View from the Pelgrane’s Nest – Summer Whirlwind Edition

August heat brings basking time for the Great Pelgrane. He lolls in his nest, panting tongue dangling from his piercing beak. In his endothermic torpor he allows us to complete this update without fear of interruption.

We toiling humans at the press named after him regard August differently, as a time not of rest but of frenzied activity. Our American team members have been swept off their feet by the bustle of Gen Con. The rest of us have everything coming at us at once in our home offices from Toronto to Bantry to Izmir.

Much of that activity revolves around the Backerkit campaign for Merryshire Detective Club, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan’s GUMSHOE game of cozy halfling mystery. The project has funded and now cruises through its roster of stretch goals. Several upcoming entries require actual work from me!

The campaign runs until August 22^nd so you still have plenty of time to jump in and get first dibs on the core book and its accompanying scenario anthology, The Dreadful Hare.

That book will keep you going in Merryshire for a good while, with nine fully fleshed scenarios by Gar, Kevin Kulp, and myself. I have just completed my three adventures:

Here is the Steeple, in which the impaling of the village church’s custodian on its steeple turns out to be less accidental than your dithering Constable assumes.

That Smear was a Clown, in which the circus comes to town, bringing homicide with it. Be careful around that murder weapon: it’s an elephant!

A Midsummer Night’s Murder takes the sleuths to another realm entirely, when the pooka Cock Robin hires them on behalf of King Oberon to find out who murdered the royal herald Puck.

Gar has three scenarios of his own written and in the playtest queue. He has a few finishing touches to put on his fourth and final contribution to the book. Kevin is revising his first story and nearly finished the first draft of second.

Not to be outdone for hustle and bustle, 13^th Age also reports an uptick in writing and design activity. I sense a big announcement. Let’s open up the latest scroll from lead designer Rob Heinsoo:

 

Well, Great Pelgrane, this was a month of focus. Despite being scattered now!

Fans have been asking us for two categories of 13^th Age book since we first published 13^th Age.

Category 1: A single-book campaign going from 1^st to 10^th level.

Category 2: A book detailing the NPCs who work for the icons, the guards, spellcasters, warriors and other NPCs who fight for the icons when the heroes aren’t available.

So in October we’re running a crowdfunding campaign for both those books together. Gareth’s Prophet of the Pyre is our first campaign-length adventure! And Iconic Adversaries: a 13^th Age Bestiary, is the book of monsters stats for characters and creatures closely associated with the icons and the icons’ organizations.

Dispatch your guards, spellcasters and minions to the crowdfund pre-launch page to receive alerts for this double-barreled project. With sign-up you receive a free preview excerpt of the Iconic Adversaries chapter on the Crusader’s doughty servitors.

There’s work happening on other 13^th Age products, including wonderful art for the starter set from Simone Bannach and Rich Longmore (pencils) & Lee Moyer (colors), but I’ve been focused on getting the two manuscripts and art ready for the campaign.

And in a distant attic, Ross D’ Souza has been working on the SRD for 13^th Age 2e. He’s through the biggest chunk of work, the classes, so he now says that a version will be ready soon.

Thanks, Rob, for the exciting updates.

Much other Pelgrane activity revolves around printing, with presses either rolling or files being checked and fine-tuned for printing on:

• Hamlet’s GM Screen, my follow-up to Hamlet’s Hit Points, mapping the up and down beats of classic moments at the gaming table
• Gar’s Swords of the Serpentine campaign Pillars Built on Sand
• Fear Itself Shattered Veil Edition plus companion volumes Ocean Game and Book of Unremitting Horror: Shattered Veil Edition
• Trail of Cthulhu 2^nd Edition PDFs, including the Boundary of the Darkness Enlightenment-era sourcebook are now propagating to backers across various platforms, starting with Backerkit downloads.

Speaking of whirlwinds, we’re, gasp, weeks away from the great gathering of the Pelgranes at Tabletop Scotland in Edinburgh, September 4^th to 6^th. Ken and I look forward to our first live Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff recording in the Athens of the North. As recently announced this will take the place of our heretofore typical appearances at Dragonmeet in November. We’ll miss London but hope some of you we usually see there can also make it to Tabletop Scotland.

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

Merryshire Village Environs map by Jog Brogzin