A month has passed since my last report, most of it spent sick. Colds and allergies; maybe a mild viral sinus infection or flue. Heck, for all I know I had Covid. Now my kids have something too, which means we’re playing illness tennis.

So it’s slowed me down. On the flip side, I’m much closer to finalizing the full Sedra project.

• Artifacts of Legend and Artifacts of Saga are up on my Shopify store.
• Isle of Sedra is currently at 95% survey completion. The Belladonna solo and Scorpion Labyrinth GM’d adventures are distributed. Decks of Destiny cards are 2/3 finished. Sedra Sourcebook is edited and in preliminary layout, with some art, and some content, being worked but it’s very close.
• Late pledges are still open for The Isle of Sedra.
• Sedra Sourcebook is likely to ship at 76 pages instead of the original 32.
• More alternate Felltower. This delve featured a lot of low-threat combat and ended with some serious magic items and other loot.

Gaming Ballistic Patreon

To help with ongoing funding of art and speed eventual time to delivery, Gaming Ballistic started a Patreon in January 2021. Here’s the weekly update on Patreon status.

• Membership status: 66 patrons and $469 per month.
• Special Content in August:
  • Preliminary view of Sedra Sourcebook and Decks of Destiny cards to date.
  • Concept art for Mission X.

Currently Manufacturing/Fulfilling/Shipping

Projects where hardcopies and PDFs are going out or scheduled to do so.

• Isle of Sedra is in hand with the manuscript, has preliminary layout, and I’d guess is about a week from being backer-worthy, although not 100% complete. Some of this depends on art spaces and how that falls out.

Media

• Been quiet. Probably too quiet.

Crowdfunding and Product Launches

• The Isle of Sedra is in the Backerkit phase and accepting late pledges. If you missed the Kickstarter, this is a good time to get it, as page count estimates went from “96 pages total” to “144 pages total” since the project launched. That’s 28 pages for the GM’d adventure, 40 for Monster Hunter Belladonna, the solo/programmed adventure, and 76 pages for the Sedra Sourcebook.
• Final color cover for Sedra!

Product Announcements

 

Now for sale on DriveThruRPG:

• Shields Up

 

Now for sale on my Shopify Store

• Artifacts of Legend
• Artifacts of Saga

In Development

Writing and content creation for announced projects. Some of this may be cryptic.

Let’s see where we are on other things…

• Infinite Archipelago has taken its first steps, and making this one has helped define the next. Logical next step would be Elazar, the neighboring island to Sedra, plus of course moving Nordlond into the mix for TFT and other systems.
• Mission X: I’ve got about 10 pieces of inspirational art in hand that hopefully will populate a kickstarter pitch-page. Once the art direction and prelim layout for Sedra is in place, I’ll turn my hand to steady daily development of this project. That being said, I expect a LOT of backers are needed to make a full RPG happen, and with backer counts down by 20-25% over the usual, this may be a bigger lift than I can accommodate. We shall see.

• Delvers to Grow Companion. Some new professions. A whole bunch of new disad packages. Epic Upgrades. Everyman Adventurer modules. This can’t happen in its planned form with only 425 backers. I just now had an idea of what to do with this, so I’m going to see what I can make of it. I think I’m going to turn this into Patreon-only content. It’s the right level of “get it done over time” and a solid reward for the Patreon community that can come frequently. But it also means it’ll have to push out in terms of any sort of public release; the market just doesn’t seem to be there right now.
• Let Us Rejoice! Looking at my planned releases and the work required, this is either 2024 or “as time permits” in 2023…and I hope it’s a non-crowdfund release in 2023 and time does

• Inns and Taverns; Two Warring Houses, by Douglas Cole. Systemless. 2024 is likely, and I’m probably going to solicit new authors on both.

I actively encourage prospective authors to drop me proposals having to do with any of the above projects, but bear in mind that there are guidelines and strictures that must be followed to make a sale and move from concept to final.

Wish List

I’m looking for contributions for the Infinite Archipelago. Authors must be detail oriented, capable writers who can take on projects and deliver them to specifications while still respecting the constraints of both system and setting. Some “demesnes” have been mentioned in other works before and can be considered pre-approved for the right writer:

• Now that Sedra is rounding the corner from “thought” to “product,” I would welcome adventures and scenarios set there.
• A realm modeled after a mix of historical and mythological “ancient Egypt.” This could be an original homeland to what became The Scorpion Empire on the Isle of Sedra, or something similar. Known to be one of the origin places of the cat-folk mentioned in the Nordlondr Folk book.
• A realm loosely based on Kamakura-era Japan (or the region around Japan, Korea, and China which has so much game-adaptable history to it). Hints to this realm, called “Inthriki” in the Nordlond and Dragon Heresy materials exist, but could easily be altered to taste.
• The realm of Morevel, which was based on a mix of Hellenistic and mythical Greece with a focus on an uneasy period after totally-not-Philip-of-Macedon unified disparate states by force of arms. This one should probably be a set of idyllic, Mediterranean-climate island nation-states with lots of rowed galleys, phalanxes, heroes, and monsters.
• The neighboring nations – and we can talk about island or no, but probably yes – of Arnulf and Brionnu. These are “not Carolingian France, really” and “not Celtic Britain, we swear.” Arnulf and Brionnu were more or less created to give the Nordlondr somewhere to go raid and pillage…but that’s up for negotiation too. And “Carolingian France” is darn close to “Vikings, but continental” in their equipment and such, but the cultural differences are enough to make it quite interesting.

Friction

Bits of news and items that put a monkey in the wrench.

• The biggest issue in my face has been being sick for the better part of a full month. The sinus issues aside, it’s really hard to sleep when you can’t breathe. So I’m tired all the time.
• Also, school started again for the kids, which has been mixed. On the one hand, I’m Transport Dad most days.
• Inconsistencies in how folks named their art and how I asked for it to be named have led to issues in getting things properly assigned and allocated. This has been very annoying and is mostly my own fault. But I need to come up with a clear naming convention for future art so that when I sort it, I know what I have.
• My motivation is suffering a bit, with a poor year behind me and great uncertainty ahead.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

• The concept art on Mission X is really fun.
• Felltower continues to be a good way to spend a Sunday.
• I think Sedra is going to turn out well, but I’m simply not going to accept “sourcebook” style submissions that are planned on fewer than 64 pages. I mean, Citadel at Nordvorn is a single city and a few towns/villages and came in at 128 pages.
• New Swords! I got a pair of swords from Arms and Armor that I got to play with last night, and they’re proving awful fun. The first is what they call a Grunwald (left), which is a 30” blade, maybe 1125g, cruciform-style sword that proved adequate for Sword and Buckler. I asked A&A to take a Grun blade and mount it with some of their Viking-style furniture (center), and that worked out very well. It came in at 975g, so the lightest by far of my swords, and is very springy. My Elgur blade (right) is extremely rigid, even in the flat rather than the edge direction, by comparison. All of the Viking swords I have but the Grimfrost Asgarthr seem to balance around 15-16cm, but the Asgarthr is also like 1,400g or so, so makes up for a more hilt-oriented balance by being something like 50% heavier than the A&A “Shiff-wald.” I’m not ready to buy another one just yet, but I know what I want to try and get made if I do.