Dark Lord’s Doom: Distributed!

I got word from SJGames this morning that, barring one small tweak, the file was good to go. I did a final check of the file, tweaked the curves on a few images to prevent them from being too dark, and spooled out the file.

And then I hit go…so you should be able to check your Downloads link in Backerkit and see the first adventure waiting for you.

It’s solid programmed adventure…perfect for lockdowns.

First you’ve heard of the More Perilous Journeys project? That’s OK! Pre-orders are still open on Backerkit!

I’ll give folks through November 28 to report errata using this link. Please remember “I’d do this differently” is not an errata, and that especially in dialog, folks might not be using perfect grammar. Beyond that, if you find issues, let me know, and David and I will make a judgment call on whether to incorporate them, taking into consideration the magnitude of the problem and whether the fix is (a) better, and (b) doesn’t break layout.

All the hyperlinks should be active and correct. Those are important to fix, obviously…but they also don’t appear in print, so last-minute “Oh, this doesn’t go where it should!” is much easier for that kind of thing.

The Rest of the Story

So…what about the other files?

Roc of Sages. This one is finished but needs some tweaking of the cover (bar code, sizing of logos, final read-through of the teaser text on the back cover), plus we have to get going on the counter art. The requirements for counters on Rock of Sages are fairly minimal, so this one shouldn’t be too rough.

Catacombs of Living Death. I have quite a bit of counter art for this in place, if I recall correctly. I tried something different with how I did art direction on CoLD…and I liked the results. So that’s a matter of getting the right number of counters and foes in place on the final page. But most of those art assets are in hand. That one should go relatively quickly.

Dragon Hunt! The counter art for this is in the works, but as I reported earlier, the book actually had to grow by a few pages in order to accommodate all the large counters!

There may yet be some tweaking of sizes and content; obviously the yellow will go away, replaced by a 7-hex dragon drawn for the release. There are at least two more pages of counters for this adventure, most of them large.  My goal is to release this one next, so that the solo/programmed adventures get a thorough workin’-through.

The Sunken Library. I’ve made very good progress on this during this past week. Some things changed in my home life (mostly the with my kids) that gave me a lot more time to work, rather than be a proctor for distance learning. So that’s to the good. I have finished the reframing of the material as “more setting and sandbox” and with that background in place – preserving the authors’ good ideas but giving GMs more room to improvise and steer the flow of the game – I can start to drop the challenges and encounters in…and my budget for that is basically 14 pages. So the adventure is still hefty, but includes a lot of room and background for the GM. Motivations and goals of key players. Resources available. Limits (or not) on behavior and action. I’m really hoping to transfer the remaining concepts and challenges into the document over the next few days…and then I can start layout and art for this. It’s the laggard – I felt it needed a lot of reframing to reach its full potential – but it puts a nice capstone on the Jok Sevantes series and I wanted to do the authors’ ideas justice.

What’s Up Next?

So with all that in mind, I should be talking with Juan about the Dragon Hunt! art today. I have most, if not all, of the Catacombs art and the stuff for Roc of Sages is somewhat minimalist. That should allow me to bring those three books into fighting shape relatively quickly. Then they go to SJGames for review, and then to you.

I hope to parallel process the review time for those books to finish Sunken Library.

As the books go out, and then I get errata and tweak feedback, they’ll go for printing. I’ll be using Mixam again, and that has a very short turn-around. I also don’t have to worry much about printing all the books together like I do when I use Livonia…so as they get finalized, they get printed. They’ll ship to backers together, though.

Hopefully that’s a pretty comprehensive update as to where we stand.