WotBS WotBS hardcover afterword

[Morrus]

In the WotBS hardcover we have a foreword by Ryan Nock, and afterword by myself, and a.. err... middleword by Eric Life-Putnam, our layout artist.

I thought I'd post my afterword here.

When Ryan Nock initially approached me and floated the idea of our publishing a series of linked adventures, I said no. I didn't believe that we could do it well; and I didn't believe that we could sell the product. EN Publishing is a small company, and this proposal would be the most expensive thing we'd ever attempted by an order of magnitude.

But when I saw his outline for the adventure series, I was floored. From the adventure titles (I'll take "Sleep, Ye Cursed Child" and "O, Wintry Song of Agony" over "The Lava Caves of Xyrthennrgggh" any day) to the huge cast of fully fleshed-out NPCs; from the sheer variety of tasks (rescuing prisoners from a secret undergound ice prison where they are tortured and their pain used to fuel a magical weapon, assaulting a mile-long living biomantic airship, traversing the Indomitable Fire Forest of Innenotdar) to the epic climax which evokes the Battle of Minas Tirith as civilizations clash in a mighty battle, I saw reasons not to say no everywhere I looked. And so, finally, I said yes. And, if you look again at that long sentence you just read, you will also see why the bulk of the writing work would not fall upon my shoulders.

We plunged into this herculean task without the faintest idea of what we'd let ourselves in for. We had no idea, at the time, of just how difficult producing a fully-fledged adventure every month on time would be; over a year of waiting on tenterhooks for art to arrive in time, for writers to deliver manuscripts, juggling all these tasks, somehow paying for them (and the costs were mounting up and up - I could have a pretty nice, brand new car for what I spent on this campaign saga), and then trying to find the time to persuade people to actually buy the darn thing - only to have 4E D&D announced partway through and our sales to drop to almost nothing. Man, producing this thing was hard. Most of the time we were behind schedule, and falling further and further behind: what was supposed to take one year (twelve adventures, one per month) took nearly two years; thankfully, it seems it took most folks more than a month to play through each one and so we never found ourselves in the unfortunate position of having our customers caught up and waiting for the next one with nothing to do.

We did get lucky in places. We managed to persuade veteran D&D writers such as Ari Marmell (Heroes of Horror, Tome of Magic) , Wolfgang Baur (Editor DUNGEON® Magazine 1992-1995), Wil Upchurch (Midnight®, Champions of Ruin) and Darrin Drader (Book of Exalted Deeds, Serpent Kingdoms) to write for us for knock-down prices.

We finally released The Beating of the Aquiline Heart in late 2008 with a massive sense of accomplishment. We'd done it! We'd finished! Yes, we took much longer than we said we'd take; yes, it cost far more than we thought it would; yes, we fell out on numerous occasions and nearly gave up - by we did it, by jove! We had our fully-fledged campaign saga and, damn, it, it was good.

In your hands, you now hold the compiled hardback edition of the saga - a monster of a book, as I'm sure you can see. Not only have we put all twelve adventures together, along with the player's guide and campaign guide, we've also added five bonus adventures, a section on the city of Ragos, and other bits and pieces. We're very proud of this enormous book, and we fervently hope that those who had the faith in us to pay the equally monstrous price tag get as much pleasure from it as we have.

Thanks does need to be given to an incredibly large list of people - the writers, artists, playtesters, and editors. Especially Ryan Nock, who not only saw this thing through to the very end, but did far, far more than he was actually paid for simply because he wanted to see this thing done right. Equally, other contributors stuck with us the whole way through - Claudio Pozas who did so much of the art, Sean McDonald who created the majority of the maps, and Eric Life-Putnam who still hasn't been paid, but is hard at work laying out this epic tome as I write this despite recently becoming a father to twin girls. This project really was a labour of love.

Russell Morrissey
Owner, EN Publishing

 

[amethal]

Thanks for posting this.

In a strange way it feels like we've all been on a journey together - everybody who did the hard work putting it together, and people like me who had the fun of playing it.

Our party have just finished "Festival of Dreams", and now Gate Pass has a massive statue of Emperor Coaltongue, on his knees and clutching his chest, taking up space in one of the western districts. You can't get that kind of fun anywhere else!

 

[Volaran]

Thanks for posting this.

In a strange way it feels like we've all been on a journey together - everybody who did the hard work putting it together, and people like me who had the fun of playing it.

Our party have just finished "Festival of Dreams", and now Gate Pass has a massive statue of Emperor Coaltongue, on his knees and clutching his chest, taking up space in one of the western districts. You can't get that kind of fun anywhere else!

Colour me envious. Our group has been stalled for months on Festival of Dreams thanks to two people on rotating schedules that seem to never match up. We could probably make 2-3 hour sessions, but it just doesn't seem to do the WotBS justice.

Some players are probably going to have to take vacation days so we can sit down and finish this thing

 

[Marius Delphus]

And yes, for the curious, some of the layout was performed with a baby strapped to me. I neither condone this nor recommend against it... but I will say that it can be tricky.

 

[RangerWickett]

And yes, for the curious, some of the layout was performed with a baby strapped to me. I neither condone this nor recommend against it... but I will say that it can be tricky.

So that's why the pdf had those apple sauce stains!

 

[Morrus]

So that's why the pdf had those apple sauce stains!

Ryan made a funney!

 

[RangerWickett]

Well, I am flattered by the compliments you paid me in your afterword, but let's be honest. Nobody's ever complimented me on my comedic writing.

 

[Marius Delphus]

Applesauce... I can't wait until it's time for applesauce. Applesauce will be fun.

The girls are a little over a month old (and by "preemie math" that means they have just reached zero); lucky for you, those are formula stains.