I have been flying under the radar for a while now, and haven’t had a news in a long time – so here it goes: what has EMDT been up to?
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Baklin in PDF
Baklin: Jewel of the Seas |
- One will be the lands of Kassadia, a domain of colourful city states built on a Roman Empire that dwindled into irrelevance but never fell. Kassadia, once a label on the map of Erillion, was really co-created by Istvan Boldog-Bernad; first through Armand the Scumbag, his Assassin character, and then In the Shadow of the City-God, set in one of Kassadia’s ancient cities.
- The other direction will go towards the northwest of Erillion, to the Twelve Kingdoms: a set of warring domains, neither twelve nor true kingdoms for the most part. This is a cold and unforgiving land, but also one of weird beauty and curious customs: it draws on sources like Lyonesse, The Lords of Midnight, Smith’s Hyperborea, and others.
- And of course, the City of Vultures is not yet finished: its secret societies, its surroundings, and its strange Underworld realms shall be explored in due time.
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Castle Xyntillan ran out of stock sooner than expected as sales suddenly spiked after the Questing Beast review, but the book is back in print in a third printing, and available from my store. The module’s first printing consisted of 500 copies; the second, 400 – as numbers go, I am happy with them.
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Das Froschgottkloster
Abenteuer #08 |
Cloister of the Frog God is kind of a patchwork module that came together from the bits and pieces of my unpublished 2006 Tegel Manor manuscript. Since Tegel was quite dead at the time, I started thinking about reusing my original contributions to the module for something new – maybe as articles for Knockspell or Fight On! magazine. At the same time, Bill Webb was starting on a new edition of Rappan Athuk, and asked me if I wanted to contribute something to it, perhaps using these materials. This was a start. I took the figurative scissors to my room key, and reversing my usual development process, drew a dungeon around the existing encounters. A once mighty, now partially ruined and semi-abandoned cloister complex came from two mini-dungeons once located in the wilderness around Tegel; the three-level catacomb complex underneath came from the manor’s dungeons (the original module treats these as very simple monster listings, so I had quite a lot of original stuff to work with).
Tumula the Marshman, Proud (?) Father |
So Cloister shipped, got published as a chapter of the big 2012 Rappan Athuk book (where few people have found it among the mountains of other stuff), but this was not yet the end of the story. Something about the frog theme was still kicking around in my head, and in 2016, I ran the adventure in a form that was half Frogocalypse Now-style boat ride through the surrounding marshlands, and half dungeon crawl in the Cloister ruins, culminating in a deadly battle with a procession of frog-cultists, and the assassination of their leader, Abbot Grosso. Then, the wilderness section was reused again in 2018 as a standalone game for the original Cloister team (still following?), resulting in Against the Frog, the eccentric swamp crawling scenario finally published in Echoes #04. Rotar the Raftsman (a haf-orc) was reunited with his incredulous and ancient father, Tumula the Marshman (the same player’s old character from the earlier adventure), and a new plague of frogs was prevented from devastating the nearby lands.
The storied life of the module now enters another chapter: after Rappan Athuk (dungeons), the Hungarian edition (dungeons and wilderness), and Revenge of the Frogs (wilderness only, different scenario), Das Froschgottkloster is set for imminent release, featuring more frogs than you can shake a stick at. How many frogs? At least 666 frogs, but potentially even more. And that’s a lot of frogs.
The 2018 Hungarian edition |
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The Sullogh are Coming! |
Where some things end, some are set to begin: Yrrtwano’s Repose, the first adventure drawn from the cold lands of the Twelve Kindoms will be included here. And from the City of Vultures, the fantastic wilderlands around the sinful city-state – detailing the hex map whose player version was included in Echoes #06. The eighth issue will also be the first to feature two map sheets, and I hope that, seeing them, you will agree it should not be the last one.
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Not the Helvéczia Boxed set |
This is a project with a lot of moving parts, but every so often, another part is locked in its place, and the working bench gets less cluttered. Now it is close to empty. April? Could be April. A more detailed preview will follow in March.
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“Last comes the black soup.” This is a saying in Hungary, originally referring to coffee, and meaning “bad news last”. Last year, postage increased slightly, in a way I didn’t feel like annoying customers with. This year, the increase, while not radical, is a bit steeper, and comes with added paperwork on non-EU orders – or you can let the Post do it, and increase postage further. I decided to do the paperwork – electronic data entry stuff, not too bad – and go with a smaller shipping price increase. So here is how it is going to look from now:
- Any quantity of zines, Europe (incl. UK): $6.00 to $6.50
- Any quantity of zines, worldwide: $7.00 to $8.00
- Hardcovers and boxed sets, Europe (incl. UK): $20.00 to $23.00
- Hardcovers and boxed sets, worldwide: $25.00 to $28.00
These are still flat rates, so ordering one zine
will set you back as much as ordering ALL zines and pamphlet-sized modules (they
may ship in multiple envelopes, but a large order deserves a discount). There
will be one exception: the Helvéczia boxed set is going to ship alone,
because it will weigh right below the 2 kg (4.4 pounds) postal weight
limit after packaging, and if you add just one zine, shipping suddenly jumps
from $28 to $60 or so.Let There be Order
In summary, I will go with a small price increase, you will start seeing custom form stickers on your envelopes, large and heavy supplements will be a bit pricier to order (but hopefully well worth the price). Death and taxes, ladies and gentlemen!
These changes will come into effect after the first week of March, so if you'd like to buy something with the lower shipping rates, there is still a week for that.
The Fruits of Endeavour |
I posted a big long thing here about my experience running the Cloister as a campaign for the better part of the past year, but Google appears to have eaten it? I will repost again after Tuesday’s session, which should be our last. Grosso had been pretending to be our captive for the majority of our time here, but once he realized we had sealed in the frogpocalypse forever, he fled and force fed the elixir to one of the druids guarding him. Our wizard has him trapped in some vines he cast Plant Growth on as he is fleeing across the ruins to a boot moored at the inner cloister. It will take a while for the rest of the party to catch up. Should be an epic final showdown. Thanks for writing a great adventure. Looking forward to sharing more about it when we are all done!
ReplyDeleteA great adventure, and it’s very cool to hear that will get its own publication and not be buried inside Rappan Athuk as an extra.
I would be interested to hear about it!
DeleteMake sure to copy your post before submitting it. I have lost a lot of detailed comments I have made thanks to blogspot's issues. (And I would have lost this one, too, if I didn't!)
My write up was too long to be a comment, so I posted it on my blog. Hope you enjoy reading about our adventures in your creation.
Deletehttp://www.omegadungeon.com/2021/03/cloister-of-frog-god-write-upreview.html
Thanks a lot! This was an excellent read.
DeleteCongratulations on all your endeavors! 900+ copies of Castle Xyntillian is a massive success! And I am the proud owner of 1 copy, plus a "super rare" manuscript version. :)
ReplyDeleteStill waiting for the "Thief lessons applied to D&D" article, hehehe.
Cheers!
Yeah, that's big. I initially printed 500, thinking it would last a few years for the long tail sales - and got pleasantly surprised.
DeleteI still owe you the Thief post... and others I have been procrastinating on for a while.
Stay well! .)
@Omega, very interested in your exploits in the Cloister!
ReplyDeleteDo you have a link to a website or something for the german zine "Abenteuer"?
ReplyDeleteI tried seraching for it online... though as "Abenteuer" simply is "adventure" you get like a million results, none which lead to the zine :(
Note the dot, it is pronounced Abenteuerpunkt: https://hofrat.rsp-blogs.de/abenteuerpunkt/
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ReplyDelete@Grützi: I think our most recent efforts at building the 1e-scene are the most noteworthy. We have a 50+ player Co-DM'd Campaign for hop-on-hop-off gaming, FLAILSNAILS style. let me know if you can be interested in such things. We area also always looking for collaborations!
ReplyDeleteI cannot help but brag a bit about Tumula, immortalized on the cover of Echoes #4. Well the sinister family secret is out now, so here's some trivia: he's modeled after Uncle Matula, a wise old wilderness dweller and father figure to a pair of city lads from the Thoreau-esque educational Bildungsroman titled "Tüskevár" ("Thorn Castle", actually a pretty cool name for a Turkish-age ruin covered in thorns, according to legend). The book was mandatory reading back in grade school in Commie-era Hungary, or maybe even now, who knows... but come to think of it, it features treasure hunt and even a short dungeon-delving episode. Sadly I can't recall any killer frogs, but Rotar the Rafter, my second PC down the line also got his nickname from a protagonist there (one of the boys is called Rafter as well, for he likes to boast on imaginary river raft adventures).
ReplyDeleteWhen translating, Tumula was my favorite character! Good job, V!
ReplyDeleteGreat news all around - congratulations on your earned successes
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@Settembrini:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the informations, I'll take a look at all this ;)
Generally speaking I'm interested in collaborations... though time and other obligations limit my capacity in that regard (as for everyone else I imagine ;) )
If you feel disoriented by Retro Clones or 5e, there is always a song to listen to, if time is of the essence:
ReplyDeletehttps://soundcloud.com/benjamin-aka-flann/ich-spiele-feat-hassran-beat-by-bielefeld-bass/reposts
Also, if Podcasts are your thing, we have a lot of 1e content: https://pesa-nexus.de/category/zock-bock-radio/
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteFascinating. I wonder what any of that has to do with OSR or gaming.
DeleteVery interesting ideas, Kent. I will just note here that I am ethnic German on my father's side - a mixture of Zipser, Burzenländer and Banater Schwabian - and I am not interested in your newsletter. Behave, or begone!
DeleteNow that was weird.
ReplyDeleteWill an English version of the Cloister be translated from the Hungarian EMDT publication, or do I have to get Rappen Athuk in order to read it? I heard very positive comments from friends who have played the module.
ReplyDeleteRappan Athuk is still in print (more correctly, it is in print again with a 5E edition), so I do not wish to cross the wires. Maybe some day. RA itself is worth owning although I will confess that I think its best version is the original three-booklet release (and you will never need more than the first two). At least until Bill publishes a facsimile edition of his original typed manuscript.
DeleteI like all the dungeon levels in the first two Rappan Athuk modules. I also like the following levels from the third module:
Delete9: The Lower Temple of Orcus
9A: Caves & Caverns--The Hydra's Lair
9B&C: The Well of Agamemnon
10: The Lava Pit
10A: The Giant Cavern
11: The Waterfall and Akbeth's Grave
I missed this update, somehow, Gabor, and just saw it over on mewe (of all places!). Great to hear that things are continuing apace, and I'm really looking forward to the all of your new titles =)
ReplyDeleteAllan.
MeWe is not dead! Worthwhile things are found there if you pay an occasional visit. .)
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