Hey all, Bill Webb here.
I wanted to give everyone a “State of the Onion” as we at FGG call it, on all current projects. Then I want to talk a bit about that last week on the Bard’s Gate Kickstarter.
First of all, everything is moving along (albeit we had some slowdowns). Quests of Doom 3 is at the printer and is expected to ship to the warehouse in a couple weeks—so figure delivery to you in mid-July. Chuck actually finished this the week after he got out of the hospital—against my orders to rest---so its back on track.
The Blight is behind schedule—the stretch goals and add-on’s of the extra books, as well as Chuck’s issues with his leg and Greg finishing his 3rd year in med school just got us behind. Everything is now written (yours truly was the last delinquent delivery) and in development and art is being purchased. I don’t want to give a final date on this—but suffice to say we underestimated how long the added material would take, and got behind. That being said, the text is awesome, much of the art is as well, and we will, after all, be producing what I believe will be the largest (certainly one of the largest) books ever made for the game! Better late and quality than on time and rushed.
Bard’s Gate actually has all the art and maps done (Skeeter got a head start), and ongoing work is primarily focused on conversion and final editing. While this one needs to print in China (its color), we may actually have the pdfs ready fairly early (like end of summer), and all indications are that this one will be on time.
So have no fear, we will deliver and it will be to our standards of quality—we just have slipped behind on a couple fronts. As a bonus—this gives you time to reinforce your bookshelves before the books get there!
Ok, so Bard’s Gate and the pitch. Those of you who know the Lost Lands know the name Bard’s Gate. It’s basically the hub centerpiece city of both the wilds of Akados and the Sinnar Coast. This place is integrally linked to Rappan Athuk, The Sword of Air, Stoneheart Valley, The Borderlands, Barakus, The Sundered Kingdoms and about a dozen of the Quests of Doom adventures. Heck, it’s the starting point for Sword of Air. Anyone playing in the Lost Lands will benefit greatly from this book.
If you don’t play in the Lost Lands, but just need a city, it works for that as well. Ok, time to do a Grognard check—how many over 40’s used the City State booklet for every city in every area of their game world? The best part about a book like Bard’s Gate is that you can grab bits and pieces of it for use as a city adventure or you can use the whole as canon material—your choice. After all, who doesn’t want to visit Tenkar’s Tavern or Thilo’s Scriptorium? There are Easter Eggs galore throughout the city, and dozens of side quests and adventures that can be tailored for low, medium and high level player characters at the GM’s discretion.
Skeeter and Casey have done a wonderful job of expanding and re-imagining the work that Clark Peterson and I produced back in 2003-2004—this city is much bigger and better than it was before—this is not just a window dressing of the existing material. We have modified most of it and added over 120,000 words of new material.
We designed this book to be used, not to sit on the shelf (ok, the metal one is designed to sit on the shelf, it weighs too much to use at a table I fear). Care was taken to make it so you as the GM can easily read, find and follow plot lines and connections within the book and thereby maximize its utility. After all, since the player characters need to return to a city after killing the dragon and rescuing the princess, you might as well have something waiting for them that wants to kill them!
So that’s about it, except for one final note about the giant maps—these are an experiment, and literally can be used as a table cloth or shower curtain. I know they are pricy, but as we are unlikely to make many of them, our costs are fairly high. They are made of cloth and are quite durable. We had one prototype in Dallas last month, and about 20 folks wanted to buy it from us. I can say that one will be going on my wall (and used as a table mat when the party enters the City). Again, we focused this on utility. It makes it very easy to tell where folks are if the party decides to split, where one goes to the armor shop and another goes to the sewers to visit a certain guild. While not quite to miniature scale (it would have been 14 feet long), this still may be the coolest map I have ever seen (ok, geek mode off).
Thank you all again for your patronage of FGG, and I hope we continue to delight you with our books and other products.
BW
30 JUN 16
ps--coming soon, Mountains of Madness by Tom Knauss, Quests of Doom 4, and a few other surprises!
