We have fed it days, weeks; the slow ruin of our waking hours; and still it gapes, patient and bottomless, awaiting the next morsel we throw screaming into its depths.
We haven't made much progress on the core book layout. We discovered the document was set up at the wrong page size, so the layout had to be resized and reflowed. That's all done now, so there isn't much left to do; just adding the final art (new Occupations headshots and the adventure illos) and maps (which are due by the end of March), and the index, which Ken will be starting on once the layout's finalised.
We have one map finished, which is Ralf Schemmann's Bishop, OK map. He offered us a couple of different options, and we unanimously preferred this one. I think it'll make a great poster:
To speed up the layout process, we've got three parallel streams going (which I'm almost certain is a new company record for one project). As well as Gareth at Moonblade on the core book design, we've looped in Jen McCleary to work on the GM screen and Kingsbury Horror layout, and new (to us) layout artist Francita Soto is laying out Boundary of the Darkness. This should put us in a good place to have final PDFs for the new books by the end of April.
To keep you going until then, for backers I've attached a sneaky peak at the (nearly) final layout. It will be split into two books, the Trail of Cthulhu Player’s Guide and the Trail of Cthulhu GM’s Guide,and we'll be doing two different slipcase sets:
If you've backed at a level that includes a GM screen, or you've added a GM screen to your pledge, you'll be upgraded to the larger slipcase that holds both books & GM screen.
If you've backed at a level that includes just the core book(s), or added just the book(s) to your pledge, you'll get the smaller slipcase with both books.
