Wolfgang Baur's Open Design #3 down to Ghouls vs. City-State

Glyfair

Explorer
Wolfgang has brought his Open Design Project options down to The City-State of Zobeck or The Empire of the Ghouls. Both of these are huge projects and have a high minimum amount of patronage requirements, so we still need more patrons before either project is greenlighted, with less than a month until the deadline.

As a patron of both previous adventures, I can say these are very worthwhile projects. Wolfgang is regularly tweaking the presentation and options. With Castle Shadowcrag he's presented an encounter type I haven't seen used in any other projects before, even though it's very traditional for adventures in books, movies and TV. I think the project is worthwhile just on that experimental concept.

Also, for the first time he's put it up at Lulu.com at cost (since we already paid for the adventure). For my patronage I have a quality adventure in PDF, and I can get it printed in a quality format and shipped to me for less than $10 more if I wish that route (and I did take advantage of the option).

Also, I believe that patron of future projects will have the option of purchasing Castle Shadowcrag as well (alas, Steam & Brass is only for patrons of the original project).

The two possible options are:

The City-State of Zobeck: All Levels of Play

A regional and magic sourcebook for the Free City of Zobeck first described in “Steam & Brass”. The usual NPCs, adventure hooks, and major locations are just a small slice of the setting. A big section focuses on rules for things that make Zobeck unique, such as the star & shadow school of magic, clockwork magic, and rules for kobold and skinshifter PCs.
The campaign section describes the local pantheon and provides a regional gazetteer that outlines the giant-dominated cities of Nordheim, the elven River Court, the trading hubs of the Seven Cities, the dwarven stronghold of Bernau, the necropolitans of Morgau & Doresh, and the magocracy of Allain. Includes a two-page city map and a full-page regional map showing trade routes, cities, and kingdoms.
Because I love monsters, it includes 12 new ones: reaver dwarves, the lorelei, cave and lightning dragons, new clockwork creatures, and slaver giants, plus the shadow fey, reaver angel, and steam golem from prior Open Designs.
At roughly 70,000 words with complex mechanical design and worldbuilding, "City-State" will take five or six months to write. This one is loaded with plug-and-play pieces for any campaign.

The Empire of the Ghouls: Suggested Levels 8-12

This Underdark adventure pits the party against a civilization of intelligent, shadow-powered, hideously strong ghouls who dominate the Underdark and have enslaved gnomes, dwarves, and even the drow. They are now ready to seize a city of cloakers, a place of hanging stalagtites and elder cloakers who control an ancient artifact. If the ghouls seize it, their power will double, and shadow-walking assassins will soon become commonplace on the surface world. The party must enter the Underdark, survive, and destroy the ghoul empire at its heart.
Probably at least 60,000 words long, "Empire" will take a minimum five months to write.
 

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I'm psyched for this one. I was a patron for both Steam & Brass and Castle Shadowcrag, and while Steam & Brass was a good adventure, Shadowcrag is an absolute classic from what I've read so far (which is about half of the adventure).

I'm pulling for the City-State of Zobeck to get the commission, but I increased my participation to Patron of the Arts on this one because all of the potential projects were so cool.
 

I would really love to be a patron, particularly for the Ghouls adventure.

However, I'm on unemployment and now going back to school full time. I don't think I could afford it and I don't use PayPal. That really cuts down options.

I hope he does well, regardless.
 

Why the Open Design project is so Awesome!

I was a patron for Steam & Brass, which turned out to be an awesome adventure. I ran it for my weekly gaming group and it provided several weeks of fun, and some of the plot threads that came out of it have spun the campaign in a bunch of wonderful different directions.

Castle Shadowcrag, which just recently released to patrons is I think even more amazing. These adventures rank among the best adventures ever published, except they were only available to patrons of the project.

What's cool about Wolfgang Baur's Open Design project is that, as a member you get to help shape the adventure by helping to choose the monsters, contributing ideas, voting on various aspects of the plot and presentation, offering comments and critiques of the work in progress. You can participate as much (or as little) as you like in the creation of the work.

Everyone knows Wolfgang right? He was an editor for both Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine, he has written some of the best adventures that have appeared in Dungeon, he wrote sourcebooks and adventures for Planescape, Al-Qadim, Alternity, Call of Cthulhu, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, including the recent Frostburn and the upcoming Expedition to the Demonweb Pits. He also currently writes the regular Dungeoncraft article in Dungeon Magazine. He is a top-notch designer and writer.

I have learned a tremendous amount about adventure crafting from participating in the projects so far, and Wolfgang and the other patrons are a really cool group of people to hang out with on the boards over there.

One little extra bonus about being a member is that Wolfgang writes these cool design essays about various aspects of adventure building that contain tons of useful advice about topics such as plot and setting and pacing and distributing treasure and including traps and doing chases and crafting memorable villains or plane hopping, etc. He posts these articles for members. The essays are way cool and I have learned a lot from them.

I signed up again for the 3rd project, which is still in the voting stages. Looks like the top 2 contenders are either the City State of Zobeck or the Empire of the Ghouls. I am voting for Empire of the Ghouls myself. If the patrons pick that one it looks to be a heck of a good adventure involving an underdark kingdom of undead.

If you go to the website (wolfgangbaur.com or http://customadventure.livejournal.com/) you can check out the outlines for the various proposals under consideration, and you can get a better feel for what the project is. If you are not a member only certain parts of the site are visible to you, but you can get the gist.

There are several levels of membership, basic membership is $25, there is an apprentice level for as little as $10 if just want the final adventure, and there are patron levels with greater access and privileges for larger donations.

The final adventure will only ever be available to members of the project. Plus it is an awesome opportunity to learn about the craft of adventure writing, a tremendous boon to any DM. Check it out!
 

People are already pimping pretty hard so I won't go into detail but I was a patron for the first adventure (20 bucks IIRC) and thoroughly enjoyed the process. The community is good. Baur is busy but he takes input seriously.
Since it's self selected and there is a minor financial commitment there isn't a lot of noise like you have on the message boards with one or two people perpetually pulling a topic off track or insisting that something has to be done their way.

In the questions that come up he does a very good job of addressing the meta-game and design issues.

It would be attractive if you want to experience working with a group of people to make a fun DnD game without having to do any heavy lifting yourself.

It should also be attractive if you're frustrated with the current paradigm of passive consumption of roleplaying materials. If you're unhappy with WotC & co. deciding and then selling you on their ideas this model provides an alternative.
 


As long as he's able to be employed making these adventures, I think that there's always that chance. Shadowcrag really amazed me with the concept behind the adventure mechanics.
 

Soel said:
I'm still hoping Gates of Mal and the angel adventure see the light of day.

Unfortunately, Wolfgang has related that Mongoose refused to allow him to use the IP for gates of Mal.

Which is really unfortunate... I've even run parts of my campaign in Mal and thought about running that adventure myself.
 



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