View from the Pelgrane’s Nest – Send in the Scones Edition

With July comes the sultry summer heat that leads the Great Pelgrane to fly away to bask on one of his favorite rocks. Though distressing to the villagers dwelling below that lofty perch, it gives me the opportunity to creep into the nest to review the progress of various projects here at Pelgrane Press.

This month finds the team focused on the imminent Backerkit campaign for Merryshire Detective Club, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan’s delightful GUMSHOE game of cozy murder deduction in a bucolic, breakfast-strewn fantasy setting. If you’ve been distracted by a crumbly pastry or perhaps the gooseberry jam atop it, you may not have yet signed up to the launch alert page.

Please note: without this sign-up we can’t guarantee that the message squirrel will arrive at your cottage bearing the necessary dispatch! With the sign-up, have your walnut ready and quality checked before delivery. Your courier may reject a walnut that does not meet standards.

Message squirrel illustration by Amy Nagi

Gar has written, playtested and revised the core book. In doing so he identified a desire for an extra intro scenario, which he has dutifully authored. This will be among the items we send to playtest in next month’s See Page XX. We’ll also test scenarios from The Dreadful Hare and Other Halfling Mysteries, the core game’s companion volume. Gar has written three of its nine scenarios, with the fourth partially complete. Kevin Kulp and I have completed first drafts of two other scenarios. Kevin is now at work on his second contribution to the book. I’ll be writing another couple to bring the total up to nine. Mysteries involve pooka curses, a doomed romantic gesture, a razor-sharp steeple and a falsely arrested goat.

With Gen Con on the way Cat has been intensively coordinating with our heroic all-US booth team to make sure all goes well in Indianapolis. If you’re planning to attend the show we hope you swing by to peruse tables stacked with recent releases:

• 13^th Age Second Edition, our fast-to-run, easy-to-play F20 game, tweaked to a fine polish by original designers Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet.
• Gar’s fantasy One-2-One game, Paragon Blade.
• Page Turners, my game of dramatic interaction for one player and one GM, with scenarios by Wade Rockett, Sarah “Sam” Saltiel, Ruth Tillman, and myself.

The three books of the Fear Itself: Shattered Veil Edition are printing now. They will ship first to backers.

You can now preorder Hamlet’s GM Screen, my book of actionable GM advice based on the beat analysis system first seen in Hamlet’s Hit Points. As a perfect bound book with simple images it can zip through the printing process and will be on hand soon. Cat is currently building its ebook format versions.

Trail of Cthulhu 2^nd Edition continues its unspeakable shamble toward publication. A few errant page references in the core book need to be brought into Euclidean space. Boundary of the Darkness, the Enlightenment era sourcebook by Philip Masters and Sarah “Sam” Saltiel, are holding for print along with the revised Kingsbury Horror scenario.

Outside Entities, a Trail bestiary by Kenneth Hite that stands (slouches?) apart from the Second Edition package, is also complete and ready to print when its release date arrives.

I have completed my first draft of the untitled Yellow King Solo game and Cat is now conducting her own playtest on it. She has already gone from Vignette 188 to 198 and [checks spreadsheet] oh dear that’s quite a troubling spot I don’t know whether she’ll go on to 78 or 86.

On the 13^th Age front, the starter set has gone over to editing. There are ancillary components to handle, but the text is finished except for the handouts.

Steven Warzeha and Rob Heinsoo have been working to finish Bestiary 3: Icon Followers for an upcoming crowdfunding effort. That campaign will also include Gar’s Prophet of the Pyre, which has also moved to the editing phase. Let’s foretell its progress by revealing Lee Moyer’s broodingly heroic, fiery cover.

Finally, we’d like to express our utmost gratitude to the beloved backers of the Pelgrane Press Patreon. We’re placing it on hiatus for the time being as we evaluate its role in our future plans. Ibrahim will continue to post early access articles throughout the month, so there’s still more to come before then. Billing stops at the end of July.

While the Great Pelgrane is away, estimable backers can now sneak away without being picked off one by one. As they flee  the craggy nest we’d like to publicly thank them by name: Aleksandr Semykin, En, Keith Pishnery, Andy Gibson, Alex Tallon, Yerbo Yerbo, Jason Kraus, Marc Kevin Hall, Christian Ebel, Thomas Edward, Eric Haste, Jiří (Almi) Kučera, Daniel Fidelman, Mark Richman, Michael Heilemann, Pete Nixon, Samuel Crider, Gunnhrafn, Zed, Andreas Meier, Todd W Crone, Unnamed Member, Michael Bowman, Michael Maneval, Kyle Oppy, George Poles, P. Troilus, Bryant Durrell, S. Go, Peter, Justin, Phil LaDouceur, Brandon Thompson, Finyet, Vivienne Dunstan, Emma Marlow, Jim McCarthy, Clark Olson-Smith, Gusty737, Iron Moose Development, Peter Nix, R. Brian Scott, gamedave, Charles Paradis, and Anish Hermon.

As always, for the latest on the entire announced production stream, head over to our status page, updated as news comes in.