November 2014: View from the Pelgrane’s Nest

As December approaches our thoughts turn to the Dragonmeet convention here in London and the gathering of the Pelgranistas. We will be discussing next year’s releases, International PelgraneCon 2015 and celebrating the outcome of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter.  Money will change hands—whose hands give and take depend on the outcome. There will be tears, laughter, drunkeness and stupor, and that’s just Ken. Rob Heinsoo will be running the legendary Friday night game – thie time allegedly a mash up of Feng Shui and Day After Ragnarok.

This month sees the release of  Eyes of the Stone Thief for 13th Age in glorious full colour and PDF releasees of Mythos Expeditions for Trail of Cthulhu, The Gaean Reach and The Gaean Reach Gazetteer together with the latest Ken Writes About Stuff.  Hideous Creatures: Byakhee.

Night’s Black Agents

The Dracula Dossier Kickstarter, as of the writing, sits at £60K, with a host of stretch goals still left. Thank you backers! I’ve seen others (including Dracula Unredacted in colour, Trail and Eso tie-ins and others I am not permitted to mention) which I’d love to see, but I do not know if we’ll get there. But that’s the excitement of Kickstarter!

13th Age

But the 13th Age has not been forgotten – on the contrary – welcome to  Eyes of the Stone Thief! Welcome to the vastest colour book we have ever done. Delve deep into the Living Dungeon, come back to the surface barely alive and delve again, until you or your indomitable foe sucks in their last breath.

• Three issues of the 13th Age Subscription have been approved by Rob Heinsoo for layout.
• Cal Moore has delivered a polished first draft of Battle Scenes – a huge collection of loosely linked adventures and encounters to plug into your 13th Age game. We’ll set the scene, you add the story. It’s available for playtesting here. I’ve played it myself.
• James Semple’s amazing music for 13th Age has been mastered, and there will be a world premiere video in the Pelgrane seminar at Dragonmeet.
• Gareth has began work on Demonology, which includes a new class of his devising.

Trail of Cthulhu

• Until the physical releases, Dreamhounds of Paris, a campaign of the Parisian surrealists’ adventures in the Dreamlands, and its diaristic companion volume The Book of Ants, are available as a bundle – a choice almost every purchaser to date has quite sensibly made.
• Explore the globe and go mad with Mythos Expeditions – now available as a PDF.
• Gareth Hanrahan has delivered the extra material for the Cthulhu Apocalypse print collection – existing purchasers of the PDFs will get a discount. I expect to see it out in February.

Esoterrorists and Fear Itself

• It’s the Esoterrorists turn to get a campaign, with the first draft of the horrifying Worldbreaker ready for playetesting. It’s not for the fainthearted or coulrophobics.
• We play tested Matthew Sanderson’s follow up to Seventh Circle for Fear Itself at IndieCon, featuring his usual highly developed characters, props and solid research. I’m looking forward to the manuscript.