Ultramyth to Develop Campaign Setting Online, Free

[Ultramyth]

Ultramyth Design announces to the world at large, or rather, anyone who will listen, that we're going to be developing our Shades of Grey Campaign setting online, that is, as a website, and free to the general public.

Do we expect to eventually release this as a book, even if it's made free? Yes.

Are we crazy? Yes... well, maybe... you decide.

Why are we doing this? Simple. We are a d20 pdf pubisher. From industry standards, campaign settings sell as one of the poorest of d20 system products. We believe one of the problems is that they can't preview what they're getting, not in the way that you can pick up a book off a shelf and browse through it.

Our tactics here is to build a fanbase, before the campaign setting is ever released, and then further support it, by building a community where the 'fans' can influence the development of the project.

Though there's not much up there yet, the Shades of Grey website is coming together quite nicely. I should mention that it is a setting I've had in the pipeline for many years, in fact, since high school actually, which was a good seven or so years ago.

It is a fantasy campaign setting, with sci-fi elements, and will use the modern rules, although it will be made compatible with the PHB as well.

I've not heard of this being done before, and I'm keen to hear what other publishers, as well as buyers, think of this.

More information, should, be available on the website:


http://www.ultramyth.com/shades

 

[pogre]

Cool Logo!

 

[Ultramyth]

Cool Logo!

Thanks. It needs a little more work, but I'm happy with it so far.

 

[Ultramyth]

Is this not a good place to post information like this? Or do you think people are just disinterested?

 

[Wycen]

Many posters are sleeping. This is an international site but I believe a good deal of traffic is from North American and or locations with a different time zone from yours.

Plus the DRM issue is still tangling people's thoughts. Don't worry, I'm sure people are interested.

And yes this is the correct forum, though you could probably also post in the general forum if you want people to visit your site and see what goodies you have they can use.

 

[Ultramyth]

That is, so long as the topic stays in a noticable position. Here's a quick collage I whipped up of images that will eventually feature in the setting.

From top left, going clockwise, a Daethonin woman, an imperial Sunblader, the head of a Forester elf, the child-empress of Titan, to the right of an Imperial variable fighter, beneath them, a Stygar power suit, to the left is a dwarf, followed by an imperial magekiller. Center is M.O.T.H.E.R. an orbital (and now malfunctioning) automated weather control space station.

 

[Creeping Death]

Is this fantasy, sci-fi, mixed, or what? Looks sci-fi, are you going to use D20 Fantasy, spycraft, D20 Modern, D20 Future, Dragonstar, or OGL?

 

[Ultramyth]

Is this fantasy, sci-fi, mixed, or what? Looks sci-fi, are you going to use D20 Fantasy, spycraft, D20 Modern, D20 Future, Dragonstar, or OGL?

This is definately a mix. It's definately fantasy, though with science-fiction elements as well, as in technology. It's highly inspired by many different things, predominantly, japanese animation, such as Genesis Survivor Giarth (a post apocalyptic world filled with sentient robots and humans), Macross (transformable mecha, mecha in general), bubblegum crisis (cyberpunk), but more importantly, final fantasy and phantasy star (both game series).

We are going to make the website compatible with both d20 Modern and D&D3e, that is, both the d20 Modern SRD and d20 (fantasy) SRD.

The magic system employed will be slightly different to either, but as it is a part of class details, and not character creation, it won't be a problem to detail.

It also will require a modified version of vehicle combat, maybe the d20 mecha rules, though I haven't looked over them yet in detail.