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.

 

[Lalato]

I found it difficult to find where exactly to start with Calidar.

 

[eyeheartawk]

I found it difficult to find where exactly to start with Calidar.

It is a bit perplexing, isn't it?

Multiple flowcharts are never a good sign.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

As a software engineer, I can attest that pretty much all of the major anti-virus offerings behave this way. We periodically see problems with various anti-virus acting against our own software (which is an ERP system) on some customer systems. As someone else said earlier, the attitude seems to be, better too aggressive than not enough. As crazy as it sounds, that was likely the best solution to the problem. They might need to call in the engineers again if something changes, but it's better than dropping a ton of money on new anti-virus, and then having the same or new issues. And in this age of ransomware, it would be nuts to run a business without anti-virus.

I think you've misunderstood my post! I wasn't commenting on the way Norton behaves; I was making a comment on the approach that @jdrakeh 's employer took to solve their 'Norton problem'.

 

[Zaukrie]

not important anymore

 

[Umbran]

Folks, this is the D&D forum, not a software management and antivirus tech forum. Let's keep it on topic, please.

 

[TerraDave]

There is no connection between Gygax and the D&D known world (mystara) except it being created for D&D.

The Princess Ark appeared in Dragon years after he split from TSR.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

There is no connection between Gygax and the D&D known world (mystara) except it being created for D&D.

The Princess Arc appeared in Dragon years after he split from TSR.

I would have guessed the Voyage of the Princess Ark debuted in the early 80s. But nope: https://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=7621

Crazy...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

"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.

If WotC is worried about the problematic aspects of Dark Sun, there's zero chance they will release a new version of a setting that is explicitly a zoo for people of color throughout world history. The Hollow World really doesn't hold up today and the Savage Coast has a ton of problematic issues as well. The amount of surgery that would have to be done on either setting would likely eliminate whatever lingering bump they could get by releasing a theoretically classic setting.

If they ever return to Mystara, it'll likely be extremely targeted on a single region and even then, most of them will need at least some updates to today's standards.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

According to Bruce's blog they were outright insulting. Enough to make him swear off working with WOTC.

OK, we need more detail, because this could mean a whole lot of things, and not all of them terribly plausible.

Does it mean "we hate you, you dress funny and you smell bad?" or does it, more realistically mean, "we think there's no way to make money on Mystara in the 21st century and it would be a waste of time to try?"

Because the latter, while it might hurt Heard's feelings, isn't a crazy point of view.

 

[Parmandur]

OK, we need more detail, because this could mean a whole lot of things, and not all of them terribly plausible.

Does it mean "we hate you, you dress funny and you smell bad?" or does it, more realistically mean, "we think there's no way to make money on Mystara in the 21st century and it would be a waste of time to try?"

Because the latter, while it might hurt Heard's feelings, isn't a crazy point of view.

It wouldn't make a lot.of sense to license a prodict that will sell 1000 copies of it will offend and turn off 10,000 other potential customers.