Hidden Kingdom Delays
Posted: June 17, 2010 Filed under: D&D 4e, Nevermet Press, News, RPG Leave a comment »Hey folks, I just wanted to do a quick post to talk about Brother Ptolemy and the Hidden Kingdom. I ran a couple devblogs for a while that talked about a mid-June release, which has passed and unfortunately there are delays outside of my control which have pushed back the release date. I’m not sure when it will actually be released, but it is being worked on. I assure you that there’s a manuscript and people dedicated to trying to put together a great product, and I’m hopeful it will be released soon. I will inform you of when you can buy it to help support the creative endeavors of myself, Paul King and the other Nevermet Press writers who made it all happen. I’ve pretty much run dry on things to talk about from the development side, unless anyone has any questions which I’d be happy to answer.
Hidden Kingdom Devblog: Writing Process
Posted: May 26, 2010 Filed under: D&D 4e, Fluff/Inspiration, Nevermet Press, News, Products, RPG 1 Comment »Though I’ve written a lot of sessions for plenty of D&D games over the years, many of those being D&D 4e games, I’d never actually written a module before trying my hand at it now. It was kind of daunting at first, but a lot of the same skills for writing your D&D 4e game sessions translate over well (in my opinion) to writing an adventure module for the system. The process though had to be different. I’m not a very structured sort of guy mostly. I like writing from the chaos of the mind, without a plan, without an outline. But I knew to get this done and done professionally it couldn’t just come out of a storm. I needed a process.
Hidden Kingdom Devblog: Companionship
Posted: May 19, 2010 Filed under: D&D 4e, Fluff/Inspiration, Nevermet Press, News, RPG 3 Comments »Companion NPCs were an interesting new element added to the game by the DMG2. In essence, they are Diet PCs, who are built using streamlined versions of the PC building rules, using PC classes and PC powers. Unlike normal NPCs, they are designed to be equivalent traveling partners for the PCs, so that if a PC is missing, a CNPC can be fit into that role and perform decently enough that the game won’t fall out of balance. One thing I did in this module was that, by default, there’s a point in the adventure where one of two characters you could befriend will follow you to your last confrontation with enemy.
Hidden Kingdom Devblog: Your Ptolemy Is In Another Castle
Posted: May 12, 2010 Filed under: Adventures, Campaigns, D&D 4e, Fluff/Inspiration, Nevermet Press, News, RPG 1 Comment »One of the major things I wanted to say up front about the adventure is that, while it does deal with the Hidden Kingdom directly, it will not feature the titular Brother Ptolemy of the “Brother Ptolemy And The Hidden Kingdom” cycle. This is something I thought was really important to say up front and to explain why it is. I mean, he’s the big bad evil guy right! Shouldn’t the adventure be centered around him? Shouldn’t the PCs get to take him down right there? Well, therein lies the problem for me, which I will go on to explain, along with some other details about creature design and fluff in the module.
Hidden Kingdom Module Devblog: Encounter Design
Posted: May 5, 2010 Filed under: Adventures, D&D 4e, Fluff/Inspiration, Nevermet Press, RPG 2 Comments »One of the more important parts of writing a 4e module are the encounters. Not just combat encounters, but anything you consider significant enough to give XP to the PCs in the adventure. From the outset, I wanted to incorporate things into the encounters that perhaps, DMs just rule 0 in when the PCs ask about them, but I wanted to make it explicit that this is in an option, that everything is here for some reason. D&D 4e encounter advice always stresses terrain and objects and the surroundings as a key portion of the encounter, and in skill challenges stress that every PC have a use for their skills. I designed stuff with those ends specifically.
The Hidden Kingdom “Adventure Setting” For D&D 4e
Posted: April 26, 2010 Filed under: Adventures, D&D 4e, Fluff/Inspiration, Nevermet Press, News, Products, RPG 4 Comments »Over at Nevermet Press, there was a little tidbit a while ago about the production of an “Adventure Setting” product for Brother Ptolemy And The Hidden Kingdom, with myself acting as Lead Developer.
I just sent the (ostensibly) full text of the module over to the big bosses, and we expect a mid-May release.
In essence, we wanted to do something different and more captivating for this product than we did for The Desire. We wanted to produce brand new content, exclusive to this product, that’d really make you want it. We wanted to do something different than just 4e monsters and items. An adventure module seemed like the perfect fit, so I was asked to write one for it.
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