A couple more traveling test deals...

Updated: And thanks to those who took advantage of today's deals! I've arrived in distant lands, and this is one exhausted Sorcerer. ;)

All of the bonus adventures should have arrived. If not, let me know!

Hey, who wants a bogo free adventure?

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Store Test sale! Things seemed to go pretty smoothly. :)

New Online Store

To make many other fun things possible, I needed a new storefront: so last night I implemented one.


Of course, you can still purchase everything through RPGNow or D20PFSRD, but having our own store provides lots of new flexibility. (And more of your support dollars end up with us as well, which is cool.)

I've updated all the 'buy our adventure' links to point to the new store page, which also has links to the other stores. Check it out and let me know if you notice anything strange! :)

The Question of Pre-Ordering the Sunken City

Update: Thanks to everyone who quickly answered the pre-order poll! I think I can surmise there's excellent interest, but not enough bodies in addition to the Kickstarter backers to merit changing up how I was going to do the printing.

Regardless, since I've set up the store to handle things like pre-orders, I'll be following through with something to reward both folks who wish to show their support early and our Kickstarter backers. I'm working out the details, but it will probably involve getting the color version of Perils of the Sunken City (currently not available anywhere!) when you pre-order, and the PDF and e-book formats of the Sunken City Adventure Omnibus & Guide as soon as they are ready. (Which will mean you'll get them 4-8 weeks earlier than the rest of the world as I'm not planning on releasing the digital versions until the print version is live.)

So keep your eyes open, and feel free to let me know in the comments if you're excited about a pre-order. :)

What extra stuff should I include?

The Sunken City Adventure Omnibus and Guide is a 96 page hardcover compilation of all four Sunken City adventures, with some extras thrown in! In the limited space available for extras...

[yop_poll id="4"]

 

Act quickly: I'm moving forward on this with wild abandon! ;)

Thanks everyone.

Combined Sunken City Covers

And here's how the two look together:



Onward and upward! Now it's time to finish the additional content, including a patron write up (with an assist from the awesome Iron Wolf), a concise bestiary, conversion notes for running the adventures at game stores or cons, funnel tips... and maybe a few magic items and adventure seeds thrown in.

The book will be 96 pages long... I'd better get working. Well, sleep first, then working. ;)

Sunken City Front Cover...

Here's the draft, I think we're pretty close.

Sunken City Omnibus Back Cover

Here's the draft I whipped up this evening. :)



Monday I'll start in on the front cover... I've already got something pretty neat sketched out in pencil.

First Stage of Conversion of Perils Complete

Perils of the Sunken City has been completely converted and integrated into the master document for the Sunken City Omnibus!

Now all the fiddly bits begin: tweaking and polishing everything into a unified whole, completing and integrating the new content, and deciding on the cover. ;)

It's going well.

Sunken City Omnibus

So far, the compilation/conversion process is going very smoothly for the Sunken City Omnibus, which combines all four Sunken City Adventures into a single hardcover tome.

Here are the updated Perils of the Sunken City maps in color:

Now that's a horde...

Tried to take a picture tonight of a complete batch of the paper minis that come with A Gathering of the Marked on one of the battlemaps. Well, you couldn't see the battlemap, and I think I need daylight to light them all. At least I'm set for my next session. :)

Battlemaps for A Gathering of the Marked

I've finished cranking out the 13(!) battlemaps for A Gathering of the Marked, and they can be downloaded for free on the adventure page.

Thanks to everyone that has purchased Gathering... we're flirting near the top 15 sellers list at RPGNow, which is always a nice thing! (Being near the top keeps the adventure on the home page, which is always cool.) So why don't you grab a copy today and see if we can move up a few slots!

A Gathering of the Marked is Away!

21,000 words... 60 new images... (including nearly 100 paper miniatures), 6 fairly elaborate maps... and I'm not sure how many battle maps because I'm still finishing them to add to my website. ;)

Regardless, the mega-cruiser that is A Gathering of the Marked, the final 0-level Sunken City Starting Adventure, has rolled into port and is available for download at RPGNow in all of its 48 pages of goodness.

I've added a tablet-friendly mobile version to the mix that I think is quite cool and useful.

(If Gathering was part of your Crawler's Companion rewards package, your code has been sent. If you don't receive it in the next couple hours, let me know!)

I hope everyone enjoys it, and if you do, please take a moment to rate the darn thing on RPGNow. ;)

Everyone's support is, as always, appreciated beyond words. Thank you!

We're done...

... almost. ;)

A Gathering of the Marked is complete: proofed, prepped, ready to go. I'm tempted to just publish it now, but I've decided to include all the paper mini's and battlemaps at launch, and I'm still wrapping those up. But all the heavy lifting is complete!

And this thing is a beast: 24 pages of text, and the appendix stuffed with rumors, handouts, pre-gens, images, paper minis and battlemaps adds an additional 24+ pages. Wow! I believe it's a pretty nifty adventure too, so I can't wait to get it out to everyone.

Most likely I'll finish up the maps tomorrow, depending on how fancy I want to get. Hopefully it will go live before dinner tomorrow, but regardless, Gathering will be up before the weekend.

Here's a few of the friendly locals you can expect to meet:

The Newsletter is Back!

Err, what newsletter, you might ask? Only the lamest, most intermittent bundle of nothingness every to grace our fair hobby! But that is soon to change. With new releases on the horizon the Sorcerer is in a mood to blurt with gusto. So sign up, because when I send the the 'roll over, it's alive!' newsletter with the arrival of A Gathering of the Marked, everyone will get a free goody. (Have to reward the long-suffering souls who signed up ages ago, and waited, and waited some more, never to hear from their sorcerous pal. Nardgrog is ashamed.)

Also if you do sign up, let me know if things go smoothly, as I'm trying out a new service for managing the emails. (If you signed up before, don't worry, I've transfered everyone over.)

Subscribe link to the right ---------------------------------------->

The text of A Gathering of the Marked is done...

Finito, completed, wrapped up, bagged and tagged. ;)

I'll package things up tomorrow and send it off to my proofers. Hopefully it will be in stores in about a week.

(And I love healthy stretches: had one feel-good day where I knocked off almost 4000 words in one evening! By way of comparison, Perils of the Sunken City is about 10,000 words long. If I could keep that up I could push out a full-sized adventure a month...)

A Gathering of the Marked is about 20% longer than The Ooze Pits of Jonas Gralk, and over twice as long as Perils of the Sunken City. Didn't see that coming. :)

Health News

Some of you have asked questions about how I'm doing physically. Traditionally, this has been a very difficult topic for me to discuss, as my role in life has always been that of peace-maker and trouble-soother: I don't like raising additional difficulties and hate to be the center of anyone's attention. :)

But as I've aged I've grown a bit wiser, and have begun to be a bit more open about things. I've been writing up a 'so you want to create a Kickstarter' style article for a while, and it's made me think about my recent struggles, so I feel comfortable sharing a few details/ideas.

(So be warned, the following text details my recent health issues, so if you're just looking for game news, scroll down quickly!)

About two years ago I was diagnosed with type II diabetes. I'm a big guy, but this was still something of a shock. No one in my family has ever had diabetes, and I'd been tested many times before and showed no signs of the disease. But I'd been experiencing numbness and tingling in my feet for a while, combined with a general feeling of cruddiness before the blood tests finally indicated that my blood sugar levels has risen into diabetic range. I immediately made some diet changes, lost 25 pounds, and got my A1C (long term glucose levels) under control. Within four months I was telling folks that if I hadn't been diagnosed, you would never have known I'd had the disease in the first place! I was wrong.

Last spring/summer, I got really busy. I'd launched Purple Sorcerer Games, and completely coincidentally, work-work suddenly picked up with some extremely important and high-profile months-long projects. Also, a family move was approaching, and during the height of the madness, I decided to mount the Crawler's Companion Kickstarter, thinking it wouldn't require that much time to pull off. (!)

I'm approaching 50 years of age, and the days where I could sustain 80-90 hour work weeks are looooong gone. But sustain them I did for nearly 3 months leading up to our move, after which my body crashed, and crashed completely.

I don't even remember much from last September and October. Somehow I managed to complete all my work-work (which I do from home remotely) but basically outside of that my life involved hobbling from my bed to the bathroom and back. Looking back at my messages during that time reveals a black hole. Truly, I can't remember much of anything other than the pain I was experiencing.

Over the past six months though, we've slowly started to get a handle on things. The first step was going on powerful painkillers to help manage the pain. This is something I had strenuously resisted, as I don't like the way they make me feel. I've never drunk or done any sort of drugs, and was uncomfortable with taking anything that altered my mood in any way. But we finally realized that the pain was so bad that it was already clouding my thinking to the point that functioning properly was impossible. We've reached a good compromise where I take the minimum strengths required to keep me on my feet, and many days I'm able to work mostly normally.

We're meeting with a specialist, and diagnostic-wise it seems I'm suffering from four things simultaneously: Diabetic Neuropathy, which irreversibly causes pain and numbness in my feet (and recently, and disturbingly, hands), gout (high levels of uric acid in the blood) which can cause severe pain in specific joints), nerve damage in my knees and elbows, and a form of arthritis related to auto-immune system issues.

It sounds horrible, and really it is, but I am feeling better as time goes on and we're looking into new treatments. I have a great specialist and I'm confident that we'll figure something out. On days when I feel like myself I'm able to produce tremendous amounts of work, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of those days!

Now obviously, the up and down nature of my health impacts my ability to make accurate predictions about how much I'll be able to do during any particular period, and it frustrates me to no end, as I've always been a 'meet deadlines or die' kind of guy. But I hope you'll humor me and allow me to make one poor prediction after another - because they help me.

When I'm feeling particularly lousy, it seems that often only a deadline (even self-declared) can motivate me to push through the discomfort and continue working. I'm confident that as we move forward, I'll be able to have a more predictable schedule, but for the meantime, please continue humoring me. We're getting there.

And finally, if you're approaching middle age, especially if you're a bigger guy, get your glucose checked regularly. As I stated, the damage caused by Diabetic Neuropathy is at this time irreversible. Once you lose feeling, it's never coming back. So stay on top of things and make whatever lifestyle changes are necessary to avoid such troubles. My symptoms were very subtle for a very long time, and I never had test results that indicated a major problem - so you have to listen to your body very, very carefully.

So that's my story for the last year. I'll let everyone know if I undergo significant shifts in either positive or negative directions health-wise. I truly appreciate everyone's support, and I'm glad I'm slowly feeling better. I'm learning how to manage the creative process from within the boundaries set by my health, and I look forward to creating lots of fun new stuff for decades to come.

Take care,
Jon

Thank you... and News

A generous donor pushed us over the top so that we've now raised enough in our inaugural Tools Pledge Drive to cover the server costs and development fees for the next year! Thanks to one and all for your support.

In addition, Awesome Dude Harley Stroh will be donating some super cool stuff for next year's drive. His generosity is amazing, and I encourage everyone to seek out Harley's stuff: I've never read one of his adventures that I didn't love. Top notch adventures from a top notch guy. :)

The text of a Gathering of the Marked is about a day away from completion. Unless something strange happens, the final draft will be going off to all the important parties tomorrow evening or on Tuesday. It's (somewhat surprisingly to me) turned out to be the longest of the three Sunken City adventures, and hopefully you will find much to enjoy in its pages!

Convention Season Approaches!

The organizer of Storm-Con in Summerville South Carolina will be running up to three sessions of Dungeon Crawl Classics at the convention. I've created special character sheets for the event, a tip sheet for running a Sunken City adventure at a convention, and everyone who participates will also receive a code to download a free copy of Perils of the Sunken City! It's coming up quick (July 12-14) so if you're a gamer down South, check it out. Looks to be a fantastic event.

Also, if you're running an event at another upcoming convention, let me know if you'd like to do something similar at your event. I'm debating putting together similar digital packets to help introduce folks to the joys of Dungeon Crawl Classics. :)