September 2014: View from the Pelgrane’s Nest

The Pelgrane Press beavers have been at work, so GenCon pre-order logjam has been entirely unblocked, and we have a flume of new releases. For 13th Age we have 13 True Ways, The Book of Loot, Shadows of Eldolan. For Trail of Cthulhu there’s Mythos Expeditions and Soldiers of Pen and Ink. For Hillfolk there is our final Series Pitch – Campus Desk by John Kovalic. For non-subscribers, Ken Writes About Stuff offers the Lloigor, and subscribers get the Elizabethan GUMSHOE setting – School of Night. Finally, there’s an adventure for Fear Itself which I thoroughly enjoyed playing, Seventh Circle.

13th Age

• 13 True Ways has (limited editions excepting) shipped out to the Kickstarter backers and pre-orderers, and 13 True Ways is now on sales in the store, along with The Book of Loot and Shadows of Eldolan. I’m about to run three solid days of 13th Age for my original D&D group, so my interest in these books is more than just professional and I’ve been digging through them for material for the game.
• The 13th Age in Glorantha Kickstarter is nigh on $80K as of this writing. It’s worth it just for the new classes alone.

• ASH LAW has created a light and a heavy fighter at every level using the 13 True Ways dual class rules, which you can find here.
• Work continues on 13th Age Monthly – we are getting our processes together so we can deliver monthly content reliably and predictably as well as having a buffer of a couple of issues for emergencies.
• James Semple and his team are putting the finishing touches on the 13th Age music, which now features mulitple live musicians. I’ve been listening to the album on repeat, and it certainly ramps up the tension of map-making and accounts! My current favourite is Dreams of a Lost Age – a tune used by almost every culture in the Dragon Empire, with differing lyrics.

Der Herr Der Orks

I’m also very pleased to announce that we have 13th Age licensees in the following languages – French (7ème Cercle), German (Uhrwerk Verlag), Portugeuse (New Order Editora), Spanish (Holocubierta Ediciones) and Korean (Dayspring Games). We are very excited that so many versions in so many languages are being produced  – only Trail has more non-English versions in production – including Chinese and Russian.

Trail of Cthulhu and Fear Itself

• Released this month, the lavishly illustrated Mythos Expeditions takes your PCs to every corner of the globe. The first Keeper who blogs a full length play report for every single expedition will get a prize – a limited edition copy of Mythos Expeditions and the frontispiece map as a poster.
• Soldiers of Pen and Ink is also out. It’s set in the Spanish Civil War – the PCs arrive as foreign fighters helping the Republcian cause, and quickly become embroiled in politics and something much darker when one of their colleagues goes missing. I am particularly impressed by the art in this one – Jérome’s amazing cover and Melissa Gay’s interiors are so authentic I thought they were period. Adam talks about his inspiration here.
• Seventh Circle follows in the footsteps of Invasive Procedures in that it supports both Trail of Cthulhu and Fear Itself. Set in the modern world, but on a Scottish island without wireless or other comms, PCs take the role of a ghostbusting reality TV team. As always with writer Matthew Sanderson, the pregen PCs have detailed interrelationships which let you get into the game straight away.
• Gareth Hanrahan, aside from working on Dracula Dossier is putting together the second edition of Fear Itself, making it more robust and including campaign settings supported by their own rule tweaks. One of the settings is the peculiar and malevolent Ocean Game created by Dave Allsop. Truly nasty.
• The artwork for Dreamhounds of Paris is coming in, and the artists are really enjoying it.

• The Book of Ants – our surrealist guide to Paris and Dreamlands – is laid out ready for pre-order next month.

 Night’s Black Agents and the Dracula Dossier

The long-awaited Dracula Dossier Kickstarter begins on 17th October. Ken and Gareth have already written nearly 100K words, before moving on the annotations and then the resotoration of the alleged censored sections of Stoker’s manuscript. The Dracula Dossier consists of the Director’s Dossier and Dracula Unredacted. Read the intro and Table of Contents, and a sneak preview from Gareth.