Last year, I planned to have a complete draft of the main rulebook with a 2nd book for treasure & monsters. The books would total at least 300 pages and be available as a primary draft in June 2024.
Both books are now available, albeit slightly late, here in August 2024. The main rulebook is available in the sidebar, and the Monsters+Treasure book (or MT book) is available by request. Both books are already larger than anticipated, at 163 and 179 pages respectively. There is an additional Bonus Book, containing a variety of extra classes, backgrounds, pagan spells, and so on. Follow the email links or join us on Discord.
Playtesting is ongoing and rules continue to change, and so I have concerns about publicizing too early. Nonetheless, I aim to have the main rulebook in a state suitable for broad public exposure by March 2025. Beyond that, I am uncertain. I realize existing players and patrons would like to see a Kickstarter with physical books as soon as possible, but I cannot offer a timeline at this moment. Currently, if you wish to support the project you will have to do so through Patreon.
Main rulebook updates are on a 3 month cadence going forward. These are planned for September, January, and March. Updates for the MT book and Bonus book are planned, but I have no estimate on frequency. Otherwise, the following goals are planned for the next several months.
September/October - Digital Tools and VTT
I plan to digitize all the random tables included in the books currently, including character generation, treasure, monster encounters, and adventure creation. I expect this to replace any existing spreadsheets, which have been useful for generating henchmen. I also expect to include such details as dungeon dressing, which are likely too fiddly to appear in any book. With any luck, there will be a Randungeon V3 era.
Additionally, the ongoing virtual tabletop project has been a godsend for running games online, however it has not been updated in several months. There are a variety of performance improvements and infrastructure updates needed, especially to support laptops and other lower end hardware. I realize there is a strong desire for this project to become widely available, but I cannot provide any estimates at this time.
November/December - Temple of Blight campaign book
I was not able to participate in the No Artpunk III contest, but during this past year I did run a portion of a higher level campaign. This is the eponymous Temple of Blight campaign, the vast majority of which was never experienced or revealed to players. The campaign has a total of 22 regions with an equal or greater number of highly detailed maps, totaling over one thousand keyed areas. The work is roughly half finished and the remainder well outlined. The campaign aims to take characters from 5th to 12th level, and I believe the variety in locations to be unparalleled. My hope is to complete the draft in December and begin running multiple groups through this campaign.
January/February - "Running the Game" draft
The largest missing component of the main rulebook is the section of Judge advice and player advice. I have a vast array of notes taken from discussions held on the Pedantic gaming discord, which will be some effort to go through. As you might imagine, I hope to create the most formidable, holistic, and detailed old school gaming primer by an insurmountable margin.
I have other activities planned for this time, so this goal has been kept fairly light.
March 2025 and Beyond
- Run 50 games at conventions or new venues
- Create adventures suitable for convention gaming
- Compile the 2023 and 2024 random dungeon anthologies
- Compile all minor dungeons into an 'instant adventures' collection
- Further VTT upgrades, perhaps allowing the Hardcore Ironman to be realized
- Complete the Stonehell campaign and plan for a new, improv-heavy campaign
The future has me quite excited. My pie-in-the-sky dream is to someday focus entirely on running games, with the ability to do so online at the click of a button, generating adventures and easily editable on-the-fly maps. First things first, however!
