Spacers, Silt Trawlers, and Cosmic Scoundrels, I present another opportunity for cosmic treasure!
Our next project, Tempest, is live RIGHT NOW! If you have a taste for swashbuckling and sailing then you'll find your place amongst the several seas of Tempest!
Tempest: A Seafarer's Sourcebook was our first campaign, all the way back in the forgotten times before Faerie. Since then we have learned many a lesson, practiced our craft, and, most importantly, developed a taste for gorgeous collectors editions! The current campaign is a ground up remaster of the original book, containing over 100 pages of brand new content, a full overhaul of all the existing pages, and brand new physical add-ons for you to get your hands on!
Contained within the pages of Tempest is over 300 pages of Piratey Player Options, Nautical Beasties, and a brand new overhauled system for running and maintaining your beloved ships! For those that have an... explosive personality, we have the brand new Powder Monkey Fighter Subclass: toss custom bombs at your enemies with reckless abandon!
Also, if you're a returning backer you'll get a brand new content pack bridging the thematic gap between Lodestar and Tempest...
Corsairs of the Cosmos will include: New Piratey Additions - New Vessels, Upgrades, Munitions & More for use with Lodestar Ship System, all dripping with pirate swagger (and a healthy dose of gold). New Subspecies of Bali - The Cometrider The monkey-folk native to Tempest take to the stars with the new Cometrider subspecies! Astral simians who wield the sort of confidence that allows them to ride the comets themselves, and occasionally survive! New Realm - The Realm of Storms Tempest joins the galactic realms of Lodestar! Featuring realm and planet details for Tempest and its surrounding system, so that even spacers can visit the several seas!
If you enjoy hearing about the ins and outs of game design, watching Conor draw monstrous creatures, or just need some background noise for your lunch break: We're going live this evening (19:00 BST, 2:00 PM EDT, 11:00 PDT) for the campaign launch stream! Hop on over, ask questions, say hello!
It has been one week since we presented unto you the Beta PDF for Lodestar and you've already been invaluable in helping us nail all of the niggly little mistakes, typos, and convergences of cosmic chaos. Just as a reminder, if you haven't downloaded it already you can get it from "Your Pledges & Surveys" on your profile right here on Backerkit. If you spot any mistakes that need rectifying, we'd love to hear about them in the#lodestar-correctionschannel over in the Discord!Just make sure you grab the @Spacer role to be able to view it!
As far as progress with the campaign is proceeding, we're on track to meet our deadlines laid out in the roadmap which you can find Here. That means some time over the next week or two you'll be getting an updated PDF including the full ship system!(any corrections made so far won't be reflected in this version so please don't point them out again!)
However, I do have something new and exciting for you. For those of you that wish to sail more terrestrial seas, our new campaign Tempest launches tomorrow! Tempest is a nautical setting pulling from a lot of the same thematic influences as Lodestar (except a little more Treasure Island than Treasure Planet!). If you like what you've seen so far, consider checking Tempest out HERE! If you are a returning backer, you also get an exclusive mini crossover PDF to bridge the thematic gap from Lodestar to Tempest completely for free! The name of this supplement is:
CORSAIRS OF THE COSMOS
Corsairs of the Cosmos will include: New Piratey Additions - New Vessels, Upgrades, Munitions & More for use with Lodestar Ship System, all dripping with pirate swagger (and a healthy dose of gold).
New Subspecies of Bali - The Cometrider
The monkey-folk native to Tempest take to the stars with the new Cometrider subspecies! Astral simians who wield the sort of confidence that allows them to ride the comets themselves, and occasionally survive! New Realm - The Realm of Storms Tempest joins the galactic realms of Lodestar! Featuring realm and planet details for Tempest and its surrounding system, so that even spacers can visit the several seas!
If you've enjoyed the stellar swashbuckling of Lodestar, we truly think you'll love Tempest!
That's all from me for this week guys, hopefully we'll see you over in the Discord or on the Tempest Page, but I'll be back again very soon for more galactic goodies!
Today, I come bearing the fruits of almost a years labour, forged in the fires of late nights, early mornings, and a rather unsafe amount of caffeine. At some point around the time of this update (give or take 12 hours if the PDF is still processing) you will be receiving email notification of a new digital download available for this project! This PDF is the Beta PDF of the book and contains over two hundred and fifty pages of of the book for you to peruse, pick apart, and immediately break!
BETA PDF: What to expect
Okay first we need to discuss what is and isn't in this release: Character options (races, subclasses, feats, and spells) are all present within this version. Expansive lore on each of the major realms, routes, and regions within the Beyond are all present alongside information about the factions that inhabit them. A literal pirates hoard of magic items(including the Pieces of Infinity and a brand new set of Congregate Arms). The 40 page bestiary is here in its entirety for the lore and statblocks of creatures that will be fighting your valiant parties.
Okay, that sounds like almost the entirety of the book, so what isn't in it?
The Ship System. The ship system itself, alongside the ship-scale stat blocks aren't present within this version. This is due to a bit of a balancing hiccup that we encountered putting all of the various subsystems, upgrades, and final abilities into place that we want to do some more internal testing on first. But not to worry! An updated version of the BETA PDF with the FULL ship system will be coming at the end of October (just over 2 weeks from when this update goes out), this gives us plenty of time to give things one last proper going over before handing it over to you gremlins to immediately break again!
Appendices & Contents. The appendices and glossary at the end of the book aren't present yet either, but this is by design. We want the appendices to be reflections of what you feel like you need to run or play in Lodestar, we have a number of ideas already but if there's guidance on a specific process you feel the book would benefit from we'd love to hear it! Also the index relies on specific page numbers to actually function and since any additions or corrections throughout testing might shift those around we'll be adding that last! (and the exact same applies to the full contents page!)
Art. Finally, and probably most noticeably, most of the art isn't present within the book, this is due to a couple of reasons: we're still waiting on a few commissioned art pieces to come back, but also settling the pieces into the page requires Conor knowing exactly how much room he has to work with. Shifting or wrapping text from corrections could throw all of that out of wack just for him to have to do that work again. The only other thing to mention is that a few placeholder pieces might remain (looking at you space kraken) in there, but don't fret about notifying us on those! They'll get replaced very soon.
Legendary Shipwrights
Those select few of you who backed our shipwright tier can expect emails from us this week to organise times for meetings with Conor to design your vessels for the book! A couple of you have yet to respond to the survey emails, so if that is you please make sure you respond by the end of next week to make sure you get chance to create your custom siltsail before the book heads into its final stages of production!
Errors & Ideas
This is where our call to action comes into play, we want to ensure the final PDF and print version of Lodestar is spic and span. Over in our Discordwe have a specific channel available to everyone that has the Spacer role. The #lodestar-correctionschannel will be the place for you to point out any typos, grammatical errors, or formatting strangeness. We've been looking at this PDF for months at this point and have gone partially blind to the strange arcane glyphs that are letters and punctuation. However, just as a heads up, anything that includes an XX isn't an error or missing content, that's a reference to a page number later in the book we don't want to fill in until all of the corrections have been gathered! Similarly any issues with references to pages or errors in that vein aren't anything to flag or worry over. In general, we also aren't looking for balance feedback on the mechanical content within the book, only flag these if anything is unplayable or gamebreaking for some reason or another.
Okay, I think that's everything regarding today's release, be kind to our baby, she took a lot of work!
How to Download it
The Beta PDF will be available sometime in the next 12 hours or so, barring any issues, via Backerkit's distribution system. Make sure you've completed your survey and paid any outstanding amounts remaining, otherwise you won't be able to access it!
Tempest
Just before I sign off, I just want to drop in one final reminder, in exactly 7 days we'll be launching Tempest Remastered, a ground up remaster of the original Tempest book from 4 years ago! Tempest is a nautical setting that's definitely far less treasure planet than Lodestar, but definitely scratches the nautical, swashbuckling itch for players and GMs! Go and follow the campaign for FREE to get your hands on the preview pdf and read all about it!
That's all for me this week gang! I hope you enjoy Lodestar, I'll be active over in the discord answering any questions or queries that might come up as y'all comb through it!
The book is coming along swimmingly as we fast approach the beta release next month, and Conor will have some new looks at art and such very soon! Today we're going to be previewing and playtesting the first of our player species since the original Dreg, some real aliens for you to inject something of the cosmic other into your lodestar campaigns!
Playtest 07 - Chitan & Sameling
First of all, we have the Chitan. These creatures are cephalopod like creatures with a zealous desire to conquer the land dwelling species of the beyond in an attempt to 'cleanse' the realms! (In this circumstance, cleansing means flooding and submerging every major landmass under the far more desirable deep oceans) While their soft and slimy forms might make for difficult traversal across most worlds, the Chitan have developed protective suits made of chitin and bone of the various creatures that inhabit the oceanic biomes. Somewhere between a Dalek and a Space Marine, these terrifying creatures come with some particularly fun mechanics for you to try!
Next, we have the Samelings! Every good space setting needs a clone race, but the magical and technological methods of creating exact duplicates of the various tyrannical mages is not how these creatures reproduce. Plant-like humanoids, the Samelings grow from spores that jettison across the beyond from the great Mother Tree. These creatures share a strange biological link to one another but still have plenty of ways to express themselves with their exact foliage!
As we draw ever closer to the release of the Lodestar Beta PDF on the 12th of October, we also close in on the launch of our next Backerkit Project: Tempest Remastered. A full ground up remake of our original pirate setting, this book will include new and remastered content, new art, and new physical goodies all wrapped in the same seafaring setting returning backers will recognise! "I already own Tempest, I don't want another standard edition version!" I hear you say? Well fear not, much like Faerie and Lodestar, Tempest will be getting the absolutely gorgeous collectors edition treatment too!
Whether a returning backer from our first campaign, or someone that's joined us in the years since, there is plenty to be discovered as Tempest resurfaces...
We'll also be launching a reservation system over the next couple of days (similar to the Lodestar one) if you want to get your hands on the Medallion of the Damned!
That's me for this week guys! I hope you're all doing incredibly well. If you have any questions, queries, or concerns drop me an email over at [email protected] or if you just wanna chat feel free to hop into the community discord!
Myself and Conor are just hopping on for another one of our livestreams, we'll be talking all things Lodestar previews today, going over the page previews of the book and maybe some other early looks! If you wanna have a bit of a chat with us or have any questions we'd love for you to hop on over!
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