D&D General Bruce Heard wraps up the World of Calidar

After ten years of work, famed TSR alumni Bruce Heard has announced there will be no future releases for his World of Calidar D&D-compatible setting.

The World of Calidar was inspired by Heard's series of articles in Dragon Magazine, Voyage of the Princess Ark in the 1990s, which also expanded on the world of Mystara. Under his label Calidar Pubishing, over two dozen titles were released between 2017 and 2023. The setting tells the story of the skyship Star Phoenix and describes the world itself.

Given the limited sales of the last series, I can't find the energy to launch another. These books represent a major amount of work, and I'm not getting any younger. It's a heartbreaking decision, but in the face of the apparent lack of activity after the latest Kickstarter and little or no ensuing feedback, I'm not comfortable pursuing the Calidar project.

Calidar's latest Kickstarter was in 2021 and raised $22,000.

It's a great shame, but it appears he was unable to build a reasonable audience for the setting. Bruce's heart has always been with Mystara, so I'm now hoping WOTC will open up the DMs Guild to Mystara content at some point.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, I'd heard about that. It was a real shame because he wrote some great stuff back in the day. Mystara continues to be one of my favourite DnD settings.

I love Mystara as well but more as inspiration or using as a mine. Used the Hollow World book last night in designing a campaign hook.

I think the main problem us Mystara aged poorly and the OSR crowd has ralied around OSE these days or are using one of 5000 clones they own to do whatever

 

[Dire Bare]

He asked WOT

Sadly when he approaches WOTC at the start of the guild to make new Mystara books they were apparently less than diplomatic with their reply.

"Less than diplomatic"?? Or, did they just say, "No".

I do think WotC should just open Mystara on the Guild, as they are very unlikely to ever release a product for it themselves first. Although, an official 5E Hollow World or Savage Coast would be pretty neat, potentially.

 

[jdrakeh]

I love Mystara as well but more as inspiration or using as a mine. Used the Hollow World book last night in designing a campaign hook.

I think the main problem us Mystara aged poorly and the OSR crowd has ralied around OSE these days or are using one of 5000 clones they own to do whatever

I still own all of my Mystara Gazetteers and have been slowly collecting the PODs. If I ever found anybody local to me who had an interest in Mystara, I'd run it in a minute (it's my second favorite official D&D setting).

 

[Zardnaar]

I still own all of my Mystara Gazetteers and have been slowly collecting the PODs. If I ever found anybody local to me who had an interest in Mystara, I'd run it in a minute (it's my second favorite official D&D setting).

That's the problem Mystara essentially died before the WotC buyout circa 1994.

And people who get gooey about B/X generally don't care about the Mystara parts that are easily ported elsewhere eg Isle of Dread on Greyhawk in 3E or 5E version.

I woukd also play Mystara but it's hard enough finding OSR players let alone Mystara or Greyhawk.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I bought a lot of the early Calidar stuff, but sadly didn't keep up with it ...(snip)...

Same.

Thinking of using Calidar and some other settings (Titan, Magnamund, the free MtG gazetteers...etc) in a material-plane hopping storyline to end off my current campaign.

 

[Zardnaar]

Same.

Thinking of using Calidar and some other settings (Titan, Magnamund, the free MtG gazetteers...etc) in a material-plane hopping storyline to end off my current campaign.

Magnamund doesn't get to many references these days. Shega ash taag.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Magnamund doesn't get to many references these days. Shega ash taag.

I've got so much material for that world and Titan (Steve Jackson/Ian Livingstone) it feels like a shame if I do not use it.
I know three of my five players will definitely enjoy it.
They recently freed slaves held on Toril who were originally from a world known as Allansia but none of my players clicked.

 

[eyeheartawk]

I can't say that I'm surprised. The pitch was always, I'm just redoing the Voyage of the Princess Ark. But people already had Mystara, they liked Mystara. I don't think people were interested in a spiritual sequel to Mysara done by one of the Mystara guys. Like, they already had the setting that they loved.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Magnamund doesn't get to many references these days. Shega ash taag.

Holmgard Press has been releasing the Lone Wolf reprints at a fair pace (2 books every few months). They're nice books. There's also a new project on Kickstarter, Fortress of Death, which is an interactive audio book, set in Kazan-Oud. It seems to be doing reasonably well (25k at the moment).

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

My employers eventually hired software engineers to deploy a customized instance of Norton that did not come with the many issues of off-the-shelf Norton.

That's seems like a rather Rube Goldbergian approach to that problem!