D&D 5E Modules: Tomb Raiders of Orek / Into the Royal Tombs

Now it can be told!
over 1 year ago – Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 09:03:33 PM

In the last update, I mentioned that GMT Games had hired me to work with John Butterfield on his next game, Away Team: Voyages of the Pandora. GMT just added it (actually, I think they added it last week, but I missed the announcement) to their pre-sale list, so if you're interested you can see their actual order page and reserve a copy at a discount. I don't know when the game will actually ship — John estimates 2024, but that's just a guess right now — but GMT won't charge your credit card until they're about a month away from shipping. They use their pre-sale numbers for advance planning and prioritizing which projects move the fastest through the production queue more than anything else, so the more demonstrated interest, the higher priority it gets.

BTW, the flavor text in the listing is not my doing. I volunteered to write flavor fiction to preface the game documentation, but GMT didn't consult me about this. What you'll see in the actual game books will have my characteristic panache, I promise.

To that end, I have added a copy of Hesiod to my Buy Me a Coffee wishlist. Pandora is such a perfect name for an exobiology survey vessel. Hesiod is the OG source of Pandora's legend, so I'd like to reach into it for a suitable epigraph for my flavor text and, really, the game itself. Adding a touch of class wherever I go, don't you know.

For the Canadians among you, I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving. For the Americans, I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving next week. For everyone else, I hope this finds you well!

The road goes ever on and on... and on and on...
over 1 year ago – Tue, Nov 01, 2022 at 08:41:44 PM

And away they go: The last of the print rewards will go in the mail tomorrow, and I just authorized Backerkit to distribute the PDFs. If you ordered PDF copies of Book of Chance Meetings or Book of Hidden Paths, DTRPG will get in touch with you shortly, if they have not already. If there is a problem with getting your rewards and add-ons, please message me through Kickstarter and we'll get it straightened out; otherwise, this brings the curtain down on another successful campaign. Thank you all for your support! To some of you, I have said this many times over by now, but it never gets any less sincere with repetition.

As for what happens next, all I can promise you is that you will hear from me again at some point. Exactly when you will hear from me, I cannot say. Six years after firing up the ignition on Ramen Sandwich Press and branching out on my own, and my to-do list of ideas and projects just keeps growing. Another way of looking at it: The road ahead not only goes ever on and on, it keeps branching off into directions, all of which I would like to follow at once. It's not disheartening, like a maze of twisty passages, all of them alike, but it is daunting.

The project moving up to the top of Ramen Sandwich Press' list is another book of random encounters. The working title is Chance Meetings: Villages, and I see it as the first of three books diving deep into random encounters in small, medium and large settled areas. In other words: villages, towns and cities. It will include a bunch of NPC templates (something on which the 5E core rules is actually rather thin) as well as tables covering a variety of village types, classified by the village's core economic activity. Yes, I had originally thought that I could fit everything about random encounters into one big book. Then I realized I couldn't, and I broke it into two books, one for wilderness and one for settlements. And now, I reckon I'll need three books to cover settlements and discuss at length who or what might bump into your party as they round a corner.

How long will it take me to write it? Not too long, I hope. It took me a bit less than a year to finish Book of Chance Meetings at a time when I literally had nothing better to do than work on it. But on the other hand the remaining Chance Meetings books will benefit from using essentially the same template as Book of Chance Meetings, so some of the foundational work has already been done.

However, at the same time I will be working on a project for GMT Games, who recently hired me to help legendary game designer John Butterfield flesh out his next project, Away Team: Voyages of the ISS Pandora. You can call it a reboot, revision, update — whatever — of a solitaire game that John designed for SPI many years ago; as I see it, he's revisiting an old idea and wondering, "How would I do this game now, as opposed to what I did then, in a different time and perhaps with a different perspective on things?" Those of you who remember Ambush! can probably figure out why he would want another writer to help him out, and I'm excited to be a part of the project.

So I'll be working on two major projects at the same time for the next little while — and on top of that, my list of things to do once they are finished seems to get longer all the time: I still have a list of Places by the Way locations that I could write. I want to write a series of stories as a sort of companion to Places by the Way. Note-taking and planning continues for the massive city setting book that I want to write as a sort of capstone to my RPG career.  I seem to be accumulating promises to help with art and cartography, and I'd like to take up those offers before the skilled folks who made them change their minds, or develop arthritis or go blind, or whatnot. Perhaps influenced at some level by recent events, I have it in mind to write rules supplements on incorporating infectious diseases and warfare into fantasy RPG campaigns. And as if all that wasn't enough, I was reminded over the summer that I still haven't finished the novel that I started writing years ago out of frustration that my contribution to Big Eyes Small Mouth 3E would never be published (and my goodness, that is a story all unto itself).

At this point in my life, I do not fear running out of ideas. I am more concerned about running out of time — and lacking the resources that allow me to remain focused on my work. In that respect, I do appreciate the support and encouragement that I have received from all of you through Kickstarter. Sales outside of Kickstarter help, and I'm just started experimenting with Buy Me a Coffee as a sort of ongoing tip jar. I don't know how well it will work but I figure it's worth a try; with a to-do list like that I've got, I'm going to need a lot of coffee.

Thanks again, and until next time, take care and keep the dice rolling!

The printer delivers
over 1 year ago – Sun, Oct 30, 2022 at 07:40:40 AM

As with so much else in life (to say nothing of Kickstarter), it look a little longer than we'd hoped. But the print copies of Tomb Raiders of Orek and Into the Royal Tombs arrived from the printer late yesterday:

If you will remember, I had hoped to have them in hand over a week ago, but our printer confounded us a bit. In addition to the printing delay, the books seem to have shipped from their plant in Pennsylvania instead of the one in Central California, which has always handled our orders in the past. For those of you east of the Mississippi, it feels like your rewards are taking the long way 'round, this time.

Even so, all print rewards will go into the mail early in the coming week; if I hustle, I may even be able to get some out the door this afternoon. At that point, those of you who are due PDF rewards and add-ons will get notices about how and where to download the files.

Thanks again for your support, and I'll post another update to wrap things up once all the rewards have been distributed. Get ready for a long read, as it will look forward much more than it looks back, and the future should be quite busy.

To the printer — and beyond!
over 1 year ago – Tue, Oct 11, 2022 at 03:51:49 PM

Some good news before I head off to GMT Games Weekend later this week: Proof copies of both modules came back yesterday and as expected, everything looks fine. So we're placing our order with the printer today, which means that I should take delivery on the print copies sometime next week, which in turn means that your rewards will ship within the next 1-2 weeks. We're almost at the end point!

In the meantime, I have been outlining and taking notes for the next random encounters book. I'll discuss it at greater length in my very last update for the campaign, when I leave you all with a more detailed discussion of Ramen Sandwich Press' future plans. For now, I can say for sure that I have decided to break up my remaining writings on random encounters into three books, not two: One each for villages, towns and big cities. It turns out that there is more to say about villages than I had thought, and I would rather break up villages and towns into two relatively short books instead of combining them (somewhat awkwardly) into one big one. That way, I can bring the villages book to Kickstarter earlier than if I were to write a combined villages + towns book.

This does mean, interestingly enough, that Chance Meetings will wind up as a series of four books, when I had originally intended to write only book on random encounters! The waters do no run dry; instead, they keep refilling — rather like a toilet tank, I guess.

In any event, you will hear from me again soon. Thanks again!

Al-l-l-most there....
over 1 year ago – Thu, Sep 29, 2022 at 07:28:46 AM

Has it really been six weeks since the last update? Once again, you people really are too patient. I have to admit that after shoving everything in front of our art director, I set Tomb Raiders of Orek and Into the Royal Tombs aside for a bit (except to write up the Forgotten Realms ports of both modules, which are currently in layout). I have a couple of ongoing projects on my desk in front of me at the moment, and I also spent Labor Day Weekend at Gateway Con in Los Angeles, which invited me as a Special Guest. I always have a good time at Strategicon events, but unfortunately I left the con with a weird/nasty sinus inflammation that depleted my medicine cabinet for a week or so. And so that brings me to where we are at the moment.

And where is that? Well, both modules are off to the printer for a test print. So we're almost ready to order the print run — the test print almost never turns up any problems. I will finally close the Backerkit store on Sunday so that we can get a final count of how many print copies we'll need. If you want to make any changes to your order, this is the time!

I'm happy with the cover art for both modules — happy enough to tease both of them:

Yeah. I'm looking forward to seeing these in the full glory of print.

That's all the news for now. I'll have more to discuss later, as we wind up this campaign and Ramen Sandwich Press move forward. And I'll post another update once we go to print.

Thanks again for your support!