Campaign Book General Structure

[Brummbär]

Thanks to both of you for sharing some info!
Looking forward to things to come...
...and hope the real life gives you enough room to get the important thigs done

Also curious about the fantasy stuff...
My dwarves are prepared to defend their mountain homes!

[Brummbär]

Hi,

did I miss something on the campaign book?
Anything new coming up?

Thanks!

[David Kuijt]

Hi,

did I miss something on the campaign book?
Anything new coming up?

Thanks!

It's waiting on internal review. Meaning that I've done my part, and trying to get the other guys to look at it is like pulling teeth. Plus we need to start getting our (overworked) artist to do cover art for it. Her time has been spent on finishing the Battle Cards -- we upgraded our original plans to have one piece of art for each battle card, which makes it possible to actually have a print-on-demand physical card deck with nice art.

[Brummbär]

Sounds promising!
Looking forward now for both: campaign book and cards

[Brummbär]

It's been a while, so I thought I dare to ask...
...any news on the campaign book?

[David Kuijt]

It's been a while, so I thought I dare to ask...
...any news on the campaign book?

Two things I can release, news-wise; neither is what you might call "good" news. 1) most of my effort these last six months have been on FT (which mod has triggered the v1.2 sticker as a side effect, to stop/avoid including things in FT that rightly will/are part of the main rules -- the Bow Levy and Rabble move mods, WWg defense against shooting mod, etc.). 2) I've done a bunch of revision on the Campaign Book, which needs to be completed. I'm hoping to finish that up this summer, though, while I'm off from teaching.

Some of the mods include the sales plan -- rather than the old plan of publishing 7-campaign books together, each including the whole campaign rules, now we're looking at the idea of Print-on-Demand and publishing the rules as one book, and each campaign as a separate book. Small books. Since they will be POD, we don't have to worry about whether campaigns are mainstream or fringe -- I can do whatever I want. For example, as a test (proof of concept) I created a new singleton campaign focused on the 1150s-1180s in the Iberian Peninsula -- "Al-Andalus in Turmoil" is the title. It's set in the period of the Almohade resurgence that ended the second taifa period.

Since the singleton campaigns won't have the space requirements of the big book of seven together, I've rebuilt the campaigns each to have three sizes: small is 6-8 players, medium is 10-14, and large is 16-20ish. Previously there were only two sizes, which made some campaigns difficult to run for individual gaming groups (not at conventions) where they might not be able to put together 12 players for a six-hour session.

The singleton campaign model also supports creativity for campaigns -- for example, the existing "First Crusade" campaign includes three battle scenarios that represent critical battles during what would be the first turn of the crusade campaign -- and I like that sort of creativity and variability, but adding three pages of scenarios to a campaign is awkward when you're fighting with the constraints of a 90-ish page book (which is what we had with the 7-campaign book system).

I'm tired and saddened explaining the delays -- but I really think the final project will be wonderful, if I can ever get it done.

[Brummbär]

For me all of this sounds „good“.
Great that you keep up your good work and develop and grow this wonderful system! I think it is a good idea to split the campaigns into separate parts which might turn the gigantic task of a big supplement into more „bitesize“, and therefore maybe also easier to handle, parts.

[David Kuijt]

Right, the hope is that singleton campaigns will be:

1. Less expensive individually (lower barrier to entry)
2. Don't require republishing the campaign rules with each copy
3. More flexible on our end (every time I do one, it can be published; don't require organized groups of 7; support oddities/unique creatives like inserted scenarios)
4. Reduced artwork requirements (faster to publish)

We'll see.