At long last, my Tome of Adventure Design (originally the Adventure Design Deskbooks) is up and ready for sale at Frog God Games. It's a quarter century worth of tables and a couple of places where I fleshed out some "Notes to Self" that were in the 3-ring binders along with the tables. People who have seen Deskbooks 1 and 2 know how it's presented -- the Tome of Adventure Design (ToAD) contains books 3 and 4 as well. The tables are what I think of as "deep design" rather than being short and weighted toward normal results as you have to do in a book of tables designed for rapid use during an adventure. This book is for when you're working ahead of time. There are a couple of exceptions - the first internal "book" can be used to generate the general concept of an adventure pretty quickly, either based on location, mission, or a villain's objective.
It's system neutral (for the D&D family, anyway, some of it uses concepts that were abandoned in 4e). So it's totally usable with AD&D, OSRIC, Original D&D, 2e, all the retro-clones, etc., etc.
The pdf is available immediately, and if you are pre-ordering the book you get the pdf right away.
It's 300 pages of tables and 7 pages of index (I worked hard to get a really good index).
Here's the link to the ordering site: http://www.talesofthefroggod.com/index.php/products/the-tome-of-adventure-design
Edit: there's a preview (uses the working title, not the final title) here: http://www.talesofthefroggod.com/files/UBADPre.pdf (warning: takes you directly to download)
EDIT: it's $42. Anyone know why?
Because that's the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?
ReplyDeleteBingo. :)
ReplyDeleteThe post is incomplete with a hearty MWAHAHAHAHAHA!, but the news is good anyway. I have recently been using some of the tables in Deskbook One to create dungeon specials and ideas for city sites, and it worked very-very admirably in providing basic, raw ideas to expand on.
ReplyDeleteThis looks like one solid book.
Purchased. I figure that if you consider this your masterpiece I have to take a look at it.
ReplyDeleteI hope this is a hardcover. Is it?
ReplyDeleteYes, it's hardcover and sewn in 16-page signatures, which I think is the highest quality binding you can get.
ReplyDeleteCongrats! When will the physical product ship?
ReplyDeleteMost recent estimate is that the pre-orders will cut off at December 1, which means ( I think) that they won't be ready in time for Christmas, which means I need to talk to Bill and remind him about the Christmas thing. But that's the current schedule at the moment.
ReplyDeleteDamn you Matt! I have way too much good stuff to read, and now I have this... PDF and Print. You really can't go wrong ;)
ReplyDeleteAwesome. Ordered, and can't wait to get it. Thanks Matt!
ReplyDeleteYou guys should be able to get the download right away after ordering the book. The pdf comes free with the book.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to getting this. Good luck with sales.
ReplyDeleteSee if you can get Paizo to Pimp this too! With all the cache you guys built up with the TOH, this could be a big seller, but you need a little push to get things going.
ReplyDeleteGood work :)
ReplyDeletePurchased. I enjoy the Deskbooks, and am looking forward to this.
ReplyDelete(But TOAD? I'd grown attached to the UBAD name.)
Paul, me too. But Paizo apparently already has a line of books that are "ultimate this" and "ultimate that." We figured that if they get "Ultimate Book of," then we've got "Tome of." Ultimately (sorry for awful pun), the fact that it's the first official non-monster "Tome" will draw a lot of interest from the newer gaming crowd that are familiar with Necromancer Games.
ReplyDelete