May Update - Partial PDF Release!
about 6 years ago – Tue, May 01, 2018 at 06:37:42 PM

First, the good news! Writing is 100% complete, editing and revision is about 75% complete. Formatting is moving along at a brisk clip, and almost all of the artwork is finished. The bads news is we've hit a bit of a snag with battlemaps, unfortunately, and that's slowed us down. We've found a solution and the maps are in-progress.

We promised a release by end of April, so we're releasing what's finished.  That's four villains, with everything that will be in the book, except that they have a mockup for the map of their lair while we get the properly gorgeous maps finished up. Salister Kane, the Kitsune, Gorm the Obliterator, and the Ashen King are ready to unleash hell upon your players. John Cason, our formatter, deserves a lot of credit for putting in extra hours to get these four ready to go, and he still deserves a lot of credit for working hard on the rest of the villainous cast!

If you haven't gotten an email with the download link already, you can find these in BackerKit here once you've logged into your account: https://tyrants-and-hellions.backerkit.com/backer/digital_rewards

We're also releasing the fully formatted Gorm the Obliterator for everyone, so feel free to share it around via this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D7I9MVy4rmbgIIwz8NtMR_REvJr7X6a2/view?usp=sharing

It is so difficult to wait for this book to be done, but it's close. So, so close. Please enjoy these four villains, and we'll have the full set in your hands before you know it. 

Steven Gordon - 2CGaming Team

April Update - On Schedule for Digital Delivery!
about 6 years ago – Sun, Apr 08, 2018 at 07:27:41 PM

A tremendous amount of work has gone into this book over the last month. Writers, editors, and artists are pushing as hard as they can to get everything wrapped up so we can present it to the formatter and enter the final phase. We're putting in overtime and paying our people rush fees to get it done, and so far, so good! 

As it stands, the book is about 160,000 words. The Total Party Kill Handbook clocked in at around 100,000, so Tyrants & Hellions is going to be a mighty tome! Don't drop it on your table too hard, your players will get scared. ;)

Artwork

A ton of art has been finished since the last update, and as always, it looks amazing. 

There are a few villains that haven't gotten much publicity, and this is one of them. The Shard of Madness is one of two Lovecraftian villains in the book. With clear inspiration from "The Colour Out of Space", the Shard of Madness is a sliver of a great old one that falls to the material plane and begins warping reality around it. Left unchecked, into will grow into a portal to its home realm and summon the great old one that birthed it.

You know it, you love it, it's Jibblinplip, the Continental Ooze! Thanks to your support, this green ooze is gracing the pages of Tyrants & Hellions. Jibblinplip is both a villain and a lair. The only way to defeat it is to enter the ooze and strike from within!

The second of two Lovecraftian villains, Xunn is an aboleth, one of my personal favorite squiddy beasts from the deep ocean. Xunn has a neat trick, every time she dies, she is reborn with a new defense adaptation that protects her from whatever struck the killing blow. She is eager to fight to the party, because every defeat just makes her stronger.

Schedule

We're pushing really hard for a digital release by the end of this month. So far, we're on track. Thank you again for your patience and understanding as we bring this project through the home stretch and into your hands. I'll put out another update in case of any delays, otherwise the next you hear from me will be at the end of this month to announce that the PDF is available for download!

Steven Gordon - 2CGaming Team

March Update - Digital Delivery in Late April!
about 6 years ago – Fri, Mar 02, 2018 at 08:46:16 PM

I'd like to start this update with some gratitude. You have been incredibly patient and understanding with us in the face of some less than stellar communication lately, and I really appreciate that. I've been dealing with a lot of "life stuff" over the last 8 months, and it shows. 

But, even though life has done its damnedest to get in the way of this project, thanks to the herculean support of everyone here at 2CGaming this has resulted in no more than a minor delay. The Digital PDF of Tyrants and Hellions will be released in late April. We were hoping for a digital release on April 1st, now we're aiming for the 23rd. Physical books will follow about a month after that, barring any unexpected issues during printing.

While the writing team has hit just about every obstacle it's possible to hit, the art team is continuing to turn out amazing work which I will let speak for itself.

That might be the coolest dragon I've ever seen. Ravilvost takes every aspect of dragonkind and turns it up to 11, and Damon captured that perfectly. 

Salister Kane is one of the villains I'm most excited about. Devils have always been a favorite of mine as a DM. Finding ways to ruin the party's day without ever telling an outright lie, and even giving them genuine help at a price that won't come due for quite a while. But when it does... there will be hell to pay. 

Representing the Fey in Tyrants & Hellions is the Queen of Air and Darkness! She's one of the villains your players might find themselves agreeing with, and the Aftermath section of her story has some advice for how to keep the game moving if they decide to join the big bad and rule the Feywild together.

Hex is one of the more unusual villains in that he's not very dangerous, and neither are his schemes. It's his lair that'll kill you. It is called the labyrinth because all other labyrinths are pale imitations. Hex seeks an heir worthy of maintaining his masterpiece, and he doesn't care how many adventurers have to die to the labyrinth's many traps in the process.

That's all I have on the update front! Thank you again for your patience and understanding. We are delaying the project so it meets our high standards of quality, and I believe you will love the end result.

In other 2CGaming news, Jon is at the helm of our next project: The Total Party Kill Bestiary! A book of monsters focusing on challenge rating 10 and higher for when your games go beyond the minor leagues, plus all the usual 2CGaming extras like lore, tactics (with variable difficulty!), and amazing artwork. You can check out a promo of the kind of content you can expect in the book here: Utterances of Truespeech

May the dice be ever in your favor.

Steven Gordon - 2CGaming Team

January Update: Writing is Almost Done!
over 6 years ago – Wed, Jan 17, 2018 at 09:04:06 PM

So it's January 1st, right? This update is totally on time. Okay, you got me. It's actually very late! 

As you might have read in the comments, I got pretty sick over the new year and have been hurriedly catching up on missed work. I prioritized working on the book, and I hope you'll forgive the late update in exchange for keeping the project on schedule.

This is going to be a pretty quick update, I just want to share the development timeline for the next couple of months. We'll still be posting updates on the 1st of each month, but unless something goes wrong, these updates will mostly be "Yup, everything is still on track!" I'll include some more artwork and samples of formatted content as we get to it, but we're in the final stretch right now so it's just heads-down, nose-to-grindstone hard work over here!

February 1st: The book will be "first draft" complete. This means everything is written, but not everything has been reviewed and revised. Artwork will be mostly completed by this point as well, but not 100%.

March 1st: The book will be fully revised and artwork will be completed. At this point it passes to the formatting team (which is really just all-star graphic designer and formatter John Cason, but he does enough work I think we can call him a one-man team) to be turned into the finished product.

April 1st: Digital delivery! No, that's not a joke, you can expect the PDF of Tyrants & Hellions to be ready to download on April 1st. At this point we send the digital files to the printer so we can begin production and shipping!

May 1st: Physical delivery! All the books should be delivered by May 1st (fingers crossed!) but if something is going to go wrong, it's going to be with shipping. We'll work as fast as we can to correct any issues that crop up and make sure everyone gets their books.

If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know, and thank you again for your patience in the crunch! I assure you that the time not spent on this update has all gone into the book.

Steven Gordon - 2CGaming Team

December Update
over 6 years ago – Tue, Dec 05, 2017 at 09:14:32 AM

My apologies for the delay in getting out this month's update, I've been a little under the weather this last weekend and trying to balance work with rest.

Let's get to it! There's nothing earth shattering in this month's update, just more progress! I'll start with some awesome artwork.

Illustrations!

One of the new monsters the Queen of Air and Darkness will be bringing to the table, Corrupted Feybeasts are equal parts creepy and beautiful, with a dash of winter. These dangerous predators will stalk the party through forests on the material plane and the Fey realms alike! 

The current mechanic for these monsters involves a miniature skill challenge as part of an ambush. The DM (that's you!) is provided with a list of clues, they pick two of them, and the party gets the chance to make some ability checks (typically Perception, Investigation, Survival, the usual "don't get ambushed" choices). The more checks they fail, the more bonuses the Corrupted Feybeasts get during the ambush. Hopefully your players take notes about what each clue means, they're patterns that are meant to be learned. As always, game mechanics might change during editing and revision, but it's fun to share.

The second villain from the Rogue's Gallery, the Ashen King carries a deadly plague that burns the flesh off his victims and raises them as disfigured undead. Fans of Morrowind may recognize the inspiration from ash zombies. ;) 

While the Ashen King is very capable of disguising himself to appear as an ordinary humanoid, we wanted this illustration to show off his true form. He's got all the classic hellish accouterments: lots of jewelry, surprisingly clean (and sharp) teeth, and gross hair.

Finally, Magnon in its fully-colored glory! Magnon is... unusual, to say the least. I think it will do very well with groups who enjoy mysteries and roleplaying, and I'm glad it's bringing some diversity to the style of villain in the book.

I'll be having some follow-up meetings with the backer behind Magnon this month to finalize its design, but one aspect I'd like to share here is the fun of giving creatures magnetic abilities. Extremely powerful telekinesis that only works on metal objects, a clever inventor who has found a way to use Magnon's energies to power never before seen technologies, and of course, magnetic boomerangs.

Writing

Between PAX: Unplugged and Thanksgiving, writing in the last two weeks has been a bit slower than I'd like. I'm going to be putting in extra time here in December to do my best to keep the project on track. Additionally, I've delegated some work to the rest of the 2CGaming team to help out, bringing on some assistance with monster design and balance of the new player archetypes that'll be added to the book. Both aspects are fairly involved, and it's nice to be able to focus more on the villains themselves.

All in all, I don't expect the project to be delayed. I am behind schedule in my writing and I feel it's important to share that openly and honestly, but steps are being taken to bring on some help, and we should be back on track by the next update.

By the way, PAX: Unplugged was phenomenal, and a huge thank you to everyone who came by the booth and mentioned they'd backed this Kickstarter! It was awesome to meet you, and I'm very excited to return to the convention next year.

What's Next?

Artwork and writing continue at a fever pitch, and editing and revision have begun as well. That will be taking up most of December and January. I can hardly wait to share the book with all of you, I've said it a lot, but thank you again for your support.

Oh, and one more thing. 2CGaming has a Discord Server, if you're in to that sort of thing. I poke my head in from time to time and you can find the rest of the 2CGaming team there as well! Check it out here: https://discord.gg/2k35fY9

That's all from me, happy holidays and stay warm out there!

Steven Gordon - 2CGaming Team