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

Next Up... Another FREE Adventure!
over 4 years ago – Sat, May 30, 2020 at 03:58:50 PM

Thanks to all of you for jumping on board and pushing us to our best day in the past week or more, cracking through ANOTHER stretch goal (special thanks to David A. Nolan for pushing us over the $38,000 mark) and even more amazing artwork. Today we'd like to unveil the nearly complete cover illustration for the final Deluxe Compilation version, capturing the essence of a truly epic journey to adventure! 

We appreciate all of your support and hard work in getting us this far with a week still to go! We are excited to see how far we can keep pushing this awesome adventure saga onward, so by all means please help spread the word near and far! 

The next stretch goal is in view, and it's one near and dear to my heart! Cold Mountain is a fantastic 4th-level foray into the forlorn forests and the hollow hills, where savage tribes cleave close to the beating heart of nature, but even that heart can be broken. Can your heroes mend the gulf between worlds and quench a hate as strong as love and as pure as death. It's all coming your way at $40,000, with versions available for each system you back in the Kickstarter! 

And beyond $40,000? SO MUCH MORE!!!

What's New with Legendary Games Panel at PaizoCon Online - now with more Aegis!
over 4 years ago – Wed, May 27, 2020 at 04:44:25 PM

Hi everybody,

Just 10 days left in the project and we are looking forward to a fantastic finish! I'll be posting part two of our art-in-development walk-through down below, but I also wanted to invite you to our What's New with Legendary Games online panel today (May 27) at 12 noon Pacific time! We'll be talking Aegis of Empires, of course, and so much more! All panels are hosted through Discord, so you can login there, using the instructions and invite below:

https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sh82?PaizoCon-Online-Special-Events-and-Player

Go to #legendary-games-whats-new for the chat, and just about 10 lines below that is a voice channel (we'll also post a link once the session begins)!

Here's the link via Warhorn (though it's possible this one is closed now):

https://warhorn.net/events/tbdcon-2020/schedule/sessions/1c61842a-170c-4325-83f6-ac263cdd6f21

The Dirty Dozen!
over 4 years ago – Mon, May 25, 2020 at 12:12:55 AM

Thanks to each and every one of you for your amazing support, and we have knocked down our TWELFTH stretch goal thanks to all of your efforts (capped off by Russell Liley who pushed us over the $34,000 line!). We are excited and delighted by unlocking the massive 200+ page PDF Art and Map Folios that will be an amazing resource for each of you in playing with your group online or even down the road whenever we are able to game in person once more! 

Our next stretch goals are for more internal artwork, and since we're getting great new artwork, just for fun we thought we'd walk through the process of how we bring new artwork on board! Each artist has their own process, as well as particular specialties that work best for one kind of illustration or another, but generally speaking art goes through several stages! For some artists this comes as a simple sketch to lay out where characters and backgrounds will land on the page.

This is a good place to see what to keep and what to fix; in the image above, we're bringing those attackers down to ground level so they are pushing through the crowd rather than leaping over it.

In a similar fashion, color tests are important, as it helps set the mood of a piece in addition to setting the structure. Adventure #4 brings us to the Grey Citadel, the waterfall-flanked city of Dun Eamon, with an action scene. That way you can start with a first draft like this.

As we look at the art needs for the particular scene, however, it happens at night so we go back to the artist to adjust the base background lighting. The final details of the piece will add more light to the action to help it stand out, and we may adjust the level of shadow somewhat to make sure it looks good on the page. In addition, since this is an action scene that is going to have the heroes scaling the cliff, we can have the artist zoom in so we can get up close to the action.

Next update we'll take a closer look at one illustration in particular and show you three stages of completion beyond the level of the initial sketch and color tests and structure of the piece! 

Hope a little inside look at the art process is enjoyable for you, and we thank you for all of your awesomeness! All the best of you this weekend and let's press on to 400 backers and beyond! 

What About Elevensies? Looks like we need MORE stretch goals!
over 4 years ago – Sat, May 23, 2020 at 01:16:36 AM

Thanks to all of your awesome support (with a tip of the cap to Daniel Reaves for pushing us across the $32,000 line, and then to Tim Vandenberghe who pushed us BACK over the line after a dropped pledge in between!), we've knocked out our 11th stretch goal, adding more amazing interior artwork for the compilation, this time a dynamic action scene of some very nasty party crashers at a high-class soiree in adventure #2 The Ebon Soul! The first sketch is already in and sent back to the artist with revisions, and I think for our NEXT update we'll show you a series of work-in-progress images so you can see how the art takes shape as we go through the process of back and forth.

But for right now, we ran out of the first batch of stretch goals! That means we need more, More, MORE, and more is what we've got, with five new goals announced, up to $42,000. That includes more interior artwork, of course, but also two special goals! Our very next goal at the $34,000 mark is a comprehensive series of PDF Art and Map Folios we'll be having our layout team create. Likely over 200 pages in total, these folios will present fully keyed and un-keyed "player-friendly" maps for every location in high quality resolution, suitable for printout or for import to your friendly local VTT program, PLUS every piece of artwork in the saga from character and creature portraits to landscapes, treasures, and action scenes. No need to try covering the text and stats with one hand and holding the book with the other to show your players the dynamic visuals their characters are facing! 

We also have another FREE bonus adventure coming your way, the 4th-level wilderness excursion Cold Mountain by Jason Nelson! Your heroes are drawn into the wild woodlands and desolate hills by a cry for help from the villages of the savage frontier, where the mix of a simple tragedy, a promise broken, and a love stronger than death has awakened the spirits of the land to anger... and hunger. It's an ideal side-trek to accompany the early adventures of Aegis of Empires, and it's coming your way for every system you back as part of this project! 

More free adventures to come at $50,000 and $60,000, along with a companion article from Aegis of Empires maestro Greg Vaughan about how to weave these bonus adventures (and even other potential adventure options) in and around the flowing narrative of this adventure path! 

Thanks as always for your awesome support and I hope you have a truly Legendary weekend! Next update... a little art study! 

Triple Funded Before the Halfway Mark!
over 4 years ago – Thu, May 21, 2020 at 07:15:06 AM

I'd call that a rousing success by any measure, and thanks to each and every one of you (especially pH-unbalanced, whose pledge pushed us over the $30,000 line) for keeping up the support and spreading the word. We're launching a new ad campaign on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites, so if you see one of our ads please interact with it! Give it a share, like, thumbs up, comment, retweet, and so on to help propagate it through the virtual-sphere as we seek to extend our reach and get the word out to even more people! That way every little one of us can be a piece of making this whole thing come to life. 

You know, like THIS guy...

#TeamworkMakestheDreamWork!