2nd Edition Brief

8/17/2024

Welcome back, Adventurers!

I have been gone for a quite a long time (~2 years on this website, months of the discord). These past three years since the funding of Crowns 1e back in July 2021 have been… enlightening.

You don’t know how much you can do wrong until you do it. At least, that’s been my experience.

So, putting to use the knowledge I’ve accumulated over the years, I’m going to (hopefully) do this one right. That starts with an open line of communication.

Crowns 2e – The Next Big Release

All the pieces are in place. The manuscript is fully written. The itch page is built. The Kickstarter is assembled (although Backerkit may be smarter, I’ll have to dig a little deeper into that). All that is left are three things in order:

UI Art Commissions

UI Art are things like backgrounds, trims along pages, header flourishes, etc. The things that separate books from looking professional and homemade even if in reality one guy in his basement can make a masterpiece and a team of 20 veterans can make a less-than-desirable product.

Once these commissions are complete, I can move onto the…

Marketing Materials

My wife is a marketing wizard. She knows her stuff. I do not. I was informed I need things like “press kits” and “marketing goals” and other things I know little of. I probably always needed those, but, you know, live-and-learn.

Once these are done I can release the itch.io page, Kickstarter preview page, and other stuff in time with the marketing releases. Once that’s down I only need to…

Get Funded on Kickstarter

Why Kickstarter? Interior art, physical print copies, and delivery fees.

I learned a lot from my last one, like:

Only use the money to enable you to do more with what you ALREADY HAVE, do not imagine that by having money you will magically do the work.
Likewise, don’t set stretch goals you aren’t prepared for or for things you haven’t done before.
Everything costs way more than you think. Printing, delivery, art. By a LOT. And everything takes more time than you think. Printing, delivery, art. By a LOT.
Put money in the art budget for concept redesigns and concept art/sketching.
Get a trusted company to handle holding onto and distributing the Print Copies, they’ll also help a bit with marketing.
Maintain the community you garnered for a long time with though out plans/events and a community manager.

With all that in mind, this one cannot possibly go wrong.

The Kickstarter will be live sometime in Q4 2024, stay tuned for updates.

Crowns 1e – Old Debts

There were two expansions promised. There are two expansions still to do.

Season of Crows

Just gotta write The Black Market and then tie it all together. That’s difficult seeing as I don’t play 1e anymore and am less familiar with the intricacies.

How about instead of tying it all together I create a dungeon for each minor expansion using the expansion in some way? Not a long dungeon, just a few pages.

Maybe Crowns 1e compatible, Crowns 2e compatible, and generic OSR compatible.

Fair?

Good. That’s what I’ll be doing. Much easier that way and much more interesting to fit into the hard copy. No pictures though. That’s money.

Here’s what I imagine the layout will look like:

2-page spread-image and title of the expansion.
6-page rules for that expansion.
2-4 page dungeon using rules from that expansion.
Repeat for all nine expansions.

Where the Wind Bites Like Steel

Much more work needs to be done, but now that I have all the tools built in Crowns 2e, this will be much easier to accomplish.

The book will be laid out like this:

Raiders in Dragon Ships

(pg1-2) Quick and dirty lore, open ended, to enable GMs to create their own.
(pg3-4) Travel rules, dealing with extreme cold, and sailing/naval battles.
(pg5-10) Holdings, fleets (holdings on the high seas, upgradable as well), downtime, and refuges (with some special equipment).

Regions 1-5 (each is a region, along with tables and rules to make regions specific to this part of the world, regions include: The Far North ~Scandinavia, the Isle of Castles ~Britain, the Kingdom of Lilies ~France, the Outlaw Kingdoms ~Ukraine, the Empire of Silver ~Byzantium)

(pg1-2) 2-page spread of the region.
(pg3-4) Lore of the region.
(pg5-6) Travel tables, weather tables, encounter tables, involving the region.
(pg7-26) Major hexes in detail, refuges, forts, dungeons, sub-biomes, etc.
(pg27-30) New monsters for the region.
(pg31-32) New treasures for the region

Branches of the World Tree (regions as before, but in different realms, section begins with a 2-page spread about the lore and how to travel the world tree, realms include: Nilfheim, Muspellheim, Svartalheimr)

(pg1-2) 2-page spread of the region.
(pg3-4) Lore of the region.
(pg5-6) Travel tables, weather tables, encounter tables, involving the region.
(pg7-26) Major hexes in detail, refuges, forts, dungeons, sub-biomes, etc.
(pg27-30) New monsters for the region.
(pg31-32) New treasures for the region.

Does that seem like a lot? Yeah. I think so too. But most of it is self-referential. Basically, as soon as a region is built, the rest is easy to follow.

A two-page spread of lore? That’s honestly pretty short. Travel tables and such? Mostly copy-paste, or easy enough to come up with. Major hexes? I mean, they should also be self-explanatory, but the dungeons and such will be fun to make. New monsters? For the realms this is really easy, for the Midgard regions it’ll be slightly more difficult but we need only lean into local folklore and/or create unique human enemies for the region. New treasures? Probably a couple of magic items.

By the time its done it’ll be a fantastic sourcebook. I might even release it in parts so there is a solid feed of content while its being developed.

Other Games and What’s Next

Now that Crowns 2e is almost out I can start working on other projects as well! And I have!

The “Currently Developing” section at the bottom of this websites home page has been updated and I will be creating posts about each of those games. Here’s the list:

BLACK BAGS, a TTWG of a collapsing America in the throws of civil war
PROJECT: Freecompany, a TTWG set to replace Soldiers of Fortune, including its own simple wargame system
PROJECT: Galaxy, a TTWG about an evil empire and a rebel alliance at war with procedural generation
PROJECT: Iron, an action-sci-fi TTRPG about mech pilots at the end of the world
PROJECT: Basic, an action-fantasy TTRPG focused on powerful PCs fighting and killing, not OSR/NSR
PROJECT: Warfighter, a modern action TTRPG focused on modern warfare, compact, and not just D&D with guns
PROJECT: Nerve, a modern horror TTRPG focused on everyday people fighting back the unexplainable
PROJECT: Scrap, a TTWG of scrap-heap mechs fighting over oil and fallen satellites on a dying planet

If you find any of them interesting, stay tuned!

Thank you so much, everyone!

Until we meet again,

GOOD LUCK ON YOUR ADVENTURES