Thank You One and All

During our inaugural free tools pledge drive we raised nearly enough to cover all the server/publishing costs for a year! Thanks to everyone that participated.

Everyone should have received codes to download your free adventures. (Rick who gave through Dwolla, shoot me an email with your email address, it doesn't seem to be included in the Dwolla info I have!)

I'll be contacting those shortly who are in the running for special prizes.

Thanks again everyone! (And if you didn't participate, but would still like to support the free tools, the tools support page is open 24/7.)

Greetings from the Grotto

Wow, past the middle of May already? Good grief time sails. The draft of A Gathering of the Marked is complete, and I'm doing the 'post-final-playtest' re-write to touch everything up before sending it off for final proofing. It's taken a bit longer than expected to get to this point, as 'work-work' (the kind that keeps the lights on in the Sorcerous Grotto) has been busy, and my health has unfortunately been a bit sketchy. But we're getting there. I truly appreciate everyone's support!

Like most small publishers, I work on the adventures and tools in my spare time, and it's often a personal battle of wills to keep pushing on in the wee hours of the night to see things through to completion. But then someone will send me a message about how much fun their group had with one of the adventures, or how useful the tools are, and it really does fire me up. I hope everyone embraces the new adventure, it's been fun to write/test.

The Future
I've been doing lots of research/planning on the next batch of projects. The M-Series of adventures is going to have a cool new look/format/feel, and I can't wait to clear the decks to really start production. I'm also going to be creating a series of 2-4 page 'sandbox' style resources called Sunken Sidetreks that will largely be system neutral: A fun map, a cool locale, some interesting personalities and rumors... I really need something like this that I can crank out quickly to fill the spur-of-the-moment creative bug while I'm working on larger projects.

I also have something ambitious brewing in the hidden recesses of my mind, but the work-load involved will require spreading the effort about a bit. As things firm up I'll offer details. :)

The Tools
On the tools front: if you have not done so, please join in with other loyal tools supporters on the pledge drive! We've raised enough to pay for 9 months of our reoccurring costs to host and publish the tools, which is awesome and much appreciated! But I'd love to be able to avoid having to revisit this anytime soon, so the more the merrier. Awesome dude Harley Stroh might be providing some fun stuff on the rewards side, so I'll probably be extending the close of the drive for a few days to give folks more time to participate. The generators have churned out over 370,000 characters over the past 2 years, and over 3000 happy gamers have installed the Crawler's Companion... if just a tiny percentage of users participate, we'll basically be set for years.

In the coming months, I'll be completing the initial feature set of the Crawler's Companion: adding in the demon/dragon/sword generators, the character generator, and a few extra dice sets. And exploring the possibility of sharing dice rolls between Crawlers, which would be real cool indeed!

Farther out, I have a number of new very cool features in mind for the Crawler, as well as entirely new gaming utilities. As I get closer to production I'll have more details to share.

As always, thanks to one and all for your support!

Thank you for your support: and I've added some rewards!

The inestimably wise Harley Stroh made a fun suggestion about how to encourage and reward folks who give to the Purple Sorcerer Tools Fund Drive: unique rewards that are cool, but won’t require a bunch more work while I’m slaving away finishing the latest adventure!

So I'm adding some rewards, and here is how they'll work:

Everyone who has donated so far, and donates at least $5 in the future will receive a free copy of Lair of the Mist Men. I know many of you already have it, so feel free to forward your code onto a friend, or use it as a prize for something on your blog, etc.

If you donate at least $10, you’ll receive Lair of the Mist Men, and your name will go on a permanent Purple Sorcerer Tools Supporter page. Also, send me a name and it will find its way into an upcoming Purple Sorcerer Adventure! I’m going to be releasing a number of 2-4 page Sunken Sidetreks beginning this summer that are designed to work with a variety of systems in a sandbox style, and they’re the perfect place to throw in a reference to your favorite character or gaming buddy you wish to ‘honor’.

If you donate at least $20, you’ll receive a code to download the Lair of the Perilous Pits bundle which contains Perils of the Sunken City, The Ooze Pits of Jonas Gralk, and Lair of the Mist Men. Finally, your name will go into a random pool to possibly receive a special item. If your name come ups, one of the following ‘treasures’ will be mailed to you, mounted (if appropriate) in some simple way, along with a signed note of authenticity and thanks. ;) If you're a fan of the Sunken City Adventures, you'll hopefully find these goofy, but cool!)

The cave of unique wonders includes:
(Click on any pic to see a larger version)

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  The original hand drawn map of Madazkan’s Court and dungeon from Perils of the Sunken City. This actually pre-dates Purple Sorcerer Games, and I’d forgotten I’d even drawn it. There’s also what I believe to be the stain of a chili bean I dropped that rolled across the page. Magic!
  
  
  
  


• The original sketch of Slither’s End along with a page of very early notes about ‘The Ooze Pits of Jonas Gralk”. Much of the information was later changed, but it’s fun to see how the original ideas evolved.
  
  
  
  


• A very basic sketch of the Lair of the Mist Men map, along with the scribbled notes from the first playtest, including directions that my kids need to make their beds and pick up all their clothes. (No idea…)
  
  
  
  


• The original printed proof of Perils of the Sunken City, where the artwork on the maps was way too dark! Still perfectly usable, and a unique one-of-a-kind item.
  
  
  
  
  
  


• The original printed proof of The Ooze Pits of Jonas Gralk. Looks lovely, but there was a white strip down the center that I wasn’t happy about. Again, perfectly usable, flawed, but unique.
  
  
  

If you are an international donor and your name comes up, to avoid dealing with international shipping I’ll just re-roll, but you’ll receive a free PDF copy of “A Gathering of the Marked” when it comes out.

If you donate $50, I'll also send you free PDF's of both A Gathering of the Marked and the Sunken City Omnibus when they come out. (And you'll get to see the final pre-publication versions of both before they go live.)

Again, thanks to everyone who has given to help support our free tools. I feel very blessed to be able to create stuff for such an awesome community: the kindness everyone around here demonstrates makes it a pleasure to keep designing.

Your Help Can Keep Nardgrog From Ever Making This Face

I'm launching a short-term funding drive to help offset the reoccurring costs associated with hosting the character generators and publishing the Crawler's Companion to iTunes. As they say, many hands make light work, and I appreciate everyone who has already given!

The Purple Sorcerer's needs are small: if the average number of visitors who use the character generators in one week contributed just $10, we'd be covered for the next 7 years. That would be incredibly awesome, as I've got many more apps and utilities in mind, and securing reliable hosting and setting aside funds to insure we'll always be able to cover annual fees would totally rock.

Finally, keeping a despicable sorcerer from needing to beg is a cause we can all get behind. :)

Thanks all.

http://purplesorcerer.com/support

While I'm finishing Gathering, a Call to Action

While I continue to polish up A Gathering of the Marked after the final playtests, I'm also working on the layout of the Sunken City Omnibus, which will combine all three Sunken City adventures and Lair of the Mist Men into a single hardcover, full-color book. One question still being mulled over is how much extra stuff to add to the book, and whether the extra material will go into the printed book, or just into the PDF version that will come free with the printed version.

Over the months folks have shared some wonderful 3rd party material they've created to enhance the adventures. If you've created something you're proud of relating to one of the adventures, such as a patron write-up, monster details, local description, or variant versions, I'd love to hear about it, as I'm thinking about putting together a 'community expansion' of all the best stuff to release along with the Omnibus, perhaps even adding some of the material as an appendix to the Sunken City PDF.

So here's the call to action:
1) If you've created something fun related to the adventures that you're really proud of, and you want to take part in the community effort, show me what you've got! If enough folks participate to make creating a community expansion worthwhile, then everyone who has material included in the expansion will receive a free PDF of the Sunken City Omnibus!

2) What sort of extra material would you like to see included in the Omnibus itself beyond the adventures? And does it make a difference to you if that material is included in just the PDF, or would you prefer to see that information in the printed work as well, understanding that it would raise the cost of the book (roughly an extra buck for each 10 pages of material) and would require a small amount of additional production time?

Thanks everyone for your support and interest in the Sunken City!

Gathering: Almost There

Had a wonderful playtest session earlier in the week for A Gathering of the Marked. We'll be finishing up testing tomorrow evening, and the draft will be going out for final proofing this weekend. I think you're going to enjoy this one, we've sure had lots of fun testing it. :)

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Also, the full lineup of Purple Sorcerer Adventures are now available through the d20pfsrd store in addition to RPGNow. If you're a Pathfinder player you're probably aware of the fantastic SRD site they host, but they're now branching out to become a full-fledged PDF merchant, as well as broadening their focus to include lots of OSR offerings as well!

And since they provide a larger percentage of the sale price to publishers, we're able to knock a bit off our already low, low prices. (Always wanted to say that.) Check it out!