Frog God Games Announces Rappan Athuk (Complete?) for Pathfinder RPG

[Steel_Wind]

At the end of September 2011, Bill Webb of Frog God Games (“FGG”) mentioned on Paizo’s Messageboards that he would soon have a significant product announcement.

Tonight on the evening of October 24, 2011, Bill Webb confirmed on the Paizo Message Boards that FGG would release next summer a new expanded version of the mega dungeon Rappan Athuk. The tome is expected to be approximately 1,000 pages in length and like the recently released Tome of Horrors Complete will be bound using library stitching, sewn, glued and assembled in archival format. Webb also says that he is looking into a faux leather cover for the book.

Webb had mused about adding a faux leather cover for Tome of Horrors Complete, but he eventually backed off the idea as it would have reportedly increased the price well north of $100 and there were real concerns that the market had little interest in such an expensive book. I expect that given the remarkable success of the Tome of Horrors Complete, Bill Webb has decided that there is enough interest in such a collector’s edition, after all.

The new version of Rappan Athuk has not yet received a “Complete” moniker to its title and it is not yet clear what the final title of the book is expected to be. The original version of Rappan Athuk together with the expansions provided in Rappan Athuk Reloaded contained 36 levels in a mega-dungeon that earned a reputation for posing a significant challenge to players. Rappan Athuk was one of the early hits of the 3^rd Edition third party adventure products.

It has been nearly ten years since Webb finished his initial designs for Rappan Athuk and it looks like he has been busy in the meanwhile. Webb promises that the new version of Rappan Athuk will feature over 50 dungeon levels and dozens of wilderness areas, three villages nearby the main dungeon’s locale and the Temple of Tsathogga.

Webb says the “book will be available for pre-order in March or April 2012. Retail price and page count are still to be determined (though it will probably be about $125 and 1000 pages or so). The pre-ordered copies will contain bonus material as a .PDF enhancement that were cut from the final manuscript and will not be available after the pre-order period ends.”

There were a remarkable number of complaints concerning the Tome of Horrors Complete from gamers who said that they were not even aware of the product. A lack of product awareness concerning the very existence of the book was one of the factors which lead to the sale of Tome of Horrors Complete on Paizo’s webstore helping to set Paizo’s one day sales record last month. Accordingly, apart from this product announcement, I will remind people from time to time about the new Rappan Athuk book in the coming months.

Like last time, I expect it probably will not matter and many people will still probably not be aware of the book and will miss the chance to pre-order it – but that’s no reason not to try.

 

[Wraith Form]

:: checks shorts ::

Yup, that was a nerdgasm.

Thanks for the info (and subsequent need to change my boxers), Steel-W.

 

[Mark CMG]

I'll bet they go a little stronger on the initial print run for this one.

 

[Mark Hope]

So. Absurdly. Excited.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Even more significantly (to me, anyway), it's being released for Swords & Wizardry, as well. Since Rappan Athuk began its life as a dungeon for TSR D&D, having a version for Swords & Wizardry is kind of like it "coming home."

(A Pathfinder version is cool, although likely to be very similar to the 3e version, which I already have. A Swords & Wizardry version is more what I've wanted to see, all along.)

 

[Samurai]

Ok, I know this is going against the general consensus here, but I think 1000 pages is a bit of overkill. The 3 books for 3.x combined were about 220 pages. That is a very big dungeon, one that'll take take characters and DMs a very long time to finish. I don't know about others, but my group is not very big on endless dungeon crawls and would be tired after just module #1, eager to go do something else, explore another part of the world. If I showed up with a 1000 page monster of a dungeon book, there would be a mutiny, not rejoicing. The response to **thud!** "Hey guys, there's enough here to adventure in for the next 10 years!" would be "Oh HEEELLLL NO!", not "Hell yeah!"

Why not do a more reasonable-sized book, along with a lower price? Heck, even if they DOUBLED the size of the previous modules combined to a whopping 450 pages, that's still be too much, IMO, but a bit less intimidating, and they could charge $50 for it instead of $125, and most groups still wouldn't get to most of it...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

As cool as this news is, the fact that there are three different threads here about this at ENWorld suggests, to me, that the site is way too fragmented nowadays.

 

[DarkSasha]

Thanks Steel_Wind!

Wow! What a nice news announcement!

We at Frog God Games are very pleased to be able to offer this huge and famously dangerous dungeon for both the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and the retro-clone Swords and Wizardry separately.

For Samurai and those who prefer shorter adventures, rest assured we have plenty of those. Some are linked (as in our Splinters of Faith series) some are stand-alone (as in our Saturday Night Specials and One Night Stands series) and nearly all of them are available for both the Pathfinder RPG and the Swords and Wizardry RPG. The singular exception to this is the Slumbering Tsar by Greg A. Vaughan, which is for PFRPG only. Check out our website: www.talesofthefroggod.com.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Ok, I know this is going against the general consensus here, but I think 1000 pages is a bit of overkill. The 3 books for 3.x combined were about 220 pages. That is a very big dungeon, one that'll take take characters and DMs a very long time to finish. I don't know about others, but my group is not very big on endless dungeon crawls and would be tired after just module #1, eager to go do something else, explore another part of the world. If I showed up with a 1000 page monster of a dungeon book, there would be a mutiny, not rejoicing. The response to **thud!** "Hey guys, there's enough here to adventure in for the next 10 years!" would be "Oh HEEELLLL NO!", not "Hell yeah!"

Part of the megadungeon philosophy is that you're not GOING to clear the joint, like you would with a standard adventure module. You go in, you get your objective, or get some gold, or get that stupid rogue you hate killed, and then you leave. You might have another foray in, or you might say "rogue dead, mission accomplished, let's move on."

But this is clearly a specialized product for a niche market, no question.

 

[Mythmere1]

Ok, I know this is going against the general consensus here, but I think 1000 pages is a bit of overkill. The 3 books for 3.x combined were about 220 pages. That is a very big dungeon, one that'll take take characters and DMs a very long time to finish. I don't know about others, but my group is not very big on endless dungeon crawls and would be tired after just module #1, eager to go do something else, explore another part of the world. If I showed up with a 1000 page monster of a dungeon book, there would be a mutiny, not rejoicing. The response to **thud!** "Hey guys, there's enough here to adventure in for the next 10 years!" would be "Oh HEEELLLL NO!", not "Hell yeah!"

Why not do a more reasonable-sized book, along with a lower price? Heck, even if they DOUBLED the size of the previous modules combined to a whopping 450 pages, that's still be too much, IMO, but a bit less intimidating, and they could charge $50 for it instead of $125, and most groups still wouldn't get to most of it...

The economics of getting value to a book-buyer don't precisely work that way, though, because a big bulk of a book's cost (until you get into very large print runs) are in the fixed costs of the print setup and the binding. Additional pages in that setup/binding are a very low cost. So in order to deliver the most value for the money, the best strategy is to include more material and just rely on the individual gaming group to move in and out in whatever way makes sense for the individual group. By including more material at the small additional marginal cost of the additional pages, there's more manueverability for a gaming group to decide what they do or don't want to do -- just because there's 10 years worth of adventuring doesn't mean you've got to do all of it, but you can pick the best year's worth.

I understand what you're saying, all I'm saying is that there's a parallel calculation going on that's created by the economics of printing, and Frog God is essentially erring on the side of providing more material than less.

 

[Steel_Wind]

As cool as this news is, the fact that there are three different threads here about this at ENWorld suggests, to me, that the site is way too fragmented nowadays.

When people repost in smaller traffic sub-forum areas, those posts tend to reach a comparatively small audience on ENWorld.

Admittedly, people post where they are supposed to on these matters, too. So a product announcement by a publisher or somebody posting a press release on their behalf ends up in the publishers forum, while some Pathfinder fan might post a link to another site in the Pathfinder forum.

Neither approach is "wrong."

News articles, however, reach a HUGE swath of ENWorld traffic that don't even bother to visit ANY of the forums at all. This is actually a HUGE number of visitors to the site, many times larger in terms of individual IP addresses than the number of people who visit any and all of the forums, combined. On top of that reach, News articles on the front page of ENWorld are also e-mailed to 110,000+ people every week.

In the end, the fact that somebody posted an hour or two earlier and beat the news post to the front page with a link in a low traffic forum area is neither here nor there.

From time to time, I have refrained from posting topics to the news page on a few occasions BECAUSE of this kind of forum posting activity (sometimes it's helpful -- and sometimes it just isn't). However, when it comes to significant news stories, they will go on the front page whether somebody posted them to a smaller forum area or not -- even when there is an existing thread on the General discussion forum too, if the news warrants it.

In the end, ENWorld is a very large website and each user develops his or her way in how they each use ENWorld. Those individual approaches are often very different from one another in terms of how each member uses the website, what areas they visit -- and what areas they each tend to ignore. No method of use is more "valid" than any other.

If unity of purpose and clarity of message was the point of ENWorld, Russ could just make a blog called ENWorld.org and stop people from even posting comments to his few posts a day. I'm quite certain, however, that people want more than that from ENWorld. Moreover (if not more importantly), I'm quite certain Russ does too.

In the end, ENWorld is very much a reflection of its individual users' widely divergent interests and differing approaches to the topic of RPGs generally -- and D&D specifically. If the end result sometimes looks like we are herding cats -- that's because we usually are.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

* moved to meta *

 

[DarkSasha]

I'm confused.

How did an exciting message about Rappan Athuk being converted to both PFRPG and S&W rules become an argument over how the forums on this website are set up? Should that arguement even go here? I think it shouldn't.

In fact, I think that Mr. Whizbang Dustyboots might reconsider and start posting comments about our product on the product forum, where I put it to begin with. I would really like to hear what Mr. Whizbang Dustyboots thinks of our product. I really don't care about how this website is set up. It took me perhaps 5 minutes to figure it out.

Hope to see your comments on our Publisher Announcements thread, Whizbang, or anyone else who wishes to comment.

Thanks!
Dawn Fischer, editor, Frog God Games

 

[Mythmere1]

Whizbang groks megadungeons based on his comment about how they're not necessarily for clearing out, they're for player-defined missions. That's exactly how it's supposed to work, IMO. An excellent comment. Megadungeons are more like a mini-campaign in many ways.

(this from the crusty old-school 1e/0e megadungeon-lovin' department of the Frog God Games Development team)
Matt

 

[DarkSasha]

Whizbang groks megadungeons based on his comment about how they're not necessarily for clearing out, they're for player-defined missions. That's exactly how it's supposed to work, IMO. An excellent comment. Megadungeons are more like a mini-campaign in many ways.

(this from the crusty old-school 1e/0e megadungeon-lovin' department of the Frog God Games Development team)
Matt

Good point Matt. Megadungeons work best as a GM's playground to place his or her own nefarious doings.

Also I went back and checked my thread. The good sir Whizbang already commented on our product; and I like his single word comment.

Carry on, Whizbang!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

***

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Moving my post to Meta, as suggested by Morrus.

As I've said on other incarnations of this thread, I think this coming back into print is an awesome thing. I'm tempted to get this and use this as much of the Dungeon beneath Ptolus, where it fits reasonably well, I suspect.

 

[Samurai]

Whizbang groks megadungeons based on his comment about how they're not necessarily for clearing out, they're for player-defined missions. That's exactly how it's supposed to work, IMO. An excellent comment. Megadungeons are more like a mini-campaign in many ways.

(this from the crusty old-school 1e/0e megadungeon-lovin' department of the Frog God Games Development team)
Matt

As someone who, in my 30 years of gaming, has never done megadungeons, will this RA Complete contain information on how it's supposed to be used? Will it include ways to get PCs to follow a path or clues or whatever toward the goal, rather than falling into room-clearing mode? Will it have suggestions on how to get players back on track, skipping over large sections of the dungeon in order to remain on task? My problem with the few megadungeons I've seen has been that they spend huge numbers of pages detailing room after room, but have only the barest hint of a plot or goals beyond, say, "something is stirring up trouble in the abandoned temple, go stop it". That's usually interpreted as "kill everything in sight, especially any boss creatures you find".

If RA Complete will have tighter goals and ways for keeping PCs on track, why even detail all those extraneous rooms? Why not just have, say, a "random room table", such that when PCs get off-track, they wind up at **roll, roll** #11, dark temple of the Frog God, with details including Slaad, some giant poisonous frogs, etc. Once a room is discovered, cross it off the list. Make the rooms interesting and fully detailed, maybe even consisted of several rooms/adventure locations. These rooms could include clues or ways to get PCs back on track, from an NPC prisoner who gives them info, to a scroll in the treasure pile with clues, to simply being a dead end and the PCs need to go back the other way.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

As someone who, in my 30 years of gaming, has never done megadungeons, will this RA Complete contain information on how it's supposed to be used? Will it include ways to get PCs to follow a path or clues or whatever toward the goal, rather than falling into room-clearing mode? Will it have suggestions on how to get players back on track, skipping over large sections of the dungeon in order to remain on task? My problem with the few megadungeons I've seen has been that they spend huge numbers of pages detailing room after room, but have only the barest hint of a plot or goals beyond, say, "something is stirring up trouble in the abandoned temple, go stop it". That's usually interpreted as "kill everything in sight, especially any boss creatures you find".

If RA Complete will have tighter goals and ways for keeping PCs on track, why even detail all those extraneous rooms? Why not just have, say, a "random room table", such that when PCs get off-track, they wind up at **roll, roll** #11, dark temple of the Frog God, with details including Slaad, some giant poisonous frogs, etc. Once a room is discovered, cross it off the list. Make the rooms interesting and fully detailed, maybe even consisted of several rooms/adventure locations. These rooms could include clues or ways to get PCs back on track, from an NPC prisoner who gives them info, to a scroll in the treasure pile with clues, to simply being a dead end and the PCs need to go back the other way.

A megadungeon excels as sort of campaign sandbox. It doesn't give you a story-arc to play, it gives the the backdrop and the tools for creating your own stories through play in the dungeon.

It gives you lots of rooms and detail so it can support many and various groups. It can support repeated play. It can support multiple groups within the same campaign. It's not just an adventure, or even an "adventure path," but a place the PCs can return to again and again during the course of a campaign (perhaps often, or perhaps on occasionally). Sometimes they might be going for a specific reason or a specific goal ("retrieve the legendary Sword of Yod, said to be buried with the fallen paladin in the dungeon of graves..."). Sometimes they may just be looking for loot. Sometimes they might simply be exploring.

Because it *is* detailed, the very act of exploration is meaningful. That is, the dungeon is not just a place to move through on your way to the next "scene" in the story. The dungeon is also a sort of puzzle that can be explored, mapped, and examined. For example, astute players can discover secret areas and such not just by getting lucky on some dice rolls, but by exploring and seeing that, "hey, doesn't our map make it look like there should be something over here?" A traditional megadungeon is very much about exploration, descending into the depths of the underworld "in search of the unknown." (And in search of fortune and glory, of course...)

You certainly could play a dungeon-based game using the approach you describe, but it would be a completely different approach with a different focus on play. Either approach can be fun. (For the traditional exploration-style approach, I wrote an essay on designing a "mythic underworld" kind of dungeon that goes into more details on the design goals, etc., that I would use.)

 

[rkuty]

Rappan Athuk Complete Pre-Order

Does anyone know where and how to pre-order this and the cost yet?

Thanks,