13th Age News: Through the Scrying Glass: November

This is the second Page XX column featuring 13th Age specific news, in which the Escalation Die turns finally to 6, we look at layout, 13th Age compatible Kickstarters, the license and the future. It turns out the Archmage’s crystal ball is in need of vinegar and newspaper.

The Good – 13th Age Escalation Die hits 6

Escalation Edition v06 is the version we’re sending into final layout. There will doubtless be changes and cuts as a result of layout, and hopefully a few corrections along the way.   There are art placeholders, but the classes are complete, and the adventure has been rewritten. Rob can now move on to Shards of the Broken Sky. There has been more actual play of 13th Age than any other game we’ve produced, and it’s not even out yet.

The final book will be a mammoth 336 pages with beautiful full colour art and excellent production values. However…

The Bad – 336 Pages is the Limit

The 13th Age is much, much bigger than we ever thought it would be, and we now have to draw the line, and that line is at 336 pages – 64 more than we ever thought possible. We’ve reached the stage where we can’t afford to print the book and make a decent margin and not raise the price for future customers. So we took the decision to remove content, but made it as gentle as possible on our dear customers. So, Rob and Jonathan decided that Chapter 10 , the adventure, will now be a free download rather than part of the main book. This should give us just enough space to fit everything in, though there may be one or two other small sections which get diverted to download only. Plus, it’s easier to run an adventure printed separately.

In addition, we were not happy that the layout wasn’t matching Lee Moyer’s vision so we enveigled Chris Huth (Night’s Black Agents and Lorefinder) to take over layout duties. Chris’s involvement will also ensure that the line will have a consistent look in future and work as an ebook. This has delayed things considerably. We hope you aren’t too disappointed, but the scope of this book has exceeded our expectations, and we weren’t willing to cut any corners on the layout.

The Ugly –  Estimated Release is February 2013

You won’t be surprised to hear that the estimated release date has been moved, to February 2013 at least. I suspect the True Ways released might be delayed past the Kickstarter estimates, too.

The Rest

Gerald “the Gorilla” Linn has been working on the 13th Age compatible license wording. It should be out in the next couple of weeks.

Two Kickstarters with 13th Age compatible products have funded, the first The Reliquary which features new magic items and a dungeon, and hit a massive 13K, and Nightfall, a gothic horror setting. We are so pleased they have funded, if only because it increases the pool of experienced 13th Age writers.

The 13th Age forum is abuzz with talk, and Rob found the corrections thread very helpful. In addition, tell us there what supplements you’d like to see.

 

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