Well, it's been a busy time recently, an unexpected illness stopped me writing for a bit so August has been about catching up with the writing schedule.
This month saw the release of the Desert themed Dungeon Masters Adventure Pack. The Discord community choose between the two covers below, opting for B. That then triggered an additional piece of content which was the Palace of Mystery. A time drifting palace that mysteriously travels through the desert appearing and disappearing. Unfortunately for those who are inside when it disappears, time continues to pass so the danger of starving to death whilst trapped inside is all too real!
The history of the palace was fully explained and went through several revisions before I was happy with it. It was fun to write but I'd personally hoped for the cover to be option A! That image did make its way into the magazine though as it became the backdrop to the contents page. The herds of wild horses that I thought I'd be writing about will be saved for later!
One of my personal bugbears from when I was growing up was that the cover of magazines didn't always get referenced inside. I always felt a little cheated when that happens so if I put something on the cover of a publication you can expect to find it information about it inside as well!
The issue was the largest to date stretching to 50 pages of system-free RPG content.
You can pick up a copy here
Or subscribe to the magazine here
The third Kickstarter, The Cavern of Dentropi is majority fulfilled with the final document in the hands of the editor. Everything else is ready to go and I'm looking forward to the feedback once people get the adventure.
It grew significantly during the writing and now runs to over 100 pages. Which is nearly double the size of its predecessor The Three Trials of Abrina.
The Kickstarter for Abracadabra - the book shown above is currently running (ends September 10th).
a lot of time goes into the setting up of a Kickstarter, (besides writing/producing the product itself) so that has taken up almost all my time since Dentropi went off to the editor. It's going well, funding in 7 hours and continuing to fund since then.
The backers have been eager to learn more and I've been asked to share more about the evolution of the book and the team behind it so I will cover those in future articles. I'm personally very excited about this project and really looking forward to seeing the hardbacked version sitting on my shelf. I am sure it will be slightly surreal to see a book on there with my name on the spine!
I'm conscious I need to get the shop properly up and running on the website here. It's daft that all my products are being sold via third-party outlets but not on my own website! Also, I've plans to start selling a series of stock art images. I've reached a level of confidence in my artwork now that makes me feel some of my images would be of use to other gamers. News on that when it crosses the starting line!
Oh, and I've also started to write some pure prose fiction, how far that experiment will go I don't know. I'm aiming for a couple of short stories and perhaps a third of the way through the first one at this point. It features Rutus and Abrina who first appeared in The Three Trials of Abrina but also show up in Notes of a Predator and Journal of a Predator which were supporting Kickstarter publications. Rutus returns in The Cavern of Dentropi and Abrina has a cameo!
This is a story set towards the end of Trials and features them going out to a tavern for a quiet pint... but when a minotaur and a vampire go to a tavern it's not going to stay quiet for long!
So, that's what on my metaphorical workbench at the moment. Luckily, I just got myself a new actual desk that is half again as big as the old one and I managed to pick it up for a song as it was left abandoned by its previous owner in an office my wife was viewing!
Until next time, stay safe and keep gaming!
Stephen Hart, Chief Wordsmith
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Manipulation: The Grinning Frog team