Friday, November 7, 2014

Adventures Campaign Update

(This update was originally to be posted to the Towers Two, Broodmother SkyFortress, Horror Among Thieves/Forgive Us, and Seclusium of Orphone project pages, but IndieGoGo has a shit update system that limits updates to 2500 characters, and this wasn't going to fit into that. If are a backer, this is about what you're going to be getting based on what you've already paid. If you weren't a backer, this is what you'll be able to buy in the future.)

OK, this update is long overdue. (I'm active on G+ and haven't ducked questions about these projects there, but updates here have been scarce, yeah...)

This update includes all of the Adventures campaign stuff, since a good number of people went for a higher pledge level that included multiple adventures.

Seclusium and Forgive Us are long out the door. Awesome.

Towers Two now has a basic layout done and is in the hands of the artist. Jeremy Duncan will be handling the art, and it will be FULL COLOR. He counts around 50 pieces that need to be done for the book, and he estimates finishing in May, which means we'd go to press in June if he delivers when he says he can. Yeah, that's right, 50 pieces. It'd be too easy to just get this done as cheap as possible and call it obligation fulfilled, but I am committed to delivering to you nothing less than MAGIC in book form. You click on that link to Duncan's gallery and you tell me that he's not the perfect guy for the job. I dare you. The book will be a 112 page hardcover, with 19 of those pages being the original Brockie draft and Brockie artwork.

Broodmother Skyfortress, bloody hell, the thing is late, and no decision made is going to make it less late, so the decision is to make this not just something that's cool, but to make this a cornerstone of your RPG collection. It's the least we can do to make up for the unbelievable fuckedupedness of the delays. So what we're going to do is nuke the current layout (when I presented the layout as it stands to Rients, I thought it was iffy but he said it was OK so I thought why add more delays if the author is fine with it? I just found out this week that he's iffy on it too and only said OK to it because he thought I liked it and didn't want to cause any trouble...) and start from scratch with the finished text. Alex Mayo did a bang-up job putting Towers Two's layout together and he's going to handle this as well. I've penciled in Ian MacLean for the artwork here, who in response to my "Can you Kirby this thing up?" query responded: "I did a bunch of Kirby-influenced technical work for Ross Payton's Baseraiders stuff, and I've got a fair bit of old Marvel stuff on my bookshelf. When you're closer to production let me know what you need." This will be hardcover as well.

Remember that English Civil War sandbox that $30+ backers were supposed to get? Don't worry, I do. Conley backed out of the project (and refunded his fee!), and I turned to Barry Blatt, who had done a blog series about the English Civil War for the Dungeon Crawl Classics game. Last month he turned in England Upturn'd, a 40000+ word extravaganza of Puritans, Royalists, and absolute insanity beyond anything I've read in quite some time. It's a thing of beauty. However, a project this big just doesn't make sense to produce as an exclusive for a couple hundred people. So I'm making the call that this will be a full-fledged hardcover release, probably around 100 pages give or take, but all of you $30+ backers will still get it without paying a dime more. It's in proofreading now, then will go to layout. Artist as yet unassigned.

So yeah, still late beyond all excuse, but NOT DEAD, and all becoming more and better than intended. That's the only way to go when things don't go as originally intended.

(insert infectiously enthusiastic slogan here)