Fabled Lands Kickstarter

Dave Morris, co-creator of Dragon Warriors, has a new Kickstarter project for his much-loved Fabled Lands gamebook series. This reunites Dave and Jamie Thomson, the original Fabled Lands writers, with Russ Nicholson, the classic fantasy artist who illustrated the original Fabled Lands series (as well as Book 6 of the 1980s edition of Dragon Warriors, among many other things).

Want to see a sequel to the Fabled Lands? We didn’t see one for many years, and the reason is largely one of money. In the glory days of the 1980s, you could publish a gamebook (or even a paperback RPG book like Dragon Warriors…), see it stocked in major bookshops, sell tens of thousands of copies, and expect, not to become wealthy (chance would be a fine thing) but at least to make a reasonable living as a writer and game designer. These days that’s a lot trickier, even using Kickstarter, even for an established author.

But Fabled Lands, and their partners at Megara, are managing it. They’ve funded the Kickstarter already (within 45 minutes!). There will be a new Fabled Lands book. More funding will mean better art, though. Get to it. 35 euro for a hardcover, beautifully illustrated, fantastically written slice of gaming magic.

Oh, and it’s called The Serpent King’s Domain, which would make us feel very happy here at Serpent King Games, if the title had anything to do with us! It seems to be one of those ‘great minds think alike’ moments, though.

Fabled Lands: The Serpent King’s Domain Kickstarter

Friends or Foes Available in POD Format

Just a quick update to say that Friends or Foes is now available in POD format:

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/93970/Friends-or-Foes

You can expect more of our catalogue to appear in POD over the next few weeks.

The Summoner’s Tale and The Reeve’s Tale are still in editing with a third book in the planning stages.

Dragon Warriors Players Guide – Now Available

At long last the Dragon Warriors Players Guide is now officially available from DriveThruRPG in pdf and print-on-demand.

 So, what can you expect to find in this long-awaited tome? A host of information and new rules for Dragon Warriors including: 

  • New professions – the Knave, Priest, and Hunter are ready to take centre stage.
  • New organizations – fight them or join them, it’s up to you.
  • New spells for your favourite spellcasting professions!
  • Essays on life and magic in Legend
  • New weapons, new armour, new combat options.
  • A simple skill system in line with the existing language rules.
  • Full rules for the demonologist profession now available and updated to include demonologist-specific spells for levels 1-4!

 We’ve reprinted the Demonologist from In From the Cold since a lot of people have contacted us looking for the rules since that book went out of print. 

Next up is another short adventure “The Summoner’s Tale”, followed by another project we’ll announce when it’s a little further along. Watch this space!

 

Players Book

First up, apologies for getting all of you as excited as we all got, towards the end of last year. The book has been all laid out and ready to go to print for three months now.

So, why don’t you have a copy in your hands yet? We ran into a few problems getting it uploaded to DriveThruRPG. These took a couple of months to resolve. We now do have the book uploaded and ready to print… but we’re waiting on two proof copies that have been posted out to us, one to our fantastic new layout expert Chris, and one to me, so we can give them one final check-over before we make this available to order for everyone.

Sorry, again, about the delay. As you’ll all know by now, the four of us are doing this part-time at best. It’s just a question of squeezing in time to do a bit of work in between day-jobs, studying, family, etc. That does make it very hard to get things out on schedule. I think we do pretty well at just about every other aspect of professionalism… but we’re bad at getting stuff printed on time. Hopefully things will get better.

We are eagerly awaiting those proof copies and will be giving them a good check-over as soon as we get them.

In the meantime, here’s a teaser pic of the Contents page, just to whet your appetite.

DragonWarriors – Players Guide-Contents

The Knight’s Tale Now Available!

Our latest short adventure, The Knight’s Tale, is now available here: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/132843/The-Knights-Tale. Set in Algandy, this adventure gives a hint of what life is like in that dark land and focuses on one of the grand events of the Legend calendar. Weighing in at nearly four times the length of the Miller’s Tale, this adventure is a sandbox scenario with heaps of NPCs and a healthy dose of chaos.

 

In other news the Player’s Guide is in it’s final stages and is on track for a late summer release.

Print stock available again

We’ve secured a few copies of some of the Magnum Opus print run of DW, mostly so as to give us some stock for selling at conventions etc. However, we do have them available to UK buyers (only, for the moment) who might prefer to get their physical copies of the books directly from us. If you’re in the USA, it’s almost certainly better to go through DriveThru. We also had DriveThru send us a few copies of the main rulebook (our printing, this time), just so as to ensure we could do some decent bundle deals that at least have enough books in to let you play.

Individual Books (all Magnum Opus editions, other than Core Book, which is the Serpent King Games edition)

Elven Crystals: £14.95 + P&P
Bestiary: £14.95+ P&P
Prince of Darkness: £19.95+ P&P
Sleeping Gods: £19.95+ P&P
Friends or Foes: £19.95 + P&P
Core Book: £22.50 + P&P

Postage & Packing is £5 for any one or two books (excluding the core rulebook), or £7.50 for the core rulebook plus up to two smaller books. Sorry about that, but Royal Mail prices are high, and books are heavy. That price does include insurance though.

Bundle Deals
Starter Set I: Rulebook + Bestiary + Sleeping Gods = £62.50 inc P&P
Starter Set II: Rulebook + Bestiary + Prince of Darkness = £62.50 inc P&P
Something Old, Something New (Elven Crystals + Prince of Darkness + Sleeping Gods + Friends or Foes) = £77.50 inc P&P
Big Bundle (all the above books) = £115 inc P&P

If you want to place an order, send us the relevant funds to info@serpentking.com via PayPal, and I’ll get the books parcelled up and posted out within a week or two. This is just a question of me taking the books up the hill from my house to the post office, rather than some bigger business that has a postroom operative, so I’m not going to guarantee a delivery date, but usually I’d sooner get them in the post and out of the house ASAP.

Players Guide at Next Step

Another mini update from the snake pit. The art for the Players Guide is now complete! Layout work begins in the next day or two. I’m not 100% sure on how long this will take but a few weeks at least so expect a summer release for the Player’s Guide! The blogs for the artists who contributed to the PG can be found here in case anyone feels nosy:
In other news the Knight’s Tale is still in layout and we’re thinking about another big project 🙂

Update

We’ve been a little quiet here at SKG for the last while so we thought we’d let you know how things are going. Firstly the fabled players guide: work is underway on the art for this. We have a cadre of – in my opinion – brilliant artists who really capture the “old school” feel of Dragon Warriors. The PG art will really harken back to those first six novel-sized books. You can find a couple of art teasers below by the amazing Jay Penn and Gordon Mackay.

 

Once the art is done we go to layout and final reviews. Fingers crossed we should have a product to show you shortly thereafter.

 

JP

 

We’ve got a new scenario for you too: The Knight’s Tale, a story of intrigue and sorcery set in the land of Algandy. In this adventure you’ll get to hob-nob (great, now I want biscuits) with the nobility at the largest tourney in the Lands of Legend while immersing yourself in the dark underworld of Algandy’s politics.

GM

Our next two planned adventures are The Summoner’s Tale and the Reeve’s Tale. More about those later…

Changes at Serpent King Games

DragonwarriorscoreYou may have heard a rumour of changes coming at Serpent King Games. The rumour is true. Jon Hodgson here to fill you in.

The short version is that I’m departing Serpent King Games.

The long version begins with some history: When we formed the company 3 years ago I had reached a point in my freelance art career where I realised I wanted a change. So I put a bunch of irons in a bunch fires, worked hard at each of them, and waited to see what would happen. As it turned out working with Cubicle 7 as their art director, and more recently deputy CEO, has burned significantly hotter than any of the others.

The downside to this is that I just haven’t had the appropriate time to give to Serpent King Games. This has never sat easily with me. I love Dragon Warriors, getting to work on the Magnum Opus edition was huge for me. Sadly when there were new SKG Dragon Warriors books for me to apply my illustration skills to, my time was all spoken for.

My departure has been a long time coming, and I’ve worked hard on some different strategies to try and stay an active contributor of the game, but there comes a time to admit I can only work 12 hours a day. Rather than hold up already delayed projects I feel it’s more appropriate to step aside, help the guys find some new art talent with a bit more time to spend, and wish them all the best.

The last thing I’m working on is all the art for imminently forthcoming The Knight’s Tale, and handing over all my art direction notes for The Player’s Book to the new Serpent King art worker. I’m leaving behind permission to use all my artwork, which was my major investment in Serpent King Games, since the copyright to that art is owned by me, rather than a part of Dragon Warriors.

It can’t be overstated that my departure is entirely amicable, and I wish Ian, Gar, Kieran and the artist slated to take Dragon Warriors forward all the best. Each of them has invested significant time and resources in keeping Dragon Warriors available, and not one of them has taken a penny in return. A true labour of love.

I’m very much looking forward to seeing what new material this new era brings for Serpent King Games.

Serpent King Games Fan Policy

At Serpent King Games, we’re fans of Dragon Warriors as well as the current publishers of the game. We recognise the essential contribution that fans have made in keeping interest in the game alive over the past three decades or so. We are very happy to see additions to the Dragon Warriors setting, in the form of free fan-made websites or other internet-based content such as free e-books or e-zines. However, it is essential that all Dragon Warriors fan sites adhere to the following Fan Policy:

1. Fan websites (or e-books, e-zines, etc.) must not be commercial enterprises. We have no objection to a fan site covering its costs through the use of adverts or similar, but you must not charge people to download or access fan-made material based on the Dragon Warriors setting.

2. Fan websites(or e-books, e-zines, etc.) are explicitly NOT permitted to reprint copyright material, including such items as art, character professions, monsters, or adventures that have been printed by Serpent King Games or other official Dragon Warriors publishers.

3. You may reference names, places, etc. from the Dragon Warriors setting.

4. All fan websites (or e-books, e-zines, etc.) must include the following text, in legible form, on the front page or on the first page that refers to Dragon Warriors or Legend:

“This website includes material based on the Dragon Warriors setting, as created by and copyright (c) Dave Morris and Oliver Johnson, and used according to the terms of the Serpent King Games Fan Policy. We are not permitted to charge you to use or access this content. This website is not published, endorsed, or officially approved by Serpent King Games. For more information about Dragon Warriors products and Serpent King Games, please visit www.serpentking.com”

5. We expect fan websites (or e-books, e-zines, etc.) to use the Dragon Warriors setting responsibly and legally. That means avoiding associating the setting with extreme graphic violence, explicit sexual content, hate speech against any particular real-world segment of society, or anything else that does not present Dragon Warriors in a positive light.

If you have any questions about the Fan Policy, please email info@serpentking.com

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