ZEITGEIST Adventure 6 text available for gold subscribers soon. Also, hardcover discussion.

I have delivered to Russ the nigh-finalized version of Adventure Six, Revelations from the Mouth of a Madman, which he should be putting up for gold subscribers soon. I believe we'll be going to layout after Eric finishes laying out To Slay a Dragon (Russ, do I have that right?), but if in the meanwhile people note any typos, errors, confusions, or the like, let us know so we can spare the general public.

The other ZEITGEIST development is that we're planning a Kickstarter to produce a hardcover compilation, and we'd like your opinions on what would appeal to you and what rewards for backers you might like.

Ideally we'd like to produce a whole-campaign hardcover, but it would be over a year before we could even start production. Plus the book would be ginormous. We could instead just produce one book per arc of the series, something along the lines of:

(Not so sure about the titles.)

• ZEITGEIST: Hidden in Steam and Stars - Adventures one through five, for levels 1 to 12 in 4e or 1 to 8 in PF. Available this summer.
• ZEITGEIST: Mask, Lantern, and Crown - Adventures six through nine, for levels 13 to 21 in 4e, or 9 to 15 in PF. Available this winter.
• ZEITGEIST: Spirit of a New Age - Adventures ten through thirteen, for levels 22 to 30 in 4e, or 16 to 20 in PF. Available next summer, in time for Gen Con hopefully.

If the hardcovers attract enough attention, it would help us get more art and maps, both to flesh out encounters that had none originally (I'm still sad we didn't have maps for the cities along the railroad, or battle maps for the Theater of Scoundrels), and to cover the costs of future adventures, which would help us get them out more promptly. Plus, y'know, paying hard-working writers more for their labor.

For rewards, I'm thinking aside from actual copies, we might do poster maps and NPC cards, but I'd love other suggestions.

What do you think?

I'd pledge in a heartbeat. Personally I think splitting the campaign into 3 hardcovers is the way to go because, as you said, one single hardcover will be insanely huge and it'll take a very long time for the book to be released.

As for what I'd like to see in a Kickstarter, I'm a sucker for additional content. Expanded locations, organization writeups, more encounters, that sort of thing. And of course maps for encounters and locations that currently don't have any.

Good news all round. I hope to have my lifetime Gold Subscription up and running in time to 'join the conversation' (as they say nowadays).

As far as the proposed Kickstarter is concerned, I would love to back the project, but - and this is a big but, and I apologise for harping on the same string here, and for sounding a note of negativity - there would have to be an undertaking to improve and maintained the publication schedule before I could consider doing so. I have already made three commitments to Zeitgeist: embarking on the AP from the outset; backing Admirals o'the High Seas; supporting the rejuvenation of EN World (and gaining access to the remaining adventures in the process). Making a fourth without knowing for certain that the final product(s) would be coming out before 2016 would be out of the question.

(And before anyone says anything about unforeseen circumstances, I seem to remember 'Christmas' and 'Gen Con' being advanced as explanations for delays in the past.)

So my answer is "Yes, if we can have some assurances that it the approximate release schedule will be adhered to."

Three hardbacks would be terrific. Love the subtitles for 1&3, not so hot on 2.

I'm not too interested in the hardcovers myself; I prefer the pdfs. However, if it means putting Zietgiest on a faster schedule, more maps, detailing the organizations and nations better, and more fleshed out encounters, overall improving upon an already great campign.... I will definitely give money for that. The hardcovers would actually be just a bonus for me.

gideonpepys said:

So my answer is "Yes, if we can have some assurances that it the approximate release schedule will be adhered to."

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Yes, it's every 3 months barring unforeseen circumstances.

As a side-note -- my personal preference is for the single hardcover (like WotBS); it's just such beautiful object and such a joy to own. Eric has confirmed he can fit the content in the required pagecount with some work.

I'm not against 3 hardcovers - I just love the idea of the one big one.

As Ryan says, it'd be some way in the future. We wouldn't start work on it until the AP was finished.

Morrus said:

As a side-note -- my personal preference is for the single hardcover (like WotBS); it's just such beautiful object and such a joy to own.

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Oh I agreed about one big hardcover being a beautiful object. I own several already and have a few on the way through various Kickstarters. So yeah, as a collector, I'd love to own a single Zeitgeist hardcover. However, I've learned that hardcovers like the one we're talking about aren't terribly handy at the gaming table, and smaller hardcovers might be more ideal for use during game sessions. That's my experience at least.

Morrus said:

As Ryan says, it'd be some way in the future. We wouldn't start work on it until the AP was finished.

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Not a gold subscriber, but I might back a kickstarter, mostly because of this. I'm loving running this for my group, and we're not as far along as some of the other groups (just about to finish Digging for Lies this week, possibly), but I would want to see the AP finished before adding more workload. The quality so far is so high, that I don't really need anything else (though, I've read ahead and I do agree it would have been nice to have a map for the Theater of Scoundrels) and I'd rather just have the rest of the AP instead of the extras.

Still, if it came to a kickstarter, I'd probably back it to some degree, especially if there are poster maps involved, because I am a sucker for poster maps.

I would drop money on this in a heartbeat, especially if it means expanded content and art! I was really disappointed when the original Kickstarter didn't fund.

I would prefer the 3 volume configuration, since my group would benefit from additional art and content while still running the low-end of the AP (just about to start The Dying Skyseer). If we had to wait until the entire AP was out, then we'd likely be past the point where additional content at the lower levels would be useful.

As far as rewards, i prefer the product be made better! More pages, more art, more information!

My understanding is that we have to wait because we still have two outstanding Kickstarters to deliver on: To Slay a Dragon, and the Rebuilding EN World Kickstarter. Once one of those wraps up, we can launch another.