The crowdfunding campaign "The Nordlond Sagas" produced four new books for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG. Get those here . . . and much more!
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As part of “coming up for air,” I hope to be fixing/adding a few things to the site, and to my business processes. One of those things is a new method of submitting errors found in all my books. There are over a dozen now, and more on the way, so keeping track of everything is a challenge. There are so many lines of possible communication – Kickstarter messages, Facebook and Facebook messenger, Discord, email, and more (and I’ve received feedback from all of these) that it’s too easy to lose track. And too easy to have them deleted or missed.
So…here we go.
Check out the new page on the menu bar:
Once you click the Errata link, you’ll be taken to a submission page. Only one entry per submission, and you’ll need to choose the product (I’ll update the list as new products come out), provide a contact email, and a few other things.
It is very, very helpful if you give me enough information to easily find the thing you want changed.
There’s only so much I can do. If your suggestion is to replace “Maui” with “Maui, Shapeshifter, Demigod of the Wind and Sea, Hero of Men and Women,” well, that might not fit. Or it might. But it’s not really an error.
“There’s no such thing as a Technique in the Dungeon Fantasy RPG” is a rules-related error.
“Immunity isn’t a thing in GURPS!” is true in the Basic Set, but if you look up Immunity in the Dungeon Fantasy Monsters book, you’ll find it right there on p. 11: “Immunity: Monster cannot be affected at all by the indicated threat – e.g., disease, mind control, or poison – regardless of cause or means of delivery. As it needn’t defend against or resist such things, they don’t even count as distractions!”
I mention this because my publishing to date for Steve Jackson Games’ products is confined to The Dungeon Fantasy RPG and The Fantasy Trip. So if you’re correcting rules usage, please ensure you’re using the correct the source material.
I hope this works out better for everyone. It’s got the advantage of all being in one place for everyone. It gives me the most easily searchable format. And hopefully means that I can do things more efficiently across all my product lines. It also means that I should be able to compile easy “from–>to” errata sheets over time.
We’ll see! I hope it’s useful to you. I know it will be useful to me…if it’s used.
In a few moments, you should receive a copy of a preview file of The Dragons of Rosgarth.
All 112 pages have content except for the Index, which is pending. The ToC needs to be updated to reflect putting the Kickstarter backer list at the end (that had to be done for layout reasons).
There's some art that is pending. The index and hyperlinks need doing.
I've been staring at this for months. I could really use additional fresh eyes on this project, and this is a great time for y'all to help. If you have a suggestion or observe an error, please send me email at [email protected]. Email. Not a discord chat, not a text message on facebook. Definitely not a comment left here or through the Kickstarter private message function. Email, please.
What do I need?
That should do it. Please give it a look. The next version should come out in about 10 days when all the art is in, index and ToC are fully updated, and we're ready to go to print.
Until then and as always, thanks for your patience.
So, I've made good progress this week. It's easier to talk about what's left to do, so here we go.
There are two things that remain undone.
The first is the Introduction and Quick Start. Rosgarth is a unique sort of adventure, in that the cool stuff happens 100 miles away from Town. It's also involving some things that most sane people would simply say "this is why we have nobles and why nobles have huskarls and Wardens and why the king has soldiers." The good news for Kyle (the author) is that The Citadel at Norðvörn set this up pretty well. Those royals, nobles, huskarls, wardens, and soldiers are busy. This is a job for thegns. In fact, it's a job for super-thegns, since the adventure is designed to challenge way-more-than-basic adventurers. Even so: the GM needs a bit of help and advice to point said insane adventurers (but I repeat myself) 100 miles away, to the ruins of Rosgarth, to get 'r done.
The second thing is a glossary. Lots of new stuff in this book with funky names, and I want to return to the practice of having a glossary in the books. I didn't have room for it in Forest's End, but I do in Dragons of Rosgarth . . . so in it goes.
I have three monsters left to transfer from Kyle's written notes. They're not just scraps of paper, of course. Each monster has a stat block and all the things necessary for it, but I need to move that over to the layout format I use, which is an intensely manual process.
One of those monsters is going to be simply trivial, by its nature. The other is a bit more work because it's really a type or family of critters: three variants of one thing. The last is the Big Bad. HE is a two-page spread.
But that's it. Once the Bestiary is populated, with or without art (and at this point, it's mostly with art, because the bestiary art was commissioned first: I knew I was going to have a roughly quarter-page image for each critter), I can compile up the document and get it to you guys for some feedback.
All of the art is under commission, and much of it is in hand. Just today, I received two finished pieces and provided feedback on 2-3 more. All art should be in hand in another week or two.
This means we're coming down to proofing and feedback time. This is a big book. It's not quite the 128 pagers that Nordvorn and Hall of Judgment were, but since it was designed to be MAYBE a 64-pager, things got interesting.
In order to ensure that life moves along promptly, I'd ask that folks willing to do so provide feedback and proofing of the book in a fairly expedited fashion. Ultimately, proofing and editing is on me, the author, and the editor...but many hands make light work, and it's way too easy to have eyes glaze over looking at something you've looked at for 100 times already. As always, if I use your edits and you catch things that need changing, your name goes in the book.
Also: I've got the Kickstarter backer list in there, so find yourself and make sure it's right. Many folks have a Kickstarter Handle and a Backerkit name. I chose the one that sounded more like a real name if I had the choice. If you want to be credited in a particular way, let me know...but if it's obscene, or you want to be known as "Maui, shapeshifter, Demigod of the wind and sea, hero of men (and women...to all, really)" that's going to be a hard "no" for space reasons.
But once that's done, I'll get the two 16-pagers off to Mixam, and the two longer adventures . . . off to somewhere. Korea or Latvia, I think at the moment. Probably Latvia since "going viral" is returning to its original meaning these days.
The very last thing that gets done before the PDF is finalized are the hyperlinks, and that includes Indexing. That's not required in order to get the thing out for feedback, so you'll see an initial version that's lacking those. But once the text is fully done, it's time to ensure that all of the links that need linking are linked. Mostly, I have most things already tagged with a particular style, so it's just a matter of linking them up. Indexing has a feel to it that you get in a groove and then it's good.
So that's the WHAT. The key for y'all is the WHEN. I really do expect to get a proofable copy of Rosgarth out to y'all this weekend.
Art will then be finalized in a week or two, and hopefully feedback, proofing, links, indexing, and tweaks finish up simultaneously. PDFs go out then.
Then we're done until they arrive for fulfillment.
Last week Emily got me the edits to the final content chapter. I got it re-checked, and then into layout. With the art spaces thus defined, I've got 22 pieces of art that have art direction now, and they're starting to be claimed and worked on by the art team.
I'm asking for a two-week turn-around on art. With only two pieces per artist, this is mostly doable.
Now I'm doing layout for the Bestiary for the rest of the day. I made good progress on the dinosaurs so far. That's not a difficult job, but it is very, very tedious. One of my goals for this year is to figure out a way to automate this.
But even if the art isn't done, as soon as prelim layout of the monsters is done I will spool out the PDF (after a once-over for basic spelling) and also get working on a one-page glossary of Nordlondur terms.
So really close now.