Update - 03/03/2025
Hello, and welcome to a new weekly update! I hope you all had a great weekend. I spent mine working and little else, I didn't sleep very well these last couple of days and on top of that we are having actual winter for the first time this season so I wasn't in the mood to exit the apartment. As you all know, the Core Rules book for Machine Gods of the Noxian Expanse is finally complete, so now Simone is working on the art for the Voidspire Territories book. As I mentioned before, please read both carefully and let me know if you find any errors, I want to send the Core Rules to DTRPG so we can get those PoD ASAP.
In other news, the DTRPG PoD version of ATDW (that's a lot of acronyms) has been taken down, again. It appears that they really can't print it due to ink saturation issues, so they've asked me to prepare a premium version of the files. The problem is, they don't support premium printing in our chosen format, which means we must re-do the layout in a different format. I've asked Glynn Seal to start working on it, but it's going to take a while before he's done rescaling the book up to 7x10 inches. It's a bit larger than the original format, but not by much.
This poses a question, though: what do I do with Across a Thousand Hollow Vaults? I've been working under the assumption that the current format would work fine, but it will definitely cause issues with DTRPG. So what do I do, do I rescale it up to 7x10 as well, or leave it as it is? If I leave it as it is now, it would mean that there's a size consistency between the offset versions of both books, which is something really important to me. I hate it when you have books in the same "collection" with different formats... But if I do this, I would have to either not release a PoD version on DTRPG, or make a separate one later on... which means more expenses. What do you guys think?
In other news, I don't think I'll be able to give you guys a lot of new stuff this month. Well, that's technically not true, because I plan on giving you access to the Ker Nethalas Quickstart very soon, and that's all new stuff, but you know what I mean. The reason is a good one, though: as some of you might know, in 2021 I started working with Ivan Sorensen on a skirmish game set in the world of Disciples of Bone & Shadow. But as you can imagine, once I sold the game's publishing rights to Exalted Funeral, we couldn't continue working on it, so we dropped it. Still, I've always kept a good relationship with Ivan, I love what he does, and he's a really great guy. Fast forward to the release of Carnage & Aether, and apparently he liked it so much that he told me to work with him in a project. You guys know I'm not a fan of working with other people anymore because I'm a control freak, but this is a really cool opportunity, and on top of that he had some very fresh setting ideas, so I said yes. We've been brainstorming now and then but we set March as the month we would both dedicate fully to this game, which means I'll not be able to work as much as I would like on my own projects.
Still, I will be giving you guys a new ATHV alpha with new art and a few additional pages, as well as a few pages of Machine God's Advanced Rules book. I'm done with quite a few sections, so although it's far from complete, there's already plenty of playable content there for you guys. I just need to sit and work on the layout for it before I can share it with you.
So that's it for this update, this week I'll be busy working with Ivan, and also making packages, since I finally got the Path of the Aram Thyr books from Alan Bahr! I'm excited to ship these out, they came out very nicely, super good quality printing.
Have a great week!
Comments (14)
Granted I currently only have the PDF of ATDW, but I'll echo what Seth said. You need to do what is best for you, and helps grow the brand. If that means changing the size of the book, so it conforms with DTRPG requirements, go with that option. The quality of the product will hopefully overcome the fact the books are slightly different size.
Thanks for the feedback, once I get the new 7x10" version of ATDW and set it together with the original I'll be able to see how different they are, even though the slightest difference will trigger me, haha.
Reading through the Voidspire territories I think everything looks good the only nitpick I have is that some of the notable NPCs have the same names which was a little confusing as to whether they were two different people or the same person playing different sides. Ex: Knight-Sergeant Garrick and Garrick the Blacksmith and Foreman Garrick, Agent Kael and Kael the Informant, Knight-Lieutenant Thalia and Thalia the Healer. I wasn't sure if they were supposed to be the same characters by a different name in a different area or if they were distinct different people who happen to have the same first name.
Damn, how can I've done that and not realize, haha. I'll change the names of some of the NPCs, thanks! I'm terrible at naming NPCs but I really didn't even realize I did that haha.
I hate to make you do more work but I would prefer ATHV to be the same size as ATDW. I am the same. All my black oath games are on the same self and the consistency of size is very desirable. It’s a shame that the Only pod options are making you resize the ATDW book.
I'm honestly the same, I would be really annoyed if it weren't. I will probably end up doing two different versions, yes... Mostly because I'm already almost done with ATHV and redoing 150 pages or 200 is basically the same.
Alex, you really take good care of your current fan base and we all will love whatever physical format of ATHV is available to us, even if the size doesn’t pair as nicely with our original copies of ATDW… I think you should make the decision on what to do about ATHV by doing whatever will make it the most attainable for newcomers to your work… I would eventually order the newly formatted ATDW to match my ATHV and give my original copy to someone that will appreciate discovering your great work! Simplified…. You have a solid fan base, so do what you have to do to bring more fans into the fold👍🏼 You’re the best at what you do and others deserve to experience it too😎
Thank you, I really appreciate the support! For the time being I'm focusing on getting ATDW back on DTRPG, and depending on how complicated that is, I'll see what I do with ATHV.
Did you have any extra copies of Path of the Aram Thyr - I have the pdf but rather buy from you than get it third party printed
Yes, I'll have a handful of copies for sale directly from my site! I'll let you guys know when.
I just wanted to give a clarification. When Alex says actual winter, for Spanish people it means 6 degrees centigrade and rain lol. Keep up the good work. Great update as usual!
Haha yeah, actual winter for this part of the world. The weeks we had of 15-18 degrees was madness, haha
I can't wait for the new colab! And for the Alpha ATHV! And the new quick start haha what an exciting time. I got that ATDW hardcover printed and I got a good copy! If it's saturation issues, have you seen what inverting the colors of the dark dark pages looks like? If you changed to light pages would that solve the saturation issue? It would still take a lot of formatting work ... some artsy pages would still need to be pretty dark to look right. I don't know. Or maybe in that same size, can you switch to glossy? I don't know if DTRPG even does glossy... I have no idea of course... just brainstorming. I hope you find a solution that you are comfortable with and isn't too costly.
Sorry, the dark pages do really enhance the print so idk