Need volunteers (esp. artists, mapmakers) for 4e campaign setting

[catsclaw]

I'm one of a group of volunteers working on a new campaign setting and adventure path for D&D 4e, called Harvestlands. It's intended as a darker setting, where evil has taken over much of the land, and heroes are needed to turn back the darkness. There's lots of the basics of the setting on the website, including the country of psychopathic gnomes.

Our first public premiere is at Origins in three weeks. We're rushing to get our mods written and stated (obviously tricky without the rules) and we could use help. In the short term, we could use someone capable of doing some art for the mod--character sketches for the pregens, some drawings of important characters or scenes in the adventure. Also, we'd love to have someone interested in working on the maps: either the map of the world or encounter maps for reference in the mod. Or both. These are obviously somewhat time-critical.

On the other hand, we're always interested in enthusiastic volunteers who have any skills they can offer--editors, writers, playtesters, rule designers, web site admins, graphic designers. Even if you just have interesting ideas and would like to make suggestions, we'd love to have you. If you can put in time before Origins, great, but we'll need just as much help (more, in fact) afterwards as we look to getting the Adventure Path launched.

So check out the Harvestlands site, and if you have any questions or would like to volunteer, send an email to info@harvestlands.com.

[Charke]

Looks like a good start.

Who are your staff who have been "professionally published in the industry?" I'm not trying to challenge your claim. I'm currious to see who you've got! I've jumped on board with a few projects based on staff. (If you don't want to post it publically, feel free to drop me an email.)

Okay I've got to ask the money question. If you're going to print, and we all know that's expensive, why are you asking for vollunteers?

Are you taking print copies to Origins?

"Tricky without the rules". Sigh yeah, hold yer breath.

Mark Charke

[catsclaw]

Originally Posted by Charke

Looks like a good start.

Thanks. We've got a lot that's not up yet--a preliminary list of all the countries, mainly. It's a good time to jump in before we set some things in stone.

Originally Posted by Charke

Who are your staff who have been "professionally published in the industry?"

Staff is a bit strong; we're all volunteers, and some people are contributing more than others, as interest and time permits. We don't have any big industry names, if that's what you're asking. I'm not comfortable naming names, but one of the people writing the first two mods is a member of a Living Greyhawk Triad who has sold some of his LG adventures to 3rd party publishers, after the copyright reverted back to him. So we do have some industry experience on hand.

Originally Posted by Charke

Okay I've got to ask the money question. If you're going to print, and we all know that's expensive, why are you asking for volunteers?

Whoa, we aren't planning on going to print, we're planning for going to print. Our first choice would be print, but as you say it's expensive, and risky as well.

Personally, I expect we're going to start by releasing the first couple adventures of the Adventure Path, along with campaign documentation, online in PDF form, for free. After that, we might sell subsequent issues, and in the process of producing the Adventure Path we'll generate enough content to release a full Campaign Setting (maybe in print, maybe for download). Then we'll hopefully have enough critical mass to start a living campaign, and we'll go from there.

Any profit we do make is going to go first towards repaying those who donated things to the project, like web hosting and font licenses. Beyond that, it'll be up to the community.

Originally Posted by Charke

Are you taking print copies to Origins?

Can't. As far as we're aware, the GSL will prevent us from officially releasing any rules before August. We're looking into having short rule-free packets for people to take, but it's not a high priority for us, at the moment.

Originally Posted by Charke

"Tricky without the rules". Sigh yeah, hold yer breath.

It's not quite that bad. We've had Keep on the Shadowfell for a while, and that contained a lot of practical information on encounter design. But yeah, we're in a crunch.