Hello, everyone! I’m pleased to announce that Kickstarter has confirmed our funding this morning. As such, it’s time to distribute the sneak peek of the adventure draft!
The sneak peek will be distributed via Dropbox. All backers at Conqueror level or above will receive an email with a Dropbox link to the adventure in word document format, along with .jpg maps of the region, fort, and dungeon. The draft is complete and totally playable so feel free to dive in! (You may post excerpts of the draft and maps in the context of a review or preview, but the drafts are not for public distribution at this time.)
If you are a King- or Emperor-level backer, your rewards include the opportunity to help us illustrate the module. Please review the draft and email us with your art order. Kings are entitled to a 1/2 page black and white illustration and Emperors are entitled to a full-page black and white illustration. We will need to receive all art orders by June 15, 2015. (We will also be including an opportunity to present your art order in the backer surveys, which we’ll send out later this week.
Now I have to wonder how much not work I can get away with doing to read this document. Super excited.
It’s highly unlikely this would happen for me, but would it be acceptable to run the adventure while recording it as a podcast/youtube video and make that publicly available?
Ooh. I just realized I have information somewhere on sailors’ rations during the Armada campaign, which I could use to calculate the cost of their upkeep.
Anyone been reading Black Company recently? I noticed the villian is “The Lady”.
I also noticed that Audarius cameo.
It’s probably been asked before, but any chance we could get a ‘blank’ version of the Domain Record? It seems like the sort of thing that would fit perfectly as an Excel sheet (and might already exist in such a format).
In a fit of very little helpfulness, I note that the reference for fetid gas-breathing wyrm can be found on page 164 of ACKS. (Referenced as pXX in Idimmu’s description on page 56).
At one point, I remember you mentioned trying to get people to call you Audarius; I had assumed it was a Stan Lee-style cameo. Perhaps I was wrong!
And yup, the Turos Tem one (appearing on page 37). I think the one-page vital stats of a domain is an awesome thing to have for any player who has made it to domain game.
On the map, the inn is building 22, but in the text, the inn is building 23.
All dimensions of inn rooms given in the text save those of the courtyard seem to be double what the map says.
Are the maps not included in the download (e.g., of the mural towers, stable-barracks block) not part of the backer preview?
From a design perspective, what motivated the placement of the buried temple inside the wall of forts, as opposed to closer that ominous-sounding Dark Wall?
Would it at all be possible for the final pdf to include the region map, minus the hidden sites (so the temple, the sinkhole, and everything else)? It is a nice map, and it would make a decent player handout.
Chris Hagerty is doing a final pass on them before release. They’ll be included. He just didn’t want to share them until they passed his quality standards.
See below.
Good suggestion.
Regarding #4, there are two answers:
The module was inspired by, and replaces in-world, The Keep on the Borderlands. The Buried Temple is approximately the distance from Turos Tem that the Caves of Chaos were from the Keep.
The Borderlands region was built specifically following the guidelines in ACKS, C Chapter 10, Secrets. If you refer to the guidelines in ACKS in the Secrets chapter on constructing a region - in particular the advise I give on building a borderlands - I explain that a good borderlands sandbox should have a series of low-level dungeons located near the forts of the borderlands. There are lots of dungeons in the Dark Wall, but they are considerably more challenging dungeons which are suited for a party that can survive a long wilderness trek.
Aryxymaraki - funny you remember that. Audarius was a name i used for a character of mine ages ago. When I built the Auran Empire setting, I named the empire’s founder after my character.
pg 53: “The goblins lost, and we were wiped out.” Presumably the “we” should not be there?
pg 54: The description for room 43 suggests that there should be letter labels on the map denoting each orthostat’s location. No such labels seem to exist.
pg 69: “The shells are harmless and be destroyed with…” My suspicion is that a word has been omitted.
Alex:
Re: the temple’s location. That makes sense, and I assumed it was based on Chapter 10. If you will forgive a bit of pedantry on my part, the temple could also have been placed on the other side of the Krysivor River and still be no further away from T. Tem than it currently is. E.g., in the forest across from T. Tem, T. Luin, and T. Drav. In the canonical Borderlands, would such a location be too deadly for starting characters to travel to?
Yukiomo: Thanks for catching the typos/map problems.
As far as the temple, you are correct, but then that would make the buried temple considerably less of a threat. There are generally beastmen on the opposite side of the Krysivor River - business as usual. Beastmen in sufficient numbers raiding the road to Siadanos is unusual enough to cause worry.
