D&D General Goodman Games To Reincarnate Jennell Jaquays' Caverns of Thracia

Game designer Jennell Jaquays has announced that Goodman Games will be reviving her 1979 Caverns of Thracia adventure for D&D 5E and its own DCC RPG. The Greek-themed adventure is set in a detailed dungeon, and was originally published by Judges Guild.

After over two years of biting my tongue and ignoring friends' questions, I can finally share this news.

In addition to owning Dark Tower, the game adventure that I created 43 years ago for Judges Guild; Goodman Games also owns The Caverns of Thracia... which some fans consider to be the better of my two Judges Guild mega-dungeon/campaign adventures.

It will eventually be getting the same treatment as Dark Tower as a Goodman Games Original Adventures Reincarnated product

Dark Tower, another of Jaquays' Judges Guild modules, is currently on Kickstarter with three weeks to go.

 

[timbannock]

Production costs?

Also, can all of these companies specializing in the written word stop putting all their news in videos without transcripts? Even just posting the outline they're presumably using to guide their videos would be useful.

(This also applies to you, Cubicle 7.)

But if it's releasing in Oct, production is already paid for, and the turn around will be so small that if anyone were to catch errors or anything, it'd be about 4 months too late to do anything about it. Why crowdfund when you're already doing pre-orders?

Is this normally how late in the process Goodman runs crowdfunding?

 

[J.Quondam]

But if it's releasing in Oct, production is already paid for, and the turn around will be so small that if anyone were to catch errors or anything, it'd be about 4 months too late to do anything about it. Why crowdfund when you're already doing pre-orders?

Is this normally how late in the process Goodman runs crowdfunding?

As of yesterday, there was nothing about Thracia on Goodman's pre-order page. And afaict, they haven't even directly mentioned Thracia since late December, and that was with respect to crowdfunding.
So... is Goodman really taking pre-orders, or is it just the online retailers? How does that work?

 

[timbannock]

Great question.

To the best of my knowledge, neither Dark Tower nor Old School Traps were up on Amazon pre-crowdfunding, and I was at least vaguely aware enough to be looking. Both are up there now, with Old School Traps as pre-order for end of May.

I've never seen any other crowdfunded books show up on Amazon during (or before) their crowdfunding campaign.

It's definitely strange.

 

[Parmandur]

Crowdfunding plans could well have been derailed by the unfortunate passing of Jaquays.

 

[SteveC]

If you're interested in this adventure, here is a two-hour discussion about it and what makes it so special. I wouldn't watch this if you plan on playing the adventure because it will be completely spoiled for you. Derik discusses the adventure and the style of play that it represents.

 

[bmfrosty]

Crowdfunding plans could well have been derailed by the unfortunate passing of Jaquays.

Definitely could be. I think that crowdfunding is too big of a tool for goodman to ignore. The preorder aspect alone is pretty big. If they design the product thinking that they'll have (BS number) a print run of 5000 and preorders are for a significant percentage of that then they have data that indicates how much they should adjust their print run in order to maximize sales and minimize waste.

 

[mach1.9pants]

I reckon those Amazon and B&N pages are errors from distributors. It won't be out until well into next year

 

[timbannock]

I reckon those Amazon and B&N pages are errors from distributors. It won't be out until well into next year

Source?

 

[J.Quondam]

Source?

To be fair, "I reckon" means "I'm guessing." There's little point in demanding a cite when they're acknowledging it's just speculation.

 

[Parmandur]

I reckon those Amazon and B&N pages are errors from distributors. It won't be out until well into next year

That's extremely unlikely, given the nature of the distribution model.