The Heroes of Thornwall is now available on DTRPG! This is my first complete Pathfinder compatible book, and I'm extremely excited about it. Please take a look! I'd love to hear what you think!
Ok - so here's the official blurb!
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Goblins are loose in the hills surrounding the town of Thornwall, and Mayor Thane has learned that no reinforcements are coming from Downbury Castle. You and your intrepid band of heroes are the only hope for this harried hamlet. If you cannot defeat the goblins and seal whatever Deepland hole they crawled from, Thornwall is doomed!
The Heroes of Thornwall campaign starter provides you with everything needed to launch your campaign. Inside you’ll find:
- An Introduction to Aetaltis: Discover Aetaltis, a fantastic new campaign setting where stalwart heroes fight to protect the people they care about from the rising forces of darkness.
- The Town of Thornwall: A detailed town environment for your fantasy campaign. It includes a full map, detailed building descriptions, equipment lists, and a rich supply of exciting adventure hooks.
- The Green Briar Tavern: A classic fantasy tavern where the party can relax after a long day at the dungeon! It features a color map of the tavern, an authentic medieval menu, recipes for making the cook’s specialties at home, and various tavern games.
- The People of Thornwall: Stats for 20 non-player characters you can use to populate your town, including constables, farmers, merchants, priests, tavern staff, and woodwards.
- The Temple of Modren: A heroic Pathfinder® compatible adventure for 4-8 1st Level Characters. Delve into the Deeplands and face the dark power of the Endrori as you begin your quest to save Thornwall!
Plus five pre-generated characters, new rules for goodwill character rewards, and much more. It’s everything you need to start your campaign off right and support it for many adventures to come.
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Finally...I really need to tip my hat to a few people. Special thanks to Mike Schley for his incredible maps, Amanda Hamon Kunz for her work on polishing up the Pathfinder rules for the adventure, Steven S. Long and John Helfers for their work on editing, Shawn King for covers, Mitchell Malloy for art, and Michal Cross for his incredible layout! This book is what it is because they're all awesome!
Meanwhile, now that this is out the door we're starting work on an anthology of short stories set in Aetaltis called Champions of Aetaltis. It includes stories from Richard Lee Byers, Larry Correia, Elaine Cunningham, Erin M. Evans, David Farland, Ed Greenwood, Dave Gross, John Helfers, Steven S. Long, Mel Odom, Jean Rabe, Cat Rambo, Aaron Rosenberg, Lucy A. Snyder, Elizabeth Vaughan, and Bill Willingham!
That's a promising collection of writers.
Thanks! And as of yesterday, I also set the Pathfinder compatible book to PWYW. I hope you'll check it out!
What is a PWYW?
Pay what you want.
This is a nice looking book; I'm working up a review right now. Are there plans for a PoD via OBS?
What is a PWYW?Pay what you want.
This is a nice looking book; I'm working up a review right now. Are there plans for a PoD via OBS?
Thank you! I had an amazing team to work with. And thanks for working up a review! Hope you like it!
As for PoD, yes! In fact it was supposed to be available already, but it got tied up in the formatting process. We're sorting that out now. It's possible to order a hardcopy from my site since we have a 2nd printer preparing more copies.
I also wrote this since a lot of people have asked me why I did it: Why I made my book PWYW
Thanks to everyone that downloaded the book so far! We're in the top 50 for small press on DTRPG and just broke the top 100 Hottest Titles! I appreciate all the support!
And I'll put it in the Paizo store ASAP! Waiting for the rep to get back from a well-deserved vacation!
Well, it occurs to me that quite apart from "ttotally trusting the gaming community" you can trust them to pay whatever they actually want which will drive "sales" artificially, and thus do very well in the rankings you posted above. Which spreads the word/is great advertising.
Nicely done.
Yeah, I get where you're coming from.
The thing is, I'm just a guy who dreamed of putting out a book (like a million gamers have), and it finally all came together. I'm insanely excited about it. It really is a dream come true.
I spent quite a bit more to make it than the Kickstarter covered, so I also have a nice pile of debt as a result. From that perspective, the whole PWYW thing really is an exercise in trust. If it turns out I was wrong, the first Aetaltis 3PP book might also be the last one, no matter how great the rankings. To put my situation in perspective, I'm in the top 100 Hottest Titles but my profits on DTRPG are just about enough to buy a copy of Pathfinder unchained. BUT I'm an optimist and I really do trust that people will support it if they like it.
Also, I definitely get how the business works, and I have no illusions about the impact of ranking on sales. At the same time, what I'm really excited about is that I saw my book on a list with a Numenera book above it and the FATE book below it on the Hottest Titles list. THAT was awesome, and it only happened because people went out and downloaded the book, and I'm truly thankful for that.
I know some people will think I'm full of it when I write the sort of stuff I wrote here or put on my blog, but I'm taking a risk there too. I trust that as people get to know me and my products, they'll know I'm not just spouting a marketing line. I'm just a gamer who's extremely excited to share what I created.
No worries Marc, I get the passion. I'm much more interested in folk using and enjoying stuff I created than concentrating on sales, which is why I'm happy for my content to appear on d20PFSRD. Not that the two are mutually exclusive.
I'm actually very supportive of PWYW as a concept, quite apart from corollary advertising benefits.
FWIW, having tooled around your blog a bit, and read a few posts you seem quite genuine. ;)
It is me or the new races are just shortly described but not stated out in the book?
Hey, Nicos. The book isn't a complete campaign setting. It's a town/tavern/campaign starter that happens to be set in the world I created. That said, we have full write ups for all the races, and we'll share those at some point soon (and eventually in a campaign book).
As an example, here are the Scythaa. Note that all art for this is visual development and may not reflect the final look of the race.
No worries Marc, I get the passion. I'm much more interested in folk using and enjoying stuff I created than concentrating on sales, which is why I'm happy for my content to appear on d20PFSRD. Not that the two are mutually exclusive.
I know! That's it exactly/
I'm actually very supportive of PWYW as a concept, quite apart from corollary advertising benefits.
Yeah - it doesn't HURT that there are marketing benefits, but that is the main reason.
FWIW, having tooled around your blog a bit, and read a few posts you seem quite genuine. ;)
Thanks! :)
I just happened to be perusing drivethrurpg and happened upon Heroes of Thornwall. After spending a couple of hours reading through it I was excited to find someone else out there who thinks that really fleshing out a town/city for the PCs to connect with is worth the time and effort to do well. I applaud your effort Marc. As another fledgling publisher I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment of this work being more a labor of love than a labor of profit, though that would be nice as well.:)
Hey, Lars. Thanks for the kind words! I'm really glad you like what you see! And yeah, profit would be nice, but breaking even would be pretty cool too. :)
I assume you plan to produce some further adventures that take place in and around the town of Thornwall? How will you handle town dynamics while the PCs are adventuring? By that I mean, will the town be affected by the actions of the PCs or will the adventures be completely separated from what goes on in town?
Yes. If the book does well enough, I'd love to do more. In fact there are a couple more adventures already started.
As for the evolving town, the book already touches on some of that. For example, there is a section in this book that discusses different events that can happen in town while the players are there or off adventuring. This creates the sense of a living community rather than a static backdrop. There is lots of advice as well for how players can get more involved in the town as the campaign progresses. Lots of buildings/sites/characters are there to support this in a story-driven way.
Finally, you'll see at the start of the adventure that there is advice for how the events impact the town. This is just a brief write-up, but allowing the actions of the characters while adventuring to have a direct impact on the community is something I plan to include.
And thanks for checking the book out!
Great questions!
Just out of curiosity, where did you draw your inspiration for this setting?
I drew inspiration from other campaign settings I love, fiction, mythology, and real life. I was definitely inspired by Earthdawn. It's a wonderful setting and they way they wove rich stories around traditional game elements was quite wonderful. Of course fantasy fiction was an inspiration, including a long list of the usual suspects: Tolkein, Alexander, Vance. Myth really inspires me as well, and I drew on everything from ancient folk tales to Arthurian mythology. ANd course real life inspired me as much as all the rest combined. History is filled with wonders and delivers a wonderful blueprint for a rich fantasy setting.
and how much playtesting was involved?
The world was originally created for my own campaign, although I always designed it with an eye toward sharing it in the future. I started running/playing games set in the world more than 15 years ago, so as a world it's seen a LOT of play.
Much of that play was d20 (3.0/3.5). That said, I'm preparing playtest materials I can distribute in the near future, because the Pathfinder ruleset is still relatively new, and I'd love to get more people involved in running the game through its paces. One of my goals, however, is to stay as close to "standard" Pathfinder as I can, so hopefully it will run just as well as PF itself.
Also, why the restriction on matter transfer spells? I have a guess but I hoped you could enlighten me.
In the game, there is a story behind this dealing with the unintended gifting of magic to mortals and the efforts of the gods to mitigate this error.
From a meta-game POV, I think matter transfer is one of the more problematic magical effects from a cultural/anthropological perspective. Difficulty of travel is a major force in shaping our civilizations and societies. Remove this barrier and it has many consequences that are highly disruptive to a traditional fantasy setting. There are also some key story elements that are undermined if matter transfer exists.
That isn't to say that there is NO matter transfer on Aetaltis. Ancient enchanted devices and tapping into the corrupting power of Darkness offer ways of bypassing this restriction. In both cases, however, this becomes a part of the story rather than an easily accessible power.
I couldn't agree more about teleport and magic of its ilk being a problematic magical effect. How can you have epic quests without the long arduous journey. I think players and some GM's have come to see the trip from point A to point B as simply a number of random encounter rolls and a handful of Survival checks. What a missed opportunity! My partners and I are working on some guidelines for our next adventure about forming expeditions and setting up semi-permanent base camps so PCs can enjoy some of the benefits of home without the need to teleport to their favorite magic shop after every session.
I also dislike the spells I like to call "suspense-killers". Stuff like detect secret doors, detect evil, find the path, true seeing, commune.
I agree about making a journey part of the game. There are times to make it a montage and just get the heroes where they need to go, but there are times where the journey really should be part of the story. I look forward to seeing your guidelines! Sounds like my sort of tool!
As for the Detect spells, I actually have some optional rules that we use for this that I hope to include in the campaign book if I get a chance to make it!