Publishers Announce Your 4e Products!

[Lord Xtheth]

I'm planning on publishing a 4E version of a 3.5E campaign I ran from February 2007 to March 2008.
It is a horror based meat grinder of a campaign that I think will fit perfectly with 4Es Tier-based system. And hopefuly where my campaign fell apart (arround level 25 where my party was beating things I couldn't believe in a matter of rounds with no damage taken, yet getting beaten down by encounters -2 levels from them) 4E looks like its prepared for "Epic" encounters.

I'm not going to release any vital info about it until I get my hands on copyright law and maybe a lawyer who works for crackers and cheese, but I will definately keep posting.

I'm hoping to have it all converted and in PDF format by October of this year. But alas, I am but one man, and if an entire company has shown me anything is that it might get pushed back to a later date.

Wanted: Artists who are willing to work for E-crackers and E-cheese

 

[Spinachcat]

Will this also come up with fluff as to why these encounters are together? Otherwise you end up with two maruts, a vine horror and a devourer just hanging out.

Absolutely! The 1001 Encounter books are only worth buying if they give you more than a random generator. I am designing Fluff with Variant Fluff so GMs can either use the encounter As Is or have options on changing the flavor to best fit his campaign.

My ulimate goal is for harried GMs to grab the book, spend 5 minutes picking out three encounters that sound fun for his group that evening and then spend 10 minutes tying the encounters together into a cohesive A-B-C story for the evening. It may not win a Pulitzer, but a fun story with three cool battles makes a good gaming evening. And with a 1001 choices, there are plenty to choose from!

Um...someone needs to tell Amazon about the Oct 1 date.

Hopefully WotC would be forgiving if Amazon starts selling the product early if the Publisher stated the work could not be sold until Oct 1. The clout of a micro-publisher to tell Amazon anything is...micro.

 

[Filcher]

Also, apparently a new line from Goodman Games:

Fear the might of Clyde Caldwell. It will be interesting to see how the adventures differ from the near seminal Dungeon Crawl Classics. Cheesecake aside, the cover looks really sweet.

Edit. Here's the blurb from the goodman games site:

http://www.goodman-games.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=20&p=20244#p20244

The Master Dungeons are a result of my efforts to focus the DCC line and keep it true to the original vision.

DCCs are very specific: They are sword & sorcery crawls. The NPCs all die by the end, there better be some secret doors and death traps, and if a PC doesn't die somewhere it was because the GM was soft. DCCs are REH, Leiber --- golden age pulp material. Gritty, bloody, and a lot of fun. (Consequently, due to the confining parameters of a "crawl" they are pretty easy to run, but this is a result of the design, not the intent.)

In contrast, Master Dungeons are more open. They are epic in tone (though not necessarily levels, ala the Heroic/Paragon/Epic tiers). They are less street level gritty (which I love) and instead high fantasy. The NPCs might not die --- in fact you might want to talk to one or two of them (and kill them afterwards ). PCs are assumed to play a crucial role in campaign setting --- whereas DCC heroes can quite easily be wandering homeless people with weapons, the default for MD heroes is that they are the champions of their realms. The stakes are higher, the stage is grander, the consequences are dramatic. If the PCs fail, it's not just their lives that hang in the balance.

(Note that this is just default assumption. DCC heroes can be regents and heirs, and MD heroes can be wandering vagabonds, but the assumptions leading into the adventure have a different flavor.)

MD allows a writer a bit broader scope. Consequently they can be a bit more challenging to run as a GM. While the plot is jsut as clear, and the goals are understood, PCs have more options on how to meet the challenges.

If we were talking classic Mentzer D&D, DCCs fall under the Basic and Expert sets. Master Dungeons are Companion and Masters. The quality of play isn't different (neither one is "better") but the tone and themes are.

 

[see]

*cough* Do an Amazon search for any of the 4E Dungeon Crawl Classic titles. Check the release date.

Um...someone needs to tell Amazon about the Oct 1 date.

Goodman Games is saying August on their webpage. When the GSL's OCtober 1st date was asked about on the Goodman Games forums, John Goodman confirmed that August was correct.

No other information has been released, but speculation has been rife.