Friday, April 24, 2015

WORD COUNT LIMITS AND FUTURE RELEASES FOR OGRE GATE

The Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate rulebook will be bigger than I expected initially, but we still have a hard word count cap that we need to abide by and that means some things won't make it into the final release. We are probably going to steer those things toward PDF releases. 

That said, the book is fairly substantial in terms of content, it includes all the core rules, character creation, sects, sample adventure, kung fu Techniques (and we are getting close to 200 of these now), equipment, NPCs, culture, history, gazetteer, monster section, GM section, appendix and the ritual chapter. 

In many ways we are trying to do just as much as we did with Sertorius (which was 500 pages) but in less space (300 pages or so). Basically the gazetteer will fully cover the southern frontier area (which is where players are expected to do most of their exploration). We include a map of the empire and some basic descriptions of it, but the focus is a place called The Banyan. This is fully described and labeled to encourage a kind of sandbox-style play. We also include a huge number of NPCs in the book to go along with the Banyan. However we couldn't include everyone we wanted to. There are a few masters we just don't have room for in the NPC chapter, so what we will probably do is release an NPC supplement down the road containing those a long with new threats for the party. Similarly the monster Chapter, while not small, isn't going to be the size of the monster chapter in Sertorius. This will be a more modest effort because monsters are simply not the focus of the game. 

One of the things we did in this book that we didn't do in Sertorius is include a sample adventure, which takes up considerable space. We also include a large sample dungeon in the Gazeteer section that is about 10,000 words (which is a lot because that could have been many, many NPCs and Monsters instead). In the end we felt it was very important to include the dungeon and the adventure, even though they brought us perilously close to our word count cap. 

While the book does have close to 200 techniques (we need to count since our last tally to see where we are exactly) we might also release technique supplements as well (these will be free if we do them). Ideally groups will use the underlying system to make their own techniques, but if folks want it, we are happy to create more. 

I will release further updates as we continue to make progress. 






6 comments:

  1. Ooh, I know I'd shell out cash for a monster or supernatural supplement in the vein of the Aegyptus Guide. But I guess conversion from the Bestiary for Qin wouldn't be too hard, either, if it comes to that. (It probably will, just to tide me over. Still, I love Chinese mythology, and anything that gets me closer to running a more mystical game like Jade Empire or Bridge of Birds is a plus!)
    I would also be more than glad to shell out cash for more detailed sects, masters, dungeons, provinces -- that sort of thing, as well! Beggars Sect stuff especially. They have always been my favorite, even before reading Legend of the Condor Heroes.
    Also, I was expecting Ogre Gate to be more like ~120 pages like SoG and Terror Network. Not that I'm complaining about it, of course!

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  2. If we do a monster book it will probably be a standard manual of some kind. The current rules do contain entries for: lions/tigers, wolves, Bronze Monks of Bao, Dragon Horses, Fox Demons, Snake Demons, Golden Guardians, Ghosts, Immortals, Skeletons, Tiangou, Qi Spirits (Water Spirit, Fox Spirit, Vulture Spirit, Wolf Spirit, Swallow Spirit, Bull Spirit, Pig Spirit), Ogre Demons, and Xiaoyang. So that is what you can expect with the core rulebook (it also has stats for mundane threats like Bandits and other Martial Experts).

    The core rules contains a number of sects. We have a sect based loosely on Beggar Sect called The Nature Loving Monk Sect.

    I originally wanted to have the rules be 120 or so, but that wasn't feasible. Right now I am anticipating 300 pages.

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  3. Bronze Monks of Bao, Dragon Horses, Immortals... very interesting! I notice jiangshi is missing -- but maybe they're just hiding another the guise of Immortals or somesuch. I won't press it! But like I said, there are a ton of other resources I can siphon from if I want good old "hopping vampires.
    Really? I'm already interested in learning more about them! Actually, I kinda really like that you don't seem, from what I remember, to have many direct analogs to sects in popular fiction -- that'll be a lot of fun! Well, I WOULD venture that the Mystic Sword Sect owes a little to Zu Warriors -- but I shouldn't make any assumptions until the book is released!

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    1. Jiangshi is in there too (I just forgot).

      Mystic Sword Sect is a sect based off of Lady Hermit, but evil.

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  4. Oh, wonderful! (I wonder if they can instigate Qi loss... ?)
    Ohh! Well, I think it was a good guess all the same, hehe (I haven't been keeping up with your playtest reports). And I have yet to watch Lady Hermit, but I love Cheng Pei-pei so I might as well.

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  5. Definitely check out Lady Hermit if you can, it is one of her greatest roles with a truly iconic revenge scene. I did a review of it on the blog: http://thebedrockblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/wuxia-inspiration-lady-hermit.html

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