Jharuh

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Organized Play Member. 202 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 1 Organized Play character.



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The 5e version is now available here at Paizo and on drivethrurpg.com

Hoping to get the Pathfinder version finished and uploaded in early January :)


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This is well worth a look for anyone who missed out on Open Design. I learned a hell of a lot from taking part in those projects :)


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Looking forward to this!


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Here's a link to the cover art by Joe Shawcross – I think it looks stunning!

Cheers

Rich


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Hi there,

I've been busy this Easter working on Whispers of the Dark Daeva, converting the adventure from Pathfinder to 5e. This has involved rebuilding most of the NPC and monster adversaries from scratch and also remembering which skills exist in both editions, which have different names, and which need replacing with an ability check! The first draft is done - the next stage will be incorporating learnings and feedback on the story structure and roleplaying encounters from the Pathfinder playtesting.

Last Monday I ran a Pathfinder playtest session for our Monday night group which was very useful, and gave me plenty to think about in terms of making the adventure more enjoyable. We got through about half the adventure in a single 2.5 hour session, so should finish it next time we meet in April. I also had some very useful feedback from veteran GM Paul Baalham on the scenario, and am eagerly awaiting playtest reports from several other groups.

Once this is all in I'll revise incorporate the relevant feedback into both versions of the adventure and get a revised 5e draft ready for playtesting. If you're interested in running the 5e version in late April/May for your gaming group and giving me playtest feedback, please email me at parsantium@gmail.com

In other news, Joe Shawcross is working on the painting for the cover and Matt Morrow is doing initial sketches for the interior art. Hopefully I'll be in a position to share these soon. In the meantime, you can check out the colour cover sketch here.

I'm very excited about how this first Parsantium adventure is shaping up and am looking forward to seeing it out there in the next few months :)

Cheers

Rich


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Hi there,

Happy New Year! I thought I would take this opportunity to update you all on what I’ve got planned for Parsantium this year.

Top priority is to finish and publish Whispers of the Dark Daeva in both Pathfinder and D&D 5e versions.

I am hoping to finish the first draft of the Pathfinder version in the next few weeks. The manuscript currently stands at 12,000 words with only the final climactic battle scene, the “Concluding the Adventure” section, and a few brief room descriptions left to write. I don’t think these bits will take too long to do, but I have a freelance project to complete for Raging Swan Press by the end of this month too.

Once the first draft is complete, I will do a revised draft before sending it out for playtesting. Then, I’ll start commissioning the cover and interior art, and also begin work on the 5e version.

If you are interested in playtesting the Pathfinder version of the adventure, please let me know in below or email me at parsantium@gmail.com

Depending on how it takes to write, edit, lay out and publish Whispers of the Dark Daeva, I may or may not get the chance to go back and finish writing Flotsam and Jetsam, a second adventure for 3rd-4th level characters which follows on nicely from Whispers. Quite a bit of this is already written as I worked on it on and off in 2015 before deciding I needed to publish a 1st level adventure first!

Please do let me know your thoughts, and if there is anything else you would like to see for the setting.

Thanks to everyone who bought Parsantium: City at the Crossroads or Icons of Parsantium or wrote to me with questions and feedback in 2015. I really do appreciate it :)

Cheers

Rich


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Hi there,

It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update on Parsantium: City at the Crossroads on these message boards so I thought it was high time I wrote something!

For the last couple of months, I’ve been working on Whispers of the Dark Daeva, a new 1st level adventure set in Parsantium’s Dock Ward, to be published in PDF in 2016 by Ondine Publishing. If things go to plan, this will be followed by a second adventure that can be played as a standalone, or the two can be used together in a Tales of Parsantium mini-campaign.

As the boat town of Flotsam gets ready to celebrate the Festival of Flowers, a series of violent murders threatens to spoil the upcoming festivities. When the PCs delve into what’s been going on, they uncover an ancient evil lurking below the city streets in the Hidden Quarter that must be stopped before more innocent people die.

My original plan was to write a short adventure of around 10,000 - 12,000 words, playable with Pathfinder, D&D 5e and 13th Age. Following on from some very helpful feedback on these boards, I’ve decided to write and publish separate versions of the adventure for each edition. Since then, I have been hard at work on the Pathfinder version and have been enjoying building some fun, crunchy NPC villains for PCs to battle in the adventure. So far, the introductory section (adventure background, synopsis and hooks) and the first seven scenes/encounters are written, with the manuscript clocking in at nearly 9,000 words. I’ll definitely be honing my prose on the second draft, but I've still got around seven to eight scenes to write, so it looks like the adventure will run longer than I initially expected.

The plan now is to get a playtest draft written by early January, before working on the 5e version. If you’re interested in running the adventure and providing playtest feedback, please let me know below.

More news to follow...

Any questions, please shout :)

Cheers

Rich


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Hi all,

Thanks very much for all your comments! Plenty of food for thought here...

My original thinking was to include the encounter information in edition-specific appendices – a bit like Murder in Baldur's Gate and Legacy of the Crystal Shard but with all the information needed to run the encounter together, including how to vary it by PC level. But that doesn't allow for differences in treasure and skill/ability DCs per system and I wasn't sure how best to handle those, hence this thread.

I'm 2/3 through the Pathfinder version of the first adventure and have been wondering how to make various details work in the different systems. I'm basically running into exactly the issues Thilo pointed out in his first post!

@Tinkergoth – one of my players mentioned Achtung! Cthulhu's adventures in a comment on my blog post on the same subject on parsantium.com. I need to have a proper look at one.

@Ben – I remember those Atlas adventures and I have to say the dual-systems put me off buying them, even though I bought most of their Penumbra stuff. Point well made ;) I definitely need to check out Breaking of Forstor Nagar too as someone else mentioned that one to me recently.

I'm very familiar with the Kobold Press adventures – I did some stats for the 4e Halls of the Mountain King and have run many of them – and it was very interesting to compare and contrast the 3.5 and 4e versions of each. I'm not sure Pathfinder and 5e are as dissimilar, but 13th Age is a different beast entirely and I wouldn't want to shortchange those gamers. Having said that the maps and art will need to be the same across all three versions to get them to stack up financially.

Overall, some pretty strong and very useful feedback that doing separate versions of each adventure is the way to go.

Any other thoughts or suggestions gratefully received!

Cheers

Richard


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Hi there,

One year ago this week, Parsantium: City at the Crossroads was published after more than a year of writing, revising, editing, proof-reading, layout and design by me and my wife Kate.

I've written about how well it did in this post. Apologies for not cross-posting here but I don't think I can include the charts.

Cheers

Rich


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Endzeitgeist wrote:
Reviewed first on Endzeitgeist.com, then submitted to Nerdtrek and GMS magazine and posted here, on OBS and d20pfsrd.com's shop. Cheers!

Thanks so much for the review! Much appreciated!


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Hi all,

Endzeitgeist has just reviewed Parsantium: City at the Crossroads and has given it 5 stars and his seal of approval!

He says "Parsantium BREATHES authenticity and love – New York City meets Byzantium, modern metropolis meets swords & sorcery – this book actually manages to portray a believable, interesting, unique city that oozes the spirit of Al Qadim, early weird fiction and recent phenomena like the god of war-series, all while staying believable."

Read the full review

Cheers

Rich


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Hi all,

Now that Parsantium has been out of a couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking about writing some new material to support the book. Some of this new stuff will be blog posts or articles on parsantium.com but I am also considering some PDF-only supplements for sale on drivethrurpg.com and here at Paizo.

So, what would you like to read about? Vote in the poll here and/or let me know in this thread

Speaking of feedback, I was thrilled that Parsantium got another 5 star review this week :)

Cheers

Rich


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DungeonmasterCal wrote:
I reckon I'm gonna have to buy this, as it's darn similar to the homebrew city I'm basing my current campaign on, which is also Byzantium.

Happy to answer any questions ;)


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Hi all,

We worked on Parsantium all weekend, inputting all our proofreading corrections and making last minute tweaks to the text and layout. Once the back cover blurb had been edited and the cover (front and back) finalized, we went through the whole InDesign file, making sure all the images were at the correct spec for printing. It was hard work, but we got it all done, and I uploaded the printer files to drivethrurpg.com last night and set up the product page.

The next step is for drivethrurpg.com to send the files to Lightning Source for checking. Once this is done, I can order a test copy to sign off. If this is looks good, the print version and pdf will go on sale, hopefully around Valentine’s Day. Phew!

Hope you like it!

Rich


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Thanks guys!

Just had some more finished art in from Matt Morrow - looks awesome! ;)


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Another vote for some more Indian stuff. There is very little available for Pathfinder/D&D compared to the volume of Far Eastern material.

Will look out for the new book ;)

Cheers

Rich


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Hi,

Some of you might know that I've been running a campaign set in the cosmopolitan city of Parsantium for some time. Parsantium is loosely based on a fantasy Byzantium with added Arabian, Indian and Chinese influences.

Since January I've been working on turning Parsantium into a decent-sized city sourcebook suitable for use with Pathfinder, D&D Next, 4e, and any other D&D edition/variant you like. The first draft is finished, weighing in at 88,000 words and I am planning to self-publish the book later this year, all being well.

If you're interested in learning more, please check out my website here

Cheers

Rich