Announcing: "The Hand of Asgard" for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG
over 4 years ago – Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 09:11:23 PM

Gaming Ballistic is thrilled to announce yet another product approved for the Norðlond Setting. This one will be ready in time to be included in the Norðlond Sagas Kickstarter as an add-on!

The Gods of Norðlond—The Aesir—are more than just mythological, ineffable entities: they walk among the people of the world, offering their wisdom and might to those they find worthy. This book offers detailed information on the denizens of Asgard, the divine realm worshipped by the people of Norðlond and its surrounding regions.

The book presents additional options and guidelines presented for Clerics who choose to devote themselves to the worship of just one instead of the pantheon as a whole. Also included are more than twenty new Holy Might abilities available for Asgardian Clerics and Holy Warriors to bring the word . . . or the sword . . . to those that need it.

The book is 16 pages long, in 8x10 format, in full color. Written by Kevin Smyth, who just couldn't stop writing after we put the bug in his ear with Norðlondr Fólk. 

As an add-on, it will be $5 PDF, $10 Print-only, or $13 Print + PDF. If you want it, simply adjust your pledge. This book will print and ship together with the rest. No waiting!

For Asgard!

FUNDED!
over 4 years ago – Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 07:39:10 PM

Excellent! Thanks so much for those that are already on board. Now we run up the score, I hope. 

While I'm going to simply get to work on continuing preliminary layout templating, editing, and manuscript improvement, I've hinted here and there that there might be something new coming for this Kickstarter. Might. I need one more thing and then I can go public . . . but it'll be pertinent to this campaign, it will be an intermediate goal between $15K and $29K, and it's SO VERY PRETTY.

Stay tuned.  

$100 to go! I can cut the suspense with . . .
over 4 years ago – Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 05:45:50 PM

. . . some sort of suspense-cutting device.

We are one Allar Bækurnar pledge from funding. 

I'm not getting a lot done right now here at the office.

Don't Forget the Add-Ons!
over 4 years ago – Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 12:08:10 AM

Almost There!

Good morning! We're six full days into the campaign, and if we can score fifteen new pledges today, at the current pledge average, we'll fund! 

Another way to help the campaign is to pre-fund any add ons you intend to purchase. Think you want Fantastic Dungeon Grappling in PDF and you don't already have it? Pick a reward level (as usual) and then add $4 to cover that. Curious about the Dragon Heresy Introductory Set, which is derived from That Other Game but was the origin of the Nordlond Setting? Print + PDF for that is $60. That sort of thing.

As always the last way you can help - and in many ways, the most important - is to say nice things about the campaign in other places. The last few crowdfunding runs have produced between 500 and 615 backers each. A nice number! But with 750 or even 1,000 takers on a given project, I could do even more. I could do more without Kickstarting things - just making product available because I can fund it out of the Gaming Ballistic revenue and profit stream. Not there yet . . . but it's close.

In any case - if we can find 15 or 20 new folks today, the project funds. Then it's all about stretch goals!

When I'm Not Writing

One can't write and edit and do layout all the time. When I'm not doing that, sometimes I dabble in woodcrafting.

My most recent foray has been exploring - though with some modern help - the construction of round shields in the same style as what the Norðlond setting is trying to simulate: Viking Round shields.

This time around, I started somewhat the old-fashioned way: my father in law and I cut down some trees. Forty-year-old poplar trees, to be specific. I had them quarter-sawn, to maximize the quality of the grain in each shield board, and also to stay within the constraints of the saw mill. From best to worst, if you want good shield wood, start with a really old tree (the grain is tighter), and then:

• Rive them out of the trunk by wedge-splitting them and then shaving them into boards with an axe. 
• Rift-saw them, which is effectively using a saw blade to do the above. It's very wasteful of wood, but it's a mechanical way to approach the riving method. 
• Quarter-saw them. The first few cuts are radial to the grain, so you do get the biggest boards of the best quality. Also, you get a very wide variety of wood widths, though that's not too big a problem. The last few cuts are pretty close to . . . 
• Flat-sawn. Much common lumber is this way. Just slice up the log. Maximum yield, but not all of it is terribly good for shields.

After that, I have to take the 1" thick boards and re-saw them to a target thickness of about 7.5-8.5mm, but that doesn't always work out. The end product can be squared off and then joined together like so.

You can see how rough these are. They require planing to finish them. The glue is real hide glue, basically boiled animal parts, so it's one of the main glues that would have been available at the time (the time I'm focusing on would be about 750-950 AD, but obviously Nordlond, with its generic fantasy feel and magical influence, pulls from much wider time periods). The other big one is casein glue - milk glue - which is also a fantastic paint base.

Then when the square blank is done, I use a power planer or a curved scorp to smooth it, cut the outer circle, and finish sand it. That gives me round blanks. I have to taper the edges - the blanks are maybe 7.5-8mm in the core, but taper to 2-4mm at the edge. This lightens the shields remarkably - the target weight is 5-7 lbs.

Used properly, and with some edging and stitching, even just this can be nice protection against cuts and melee. But the poplar isn't a strong wood, and face-on, it's still thin. Recent physical archaeology testing has suggested that a rawhide facing and backing - or even leather, but tanned in a particular way, not the super-supple stuff we think of when we hear leather - add tremendous resilience to the shields. One example, made pretty historically, was able to absorb shots from a 100# draw weight longbow. 

So I procure calf or goat hides, of only 0.5mm average thickness, and laminate them front and back. Again, I use hide glue, but the casein is a bit more compliant and might make a better interface between the hide and the wood; it's a bit more water resistant than the hide glue, which is water soluble. I've not tried that yet, but I want to.

These are works in progress, but the next steps are to trim the excess hide, cut the opening for the boss, cap the edges with more hide edging, and then carve the handle, attach it, and finally attach the boss. When done, it should look like this

So the one on the left is (hopefully obviously) hide-backed and edged; the one on the right is merely edged and stitched.

Finally, for maximum aesthetic value, of course you break out the milk-based paint.

Anyway, this is one of the things I do for fun. You know, in all my spare time.

Norðlondr Fólk Outline
over 4 years ago – Fri, Sep 13, 2019 at 06:40:15 PM

Good morning! As we head into the weekend, we're just a hair short of 80% funding. For what they're worth, projects put us just shy of the top stretch goal, which suggests we'll handily make the offset print goal. Of course, it's all speculation until it actually happens. As always, a tweet, a blog post, a reshare of the link help quite a bit to expand the project's reach.

I thought I'd lead into the weekend by teasing the content of the 16-page Norðlondr Fólk book.

Norðlondr Fólk

Each entry features a template, of course (Traits), plus special traits specific to the template (Special Traits). Additionally, there are unique "grow into them" gifts for every race to spend surplus or (in most cases) earned points on.

So what's in the book?

Familiar Faces

• BOX Racial Gifts
• Cat-Folk
• Dwarves
•      Dvergr (a Norðlond-specific description and traits better fitting with the implied history of the setting)
• Elves
•      Elfàrd (a Norðlond-specific description and traits better fitting with the implied history of the setting)
• Gnomes
• Half-Elves
•      Hálfálfar (a Norðlond-specific description and traits better fitting with the implied history of the setting)
• Half-Ogres & Half-Orcs (orcs and ogres need some tweaks to fit in with the setting history; their niches are usually filled in Norðlond by trolls and storalfar/hobs, respectively)
• Halflings
•      Neveri Halfling (the Neveri are the thorn in the side of the southern border of Norðlond, perhaps 400 miles south of Audreyn's Wall. Nomadic tribes with the analogy to the Algar horse-lords, the Dothraki, or the Mongol hordes of the Khans. Some of the tribes are halflings, and they are not nice.)
• BOX Downsizing (Kromm-approved optional guidance for tweaking out armor for little races like halflings and gnomes)

Beast-Folk

Some of these beast-folk are the results of purposeful rituals to bring a person closer to the totem or favored animal of one of the Gods, such as the Allfather's Ravens, or putting the bear in bear-shirted (berserker). Some of them, well, "a wizard did it."

• CC Björnhjarta (Bear-Folk)
• CC Gullinálmur (Boar-Folk)
• BOX Becoming the Beast
• CC Úlfblóðugur (Wolf-Blooded)
• CC Hrafnar (Raven-Folk)
• CC Triger-Folk

Half-Breeds

• Dragon-Blooded
• Eldhuð (Demon-Blooded)
• Himneskur (God-Blooded)
• Vandræðagemsi (Fae Gnomes)

We have 15 pages to fill, and I'm fairly sure we'll also have room for elemental-touched half-breeds (four of them). I'm not listing them here yet; we'll either see them if we have room, or we won't, because the book is so filled with awesome already that we don't need them.

Hopefully you like what you see. I know my previews of Kevin's work have been really fun to read.