D&D 5E FGG Kickstarter The Blight Richard Pett's Crooked City

[qu0zl]

All this bard/acrobat/thief stuff is the most worryingly twisted thing I've read in a Blight thread so far. Wanting to play a Bard? You people need help!

 

[rich pett]

Welcome to the Sinks...

INTRODUCTION
Is madness infectious?
They cram into its decaying façade living a collective lie; all is normal here, all are normal here. The truth is darker; madness begets madness, excess drives excess, and when the hunger is driven by those who are unused to hearing the word no the glut never stops, feeding upon itself and growing out of control.

No aristocrat should kill another—at least not openly—so those who are deemed unfit to mingle with the inbred, selfish, vile polluted horrors that rule the city from the Capitol are exiled.

They come to the Sinks to die.

They crawl the streets here, taking on an exterior calm, an image of serenity, of utmost importance, for no matter how depraved, no matter how diseased, no matter how wrong they are, they find a home here.
Yet even the royal family admit that some of their high caste are too dangerous. These are confined in the Asylum, the asylum run by inmates many call it. The guards, physicians and cultists who make home of caring for the Asylum do so for perverted reasons, but each is bound by a fear of retribution, they dare not openly defy a noble by killing one. Many inmates walk free only to be caught again, yet some remain at liberty to carry on their wicked lives.

This is a place where royals take care of their sick, and make sure they rarely leave...

 

[rich pett]

..and what the heck, let's have Festival out in the garish lantern-light too....

INTRODUCTION
What’s your pleasure?
Festival is a huge man-made island in the Lyme River, built around a squat grey hill. It is the place locals come to for pleasure, and boasts that every delight may be found here, whatever your joy might be. The dark and light of the soul are at their strongest here, simple laughter lies in earshot of unspeakable pleasures.

Covering twelve score acres, it rises some two hundred feet through steep streets called the Skew, to the Great Fayre at the summit; itself eight acres of joy and amusement. The streets rise sharply between shambles of buildings built upon buildings, each bolted to the last, giving the place a spastic look and a constant feeling of imminent collapse. Timbers groan and creek, bolts occasionally explode, and the evidence of shoring up and repair are everywhere beneath the veneer of happiness.

Whatever you define as pleasure is available here, from simple tumbling clowns to sinister dark places where nightmares are drawn out of madwomen and given breath for gratification. The Crimson Lantern is said to be the largest prostitution area in the world, with any vice available at the right price. The freaks here are not mere freaks of nature, they are abominations of unbiology, often things made to gratify, to serve, or to terrify.

This is a place of hidden dark secrets. Vice and misery seethe just below the surface; dig even slightly and the maggots of corruption are there for you to see. Only beware, for here, many people share the same ancestry...

 

[rich pett]

..and so to the Hollow and Broken Hills...

“Evil is a moral entity…

Power and divinity somehow mingle upon unsure ground here. This part of the city is fractured; a limestone landscape of broken tors and tidal stacks and vales infested by the river. Bridges of outstanding grace and cost span these gaps, while minarets and spires and fortifications embrace, almost throttle, the natural wonder they find home upon.

Beatific faces—mostly of Mother Grace—smile from stained glass windows, holy wells, grottoes and alleyways. Boats cram dark harbours below, and the skirts of the tors are given over to tiny villages. Above, graceful parks rise up the sides of limestone crags, passing ancient trees and ivy and seemingly endless graveyards and mausoleums to the summits, which are crowned with cathedrals and mansions and townships that stare across at each other, almost as though daring each other to approach.

Ravens and crows sweep between the mangy gulls that soar over the ever present river below, which at its edges touches the sea at the borders of this strange place.”

 

[mach1.9pants]

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2t4v4?-Richard-Petts-The-Blight-Kickstarter

I'd encourage those who want to see more info tidbits to read that thread at Paizo, there is extra stuff there. It is all very good imo.

I so hope this gets the support for 5E physical book, but that fluff is so horrendously awesome any rules flavor will do!

 

[Elodan]

Latest update:

And the $80,000 line has come and gone. With that stretch goal the adventure Horror in the Sinks is unlocked. And, I feel compelled to add, The Blight Player's Handbook is just a hair over $1,500 from being unlocked as well.

I'll go ahead and mention that another stretch goal has been added too. At $88,000 (only about $7,500 away), Bill Webb, co-founder and CEO of Frog God Games and co-founder and former president of Necromancer Games, throws his hat in the ring of The Blight adventure design with the adventure The Children of the Harvest. It's almost like Rappan Athuk and the Sword of Air had a baby in the Blight...and it somehow came out wrong. Don't say we didn't warn you!

We are now less than $20,000 away from hitting the 5e print version stretch goal...and we've made $20,000 in just the last few days. The 5e print version is not only in sight, it's well within reach if we get a huge blast from our 5e fans here in the final days. You guys can totally make this happen. Only 100 more base customers with no add-ons gets us 2/3 of the way there, and I feel strongly that there are more than 100 5e fans out there that haven't backed The Blight yet. And with add-ons to those orders, the sky's the limit.

I should also mention, since it has been asked and had never been formally stated in the product descriptions for add-ons and stretch goals: If we sell a thing in PF and S&W rules, then there will be a 5e version as well. Right now, for the books, there will only be a 5e pdf version, but as soon as we hit that $100k goal, those will all become available as 5e print products as well. Anyway, just in case there was any confusion I wanted to go ahead and get that info out there. And I have updated the KS text itself to reflect this. So tell all your 5e friends what's going on here. Make sure those who are backing for the main book are aware that the add-ons and stretch goals can be had in 5e as well.

We made it to $75,000 primarily on PF and S&W fans (yes, I know that there were many generous-hearted 5e fans who backed as well to make the initial funding, for which we are forever grateful, but primarily it was our regular PF and S&W who made that happen), and I feel like there are numbers of 5e fans out there sufficient to raise the additional $25,000. I realize we're not tried and established in the 5e community (which was obviously our initial concern as well), but from what I've seen of the 5e community in this KS, you guys are interested in 3PP campaign settings/adventures and you're serious about your gaming. So come on out and let your voice be counted. We believe you're out there, we just need you to pick this KS up and carry it the rest of the way home so we'll know we can do our books in all three versions from the get-go from now on.

You guys have the power and the numbers. Tell us what you want! Because we really want to know,

Greg

Three days to go. 5E version seems to be within reach.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I backed for a hardback, hopefully we get a 5E version, but its so incredibly easy to convert on the fly to 5E, not a huge deal if we dont. For those wanting an adventure path which doesnt end at 20th level and saving the world, this is for you! I really enjoyed the Styes adventures in Dungeon, so totally glad this is funded!

 

[Noctem]

I backed for a hardback, hopefully we get a 5E version, but its so incredibly easy to convert on the fly to 5E, not a huge deal if we dont. For those wanting an adventure path which doesnt end at 20th level and saving the world, this is for you! I really enjoyed the Styes adventures in Dungeon, so totally glad this is funded!

silence cur! We need the 5e hard back!

 

[Elodan]

The Last 60 Hours and the 5e Catch-22

5E Specific Update.

We're down to the final 2-1/2 days of The Blight Kickstarter, and we've not only funded recently but have been smashing through stretch goals.

We're now over $85,000 and seriously eyeing that $100,000 stretch goal where The Blight suddenly becomes a 5e print product! But here's the rub:
There are a lot of 5e fans that are still not ready to commit to a print version of the book until they're sure that there will be a print version of the book, and there can't be a print version of the book until there are enough 5e fans that are committed.

So that's our Catch-22. And I don't think that the 5e fans that are on the fence have unreasonable concerns. I mean, unless you'd like another version of the print book just as much and would be content with a 5e pdf, then that's a lot of money to invest in the possibility of hitting the goal. I fully understand.
But this is the point where we really need you to step up so we can get there. And if at the end of the campaign it appears that we are coming up short, then by all means reduce your pledge accordingly. You can do that at any time prior to when the Kickstarter ends. But we really need you right now so that other 5e fans can see the trending as well.

Remember, this product was written before 5e was released. So we didn't originally have the option of writing/releasing it as a 5e book and had never intended to make such a massively huge and expensive book as a test-case of the 5e market. But the overwhelming demand of 5e fans feeling slighted or disappointed that we had not included them in The Blight showed us what you wanted and made us put our money where our mouth is. So we committed early on to doing a 5e conversion of The Blight and including it's pdf in the campaign. Doing this is not free. At 550,000+ words that is A LOT of paid editing and conversion work that we can't back out of once it has been contracted. And FGG is not a massive company that can just thousands of dollars here or thousands of dollars there on a whim without the risk of it hurting our bottom line very badly.

We have mentioned previously in our comments that even though the KS funding goal for this project was $75,000, even from the start, before adding the additional expenses we really needed about $78,000 to reach the break-even mark for the costs associated with producing this book; we just thought that $75,000 was already so high and didn't want to cause any fans or potential backers to be dispirited by the daunting level of the goal and left it at $75,000 as a result. That means that $78,000 was the first time that Richard Pett actually sees any direct payment for the writing of The Blight since we entered into a royalties deal with him. With the addition of the 5e conversion expenses, we're probably realistically just now reaching the level of profitability where Richard and FGG make any money on the book. That's why we had to make the 5e print stretch goal so high, because it adds to substantially to the cost of the project.

Right now we've got 62 backers sitting at the $1 pledge level. I suspect that a very significant portion (if not virtually the entire group) are 5e fans who are waiting to see if the $100,000 goal is reached. If those 62 fans increased their pledge to the $135 print copy level, that would push our funding up over $93,000. We've got 148 backers at the pdf-only level. Some percentage of them (maybe half?) are likely 5e fans waiting to see if we reach $100,000 before committing to the print version. If between a third and a half of them increase their pledge to the $135 print copy level, we're already over $100,000. And none of that includes the myriad add-ons and stretch goals that are available to the 5e fans as well. Plus the already-a-print version-for 5e of the Monster Book that becomes available as soon as we hit the $92,000 stretch goal.

I think you can see where I'm going with this. And I'm primarily addressing our 5e fans here, that great horde of fanatic gamers whose faces and names are only now beginning to come into focus as FGG takes these early tentative steps into a market that officially only opened yesterday. We love you guys, and we want to make the books that you like. Just like we do for our long-standing PF and S&W fans. We have committed and made the investment in you. We don't want to trick you, and we don't want to cheat you. If the $100,000 goal isn't going to be met then we want you to reduce your pledges so that you don't get stuck with a product that you don't want. FGG is all about our customers, and once you've been on board with us a little while or have had a chance to talk to some of our current customers you'll see that. But we are asking a favor of you. We've committed; we're all in here. The Blight 5e is happening whether in pdf or pdf and print. What we're asking is that you take a chance on us as well and make the leap. We need you to make it to the golden $100,000 goal. We need you to pledge for the $135 level. We need you to buy any add-ons that look interesting to you. We need you to spread the word to all those 5e fans out there that we don't know yet and don't know who Frog God Games or Necromancer Games are. We need your help, and now is the time to do it if we're going to make it.

We sincerely thank you for all that you've already done and the faith that you and all our existing fans have already placed in us. We're just asking you to help us get over this last hurdle and make this book a 5e print reality.

Greg

I upped my pledge to the hardcover to help reach the $100,000 5E print goal while setting a reminder to check late Monday to go back to the PDF level if it seems unlikely the print version will fund.

 

[Elodan]

In case this wasn't clear in the above.

...The Tome of Blighted Horrors will be in print for 5e, PF, and S&W even if we don't hit the 100k 5e print goal.

So join in and spread the news to 5e fans everywhere. Even if they don't want a whole campaign setting or a pdf, they might still like a book of new, twisted, and depraved monsters, the likes of which could only be found in the Blight.

Greg