Friday, November 30, 2018

Tegel Manor Panel Discussion 11-30-2018

Last night I ran the most uncomfortable video panel of my life - not because of the content but because of the sneezing. When they tell you to wear a dust mask while cleaning enclosed areas with a lot of dust? Yeah, listen to them. I spent half the video off-screen and muted while having sneezing attacks.
Link to the Tegel Manor video where I am half incapacitated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLmOaPb1U7Q
The topic of the video was Tegel Manor, mainly focusing on the Frog God expansion of it that's an ongoing Kickstarter right now. I do have a small financial interest in this Kickstarter since I'm a partner in Frog God, but as you'll see if you watch the video, it's not a commercial. What I was aiming for was a set of anecdotal snapshots of the history of Tegel Manor in 1977 followed by the development of the Kickstarter from the deal to the contract and then into the art, writing, cartography, original D&D version, 5e re-structuring to keep the original feel in the 5e rules, and the overall management of the project by Zach Glazar.
Link to the Kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/froggodgames/tegel-manor-returns/description
Best quote of the night: "I came in through the appendix." - Edwin Nagy
Frog God's Tegel Manor follows the massive collapse of the Judges Guild City State of the Invincible Overlord, and while Tegel isn't a white knight project, the Judges Guild share of the proceeds is going entirely to the rescue of the City State Kickstarter. This is important to lots of fans who backed CSIO, and it was one of our requirements in structuring the new version of Tegel.
In the chat room, one of the big issues for people was the question of whether we were changing any parts of the original manor. The answer was no, but there is additional detail in those parts of the manor.
One area we only touched on briefly was the cartography of the new Tegel's presentation, because the cartographer, Alyssa Faden, wasn't available for the panel. To get an idea of the size and scope of the cartography, there are some examples on the project's Kickstarter page. It will be usable for 28mm scale battlemaps for those who want to use minis, and anyone familiar with the scale of the original map should at this point have pretty wide eyes at that statement. For those who play on a VTT, the map is also going to be available in the layers that allow hiding details from player view.
This isn't a review of the project because (a) I'm not personally a fan of haunted-house adventures, although I did enjoy Tegel Manor when I played it in 1981 or so, and (b) as I mentioned, I have a financial interest in it, however slight. But this video, I think, will be very interesting for those who want to see how a Kickstarter proceeds from soup to nuts.
My next video interview is going to be with Iain Lovecraft, who designs 3D-printable terrain. As with many of my interviews, he is also running a Kickstarter, so I'll note that I don't accept money for doing videos -- but it's easy for me to spot interesting people when a Kickstarter is launched, and it gives me a hook into what drives the gaming life of my interviewees since a Kickstarter is almost by definition a tangible expression of their core interests. If you're into 3D printing, the interview with Iain should be interesting to watch. He has done a couple of cityscapes in the past (Rome and a Meso-American type of city) and this Kickstarter involves some cool stuff. My favorite part is a funky-Gothic-Tudor set of buildings along a bridge. There are also elven tree-building (not my cup of tea) and some nice looking miniatures that look to be of pretty good quality.
Iain's Kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1612773283/riders-of-the-storm-elves-dwarfs-miniatures-and-dr
Until then, no matter what kind of D&D you play, Imagine the Hell out of it!
Matt