D&D 5E The Spire an online Magazine for 5e and pathfinder

[Magistus71]

Endless Vistas Publishings is doing a Patreon for an online 5e and Pathfinder Magazine setting. Check it out at https://www.patreon.com/evp

 

[jamesjhaeck]

Looks interesting! I'm interested your plan going forward for this magazine! Is it just going to focus on adventures and the Arenden campaign setting? Do you intend to include other content, like new monsters, magic items, races, etc.?

 

[Magistus71]

I don't have anything to do with this, other than being someone who subscribed to it.

 

[D_Drader]

Looks interesting! I'm interested your plan going forward for this magazine! Is it just going to focus on adventures and the Arenden campaign setting? Do you intend to include other content, like new monsters, magic items, races, etc.?

Hey Jumblejacks,

As the managing editor of this magazine, I am uniquely qualified to answer your question (and thank you, magistus71, for starting this thread. We appreciate any help spreading the word a great deal).

The focus of the magazine is adventures. There will be additional content included in the magazine as we feel it's needed or appropriate, but the core of the magazine is scenarios for you to run in your 5E or Pathfinder game. And now I launch into more detailed explanations...

The campaign setting we're using as our backdrop is what we've called (in-house, at least, Winter's Stone). For all intents and purposes, it's a flavor-neutral setting with a large canvas that will allow us to explore whatever cultural themes we wish (setting development is being led by Robert Blezard, a long-time member of ENWorld). The Retaking Arendan campaign is a series of linked adventures set in what was recently a ruined city, completely overrun with monsters. After we finish our main Arendan story, we might revisit the city to add additional short adventures and locations that you can add in, either during the Retaking Arendan campaign or after, but our focus will then move on to a new campaign. The Arendan campaign is currently slotted to run five issues, and after that we'll move on to some other part of the map so we can tell another story. We aren't planning to lock ourselves into a specific format, so the next campaign might be more or less than five issues, depending on what we ultimately decide to do with it. We might also run some issues whose primary adventure is standalone.

I specified "flavor neutral" above because, while we're working within a campaign setting we're developing in-house, we understand that most GMs will either be running their own worlds or one of the many other published settings. We want you to be able to use our adventures in other fantasy RPG worlds as easily as possible, without having to worry about how to adapt a ton of world-specific items. If you replace Arendan with some other ruined city in the campaign world of your choice, the adventures should port over with almost no modification needed. You will occasionally see information on the world, as we provide in Issue #0, but you can decide how much or how little of that to actually use.

As for monsters, magic items, races, and so on, we'll develop them as needed. Any time you have published adventures, designers come up with these things. If a designer decides to create five new monsters for the adventure, we might run an article with just the monsters, for example. We might also decide along the way that a new race of elves is needed, or perhaps a certain new grouping of new magic items. In other words, while we don't promise that there will be additional crunch per issue, we can pretty much guarantee that it will find its way in there, in one form or another.

As a final note, as mentioned above, we are using Patreon as our subscription service, and we have a number of milestones posted. Right now, in today's independent RPG market, we actually aren't doing too badly, but as we hit our milestone goals, it will allow us to increase the overall quality and quantity that goes into the online magazine. If this eventually reaches the levels of success we're hoping for, The Spire will be able to offer more articles and more pages per issue, without increasing the price per issue. Eventually, I'd like to be able to publish two to three adventures per issue, with one advancing our major campaign while the other one or two explore some other location or theme. I'd also like to run an article or two in the magazine tackling other topics, whether they be crunchy rules stuff, like you mentioned above, explore various aspects of story, or whatever else.

Thanks again for raising this topic, and if anyone has any further questions about The Spire, feel free to hit me.

Darrin Drader
The Spire, Managing Editor

 

[CelestialEditor]

I second the hello and thanks to Jumblejacks and Magistus71.

I'm Patric Rogers, one of Darrin's collaborators on The Spire. As Darrin said, we've had a number of internal discussions about content for The Spire, and have decided its focus will be on the adventures and ongoing storylines. I'd like to experiment with releasing small crunchy supplements to Patreon subscribers, and I've got a massive backlog of material (spells, prestige classes, feats, magical items, etc.) that could be updated to Pathfinder and 5e. I've also been heavily influenced by the Craft rules in the Everquest d20 books, resulting in non-magical alchemical baked goods such as "Style Pretzel, Barbarian" which adds a bonus to interactions with uncivilized peoples by making the imbiber behave in the style of a barbarian. (This item has its origins in my gamer brain misread "Bavarian Style Pretzels")

 

[Magistus71]

Hey Jumblejacks,

As the managing editor of this magazine, I am uniquely qualified to answer your question (and thank you, magistus71, for starting this thread. We appreciate any help spreading the word a great deal).

You are welcome, I really enjoyed Issues 0 and 1. I hope this gets the support it deserves.

 

[Talmek]

Hi [MENTION=6776284]D_Drader[/MENTION] -

I wanted to drop a note to say how much I have enjoyed reading the first couple of issues of The Spire and that based on the current quality of the work that you and your folks have put into it was a determining factor in me becoming a patron (via Patreon) of your magazine. Keep up the good work and keep us updated as new products are released!

 

[D_Drader]

Hi [MENTION=6776284]D_Drader[/MENTION] -

I wanted to drop a note to say how much I have enjoyed reading the first couple of issues of The Spire and that based on the current quality of the work that you and your folks have put into it was a determining factor in me becoming a patron (via Patreon) of your magazine. Keep up the good work and keep us updated as new products are released!

Talmek, thank you, and I'm glad you've enjoyed what we've done so far.

The next three issues are currently in one stage of development or another, and I think we have some awesome stuff lined up.

Thanks again, and keep an eye out for the next issue, coming soon.

 

[Knightfall]

Hi all to those supporting this project. I'm Robert Blezard. I'm one of the collaborators with Darrin and Patric.

I've been a longtime member of E.N. World, so I know how much people here appreciate great RPG material. Our hope at Endless Vistas Publishing (EVP) is that The Spire will fill a niche for those looking for an online magazine with great adventures. i want to take the passion I show for World of Kulan and apply it to The Spire and EVP's default setting, Winter's Stone.

My talents are world design and mapmaking, as well as race and monster design.