Matthew Finch's page

Interesting tie in with the partially owned by FGG (I think) Tabletop Library PDF store

basically free FGG PDFs if the KS does well.

Not owned by FGG itself, but many of the same owners.

Great interview! Could we get Matt and Bill to do a podcast talking about OD&D/AD&D/OSR as a weekly thing? ;-) Really enjoyable!

The difficulty is actually getting the two of us to shut up. :)

There is a pass through the Kal'Iugus Mountains in the South, which turns slightly northward to get to Durbenford. Again, this is just off the map (like by one hex or so).

If you look at the Sinnar Coast Region map, it is off the map a couple of hexes to the west, on the far side of the Kal'Iugus mountain chain. Politically it is part of the County of Toullen, which has pledged fealty to the Kingdom of Suilley.

I have never seen a Kickstarter launch this plagued by technological and communication problems before it finally worked. It's almost as if the real world was trying to keep the Blight from coming into being. Just saying.

Started a thread on ENW jump on in

I posted my song there, too.

Evil city
Dark city
Deadly place to be
Creepy city
Golem city
Flee, Flee, Flee.

<Sniffs the air>
"The sign is carved."

There is no official location for "The Keep," but I myself would put it somewhere along the northern edge of the Wilderland Hills, which is the southern marches of the Kingdom of Suilley. There are definitely small keeps along the edges of those hills to protect against incursions, and in fact a major assault into neighboring Keston Province happened only 10 years ago in the campaign timeline. It could even be placed right along the Trader's Way, if you want it to have a wild but oft-traveled road nearby. The further you get from the Trader's Way, the wilder the territory becomes, so you're basically toggling the Keep's isolation upward as you move eastward.
If you look at the map and find the hex where the Trader's Way appears to go directly over the top of a hill when entering the Wilderland Hills from the north, I would place it in the hex to the northeast of that one (O-17), in the extreme eastern portion of the hex. That places the Keep about 40 miles from the stone Hyperborean road, where there might still be a dirt road but it's into an area where the forts are extremely isolated from any sort of immediate help from anywhere.
Hmm, this might be an interesting update to post, too.
Link to the map I'm talking about: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/froggodgames/the-lost-lands-borderland -provinces/posts/1391215

And I'm finally back from the convention, so I can get on a computer with a real keyboard and mouse. We had a great time meeting people and telling them about the Kickstarter.

Also we sold a freaking TON of books. Actually, that's not true because we only brought 700 pounds or so. I think we might have sold 550-600 pounds of them, though.

Obviously, people don't pledge to Kickstarters when they're wandering around in a dealers' hall buying real books for instant gleefulness, but when they get home and settle in I think we'll see a lot of new people joining the banquet.

I think it's going to fund for certain, in fact, I'm making sure we have enough stretch goals planned, because it could rise an awful lot with 12 days still to go.

The question is in the title.

So a question for the FGG folks, do you guys have any plans to update and re-release Bard's Gate? I'm thinking in the same vein as Stoneheart Valley, Rappan Athuk, Lost City of Barakus, etc.?

It seems logical to do so with it being a fairly central location to the Lost Lands and I'm surprised it hasn't been done yet. So will we be seeing it any time soon?

Yes. :)

Personally I find that map really interesting, especially for scale. It seems to be a bit more of an American scale than a European, this is not a criticism but an observance.

With Pontos Island is bigger than the UK, Eastreach Province is equatable to France. Rampart mountains > Pyrenees. Forlorn > Alps.

Or have I got my maths/geography wrong?

This does imply that each village/town is fairly far apart, however we'll see the population of the towns. But this sizing does create an interesting discourse on how the various trade-routes survive; how isolated villages are; how wealthy lands are.

With carts (4 wheeled) historically moving 20-25 miles a day (generally & under normal circumstances), most of the places are at least a week apart. Hence not something a traveller would undertake unnecessarily, especially dependant on the dangers of monster/bandit attack.

What do others think?

The assumption for the map is that there are plenty of small settlements that aren't marked on the map. The population density is not as high as that of the dark ages in Europe, but it's concentrated around the old Hyperborean roads and virtually empty in many of the wild areas. So for traveling along the roads, you're generally going to find (in my interpretation of the campaign) an inn within a day's travel.

Now, that's not to say that you can't decide that only the settlements shown on the map exist, but our intention was to allow the GM plenty of latitude to place the archetypal little village-in-crisis wherever desired. With 50 mile hexes and even a dark ages population density, each hex would be crowded with labels of settlements.

With a population density of, say, 5 people per square mile, and a hex size of 50 miles (2165 sq. miles), you're looking at 10,000 people in that hex. There are lots of settlements out there.

HOWEVER, those settlements are actually quite hard to even find. Those 10,000 people are farming a total of 20,000 acres out of a staggering 1,385,000 acres in the hex. Just trying to find the cultivated land, much less the actual village, is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Anyone who has managed to get lost in a forest of 5 acres has a sense of how incredibly vast this wilderness would be, even though the population numbers seem high.

Well looking at the coastal road they made the correct call, looks to be around 1100 miles by coast road & only 600 (ish) by boat. So I'd guess that you could possibly make it in a week by boat.

Of course, to me it seems better to make the map larger rather than smaller - especially when spells can reduce the relative lengths & players always assume they can keep an excessive pace up no matter the terrain, road conditions, weather.

Probably something we haven't emphasized yet, either, is that the settlements shown on the map are not intended to be the only ones in existence. They're simply the ones that we're going to treat as canon, the nailed-down content from our perspective, things that GMs can consider a consistent reality that we'll stick to.

You'll find in the book that there are references to villages and inns along the roads that aren't marked on the map at all.

On the other hand, we will treat the population and details of shown settlements to be canon, although of course the GM is free to change anything -- canon restricts us, not you.

We've long had the philosophy that a campaign isn't intended as a restriction; it's intended as a framework of locations that can either be used "as written" for GMs like Bill who really don't care about anything beyond the adventure, or used as a rough draft for the GM to fill an entire campaign world into the gaps.

Our tapestry is woven more like a fisherman's net than like tight embroidery. It still forms a picture, but it's designed to leave room for entire new scenes.

I might actually turn this little post into an update discussing the underlying design of the campaign, because we've also had people raise similar questions on the map update.

Map of the Borderlands in Update #9.

It was a lot of fun to write. It sort of built outward from the idea of a place where a weird twist of medieval-type law created a sanctuary for potential criminals, and then developed to the tactical question of how it would look and be infiltrated/attacked, and from there to the information gathering, and from there to the details of everything that had cropped up in the thinking process.

I am actually the last person on earth with no Facebook account but feel free to link or reprint my comment anywhere as you see fit.

LOL, I do know one other person with no facebook account. I have one, but on the other hand I don't have cable TV or a smartphone. :)

I try and approach the world as if it's still the 80s but with Star Trek technology. If my phone can't flip up like a tricorder, it misses the whole point.

We are now at step 2 -- anyone can now get the module, not just backers.
The link is on the Kickstarter page, on the left, scroll down slightly.

The free module Rogues in Remballo is now live, and at step one of distribution!

Step One is availability to backers of the Borderland Provinces Kickstarter in a backer-only update. All three versions (PFRPG, 5e, and Swords & Wizardry) can be downloaded from the link in the update. Please don't share the link -- this is a way of spreading out the load on the servers so we don't have a server crash like we did with Wizard's Amulet.

Step Two is general availability. The module will be made generally available tomorrow on on the Kickstarter page for non-backers to download.

Downloading does require putting in some customer information so you can get the link emailed to you, but I think all you are required to input is an email address.
Matt

Woot! Looking forward to this!

Any of the books come with Deity information?

Some. There's a lot more about the temples, organizations, worshippers, and religions than about the deities themselves. This area is right in the center of the best-known gods mentioned in the adventures, like Thyr, Muir, Jamboor, Kamien, Freya, Telophus, Mitra, and Belon the Wise, so it focuses more on the influence of their various temples.

What there is, in terms of new information on religions, is a detailed discussion of how heresy functions.

Essentially the three areas you're covering, Endhome, Suilley, and Burgundia are right at the intersection of three world supplements. Burgundia is covered in Greg's Cults of the Sundered Kingdoms, Endhome is covered in Lost City of Barakus, and Suilley is covered in the Borderland Provinces.

The Sundered Kingdoms and Burgundia, as described in Cults, is an area where civilization has effectively lost the battle. The area is depopulated and chaos reigns.

Suilley is a kingdom rising fast in the vacuum of power left by the retreat of the Kingdoms of Foere. Suilley technically rules Keston and Toullen since the leaders of those realms have pledged fealty to the Suilleyn King. As a result, Suilley is not only a potential beacon of hope, but is over-extended to the point of paralysis. That's why there is no eastward movement by Suilley.

The eastern range of Suilley becomes less and less loyal, and more and more independent -- these are nobles who opposed secession and now don't like being under the thumb of the Suilleyn monarchy. The area is also less settled than western Suilley, and the feudal system is less organized in terms of a good chain of fealty leading to the king (who is a westerner).

So there's a kind of buffer space in between Suilley's more settled west, and its rebellious and less-settled east. This buffer zone would make an invasion of the Sundered Kingdoms difficult, and the Lorremach Highhills are an impassable barrier in terms of military force. The area between the Lorremach and the Forlorn Peaks is technically part of Suilley but to give an idea of how loose the grip is, the same area is also claimed by the King of the Vanigoths, who has almost as much power in the region as the Kingdom of Suilley. It would be virtually impossible for Suilley to maintain a military supply line from its settled west to the borders of Old Burgundia.

Endhome is a free city, but doesn't exert much political power anywhere, unlike Bard's Gate, which gets itself right up into everyone's diplomatic grill. Endhome's trade volume is still considerably larger than Bard's Gate, though. Endhome exerts a lot of influence up the Gaelon River Valley since this is a big artery of trade for bulk goods and the city's food, but its policy is usually hands-off on outside politics. As a result, Endhome guards it borders against the chaos in Sunderland, but isn't taking any steps to go out there and establish order.

I hope all this helps...

Actually, I think I can answer some of these quickly.
You've actually almost nailed the official history of Suilley, except that the empire comes from the east, in the Kingdoms of Foere, rather than from Burgundia to the west.
There's a really detailed timeline in the campaign book (Greg Vaughan really likes detail, and that's one of the parts he wrote). The Borderlands have had more than one empire wash over them and then recede, and they have always been at the edges of those empires -- which is why "Borderlands" is such an apt name for the region. First the Hyperboreans controlled the area, then fell, then the Foerdewaith took over the area ...
And as the empire of the Kingdoms of Foere are now becoming decadent, drawing back, and only clawing for a control they no longer have, that's right where matters stand now. The campaign takes place against the backdrop of that receding empire.

And all of the above applies to THREE game systems.

Pathfinder, Swords & Wizardry, and Fifth Edition!

That's true about the $12 price, you could use it in any edition since it's rules-neutral at that level of detail.

The hardcover GM books are all specific to a single edition, though -- they're not dual-statted.

We're planning on launching the Borderland Provinces Kickstarter for the core region of the Lost Lands campaign on October 15, 2 days from now. Many people have asked about pricing: the answer may be a very nice surprise:

(1) The Basic Campaign Price is $12
Yes, you did read that right. You can start a Borderland Provinces campaign on a $12 budget if your goal is just to have basic information about what's around Rappan Athuk and the other major locations. By getting the pdf Player Guide and Gazeteer, which comes with a pdf of the poster map, you're all set for that type of bare-bones campaign if you're a DIY game master who doesn't plan on using encounter tables, secret GM information, lairs, etc. The Player Gazeteer gives basic descriptions of the map locations, enough to work with if you're a build-it-yourself Game Master. And since the campaign also comes with a free adventure, Rogues in Remballo, you have a pretty complete set of resources to work with.

(2) The "Core" Campaign Hardcover + Map + PDF is $35
A library-quality hardcover of the GM campaign book is only $35 plus shipping, and it comes with the poster map of the region (and free PDFs). This contains all the information we mentioned that's not in the Player Gazeteer. Also available just in pdf, of course.

(3) Additional Resources (make-your-own "resource kit")
An extensive pick-and-choose set of additional resources is where the Kickstarter gets fun, and where you can assemble whatever additional elements you want to supplement your core book, creating an extended "kit" tailored to the way you run your games. The main one is a hardcover book of seven brand-new, full-length adventures, called "Adventures in the Borderland Provinces," which gives you an instant starting point for general campaigning. Plus, there's the above-mentioned Player Gazeteer, a Player Guide, a book we call the "Journey Generator," and lots more. None of these are necessary for play, but all are excellent supplemental resources to add.

Greg will be making the official announcement when we launch: it will be some time on October 15, as soon as Kickstarter gives us the link.

Looking forward to seeing you in the Borderland Provinces!
Matt

So, the veil of secrecy over our next project is starting to fray a bit, which isn't unexpected. We're kept this under wraps for quite a while, and information was bound to get out.

Erik Tenkar, who is a prominent blogger in the OSR, leaked a bit of information today about our upcoming Kickstarter, the Borderland Provinces. It's still a day or so before we make any sort of official announcement, and I was planning on having Greg or Bill do that here at Paizo, but fair's fair: the Pathfinder community ought to share in the leaked information alongside the OSR crowd. Erik isn't at fault here, by the way, we gave him an advance copy of the free module and said he could tease it if he wanted, it's just that we waited a bit on the official announcement because we're still organizing pledge levels and so on.

So Erik scooped us, like a good news-blogger should. :)

He mentions the free module we're going to release with the Kickstarter, and although he's specifically talking about the Swords & Wizardry version, it's going to be released for Pathfinder and for Fifth Edition as well.

So I'll just leave this link here without saying anything official: Tenkar's Tavern Reveals a Secret

Nope, it's a small campaign/world area resource. But it's an important one.

Keep in mind, there's one Kickstarter between now and the Blight. Borderland Provinces is a guidebook for the Western Sinnar Coast region, the kingdoms and lands where both Rappan Athuk and Endhome (Lost City of Barakus) are located. It's going to be a much smaller book than the Blight, although there will also be several small resources for it, kind of like a kit.

OO, nice job Chuck, that's the first time I've seen it with the border and title.

Greg, I can't believe you didn't just go all the way and say, "Winter is coming." Because WINTER IS COMING!

It's like if Robert E. Howard wrote the Elder Eddas, with a bit of editing from Ashton Clark Smith.

LOL, Chuck, did he also call you from his back porch to tell you for about 15 minutes straight how awesome it looks? I swear, he was like Gollum with the "Precious" when he got those proofs.

It's all just one long Gregorian rant.

SILVER ENnie for Heart of the Razor, Best Adventure!! Go Frog God!!

lastgrasp, Bill Webb and Lisa are quite good friends, and Paizo will be selling these books once they are printed (and making a profit from the sales). This was a way of showing that we aren't jumping ship, to make the announcement at PaizoCon. If we were changing our focus to 5th Edition then yes, it would have been crass. But it's the contrary; we are staying with Pathfinder, and announcing the plan at PaizoCon sends that message. Or should, anyway, that was the intention.

As Grimmy says, the Wizard's Amulet is specifically designed as an introductory module for inexperienced players, and it is completely different from a normal Necromancer Games/ Frog God adventure. Our adventures are usually location-based sandbox modules.

Experienced players will want to use their own developed styles rather than following our easy-to-play advice, and will probably want to sketch out a bit of a place to set it in. As it stands it is laser-focused on developing the absolute basics.

Hi everyone,
Seeing as how I'm the author of Cyclopean Deeps, even though Skeeter has done a wonderful job of covering for me, I should step up and apologize for the delay. First off, I should let everyone know that Cyclopean Deeps is the one and only thing on my desk, other than handling FGG's legal stuff, mainly contracts. The project is not in danger and is not on hold. It's delayed, and that's simply because I have bipolar disorder and hit a depression period which appears to be finished at this point. There was also a minor legal issue with the series, which Skeeter used to avoid saying that "Matt's crazy at the moment, but that happens." Everyone who knows me in the gaming community (mainly the old school gang) also knows that I have bipolar disorder -- I disappeared for about a year after writing OSRIC, and it has happened a few times. Bill and Skeeter and the gang all knew this about me, but we didn't really think to write it in as a potential risk on the Kickstarter.

In any case, I was actually working on Cyclopean Deeps through the period of time when I was in the depression -- and there's some pretty weird stuff resulting from that, actually -- but what happened was a reorientation across the outline of the 12 parts of the book. By reorientation, I mean that I wanted to make the various parts operate more like a web than like a line. That's the reason why the sudden hold-up took place in the City of Izamne, where lots of potential missions converge. I realized that in order to do what I wanted to do, I had to have a fairly detailed view of what was happening in the entire Deeps, something more in depth than the existing (relatively linear) outline. I discovered that to write #4, I needed to know more about #5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12.

And I've actually been working steadily on these, but it's a classic example of Skeeter trying to force a (certifiably insane) author to say, "this is completed!" I feel his pain, and I know that all of you are waiting with tapping feet and lowering brows.

Here's the status report: Many thousands of words are written, tons of maps are drawn, there is no risk whatsoever, ever, ever, that we would somehow default on this, unless I get hit by a bus and die, in which case Bill would finish it. The project's spine, meaning the "story" of the main powers behind the Deeps -- that's done, it's being threaded into the details as I write them. What's not finished is the integration of smaller parts with other smaller parts that are found chapters distant from each other. The longer I spend on the work as a whole, the better it becomes as a non-linear ... I hate to say sandbox, since it has become a sales-word, but .. as a sandbox. It evolves like a tapestry rather than a rope.

As I understand it, I have made this project run terribly behind schedule. That is entirely my fault, and I take full responsibility. The reason isn't anything insidious -- no other FGG project, including Sword of Air, is on my desk ahead of CD, with the exception of phone calls from Bill. Anyone who has ever been on the phone with Bill understands what I mean. It's like talking to a lightning elemental. But back to the point: if you are angry about the delay on CD, it is my fault, please direct all criticism to me, and please also understand that this is not a delay of inattention, it is a delay of workmanship. There has been no stopping of work, it's just that the work has been divided among all the parts, with the result that the next part has been delayed in order to get all the strands of the web worked into it.

As Skeeter mentioned, I also sent him a bunch of my maps (all pre-cartographer) so he can post those for people to get a flavor for what's being done.

I hope that this helps, in terms of people understanding why the delay existed (and will continue to exist for a short period of time, because I'm still not ready to finalize Izamne until I pull in all the threads).

I don't know if it makes sense to create a Cyclopean Deeps Q&A thread, or something like that (?)

Alice,
The quick answer is yes, you can share the maps. The longer answer is that we'd like you to put (somewhere, in medium-sized print) "Map copyright Frog God Games, LLC, talesofthefroggod.com" onto the map somewhere. You can put your own copyright on there as well, as: "Cartography by ..."

Also, this would have to remain a fan creation; in other words, you can't charge for it.

...and we'd love to see it!

PS: just in case, we reserve the right to ask for the map to be taken down, but we don't anticipate having to do that. This gives us the room to avoid having it show up next to "Pictures from the Book of Super-Erotic Fantasy" or something else we didn't anticipate.

Thanks for being a fan!

Here's how you play two-tome bingo (2TB). You're guaranteed to get some sort of wicked combination that your players will hate, fear, and respect you for. Get out your Tome of Horrors Complete and open up your Tome of Adventure Design pdf. Find a d10. It's probably in the desk drawer or the Crown Royal bag. Okay, got it?

No, seriously, find the d10 or open a random number generator. I know you didn't actually do it yet.

Okay, now:
1) Roll 3d100. That's your page number in Tome of Adventure Design. Go to that page and pick a table if more than one is on the page. Roll a result. That's your ToAD playing piece. It might be a corridor width, a backstory, a villainous plot, an attribute of somke kind of critter, a clue, whatever.

2) Now roll 1d1000. That's your Tome of Horrors page. Probably there's only one monster on it. If you get more than one monster, you get to pick.

3) Combine the monster and the table result.

For example, I rolled page 94 for my ToAD page,and rolled on the description of a visitation this: "Caused by the attenuation of the aether, phlogiston, or astral substance at a particular point. Alternatively, it is the attenuation of material matter which causes the visitation."

Then I got a brain rat on page 452 of Tome of Horrors. So here is my result:
A gap in the aetherial membrane of reality has been letting in swarms of brain rats from another dimension; they are using ESP and mind thrusts (this was with the S&W version -- it's probably more specific in the PFRPG book). Totally cool stuff. Then I thought of backing them up with a brain-wererat, and then I thought that maybe something is chasing them ... (!) What sort of extra-dimensional cat-equivalent eats brain rats is pretty scary to contemplate...

In fact it would be fun to get some results on this from people and put them together into a free FGG pdf...