact. Our Q1 book is basically all about a number of these evil cults, why the exist, how they operate, and putting them in context with each other. I like evil cults, nuff said.
6. There are all kinds of craziness going on here in the way of campaign styles. Just think: Rappan Athuk, Khemit (from Gary's Necropolis), Bard's Gate, Hawkmoon, Razor Coast, the Northlands, The Blight, and all the others all have to fit and have to make sense as well in their own context without breaking, denaturing, or intruding on any of the others. Heck, at Green Ronin's request we even wrote a sidebar in Razor Coast detailing how Freeport could be placed in the setting. This is no one-flavor campaign setting, I tell you.

Okay, so you get the idea. This process has been going on behind the scenes for several years and, surprisingly, I have been able to assemble this Frankenstein's Daddy with very little change to the source material. There are a few instances where a directional descriptor had to be changed (different authors just sort of made up their own version of the world's geography), but these are actually surprisingly few and unobtrusive. Some of my favorites actually stem from when this was Bill's home campaign world in high school and college, and Rappan Athuk and Sword of Air were adventures that he wrote for his own players. His personal campaign maps were 2 parts Middle-Earth, 6 parts Wilderlands, and 5 parts I don't give a crap just roll for initiative. He was running adventures, not world building! So you get things like Rappan Athuk being on the east coast of the continent as published by NG way back at the beginning of this century and then a throwaway reference to the Amazon Village in Sword of Air (that I didn't catch DADGUMMIT!!!!) that states it's just a few miles east of Rappan Athuk. Apparently it was supposed to be a floating village or something (not really). Anyway, if you bought SoA you'll get that amusing little non sequitur to laugh at. :-/ (Don't worry, the SoA maps and adventure geography totally work, I just failed to catch that single reference in my canon review of the manuscript so you'll just have to ignore it...or consider it an Easter Egg, yeah, that's it, an Easter Egg!)

So how does all this relate to Q4? Well, as I said, I've been working on this in my spare time for years in between writing for Paizo and FGG, school, familying, and working on other more-pressing little projects such as Slumbering Tsar, Tome of Horrors Complete, Razor Coast, and the three I have mentioned above for Q1-3 of 2015. Needless to say, the campaign world kept getting pushed to the backburner. But with Cults complete, Northlands nearly complete, and Blight not only nearly complete but being the written by Richard Pett and requiring minimal input with me, I can finally put aside those other projects (probably in mid year) and devote my attention solely to this project. Despite the many distractions, the world history, ethnicities, and geography has been pretty much developed and/or written. I'm about 7/8 of the way through my reading and research of the older projects. My deity list is reaching critical mass but is shaping up into a neat series of pantheons and outlyers. And my prototype poster maps have managed to incorporate all of the above as well as leave room from plenty of new adventures to come.

So while a Q4 release of this is probably unlikely, I think considerable progress on it will be made so that an early-mid 2016 release is not unrealistic. Allowing it to become my main design priority will help accelerate it a lot I believe.

And then I will crawl into a clear bottle of a brown liquid and sink into sweet, sweet oblivion.

(Maybe it's just the med school affecting me, but my attempt at a poetic description of partaking of a well-deserved bottle of scotch now seems uncomfortably like a description of someone drowning in a stool sample when I look at it again, so what say we just forget that last little part, okay? Thanks. Greg)

I was disappointed when NS petered out so can't wait to get in behind that!

Honestly, m1.9p, that has bothered me for years, both for Ken never really receiving the attention and accolades I thought he deserved but also for all for all of the awesome content I knew about that had not been able to see print.

I'm extremely happy to get this bigger, better version than even we had originally envisioned out into the hands of gamers.

Thirded, Dunes was very much a total blast that even took out the previous FGG-environment books.

I think Tom has definitely lived up to the reputation of the old NG environment books and has even raised the bar.

Greg,

Is the campaign setting in the schedule for 2015. You mentioned it in other threads but did not cover it here.

You beat me to the punch, Shem. I was going to post about it tonight. :-) I'll have details up in a little bit.

Looks like a great year coming up! Hope to see the S&W content keep rolling as well.

We're committed to S&W as well as PF, so you will continue to see S&W content.

Wow! It sounds like this will be good year for FGG! I'll keep an eye on the Kickstarters and will likely support them on some level. This past year, I had a couple Kickstarters (one was for FGG) where I had to drop my pledge to the $5 range so I could follow it, but didn't get any products from them.

I have been enjoying reading Slumbering Tsar. It is a HUGE tome and quite devious most of the time.

Sorry to hear about the pledge dropping. When money is tight, it's tight. Have to prioritize, and game books come WAY after important things. One of the things we're looking at for 2015 is remodeling our KS model (still working out the details) in order to create lower backer tiers that still get something substantial related to the main book.

One idea we've kicked around for something like Cults of the Sundered Kingdoms which includes both an AP and a rules-light gazetteer is to maybe offer a lower pledge level for people who just want to nab the less-expensive gazetteer to fill some gaps in their Lost Lands campaign but maybe don't want to shell out for the whole AP series (or don't see the need to replace the original 3.5 versions if they've already got them). Meanwhile the normal higher level would be the big book including all of the above.

We still want to do our big mega-books, and I think though they are priced high that they give an extremely good value for the quality as well as sheer quantity of their content. But we want to be mindful of those who might be interested but either don't want to or can't shell out for the whole thing (I doubt as a gamer that I'd have bought Slumbering Tsar when it came out....fortunately I received a free copy. :-P)

So we're still working out the logistics on all that, but look for some changes to how we structure our KS starting with Cults of the Sundered Kingdoms.

Greg

P.S. Thanks for the kind words about Tsar. The labor and delivery were a painful nightmare and the resulting progeny was worse. :-)

Greg A. Vaughan wrote:

Shem wrote:

I think an end of 2015 or early 2016 is a much more realistic possibility.

Such an awful long time til the campaign guide.

Please make the world map a stretch goal for any and all of the coming kickstarters - I need it!

Unfortunately, since the guide and the map are tying together basically every thing ever made by FGG or NG before, it's a fairly tedious and time-consuming process. I wish I could make it go faster but that will only make mistakes happen. There's simply no practical way to put a rush on it and ensure the full canon remains intact. That said, I'm going to try and get a sneak preview of the world map draft (my own hand-drawn scribble) available for display at North Texas RPGCon this summer.

When the Gulf of Akados map for SoA gets released (if it hasn't already), folks will be able to match its southern edge up with the northern edge of the Sinnar Coast map we did with Barakus. That should help a lot in tying together geographically some of the iconic FGG/Necro products (RA, Tsar, Hawkmoon, Bard's Gate, Barakus, Dun Eamon, etc.).

Greg A. Vaughan wrote:

P.S. For more adventure epicness ... something, something, something, Richard, something, something something, Pett, something something.

Well then, I know where my money's going in 2015.

I know this is good for FGG, but somehow this still makes me sad.

(I can actually HEAR Pett gloating over on his island.) :-P

Greg A. Vaughan wrote:

So my goal over the next decade or so is to produce updates of ALL of the old Necro stuff fully updated and integrated into the Lost Lands.

Despite having ALL of the old Necro stuff anyway, I have to say I couldn’t be more excited about the prospect of picking up an updated Pathfinder version.

Does ALL include Maze of Zayene?

Ulp (busted already), ahem, when I say "all" I mean "all that we can". The Maze stuff is Rob Kuntz's so we won't be updating it (though it will still tie in with the Lost Lands setting). We can't do any of the Judge's Guild stuff (which is its own setting anyway). We won't be updating Gary Gygax's Necropolis but it will still directly tie in with the setting and we will be doing new stuff out of Khemit.

Do you have a fairly set idea of the order in which you want to do things, or could twelve months of pleading possibly get me a Pathfinder version of Shades of Grey for 2016?

Sort of. We've got a short-term "to do" list where we've already got major plans/writing/revision underway and a long-term "to do" list. That's more on the long-term list, so a 2016 release is probably unlikely. We'll try to do some cool stuff though for 2016.

Remember, if you're willing to do your 3.5 to PF conversion on the fly, all of the old stuff will still work just fine with the Lost Lands setting. The setting is being built off of the old books rather than the old books being changed for the setting. There are very minor changes here and there (see the map in Shades vs. the map we produced with Sword of Air, for instance) to make incompatible geographic descriptions fit together, but by and large these types of changes consist of changing east to west here and there. That sort of thing. The PF updates are easily 99.99% compatible with the old books and should be seamlessly playable with them. The main difference is getting more of the "big picture" description from the updated versions like regional gazetteers and whatever bonus add-ins we decide to do (like the 3 new adventures in Cults of the Sundered Kingdoms). So if you're jonesing to run Shades in Lost Lands. Just use the SoA area map as your guide over the area map in the book and you should be otherwise good to go.

OK, I was wrong, turns out I could be more excited! That sounds awesome. Since it is (presumably) going to be a Kickstarter, is there any chance of a stretch goal for an adventure from level 1 to 3?

This is a possibility. We haven't got all the stretch stuff worked out yet. However, Barakus works as an absolutely perfect lead-in for 1st level PCs to get into Cults. It actually starts out on the road outside Barakus.

Hi Sunborder, I'll shoot an e-mail to Bill in regards to this post so he can answer further, and I'll go check out the FGG forum thread about the Amazon village.

I'll try to answer what I can here:

The KS comes with the poster map of the area that SoA occurs in, I think. I'm not sure what you mean by waiting for the other 5/6 of the wilderness map.

1. Upriver from Zelkor's Ferry are a of number small settlements, homesteads, and rural farming communities. I don't recall that any are substantial enough to have been named yet (I don't have any named or marked on my map yet). Their population is spread out over something like a thousand square miles, so they have enough numbers to bring some level of trade to Zelkor's Ferry (a LOT of trade by Zelkor's Ferry standards), but they are not significant enough to have been developed for the regional map with its 50-mile/hex scale. It's just some of the southeastern hinterlands of Eastreach Province and has really no geopolitical significance. For that matter Zelkor's Ferry doesn't really either, but it is featured in an adventure so it got labeled on the map for that reason.

2. Freegate lies about 550 miles north-northwest of Rappan Athuk. The only sizable communities roughly between would be the Stormshield (which is a fortified estate and is not particularly sizable but does get mentioned in a couple of adventures, so it was labeled), and the city of Eastwych which lies on the peninsula due north of Rappan Athuk about 50 miles north of Stormshield. Its the major shipping center between Freegate and Eastgate if you don't want to mess with the Kingdom of Oceanus on Pontos Island.

Regarding SoA:

1. I don't know the answer to this and will have to let Bill answer that.

2. Our adventures and adventure paths aren't automatically designed for beginning 1st-level PCs like Paizo does. Slumbering Tsar is a perfect example of that. Our adventures fit the level range they need to fit to be what they are intended to be and allow the GM to control the campaign before and after that. In the Rappan Athuk reboot, new bonus material was added to expand it so a new party could start the adventure right away. Stoneheart Valley is an excellent prelude to Slumbering Tsar and is what I used in my own campaign, but it was not specifically designed for that. The GM can fill in whatever low-level adventure he'd like. But if he doesn't have one we happily give suggestions. Stoneheart Valley would work well for SoA too I suspect. If you've already used Stoneheart Valley with your group, Lost City of Barakus would probably work as well and would probably be my suggestion if you wanted a Lost Lands specific adventure. However, the Cults of the Sundered Kingdoms adventure path coming out this year starts at 3rd level and Barakus is a perfect lead-in for it as well, so that's something to keep in mind. We're still working to get adventures out the door at FGG and as we do, hopefully more will fit what you're needing if the low-level offerings of Paizo or other 3PPs don't work for you, but we've only got a limited number so far to work from.

Fantastic thread. Thanks, Greg. :)

I presume these upcoming projects (other than the environment books) will continue the PF/S&W dual system approach?

Any thoughts on how 5E support is going to fit in to things going forward? (I realise you probably don't know yet, but I wondered if you had any thoughts so far you'd be willing to share publicly?)

As far as I know they will all have PF/S&W support. That is our standard. The only time we won't is when our S&W gurus deem a title as unfit to make a good transition to the S&W rules (Fire As She Bears for example from Razor Coast). So until I am told otherwise (which I haven't been yet), I assume it will be in both. As I know more I'll let you all know.

I honestly don't know about the plans for 5e since that is outside my bailiwick, but I assume that if Necromancer Games opts to continue doing 5e conversions of the FGG adventures, then they will be in 5e as well. But I don't know the Necro plans yet. I'll update on that as well as I know more.

Thanks so much for the previews. Northlands Saga and Cults look to be worthy additions to the bookshelf. Can you say anything about Richard Pett's The Blight? A massive tome that crosses the Styes with a heavy dose of Cthulhu/Ravenloftesque weirdness is probably the FGG book I'm most excited about.

Sorry, I was still working on it when you posted. :-)