Production Update: ABRE for OSR/DCC
over 3 years ago – Wed, Nov 11, 2020 at 10:48:31 AM

Great news, both in terms of content as well as timing: I've recently finished and published Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm for OSR format, Volume 1.  That's good news for timing, because we get ever closer to my finishing that pipeline product and the corresponding creature ability conversions into OSR format.

Even better, Goodman Games approved my Volume 1 of Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm for Dungeon Crawl Classics.  While that doesn't guarantee of course that they will approve the DCC content I have planned to include in the Content Conversion Guide, it's a very promising step in that direction, since ABRE Volume 1 contains the result of applying the content conversion rules I have defined.

So where does that leave us?  I'm on target to complete the remaining Volume 2 for both OSR and DCC rules editions by Thanksgiving.

That means the Conversion Guide will publish shortly thereafter, complete with DCC conversion content, fingers crossed.

Thanks again for your patience and enthusiasm... we're so very, very close!  

Onward!

Production Update: November!
over 3 years ago – Mon, Nov 02, 2020 at 12:55:40 PM

Hi folks!  Hope those of you who celebrate had a great Halloween.

Production Update

I'll keep this short:

• I'm halfway through finishing the OSR and DCC editions of Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm, and will actually be publishing about 1,700 pages of content this week.
• ABRE DCC/OSR must be completed before I can finish the Conversion Guide, so I can include converted monsters and abilities from those rulesets in the Conversion Guide.
• I'm on target for a November completion and delivery of the Conversion Guide.

I realize it's been a long road, but we're very, very close to the end of it... thank you for your patience!

Onward!

Production Timeline & New Kickstarter: Dark Harbor & FREE Gothic Horror Fiction Novel
over 3 years ago – Sat, Oct 03, 2020 at 07:05:01 PM

Production Timeline

Here's a mini-State of the Realm update: Following the release of v1.1 of Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm which expanded the world's largest bestiary by 60 additional monsters, we continue to make HUGE progress on a number of items in the pipeline.

The remainder of 2020 should see ABRE: OSR/DCC, the Conversion Guide, Monsters of Aquilae, the ABRE Master Index, DO1: Collectors Edition, Mystery of Brushgather Farm, and the Solo Adventuring Toolkit published at minimum.  AA3 and other projects that have been long waiting will follow shortly.

I've said it a number of places, but the hugeness of the impact bears underscoring: Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm consumed more than TWO YEARS more time than I had originally planned, due mostly to a lack of automation where I had anticipated being able to automate things (but my Day Job and COVID certainly didn't help).

With this enormous project now nearly off my plate, I get to focus fully on fulfilling the backlog of committed work, and let me tell you, I'm even more excited to do that than you are to receive it.

That segues us to...

New Kickstarter

It's Ravenloft meets Planescape, by way of Saw.  If that doesn't spark some interest, then skip the rest of this message and have a great weekend.

Between the timing of the season, and the enormity of progress and the tens of thousands of pages of work that's been accomplished lately, I felt the time was right to formally initialize the next thing in line.  Check it out here.  I'm also switching to an official honest-to-goodness business Kickstarter account for Infinium Game Studio.

A few things of interest here:

1: No Impact to the Pipeline

There will be zero impact to the timeline of existing committed work.  Dark Harbor will ONLY deliver AFTER all existing committed work is delivered.  I am keenly, keenly aware that I owe a great deal of stuff to a great many people, all of whom have collectively made doing what I love most possible to begin with.  I am working as hard as is physically possible to deliver hundreds of pages of content each month, a pace which I hope to keep up going forward.

2: Target of Halloween 2021

It's gothic horror, so launching in October and delivering on Halloween next year makes a helluva lot of thematic sense.

The main reason I'm launching now is that I want to have a lot of artwork in this.  The stuff I have in the Kickstarter is representative, but it takes a huge amount of lead time: the dozen or so pieces I have already completed were the result of organizing things with artists over the past 2 years in the background.  So I'd love to get a sense of what the collective interest level, and my budget, will allow.

Also, based on my throughput over the last year or so, I fully expect that I completing my entire backlog of work by October 2021 will be entirely feasible, so the timing makes sense from that standpoint as well.

3: Free Novel

Years ago, I finished a horror novel set in the present day situated in the mythology of the Dark Harbor campaign setting.  Dark Harbor the novel is not quite the same thing asDark Harbor the RPG concept, not least of which because the former is present-day and the latter is swords and sorcery, but the basic structures are there, and if nothing else, it'll give you a feel for things if you're interested but on the fence.

4: Who Gets What

If you're a backer of Dark Obelisk 2, Gauntlets & Gaslight, or Western Realm Gazetteer, or are otherwise already entitled to "Dark Harbor", fear not: you will automatically receive all digital products from the campaign; no pledge or additional involvement necessary.  There's more detail in the Kickstarter campaign description but you get the idea.

FREE Gothic Horror Fiction Novel

Grab your FREE PDF of the Dark Harbor fiction novel here.  Despite having published over 50 RPG products spanning tens of thousands of pages, I'm actually somewhat embarrassed and shy about my actual fiction writing, which is why I've only finished 3 novels of which one is entirely unpublished because it's semi-autobiographical, so take it easy on me in the feedback department with this book.  :)

Onward!

Production Update
over 3 years ago – Sat, Sep 26, 2020 at 11:39:52 AM

Hi folks!  Good news and frustrating news for those eager to get their hands on the Conversion Guide.

Good News

Good news is that I'll be including an Excel version of the conversion matrix I've been developing.  I'll be laying it out, and I have finally figured out a nice way of making that presentable and easily usable, but it'll still be a bit more frustrating than hitting Ctrl+F and banging out "Aura of Doom", for example, to see what that looks like in OSR.

As I've mentioned, I've been developing the Excel tool all along for the past year and a half as part of the work required to bring the tens of thousands of pages of Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm to completion, so it makes perfect sense that it comes as a FREE bonus companion to the Conversion Guide for ease of reference.

The Excel looks like this, though the final version will be tidied up a bit, and of course there is a tab separately for Spell mapping that appears similar:

Bad News

I've spent the past few weeks working on adding the remaining 60 monsters to Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm.  That's awesome news for those who have this product, but it means time I haven't been devoting to the Conversion Guide unfortunately.  I'm still aiming to complete the Conversion Guide ASAP, but I need to get my hands around some Day Job stuff first.  

This means the Conversion Guide, which at one optimistic point I had targeted for July, will be a solid Fall deliverable, but it's getting ever so much closer to completion!  Thanks for your patience!

Good News About the Bad News

On the other hand, everything about the new 60 creatures has been mapped fully into the other rules systems supported by the conversion guide, bringing the grand total to more than 4,800 auras, attacks, abilities, qualities, etc. that enjoy full, explicit mappings.

So, that's a second example of more content for free.

Stay safe, stay sane, and as ever... Onward!

IGS State of the Realm Q2(ish) 2020
over 3 years ago – Thu, Sep 03, 2020 at 07:21:48 PM

Okay, so "Q2" is probably stretching it a bit; the just-published State of the Realm update has been long overdue.

Updated Project Targets

This has been the overwhelming most popular request: for the stuff that's taking longer than expected initially, what's the new vision for timing?  In the past, I've tried to avoid saying anything explicit if I wasn't very, very certain; in my management day job, I've usually worked in climates where citing a revised date and then missing that is viewed as worse than just being honest and vague about what a reasonable target might be.  But I recognize that this is not a management day job, and that people want to understand, and that a best guess is often better than open-ended ambiguity.  So, I've added targets in the SotR update.

I want to stress, and thank you for, the overwhelming amount of optimistic, understanding, sympathetic, and generally positive feedback I've received.  Most of you seem to be super thrilled; many of you are eager to hear more, and I do respect that some of you are frustrated.

I have always delivered, and I will continue to deliver, as rapidly, and as completely, as I am capable of.  I thank you for your patience, now in this bizarre 2020 situation more than ever, and for the nearly 10,000 of you who have received at least one IGS product already, I'm always eager to hear your feedback!

Thank You!

Thank you as always for your patience, support, and constructive feedback.  2020 has been a heck of a year for us all, and yet, IGS has continued to produce a TON of products spanning thousands and thousands of pages and over a dozen books.

We're looking forward to much, much more yet in what has already been a record-breaking year of productivity for our teeny-tiny indie geekfest company.  None of this would be remotely possible without you, your support, and your own passion.

So: Thank you!

Onward!