JP On Gaming

Monday, January 23, 2012

Undying Legacy of the First Ones for NeoExodus funded

Good times!

Good times indeed!

Last week, I posted a plea to you all for our Free RPG Day adventure. Many of you visited and I like to think either considered supporting OR did pledge to support.

Well this weekend, thanks to you, the project got funded! We reached 110% of our goal! That's like putting the amp up to 11! Now, it's time for us to give YOU our 110% and provide you all with the type of adventures you want to experience in NeoExodus. "Undying Legacy of the First Ones" will hit your local game stores on Free RPG Day, June 2nd 2012. A heartfelt THANK YOU to all our backers!

Louis posted on his blog more information about it and some of his (my) future projects. I say my because guess who will write the product??? That's RIGHT!

Me! (or at least "Not Louis")

Back to "Undying Legacy", for the past few days, I have been doing the occasional writing on the project. (You may have seen the occasional twitter update (@jpongaming)) about the adventure. Well, my original plan was to write a simple, intro-style adventure to introduce people to Exodus, little muss or fuss. Then I started writing, and during that creative process, I came up with a number of additional scenes and role-play encounters that while not crucial to the adventure, nonetheless playing them would enhance and expand the adventure to being more than what it is. These encounters (which we call "Soft Points", see later for more info on that), really add to the adventure but are not essential to someone's enjoyment of the adventure.

For a while, I debated (with myself) what to do with these encounters. I had them in my head, they were nice and exciting, especially in the more relaxed atmosphere of a home setting (unlike the convention setting). I am a first believer in play experience and experiencing play is the most important thing. In short, getting to experience something in the game beats being told about it. You can be told that group A hates group B. Fine. No issue. But until you get stuck between those two, they are just distant, background flavor. Get them to beat you over the head with a stick because you walked on the wrong side of the road. You won't forget it... Experience matters.

Then inspiration hit.

It hit me hard.

Those chicks are vicious when they strike! (+5d6 sneak attack)

But enough with the inspiration metaphors...

I approached LPJ with the idea of writing the full ideas, include the soft points and provide all our backers with them, so they get the added scenes to their PDF product! Another way of saying "Thank you" to the people who believed in us and who support us. The "Complete" or "Expanded" Undying Legacy will be an adventure I'd like to play! Fun and full of NeoExodus flavor!

JP

Shout-Out To PCI

The terms Hard and Soft points were first introduced by my good friends at Paradigm Concept (you know, the Arcanis folk), in their adventures. For some reason, I prefer to use their terminology to the more generic "Optional" encounter found in other Pathfinder products. A Hard Point is considered a core and central part of the story, while a Soft Point is optional or flavorful that is not central to the adventure. In classic D&D terms, the random encounter tables generate Soft Points while the dungeon itself is a Hard Point (Hats up to Peter and the PCI team).

PS: Thanks to all our backers!

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