March is a big month for birthdays here in the Pelgrane’s Nest, with Gareth, Noah, me, and Rob all celebrating this month. March also feels like spring is finally here; winter is past, and the world begins anew, tf.
***NEW*** The Book of the Underworld
This month’s latest release is the campaign setting Book of the Underworld for 13th Age, written by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, and lovingly hand-developed in the artisanal word-workshop of Rob Heinsoo, John-Matthew DeFoggi and Trisha DeFoggi.
I asked Rob previously what he thought the coolest things about Book of the Underworld were, and he replied “A short list would include the Four Kingdoms of the Mechanical Sun (underworld nation-states warring to keep an ancient dwarven solar artifact borne by golems circulating in their caverns instead of the oppositions), Gar’s bizarre takes on alternate drow, the two drow deities manifest in the deep underworld that complement/rival the Elf Queen, and the rival demon cults within Gorogan’s Maw.” So there you have it – the short version is that there’s a long list of cool stuff for DMs to play with in this setting book. Pre-order now and get the pre-layout PDF straight away.
***STILL NEW, but two important updates*** The Yellow King RPG
Those of you outside the USA and Canada may have noticed that we’ve sold out of The Yellow King RPG in our webstore. 😲 While in some ways, that’s a good problem to have – it’s always nice when there’s high demand for a new book – in other ways, it’s bad, as we’ll have to reprint it sooner than I expected, and if you followed the Kickstarter printing saga, you’ll have a sense of why that fills me with dread. In the meantime, Becky’s working furiously on finding a way to get some of the US copies over our UK warehouse, so we’re hoping to have it back in stock in a couple of weeks. If you’d like us to let you know when it’s back in stock, drop Becky an email at support@pelgranepress.com.
The second important update is that, due to popular demand, we’ve set up a post for people who didn’t back the Kickstarter, explaining how to pick up the Basic Shock & Injury decks from the YKRPG. While not essential for play, many gamers have told us they prefer the tactile experience of having printed cards. All the cards from all four books of the YKRPG are available as a digital download with all purchases of the YKRPG, whether from us or through your game store. With the Basic Shock & Injury decks, Robin has carefully curated two decks focused on the varieties of injury, fear and emotional disequilibrium most likely to afflict investigators into any reality-altering Carcosan mystery, helping GMs to run scenarios on-the-fly. If you’re in the USA or Canada, pick up your cards via DriveThru RPG’s Print on Demand service; if you’re outside the USA or Canada, pick them up directly from our webstore.
Work in progress update: Swords of the Serpentine
We’re steaming ahead through production of Swords of the Serpentine at the moment, which makes me happy, as Kevin and I would love to be able to show it to you all at Gen Con at the end of July. I’m hoping we’ll be able to release the pre-order in the next edition of See Page XX, too. I’m about to go through the copyedits, and our layout artist Jen is working on a draft layout design for it. Kevin’s writing up art notes, and Jerome has posted a little video of the amazing map he’s done for Eversink’s Temple Market – you can watch that here.
Work in progress update: The Borellus Connection
We’ve got the edits back from Arc Dream now, and Gareth’s made the necessary changes they asked for. Noah is working on the art notes, it’s just about to go into copyediting, and we’re hoping to release it on pre-order in the summer.
Work in progress update: Elven Towers
John-Matthew and Trisha DeFoggi are powering through 13th Age projects, vastly improving how quickly we’re able to release new titles. J-M’s finishing up development of Elven Towers, a champion tier adventure by Cal Moore, at the moment, and will then hand it over to Trisha for copyediting. Meanwhile, Rob’s liaising with the cartographers and artists, working on finishing off the artwork, so expect to see a pre-order for this in the next few months. Hot off the email press tonight is the lush and eminently regal final cover, by Lee Moyer (using sketches from Rich Longmore), which Rob’s kindly sent over for your sneak preview delectation.
<– Here it is. Isn’t it lovely?!
Work in progress update: Honey & Hot Wax
We’ve got in the final collection of games for Honey & Hot Wax, an Anthology of Erotic Art Games from editors Sharang Biswas and Lucian Kahn, who were able to win a grant from the Effing Foundation for Sex Positivity, and they really take what an RPG can be in a stimulating new direction! We’re working on the final layout of this at the moment, and we’re having fun collaborating with artist Jana Heidersdorf on the front cover. She’s come up with some really interesting concepts, including this honeycomb design which really captures what we’re going for with it:
--> That one’s over here!
Work in progress update: A Poison Tree
I playtested a couple of chapters of A Poison Tree, an epic Trail of Cthulhu campaign, and it’s creepy and twisted and wonderful. We’ve been fortunate that we’re working alongside some of the best Mythos RPG designers – Scott Dorward, Paul Fricker & Matthew Sanderson – on it. Unfortunately, that’s meant that we’ve been competing with loads of other companies for their bandwidth, which has slowed down development. We’re kicking this into high gear this year and hoping to get it playtested shortly. We’ve spoken to the authors about Kickstarting this, but nothing’s been set in stone on that front yet – watch this space for more developments as they happen.