September brought us 62 more completed pages, pushing the project past 800 pages total! We’re still averaging about 2.6 pages per day since the BackerKit campaign ended (including weekends) which continues to be better than our original target of 2/day!
Flora's Embrace, Shaman Spell
This month began with Druskara's (and Unnatural Selection's) Ancestries, Backgrounds, Titles, Languages, Names, Gear, and our own version of Renown, called Repute.
Because Druskara includes entire cities filled with danger, such as the Frost Giant civilization and Cape Black, we wanted characters with bad reputations to have a chance of being accepted there. Repute can therefore drop into negative territory, bringing disdain from lawful communities but possible acceptance in places where respectable adventurers are killed upon entry.
Summon Giant Animal, Ovate Spell
We also added rules for oversized weapons. During playtesting, we allowed characters with exceptionally high Strength scores of 21 or more to wield weapons dropped by giants and ogres. Players loved imagining their dwarves and halflings hauling around ridiculously massive weapons. And though they do lots of damage, they sure do consume a lot of gear slots!
We officially finished the largest city in Druskara: The Shining City! This marks the last large city in need of completion, so all that remains for Realms and Rivals are some notable villages, and some unique carousing and rumors tables. As of right now, that book alone sits at 453 pages!
Captain Rashek
Sneak Attack Spell, Chroma Magic
We also added a roving caravan of Azarim merchants, entertainers, and assassins who can appear nearly anywhere in Druskara. When they set up shop, they essentially become a mobile city. Anyone who has watched the Crystal Saga on the Dungeon Damsel YouTube channel may recognize Vizier Thani, the ringmaster of this dangerous little traveling society.
Over the month, six additional carousing tables were completed. We’re making every location’s carousing experience feel different, with new decisions, risks, and mechanics rather than simply swapping out the results. That has become one of our favorite parts of the book, and our hope is that players will be excited to travel to different locations JUST so they can experience the unique carousing opportunities! In particularly dangerous locations, it is actually possible to DIE during carousing. Only the bravest will risk carousing in Boarfrost or Cape Black!
Ovate Spell List
We also completed Druskara’s fifth and final unique starting location: Shipwrecked on Gorgonstone Island! This gives you everything needed to begin with a 1st-level party stranded on an uninhabited island (or so you think) of EXTREME danger and extreme treasure. The place is littered with petrified victims, so sailors are understandably… eh… petrified to set foot on it.
Our page count and Druskara art deliveries slowed during the final two weeks as we shifted some of our attention toward preparing material for Gamehole Con in October, which we’ll be attending for the first time. Even so, those two weeks produced another 20 completed pages. Once the convention is over, our schedule is clear through the end of the year, and we’ll be back to cranking on Druskara full-time.
Art deliveries were stellar as always! The art team was mostly working on spot art for spells, so we were graced with Mark Riddick, Shannon Ritchie, Craig Brasco, Phil Stone, and newcomer Macabre Crow's amazing and unique pieces!
We are pleased with our progress and excited about how much personality these final additions are bringing to Realms and Rivals! Thank you, as always, for your support, feedback, playtesting, and enthusiasm. You’re making Druskara better. See you next month!
August turned out to be a very productive month: 99 pages completed! All while coordinating playtests, assigning, and receiving a mountain of art, and celebrating our anniversary! Much of this month's content involved creating material from rough notes -- not simply moving finished text into the final layout.
Web Covering, Arachnomancer Spell
We finished the Shining Knight and Skinweaver spells, created Lirra’s Venom Rite carousing table, numbered city maps, expanded city information, and began the creation of random Rumors tables (more on that later). We also moved the Ceremonies and Curiosities from Unnatural Selection into Druskara, making some improvements along the way, including allowing the Shaman to initiate ceremonies through their class talents.
A dozen volunteer playtesters also began digging into the campaign material and immediately made the book better. Their feedback convinced me that Druskara needed something I hadn’t planned: MORE RANDOM TABLES. We completed Random Quests and Random Dungeon Concepts, expanded a smaller dungeon, and added lore for Chroma Magic and Shining Steel (our much more twisted equivalent to mithril.)
Mind Graft, Skinweaver Spell
We added Druskara-specific Chroma Magic spells for every spellcasting class, including wonderfully strange creations such as All for One, Leap of Faith, Second Head, and Undead Unicorn. We also completed a dragon’s lair for low-level characters. HA!
Another major job was creating rumor tables by region and city. These take a LONG time to create. The d20 tables I originally planned were nowhere near large enough -- there’s simply too much cool stuff happening in these locations. I had to shift to d100 tables, and I love them! Some are even four pages long. Special thanks to the Discord discussion we had about rumor tables. It really helped guide the creation process! One of our testers said, "These rumor tables are a great reference for new GMs as they get started."
Healing Feast Spell
All this additional material has pushed the projected size of Realms and Rivals, our main world book, from just under 500 pages to at least 550 pages. Whew.
We closed August with the last remaining large capital: the Shining City. Most of it existed as notes, but we completed its city descriptions, events, quests, residents' stat blocks, and rumors. The section now stands at 32 pages! It’s our biggest city, has deep ties to Druskara’s worldwide events and lore, and I’m extremely happy with it.
And then there was the ART! OMG. What a beautiful month.
One week alone brought 15 finished pieces, with another five in their final stages. We received large pieces, spot art, and spell illustrations, some of which you see here! The quality has been absolutely stellar.
So that’s August: 99 more pages, a 32-page Shining City brought into final form, new and revised class material, quests, dungeons, carousing, ceremonies, curiosities, Chroma Magic spells, more random tables, and a flood of beautiful art.
That brings us to a total of about 750 pages completed with about 350 more to go! Our current pace is still holding over 2.5 pages per day, including weekends, which is a higher average than we'd planned for (but, our page count has increased as we've gone!) That still puts us in line to be finished with the four main books before the end of the year, and that's our goal. Editing and odds and ends will continue beyond that time, but we're happy with our steady progress!
If you'd like to participate in the creation journey, consider joining us on our Discord server where discussions and community playtests continue!
Time for another update! We've been posting weekly summaries in our Discord, so here's the digest for everyone who isn't there yet.
THE NUMBERS
Since the last backer update, we've completed roughly 98 pages. The week-to-week pace has varied, thanks to a number of factors -- including a convention. But despite that, this was our most productive month yet. We actually reached an average of 2.8 pages per day (including weekends!)
Crocodilian Spirit
WHAT WE DID
We've been deep in the fey. The Chelonian Village sits on a lake in the fey realm and has been suffering a curse for over a year: their gold mine has become inaccessible and their egg-laying has completely stopped. Also, beneath the city of Krystallia lies the Feydark -- an underground fey realm that was built over by a careless ancient hero.
Feydark Inhabitant
We finished the Shining City Palace dungeon and cellar, which Xane had run for our live stream group over multiple sessions. Because the material was so well-tested, we knocked out 8 pages in two days. (You can watch that playthrough on the Dungeon Damsel YouTube channel in the LIVE section if you are feeling industrious! http://youtube.com/@thedungeondamsel, episodes 3 – 15.)
Shining Palace Cellar
Then there's Gull Bay -- a coastal city with extensive playtest notes that went quickly. We did add one new wrinkle: MOLD STORMS, since the city sits close to the now-melted Ice Temple. We also fully fleshed out a carousing option called the Spirit Vigil, where players can work with a seer to speak with the dead. As you might know, each population center has its own carousing table with many different options, all tying into the lore and NPCs of the area. Our players really love the diversity of possibility and make it a point to try to carouse in each region.
Moon Temple
And then this past week -- 41 pages! These were the spell sections for the Arachnomancer, Grave Warden, Ovate, and Shaman (the last three pulled from Unnatural Selection). The reason for the speed: these spells had all been incorporated into InDesign, so this was mostly page layout work rather than converting notes into finished content. Xane also took the opportunity to fix some language in Unnatural Selection that didn't match proper Shadowdark style -- things like "near area" instead of "near cube" -- plus a round of buffs and nerfs based on three years of further testing and feedback from backers, which will also be incorporated into the second edition of Unnatural Selection.
BIND Spell
ON THE ROAD
We just got back from EGG Con in Lake Geneva! It was a fantastic trip. We ran the Chelonian Gold Mine there, where more players fell in love with the Skinweaver class. We also ran sessions of SUPERDARK to rave reviews -- lots of laughter and brutality -- which is exactly what we're going for.
Skinweaver
ART UPDATE
Some beautiful pieces have come in: Captain Narj of the Sand Sea, the interior spaces of more dungeon environments, art for the Aging Spire (a standalone time-travel adventure), the Moon Temple entrance, and Xane's favorite -- the Fool's Mold. In the Ice Temple, there's a type of nearly indestructible mold that giant snails love to eat. There's also a predatory, carnivorous mold that disguises itself as the snail's favorite…
Captain Narj
Fool's Mold
Sun Temple Guardian
Lava Ettin
PLAYTESTING OFFER
If you are a backer and you'd like to run a group through part (or all) of Druskara, please DM Xane in Discord or Bunni on Facebook! We love seeing how other GMs handle the material, and anyone who provides feedback we implement gets added to the credits. The Skinweaver class has been particularly popular in playtests -- players keep finding creative and devious ways to use spare corpses (fish gills for breathing underwater, griffon wings for flight, turtle shells for AC). Its popularity and creative use has exceeded expectations!
Ruins of Xal'Tarrak - Map
JOIN US ON DISCORD
If you'd like to follow along week-to-week, come join the community! After the last update, about 50 new backers jumped in, and it's been great to have them. Beyond the weekly updates, it's also where playtest opportunities are announced and where Bunni and I are most reachable. The more you engage, the better the final product gets -- and we love the interaction. We're fueled by it.
Parallel Shadows: Volumes 2 & 3 by Parallel Dimension Gaming — that's Casey Christofferson, who we also met at North Texas RPG Con! It's Volumes 2 and 3 of Shadowdark 'zines of an ongoing adventure series, and it's currently live on Kickstarter at 128% funded with 17 days to go. I’m sure you’ll love it!
Thanks for reading, and thanks as always for your support.
We wanted to let you know that we will be processing charges for add-ons and late pledges on Monday, July 27th.
To ensure everything goes smoothly, please take a moment to confirm that your payment information is up to date. This will help us avoid any unnecessary delays or issues.
Going forward, any new add-ons or late pledges will be charged on the same day they are placed.
NOTE: Late Pledges will still be open after Monday.
Thank you again for your incredible support! Monthly progress update coming soon!
Here's a rundown of everything that's happened on Druskara since the campaign ended. We've been posting weekly progress over on our Discord, but about half of you aren't there yet, so consider this the digest version.
The Numbers
Since the campaign wrapped, we've completed over 160 pages of final content. We've been averaging somewhere over 2.6 pages a day, including weekends, over the two months we've been keeping track. That's higher than the 2 per day we had set for ourselves!
CROCODILIAN UNDERCROFT
What's been built
We've integrated some of the oldest material in Druskara's history alongside brand new content. The Blood Forest and the Aging Temple were written almost four years ago, and revisiting them with everything we now know about the setting let us layer in details that hadn't been conceived back then.
We have finalized one of the most important locations in Druskara: the Lost City of Chromatica. We've also finished the Crystal Moon Temple, the Land Temple, the Black Coil smugglers' camp, the Sand Sea, Five Arches, the Crocodilian Undercroft, the Chelonian Mine, and the Crystal Ice Temple.
The Ice Temple had mostly melted (since the Crystal Ice had been taken from it) and was completely undefined in any of my playtest campaigns. After a great brainstorming session with Casey Christofferson of Parallel Dimension Gaming (a friend we met at North Texas RPG Con), we landed on a concept we love: mold. Lots of different, very deadly kinds of mold!
And most recently, we finished Brass Oak, which has always been one of my favorite cities in all of Druskara. A mile-wide tree housing a society of clockwork elves and their automatons. Jealous? You can become one of them by having your head removed and grafted onto a construct! Don't worry... it's painless!
For You
The Late Pledges/Pre-order store is live and the surveys are out and being processed through BackerKit! If you haven't filled out your survey, now's the time!
Art Update
New pieces have been arriving steadily:
RIME TYPHON
BOARFROST
ESCAPE FROM CLIFFSIDE
BOARFROST MAP
SKELETAL SPHINX and MAROUQ the DESERT WIZARD
SKULL TEMPLE ENTRANCE
We're amazingly proud of our incredible roster of artists. They keep blowing us away with each piece they create!
Want more frequent updates?
If you'd like to follow along week-to-week instead of waiting for these larger digests, come join us on the Dungeon Damsel Discord. You'll see more artwork posted there, and we often run playtests. We will also do polls, discussions about Druskara, live plays, and Play-by-Posts. So get over here and enjoy the fun!
If you've got a group willing to run a session through part of Druskara, we'd love to have you. Playtesters who give us feedback we implement get added to the credits, and it's invaluable for us to see how the material plays at other tables. Reach out to us on Discord or Facebook and we'll get you set up!
Thanks for your patience and support. We're making great progress, and we're excited about how it's coming together!
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