After the bundle's opening trio of the core 13th Age book, the 13 True Ways supplement, and the wonderful 13th Age Soundtrack album by James Semple and friends, the next chunky object in the bundle is Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan's 364 page campaign-masquerading-as-a-mega-dungeon, Eyes of the Stone Thief .
Here are a few fun things about Eyes of the Stone Thief that may not be common knowledge . . . .
1. whale book
Gareth's initial concept for the adventure was summed up by the project's original slangy name: Moby Dungeon. In a world where dungeons are alive, the dungeon at the center of this story would proactively hunt and kill things the PCs loved. Originally there was a Captain Ahab-style NPC, but that role got taken over by the PCs themselves! Given Gar's original inspiration, it probably shouldn't have been a surprise that the initial short adventure turned into a mega-dungeon with numerous aboveground locations and NPC factions that tie into the dungeon's plotlines.
You can see a trace of the original inspiration on Ben Wooten's cover. The halfling spellcaster has lost a leg and her comrade hefts a harpoon, waiting for the moment to throw at the surfacing dungeon!
2. women
Speaking of the cover art, Eyes of the Stone Thief features an art decision that turned out a bit harder to see than we'd intended. There's a consistent adventuring party used throughout the book, and all members of the adventuring party are women. Heavy armor and some small art means I'm not sure how many people noticed that.
3. colorizing the black and white
Eyes of the Stone Thief was originally a black and white book. Then Simon took stock of the wonderful full color maps Herwin Wielink had created for the book and of what we'd already accomplished with the other full color hardcovers, 13th Age and the Bestiary and 13 True Ways. Simon decided he wanted to take the time and make the effort to convert the book to color.
So Pelgrane ran a test, getting each of the artists to color one of their pieces. It went well and the colorization went forward. Towards the very end of the production process, when Lee Moyer was visiting me in Seattle, he saw the book on screen over my shoulder and asked to look at all the art. Lee is a master of light and shadow and color and he saw where he could strengthen the book. He made a bid to do touch-up work on pieces that weren't as dramatic. Pelgrane accepted and the results were magnificent.
The art process for the book captured how we've been approaching 13th Age work. We're not always as quick as we might be, but we're taking the time to get things right, and Simon and Cat at Pelgrane are wonderfully supportive, even to the extent that they'll make quality-control decisions I'd feel pretty bad about making with someone else's money.
4. but wait, the book isn't ALL in color
Gareth's art direction and vision for the book delivered four pages of truly old-school madness! Four pages of the Quillgate Library, down in the dungeon's epic-tier depths, appear in oldest-school black and white from the earliest days of D&D, the exact style and shade of paper used for the earliest rpg books widely published in the UK (as I understand it, my UK gaming history facts may be slightly off). And Russ Nicholson, famed illustrator of so many UK game books, provided the art, including a full page illustration of the dungeon cresting as a wave!
It's a joke from the old days, so it's not a surprise that the joke was too subtle for some people. Pelgrane sometimes gets complaints about misprinted pages in Eyes of the Stone Thief! "There's something wrong with 4 pages, they're in black and white and they look awful." I love the fact that Gareth, Simon, and Pelgrane buried this chunk of the forgotten module UA3 LOST TREASURY OF THE DWARVES in the middle of Eyes of the Stone Thief.
5. reviews and all that
You can find reviews and details of Eyes of the Stone Thief here and here and many other spots. I'll just close with an anecdote from one of my friends who plays in someone else's 13th Age campaign. The game has always been wonderfully GMed and huge fun, and then it got a little better. At some point my friend noticed that the battles had gone up a notch, full of interesting terrain and strange and memorable situations. A little while later, my friend realized that the GM had gotten hold of Eyes of the Stone Thief and was mining it for encounters, sprinkling its bizarre battles into the flow of the campaign.
Find it along with many other 13th Age goodies in the Bundle, or look for it in print at your local gaming store.
Hi Rob - just commenting on this one to say how nice it was to meet you back at the start of December at Dragonmeet. You recommended "The Forgotten Monk" by Greg Stolze to me and I'm very glad I bought it - it made for great reading over Christmas, And piqued my interest in 13th Age sufficiently that I picked up the Bundle of Holding.
ReplyDeleteAn excerpt from 13th Age's flagship campaign. This is the very first thing a reader sees when they open the book to the first pages past the contents:
ReplyDelete"Dungeons are where we started gaming, and they still have a powerful hold on our imagination. Roleplaying games have evolved and changed since Gygax and Arneson sent bunches of hirelings to die horribly underground, but we still return to the dungeon's door time and again. Perhaps the dungeon appeals to some primal urge, to recapitulate tales of journeys into the underworld with Inanna or Orpheus. Or maybe it's just fun to pit wits and dice against a labyrinth of monsters and traps."
They appeal to the history of roleplaying games.
They use "we", making the reader feel included.
They bring a sense of nostalgia, so it isn't just a history lesson.
They speak of dungeons as something that encapsulates something fundamental to mankind - you don't just feel included in the adventure, but 1 paragraph in, you already feel a sense of community, of hundreds or thousands of readers having the same primal urge.
They appeal to myth.
And then, realizing that their tone is getting a bit too serious and might put off gamers who dislike dark and gritty settings, they bring it back a notch. You can see them scratching their head in sheepish but calculated embarrassment, welcoming in the more whimsical gamers.
Brilliance.