Aegis of Empires Adventure Path for 5E, Pathfinder 1E and 2E

MORE ART... and an interview! Greg's workbook is in view!
over 4 years ago – Wed, Jun 03, 2020 at 02:17:21 PM

Hi all and thanks for all your support as always! We are rocketing through the stretch goals now and if past patterns hold up we might be just about to really take flight starting in about an hour and a half when we hit the 72-hour mark and Kickstarter starts counting us down in HOURS instead of days! 

The bombastic Brian T helped push us past the $46,000 mark and unlocked ANOTHER new art piece, and coming next is Greg's Design Journal, with all the original outlines and the inside scoop on what made this adventure saga so amazing. Maybe Greg will explain exactly WHAT WAS HE THINKING when he created the sinister Sagging Man, the creeptastic villain of one of our adventures. Check out the current WIP body sketches below and get ready for something VERY colorful when it goes final! 

Talk to you tomorrow, and hopefully we'll have not only Greg's Journal but a THIRD free bonus adventure ready for YOU! Meanwhile, we've posted a link with tonight's Q&A with Dan Davenport of #randomworlds! You can check it out on our Kickstarter page or with the link right here! 

https://gmshoe.wordpress.com/2020/06/02/qa-jason-eric-nelson-greg-vaughan-aegis-of-empires-adventure-path-for-5e-pathfinder-1e-and-2e/

Greg's Journal Unlocked! 500% funding is up next!
over 4 years ago – Wed, Jun 03, 2020 at 12:31:57 PM

Hi all, 

Just a quick update before I take my sleepy eyes to bed, but thanks to Ben S for knocking us over the $48,000 mark and unlocking Greg's Design Journal!!! We're excited to share the inside scoop with you and hope you enjoy getting a look at the process of creating such an amazing adventure saga! 

We're excited and delighted to see things keep rising up and up, so we'll see you in the morning, but not before we share the new cover art for adventure #3, When Comes the Moon! 

500+ and the Final Week!!!
over 4 years ago – Tue, Jun 02, 2020 at 03:44:11 PM

Thanks to each and every one of you for your fantastic support of this project and for driving us past half a thousand backers as we round into the final week! First Nicholas pushed us over $42,000, and then John Rogers went down in history as backer #500, and we have so much more to see and do! 

We're already rocketing along and most of the way to our next stretch goal at $44,000! Rachel is knocking out our next set of progress-o-meter graphics, so no looking ahead on the Kickstarter's "story" page, but not to worry, we're not out of stretch goals! Not by a long shot! 

$44,000 - New VTT Assets: For all of our VTT fans (which is most of us right now), we'll be creating Digital Token and specialized high-res VTT Map Packs that will be available in Backerkit after the project ends. 

$46,000 - New Interior Art: Because art is beautiful! 

$48,000 - Greg's Design Journal: Get an inside look at the evolution of the Aegis of Empires saga with Greg's capacious notes and adventure outlines for the saga! 

$50,000 - FREE BONUS ADVENTURE #3: Get a THIRD free adventure for whichever game system you backed - 5E, PF1, or PF2. This time, the frosty foray into snowy wild with Ron Lundeen's 7th-level wilderness adventure The Horseshoe Calamity! 

$52,000 - New Interior Art: Did we mention that art is beautiful? Because it is! Just look at one of the latest new pieces we've already received as part of the stretch goals early in this project! Don't worry, I'm sure he's nice! 

We're looking forward to an amazing final week. Keep spreading the word and Happy Gaming! 

400% Funding is a Dish Best Served Cold!
over 4 years ago – Sun, May 31, 2020 at 08:54:55 PM

Thanks to all of you for your amazing support, helping us to quadruple our original funding goal and then some with almost a week to go! You've helped spread the word and get even more people on board, like the amazing Tana Kumar Thayalan as backer #450, and the amazing Ethan Richerson whose pledge pushed us over the $40,000 mark! 

Looks like we'll need to create some new stretch goal graphics because you just keep pushing us higher and higher, including our second FREE BONUS ADVENTURE, the fantastic Cold Mountain by Jason Nelson!  This moody, grim adventure is an atmospheric foray into the forlorn forests and the lonely mountains where savage clans follow the old ways seek the favor of the spirits of the wild, but also stand at the spirits' mercy should anyone offend. Perfect for 4th-level characters whether you're using DnD 5E, Pathfinder RPG, or Pathfinder Second Edition, you'll get a PDF of this adventure for every system you back, forming an ideal side-trek for adventurers looking to shake off the horror of the city in the wake of The Book in the Old House! 

We hope you love your bonus adventures and look forward to the next one coming up at $50,000, another wild wilderness trek, this time into the frosty wastes of winter in Ron Lundeen's The Horseshoe Calamity! Meanwhile, another new art piece is coming up at $42,000, and we've got some exciting new pieces coming to completion that we can share with you then! 

Keep spreading the word on your social media and to your friends and fellow gamers! We can push this project as far and as fast as we can, but nothing has the pull of a fellow gamer you trust telling you to check something out! Share the love and help make this project even more amazing! 

Lucky 13 Stretch Goals! Time for more Art!
over 4 years ago – Sat, May 30, 2020 at 07:32:50 PM

Thanks to each and every one of you for your amazing support bringing us past the $36,000 mark and onto our 13th stretch goal, with special shout-outs going to Nicholas Bergquist for pushing us over the line, and also to Christopher Loya who was backer #400!!! We've got 8 days left and are looking forward to a fantastic finish, with more art to come and less than $4000 away from ANOTHER free bonus adventure for all three systems! 

Several of our second-wave art orders are already coming back, and we'll be sharing more of those with you on updates to follow, but today we wanted to walk you through some of the artistic process of revisions for pieces that come in. The piece in question is called The Thing in the Basement, and it's the new cover art for adventure #1 in the saga, The Book in the Old House! 

As with every piece of art, it starts with a text description of what the art is supposed to represent, and we select an artist whose style we feel fits well with that art piece, in this case one of our favorite regulars at LG who uses the pen name Peyeyo. Translating a verbal description into an image can be a little tricky, so we always try to start with a composition sketch. Sometimes these are line drawings like the "Party Crashers" in the previous update, sometimes with color to test hues. Each artist is different, and these can be simple lines or more developed sketch poses. Others go with more of a charcoal-style blocking, as Peyeyo did here, giving a sense of the balance of light and shadow as well as the general shape and proportion of the characters and objects in the image. Whichever style the artist uses, this phase is the "composition sketch" and it's a rough draft of how they envision what the art order is describing. 

Sometimes we'll send back specific corrections, like the number of creatures in frame, lighting, day and night, or if it looks good we just give them a thumbs up and go full speed ahead! Sometimes an artist comes up with something cooler than we had in our heads to start with, and we run with that!

Once you've got the structure of the image in place, it's time to fill in the details and add color. Again, some artists will do an intermediate work-in-progress to check on things or try different variants, while others will proceed directly from the composition sketch on to a much more "almost done" phase, adding lighting, color, shading, and the works in a tentative proposed final image. This is another chance to cross-check what's in the image and make sure everything works as it's supposed to.

In this case, the image was pretty darn cool, but comparing it to the adventure text the above Thing looks more demonic with the rippling skin and glowing eyes, whereas in the adventure it's supposed to look more rotten and decayed. We send those notes back to the artist and they make the adjustments on fine details like that. We might also ask them to adjust the lighting level in the image, as images for print can't be as dark as those for purely computer-screen-based images, lest they come out muddy and indistinct. The artist takes those notes back and adjusts the image and sends back the final version for the seal of approval.

And that looks fan-freaking-tastic! We approve the art, have them upload both JPG versions for showing off on our website or Kickstarter page as well as high-resolution 300 dpi PSD versions for the layout folks to use in the final book. The artist gets paid and we all celebrate how fantastic this adventure book is going to look, and plan new projects to work together! 

Hope you enjoyed and we look forward to sharing even more amazing new artwork at $38,000!