We’re down to the last three days of Best Supporting Actors, which ends 9pm Central on Saturday, April 8. This post will be the only promo in this group for the campaign. It was selected as a Kickstarter “Project We Love” and featured in Necrotic Gnome’s last newsletter.

The campaign funded on March 20 and passed the first stretch goal – a custom cover – the evening of April 5. The final goal is an upgrade of the book from softcover digital printing to sewn offset print run. The book is A5 format, and looking like 208 pages…though more is possible depending on how things shake out.

The characters are made for Old-School Essentials, but are easily moved between any rule set that is based on the older B/X or Advanced rules.

What’s in it?

A preliminary Table of Contents. This will change as the book matures, but not too much.

Early Starting Character Previews

Some of the campaign updates featured preliminary views of some of the starting tier characters. These make excellent “who’s in the tavern?” chance encounters, as well as being an outstanding grab-and-go resource for a pickup game or if a mimic eats one of the characters early in the session.

The Severed Hand

Also featured is a fragment of a former mercenary company. Mostly mid-level characters, they represent an elite force that could be menacing a settlement, or be hired as allies or opposition by an opposing faction.

Deslen is the squad leader, and 11 more characters are provided to round out the group.

Characters are all human for convenience, but using the race-and-class options from the Advanced Fantasy Player’s Tome, can be made into anything the GM needs.

Mentors and Masterminds Preview

Finally, I did some work on the smaller set of characters – 17 in total – who are coming in north of the equivalent of 100,000 XP. These vary from 7 HD to 11 HD, and most are single-class specialists. Half are Classic Fantasy, the other from Advanced Fantasy in terms of class choice (though there’s also one Fighter-4/Magic-User-7 in there as an adventurer for hire).

The introductory text makes suggestions on how to use these higher-tier characters, while the actual examples present the worked characters. Duisy, above, makes a good source of bespoke magic items if you have the time and money…or as a quest-giver as she tasks adventurers with retrieving magical ingredients for her work. You can also see that she has some of the 40+ new spells featured in the introduction of the book.

Tis make a good adversary; she has already stolen something, and the PCs are tasked with apprehending her (good luck), or at least returning what was stolen.

New Cover Unlocked!

For a while I’ve been pretty sure that the stretch goal for the new cover will be reached, and we successfully passed it on Wednesday, April 5.

As a result, I’ve been working with Billy Blue on the new cover. With some discussion, we concluded the existing text layout was not as conducive to good art presentation as it could be, so we tweaked it.

He’s still working with me on the sketch, but I’m very pleased with the progress; I hope to show you the preliminary cover pencils in the next day or so.

I can say this:

The front features two parties of adventurers, all taken from the pages of the book. Let’s say Vikings versus Ronin in flavor. This will replicate the “NPC Encounters: Adventuring Parties” section of the Advanced Fantasy Referee’s Tome and show one of the best uses of the book: when the Referee needs a half-dozen opposing murder-hobos bent on the same goals as the players.

The two groups will be arguing in front of a dungeon entrance. Loudly arguing. Focusing more on each other than what’s creeping out of the dark from the caverns beyond. Also not paying attention to the Severed Hand mercenaries, who are approaching both groups from the woods on the back cover.

I’m really looking forward to the final product; Billy does great work.

The next and final stretch goal is a hardback offset printing. One of the printers is even the same one that the Rules Tomes were printed at, and all three of the ones I’m entertaining quotes from are high quality folks from whom I either have product for others, or with whom I’ve printed before.

That’s $10,000 from where we are now, which on the one hand is quite the revenue growth from current…but it’s also fewer than 200 more backers. And we have well over 725 currently following who haven’t yet backed. And so far, more than two folks have just come in and pledged for each one who followed first.

This isn’t even close to done.

Retail Pledges Added

I always wait to the end for these, but I’ve added two retail pledges to the mix.

• The first is five copies of just the Best Supporting Actors books, with no PDFs. That’s $75 and is half off the $30-per-book Kickstarter price. If we hit the hardcover stretch goal at $25,000, those of course get upgraded to the hardback right along with all the other physical copies.

• The second level is three copies each of not just the Best Supporting Actors hardcopy, but also three each of the OSE solo adventures. That’s a smaller amount of each one, but a wider variety for your shelves.

For retailers who want more than 5 or 3 each (depending on pledge levels), add-ons that duplicate the tiers are available.

Add-Ons: OSE Solo Adventures and more

In addition to the PDF and physical copy of the Best Supporting Actors volume, there are optional quick-reference cards available for ease of lookup at the table. The art is on the back so you can show the players the art while the Referee looks at the stats.

Additionally, Gaming Ballistic’s previous work with Choose-Your-Own-Adventure flavored solo-play modules are also available. If you’re new to Old-School Essentials, both physical and digital copies of the core rules can be had as add-ons, or as part of certain “jump start” pledge levels.

Please Pledge for Best Supporting Actors. I’m told that a trove of NPCs like this is a resource that grows more useful as you become familiar with it.