A Bit of Cross Pollination
over 3 years ago
– Sun, Nov 13, 2022 at 12:45:25 AM
Hello again everybody! Doing something a little bit different tonight. A bit of cross pollination here on Kickstarter for some interesting projects that a couple of the backers to Gribble's Guide are also doing. I thought it would be a good idea to bring eyes on their work and show off some of the other amazing things out there. The first thing is...
I love things like this. I'm a huge fan of over prepping for my games. I create and build and tinker for days. That's where the fun of TTRPGs come from for me. BUT no matter how good you are at prep work and building an adventure and world for your group to play in, we all know that they can quickly choose the one option you weren't ready for. Something like this is a good solution for when you don't have something ready.
Every tavern, in every town should have some kind of job board inside. Postings the locals use to get help with various projects, or hiring some muscle for protection.
Our newest book for Architects of the Deep is a collection of Notice Boards of various jobs, tasks, mysteries, bounties and items that you can use to create side-quests for your players to take on and possibly earn extra gold. The book includes 300 boards to use in your next campaign.
This would come as a great way to create quests for the guilds presented in Gribble's Guide to the Academic Adventurer or just be fun for a quick game for that unexpected get together. And if you're going to be playing with this or with Gribble's Guide, you can't go wrong with another set of dice. Because, hey, you can never have enough dice.
The Dragon Eye Dice sets will initially be released with seven colour options, representing the many different Gods of Luminous Ages. We hope to unlock all 14 colours to introduce you to all the Gods and some characters from Luminous Ages.
Kickstarter is the best place to buy our dice with amazing special deals.
Early Bird: $128 AUD (~$80 USD) SAVE $21 AUD
Kickstarter: $135 AUD (~$85 USD) SAVE $14 AUD
Normal RRP: $149 AUD (~$95 USD)
The Dice are hollow Dragon GEM Dice that are made of 98% Copper and 2% Zinc, making them lighter than other metal dice but still very durable with a wonderful jingle sound when shaken together.
They come in a metal tray as a set of 7 including 1xD4, 1xD6, 1xD8 1xD10, 1xPercentile D10, 1xD12 and 1xD20.
The Iris of each Dragons eye is a premium natural ZIRCON Gemstone embedded into each side of the dice.
And that's it for this update. I thought it would be nice to shine the light on some other interesting projects on here and help other creators out. Don't forget, Monday we'll have another update coming with the first of the subclasses for playtesting. Look forward to that and run it through its paces. We want all of these to be as good as possible so we're looking for feedback from them.
Until next time.
David
Introducing Gribble & the NPCs
over 3 years ago
– Sat, Nov 12, 2022 at 12:18:58 PM
We blew through the first round of stretch goals fairly quick! And now we're working on the next set. As we're moving through this set, I thought I'd take the time to reach out and tell you about ALL the NPC stat blocks that will be coming with the book and actually introduce Gribble to everybody.
NPC Stat Blocks
Well, it's pretty clear that there will be low and high tier NPCs based off the first two stretch goals in this block. We already planned to have mid tier stats as a part of the book even if these stretch goals weren't unlocked but now we're looking at triple the amount you can play with. Once all are unlocked, they will represent novice, experienced, and master level NPCs. I know challenge rating doesn't always match up well but what we're looking to roll with is CR 1-4 for the lower tiers, CR 5-8 for the mid tier, and 9-12 for the upper tier stats. This should give a unique and interesting range of NPCs to populate any game and either aid or challenge your party in interesting ways. After all of these are unlocked, we'll still have Gribble's stat block which will be somewhere in the CR 20-23 area. So, knowing that, let me actually introduce you to who Gribble is...
Introducing Gribble
Taken from the introduction of the book:
Hello! I’ve not had a chance to introduce myself properly. I think it’s about time I fixed that. My name is Gribble Underisle, world renown wizard and spell crafter extraordinaire. I’m sure you’ve heard of my exploits. No? Maybe I can enlighten you over a drink.
I am a gnome and like most gnomes, I tinker. As long as I remember I have led research on crafting and producing beautifully exotic creations. Truly bizarre things that push the boundaries of what is theorized capable. Not all of them have been good. There’s a reason I can’t go back to my home in Twinklegem Veil, but that just means I get to be here with you. And what a delight it is that fate brought us together.
Held within the well crafted and wonderfully outlined pages of this tome is a small offering of my observations and research. If there’s one thing I love more than the chance of extending our time together, it’s an inquisitive mind. It’s astounding what creations and skills can come forth from the unapologetically imaginative. Through my travels aiding such heroes as Faramir the Shiny or Empress Ellifain Rhavaern, I have had the pleasure of meeting with some of the most peculiar individuals. Their own drive to acquire knowledge has fascinated me to no bounds and I’veopened myself to them to try and understand them professionally and personally. When the academics of this land are at rest, I busy myself with my own discoveries, currently I am fascinated with the concept of potential energy that everything seems to be imbued with.
I do hope reading through my notes sparks curiosity of your own and leads you down your own path of academic discovery. In the meantime, though, how about that drink?
Gribble
End exert
Gribble and his personality comes from the imagination of a player of mine. His wizard helped in the initial story that became the Knights of the Shadow Realm campaign. After helping the party in their efforts to defeat Umbrial at the end of this level 20 adventure, he returned to the Material plane and was rewarded by becoming the champion of the realm. He continued working alongside the party for a few more tasks until his past finally caught up to him and the player decided to retire him and move to a different character. Both my player and myself really love this character and the impact he had on the World of Oranth and at our table in general. He graciously allowed me to use this character in this book and I'm excited that he did because it means I can introduce you to one of the strongest adventures in Oranth.
Upcoming
You can see that this current block of stretch goals all revolve around bringing more content to the book in the form of creatures and characters that you can use at your own table. What is coming next is really exciting and means a significant amount more to be added to the book. I'm really looking forward to when I can reveal the next set of stretch goals. To do that, we need everybody's help in spreading the word for this project! We've done great so far at getting to this point and we've still got more to reveal and add to this book! Keep telling everybody you can so we can keep pushing further. The best way to see this project grow is through word of mouth.
Thank you all for helping drive this forward. Until next time...
David
We're Funded1
over 3 years ago
– Thu, Nov 10, 2022 at 01:00:51 AM
12 Hours! It took just 12 hours for this project to fund! That blows my mind. But it does mean two things:
1) All that's left is to start unlocking those stretch goals and
2) I need to start getting to work!
Speaking of stretch goals and work, I'd like to let everybody that's backed so far in on what I'd like to do for this kickstarter. Starting with...
Stretch Goals
If you've taken the chance to scroll down the screen of the campaign page you'll notice there are three stretch goals. I know what you're thinking. This seems low. If you're like me, you like stretch goals. It means extra coolness that gets to be added and you don't have to do anything. Well, here's the thing, we've got more stretch goals! We'll be releasing them in chunks of three so, as we unlock the first three, we'll reveal the next block of three. And we've got some very exciting things waiting to be unlocked. There's a lot that will be added to the final product if we hit every stretch goal. Not only that, I'm planning to give away free goodies! That's right extra stuff outside of what's in this book. But we have to reach all the stretch goals and the only way to do that is to help get the word out on Gribble's Guide to the Academic Adventurer. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell anybody that will stop and let you talk them. I promise you they won't think you're weird... that much anyway. And now for the next thing...
Running the Project
Alright, we mentioned in the campaign that we are nearly 100% finished with the writing for this product. It's true! I've done a lot to get this together already. I prefer to launch a Kickstarter only after a significant portion of the content has been created. It makes me feel more comfortable putting the content out there. That being said, we aren't 100% finished yet. And a lot of that depends on all of you who have backed the project.
You may be thinking, "What do I have to do?" Well, that's simple. You need to look at the stuff I've been working on early and play with it. Once you've had a chance to get a feel for the mechanics all you need to do is give us feedback and we'll tweak what we have. Once we feel happy with what we have, we'll craft the NPC stat blocks. The NPC stat blocks are the only thing we haven't done any work on yet. They are all based on the subclasses so I didn't want to dive into those until we pounded out the subclasses fully. Otherwise you'd have a subclass and a stat block that may work in two entirely different ways.
So here's how I'm wanting to move forward. Starting next week, I'm going to release an early version of one of the subclasses as an update on the kickstarter. Anybody who is interested can download the copy and play around with it. I'll give a week or two (haven't decided how long) and then I'll put out an update on here that leads to a feedback form. We'll gather all the feedback from there and based on what we hear from all of you, we'll tweak the mechanics to make them more sound. We'll do this with each of the subclasses until we've gone through all of them.
And that's it. That's all you have to do. You get some early toys, we get some feedback, and the final product gets a more concise version of each subclass. I'd say that's a win all the way around. Anyway, that's all for this update everybody. I just wanted to give you all a bit of a peak behind the curtain on what's to come and say thank you for getting this funded so quickly. Please share this with as many people as you know that may be interested so we can unlock everything for this project!
Until the next update...
David
