This looks really cool, and I'd like to get in, but am (admittedly) somewhat confused.
Is there any pledge that gets you physical books of all the material?
I am not too hyped on PDFs, but would buy in if we get everything in a hard copy book (or books).
Additionally, when you buy in at $400 to name 1 of the 4 iconic characters, what exactly does that mean? Like, if I buy in at $400, I can name a major character in the series my user name "Painted Klown" or whatever? Are these NPCs or something?
Sorry for the confusion. Can someone please clarify?
Thanks!
No problem. I'll answer your last question first:
1. All design decisions are subject to final approval by the Legendary Games team. That include names that are too close to someone else's intellectual property (Alminster or Briz'zt or Mardenkainen, etc.) or the name of a real-world person, place, or thing, or names that are just a little too goofy for the setting. So no "Painted Klowns."
2. The "iconic characters" refer to the set of 4 characters that we are using in our artwork throughout the series to represent the heroes. If you look at the image right at the beginning of our Kickstarter video, which is also the cover piece for the
To Worlds Unknown adventure, you'll see them:
- a male human/cyborg warrior with sword, shield, and a red uniform over his armor
- a female plant-humanoid sorceress conjuring some magical energy -
(already claimed)
- a winged reptilian humanoid rogue
- a 4-armed red-skinned alien priest with a strange staff or polearm
These characters stand in for the PCs when it comes to action scenes depicted in the adventure art, as if they were the character party going through the adventure, so if there's an encounter with a dragon or a bunch of infected alien pod people or zombie robots or whatever it may be, those are the characters you'll see. We will also be developing a separate product, detailing these characters in case you want to use them as NPCs at some point, but they play no actual role in the adventures. They're just the sample pregenerated characters.
What you get at that pledge level is creating the name of that character and working with award-winning author Neil Spicer to develop their personality and background.
3. There are other options for naming characters in the adventure by doing an "add-on pledge" (you just add on the amount to whatever your base pledge might be), including just doing a simple name-drop of a person, place or thing; sponsoring a creature, character, or action scene and its accompanying artwork; or developing a pregen of your own design to add to the four core iconics in the same
Planetary Heroes book.
4. As to your most important question, how to get the book in print, the simplest solution is the
Planetary Hero level, where you get all of the PDFs as they come out, subscription style, including any bonus PDFs (like the Art and Map Folio already unlocked at 200 backers), and once the full adventure path is complete you'll get a hardcover compilation of the entire thing - at present, that's likely around 400 pages and counting. As we add more adventures and more material, it all gets added to the hardcover; every part of the adventure path will be in it.
5. If you're not quite ready to go all in, you can go in at the
Planetary Colonizer level, which gets you the PDFs and softcover copies of the first two adventures. Our pre-Kickstarter research came back pretty conclusively that people would rather have a single big hardcover rather than multiple smaller softcovers, but the special pledge levels do include softcovers of every issue as well as the premium hardcover. We are also offering backers who do want the other adventures in softcover a discounted price on the print-on-demand versions of those adventures once they become available.
Thanks for checking in and I hope you hop on board. Let me know if you have any further questions.
