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We're elated to announce that Rise of the Drow is on its way to the printers and PDFs will soon be in our backer's hands!
Looking to the future, we've carefully weighed all the options and are in the final stages of preparing a Kickstarter guaranteed to turn heads! After receiving rave reviews and a great response from subscribers, we've decided to turn Snow White, one of Endzeitgeist's Top 10 RPG Products of 2013, into a revised, premium quality hardback book!
With the experience garnered from putting together last year's amazingly successful crowd-funded project at hand, we've laid out a plan to take our innovative reworking of the classical Hessian fairy tale and make it into a book that will go down in the history of your gaming group as one of the most memorable adventures they've ever had.
A pool of talented designers and illustrators that count themselves among the best in the industry (Owen KC Stephens, Raven Mimura, Christina Stiles, Jen Page, Mates Laurentiu) will be collaborating with co-authors Jonathan G. Nelson, Stephen Yeardley and Will Myers to expand the original adventure into a unique setting with a place in any GM or player's library!
Keep your eyes peeled as Friday March 14th approaches, take a look at the article about the Snow White Kickstarter on NERD TREK, and "Like" the Snow White Kickstarter Facebook page to get info on early backer rewards and keep up to date with this exciting project as we near the opening day!
Thank you for reading! See you next week!
Check it out, be a backer, save reality.
;)
Does this mean you will be releasing less of your other adventures, as ROTD KS seemed to lessen your output
Short Answer: No. Rise of the Drow slowed things down, but so did a host of other issues that many companies regrettably struggle through (change of roster, unexpected health concerns, etc.). Expect frequent releases from AaW in the near future.
Long Answer: I can't speak for certain, but from all my efforts as an editor I know no less than 6 adventures are in queue for artwork and layout. 2 of these are mine and I'm playtesting their sequels this month. :)
On top of those, there are the prologues to Rise of the Drow, (the 2nd of which is written by none other than RPG Superstar Steve Helt) and the epilogue—these are in the layout phase.
Additionally, several others are being developed; most are individually authored projects, but there's also the ongoing monthly theme on the AaWBlog. Last month was a vampire-themed adventure, and this month we're being a little bit off-kilter with material based on pranks.
To keep to our hectic schedule as the Snow White project progresses, all of the magic items, traps, haunts, GM articles, sidequests, and creatures from every month will get collected and expanded into a full-blown adventure with additional content to boot.
Oh, and the artwork keeps coming in (there's a great post on my website if you want to see a stellar Jacob Blackmon illustration) for the retinue of race and class books on the way. While they aren't adventures, I assure you that they are awesome (my favorite response so far has been "oh my god did that really go together").
:)
What will be expected price for the hardcover?
I've been told to refrain from shedding too many details here, and to let the Kickstarter video and Facebook page reveal all of the surprises on March 14th.
What I CAN disclose is that the first 50 people to snag the PDF and the first 50 to snag the hardback will receive a significant discount (early bird backer reward).
Follow the Facebook page for the Snow White Kickstarter to stay up to date on the exact launch date and time! Thanks!
How about drooling over some limited edition collectible Snow White dice? ;)
I expect I will be a backer.
Thank you Steve! We appreciate the support! :)
After careful consideration the AaW team has chosen to postpone the launch of the Snow White Kickstarter until physical rewards for the Rise of the Drow Kickstarter have shipped in June 2014.
Follow us on our Snow White Facebook page to stay up to date on special early backer rewards available in June 2014! LINK HERE
I'm saddened by this move as it means that I probably won't be able to participate in the Kickstarter. Oh well.
I am happy enough with this. As both a AaW subscriber and a backer of Rise of the Drow, I'd quite like to see resources not overwhelmed.
On that note, as a subscriber, I am somewhat worried about what these kickstarters are doing for the workload to subscribers. Now, while Mike's post has molified me somewhat, my subscription for AaW just renewed, I believe this will be the start of my third year, and I'm taking somewhat of a look at it as I consider what I expect from it in the latest year. Now, if the model works, in theory I should have access to 104 adventures from my past two years, but alas, when I check my downloads, there are only around 59 or so. That's a fairly significant shortcoming, though in general, due to the high content of most, I'm not complaining. Though it does seem productivity has gone down quite a bit in the second year all the same. I feels to me that the first year had the majority of these releases.
Now I admit, I tend to sign up for things and only pop in once or twice a year. If there was some notice about a change in the quantity of adventures or something, I've likely missed it. Maybe all these blog articles are for subscribers only and that's what I'm getting for my money now?
In any event, while I certainly like the ideas of the Rise of the Drow kickstarter, giving premium treatments to complete adventure paths that have proven popular, I really don't want to risk devaluing the money I pay for the subscription if supporting these kickstarters could mean less production on the website.
I will admit we had a decline in the number of adventures being released and converted to PDF. To be perfectly honest the site plan never included PDFs but the demand to "own your content" by subscribers was so strong we started to provide this service. For whatever reason I had three different PDF developers all lag terribly over the past year making releasing the adventures in PDF format quite difficult. Many of these adventures are actually available in WEB format on the site in their entirety with full color maps by Todd Gamble, they just aren't PDFs yet.
That said- I just got word that two of my PDF developers are getting back at it and will be getting me some stuff soon (especially once RotD is done with layout phase- 1-2 weeks).
Also- we have myriad of adventures prepared for release and will crank them out shortly. These include three psionic adventures, an adventure in the Scorched Lands (similar to Dark Sun), three releases for the B-Series, a C-Series Dungeon Crawl similar to old school modules from the AD&D days, and a couple other special releases I cannot recall at this late hour (yeah it's late for me- day job starts at 4am :P ).
We will revitalize the site with our creative content and hopefully and regain your support. We've been experience growing pains just like any small business and have learned more in the past couple years than we would have ever expected. Of course we never intended any of our subscribers to suffer and I personally apologize if you feel that you have not received an adequate number of adventures. We shall make this right for you!
Feel free to email me anytime!
-Jonathan G. Nelson
Adventureaweek.com
How about drooling over some limited edition collectible Snow White dice? ;)
Are those dice made of metal?
I was actually pretty glad to hear that this project was being delayed. It gives me a little time to save up for it!
Any information on this with the pushed back date coming up?
I thought I read June 1st. Would love to hear more teases about the product, stretch goals, etc ;p
You did read June 1st, but that's because I'm an excitable fool (sorry!!!). It is launching in June but not until the physical copies of Rise of the Drow are in the mail — because I already flubbed once I'm not comfortable declaring what exact day that is. :P
I'll say (largely because I feel guilty for my error here) that the stretch goals are extensive, and that two enormously talented artists are involved on multiple levels for many of them.
Jonathan might waylay me if I keep going on though, so I'll see if we can't reveal a little bit more beforehand to slake your thirst!