World of Asatania - Epic RPG Adventures for 5E

First Two Stretch Goals Accomplished!
about 10 years ago – Tue, Jan 05, 2016 at 03:41:13 PM

Just a few short days into this project and we've already blown through our first two stretch goals! Exciting stuff!

The first goal was the Asatania Players's Guide. 

The Player's Guide is a PDF handout that will contain campaign backstory known to all characters, maps, and suggested backstory elements. These will help bring player characters into the "spirit" of Asatania right from the start. 

For game masters, it will make it less likely that you'll inadvertently "spoil" parts of the plot when players ask you details about the campaign world. I'm really glad we got to this stretch goal because I think it will really add value!

The second was converting our NPC character art from grayscale to color. Most of the important NPCs in this first story arc of Asatania come artwork. We're upgrading that artwork to color and have already started the process of commissioning artists to do it.

We've got two artists that are doing work on the Asatania package. I'm hoping to find a third artist to bring into the mix. 

Next up on the stretch goal list are two additional side quest adventures. I'm excited about this one as I've already got one side quest under development and some great ideas for the second. I'm hoping we make that goal so we can include for anyone at the ADVENTURER reward level or higher.

International delivery of printed rewards is now available
about 10 years ago – Mon, Jan 04, 2016 at 09:04:39 AM

For those outside the United States who would like a printed copy of the Asatania materials, we've partnered with DriveThruRPG/RPGNow to make delivery available throughout Europe and several additional countries around the world.

And so the real work begins
about 10 years ago – Sat, Jan 02, 2016 at 11:43:15 AM

Now that the Asatania Kickstarter project is fully funded, its time to turn our attention to some actual work.  

The content of the world and its adventures are complete and play tested, but there are a million little things that have to happen to go from "content complete" to "production ready."

One of those things is the maps. The maps I created for the play test groups were rough; really only appropriate for personal home games,

I feel like our backers deserve a higher level of quality.

We started out with a straightforward scene from the first adventure; an ambush by a small stream in the woods. The map needed to be of the tactical area described by the text of the adventure. So, I took up my position to the right of the artist and let her do her thing.

The first thing she did was take a look over the maps I'd hand drawn to figure out scales and layout. Her tool of choice is Photoshop and her first task was to start inking in the features on the landscape.   

From the drawing, you can see a stream and a road that runs alongside it. If you have been playing tabletop RPGs for any length of time, you realize that just this simple black and white sketch is oftentimes the only map we get. (Its already better than my own hand drawn tactical maps.)

At least for the tactical scale maps, we decided that we wanted a watercolor/painterly feel to the maps. I wanted the maps to reflect the handcrafted nature of the campaign world and its adventures, rather than something mechanical and boiler-plated 

With that in mind, the artist started picking thinking about her color palette and how she was going to render everything in Photoshop. 

Using her graphics tablet (side note: I've been using Photoshop for years and never realized how much of a time saver these things were!), she brushed in layers of color using a watercolor brush set and the transformation (to me) was amazing. 

While the pen sketch gave the basics of the terrain and the scale, the color really brings it to life. 

Next up were the details. This muddy little back road that that our players find themselves on runs through a forest. The forest is an important part of the scene and encounter. It is yet another barrier that the players have to overcome to successfully navigate this early scene in their adventure. 

So, trees needed to be added. 

In addition, there needed to be a barrier in the road that would cause our party of adventures to stop and investigate. 

With that, the artwork of the map was complete. (Note: there are still plenty of details with titles, scale, borders, etc that need to be worked out. Because they need to be consistent across the gamut of maps, I've held off making decisions about them quite yet.) 

From a philosophical standpoint, I want this project to pleasantly surprise backers with its quality, completeness and polish. 

While we could certainly spend less time and effort on our maps, I believe that standards matter and I hope you agree. 

(Note: the artist who created these maps is none other than my wife, Amy. She's a landscape architect by training, though spends most of her days in front of spreadsheets. 

She jumped at the chance to work on something that mixed her love of role playing games with her educational background and I was happy to give up my seat at the computer for her to do her thing.)

(Also note: this update is duplicated at Asatania.com as a blog entry.)

Fully funded!
about 10 years ago – Fri, Jan 01, 2016 at 09:19:52 AM

Creating and launching a Kickstarter project is SCARY! You feel like you've put together something really great, but that doesn't mean anyone else will agree.

Twenty four hours into the launch and we're fully funded and couldn't be happier! I'm excited to send Asatania out into the world. I can't wait to see what everyone does with it!

(Also, I realize that the reward tiers that involve printed materials are currently only available in the US. Shipping costs and the customs process is always a huge issue. I'm working to see if I can find a solution that will allow us to offer the printed version of the materials internationally.)