End of September / October Update - Sands of Doom
11 months ago – Wed, Nov 01, 2023 at 04:59:22 PM

Hey guys! It's time for another update for Sands of Doom. 

If you can believe it, I ended up spending over 7 hours writing this whole thing...while gathering all of the samples and pictures that I know you guys like to see. But I know you guys appreciate the updates! So that's a sacrifice I am more than happy to make for you all :D It's been a very busy last 2 months so let's get right into it.

The Book's Writing

I have good news and bad news. The final writing of the book is taking longer than I originally anticipated, which is the bad news. But the good news is that it helps the artists have a bit more time to flesh out all the concepts, and create more art for the book. The way its looking now, the art should be getting completed at about the same time that the writing on the book is fully finalized. The other good news is that being a bit delayed helps me pivot WAY harder if needed depending on how all the playtesting goes. Already found myself adding a ton of new content based on what I see player's interest gravitating towards, or against. 

Now, I have been basically full-timing the writing of the book for the past couple of months, and I have noticed that I like re-visiting a lot of sections and improving them, over and over again. This is definitely slowing down the whole process but the quality I am seeing in each iteration feels extremely worth it. It is also becoming increasingly clear to me that I may have added too much content...hah.. and we might end up with a 300 page book in our hands. Its not ideal since it increases printing costs for me, and shipping costs for you; but ultimately I am siding with the philosophy that content is always king. Basically, I am making this the best that it can be - while limiting myself the least amount possible. 

My current projections tell me that I should be fully done with the writing by the end of January, but as always, it can be quite difficult to tell. Its very interesting how long it takes to transcribe the 'design' of a place, say a room in a dungeon, or the personality traits of an NPC; and turn that into "official-dnd-looking-language". Transcribing the terminologies and style to have it feel like a 5th edition product is definitely time consuming, but very rewarding. 

Overall though the playtesting has been extremely positive on the story, themes, and overall atmosphere; and the setting itself (characters, locations, culture, background history, etc.) is getting really good feedback. In the second chapter, which players play through as level 2 characters, characters must go through a difficult survival challenge in the dunes of the region. This second chapter got some mixed feelings, so I will have to play around with how difficult the chapter is. It will be tricky to balance out the grittiness of survival with what can easily become tedious, too difficult/deadly, or maybe even too anxiety-inducing. To keep it short, you basically have to manage limited food/water, only sacrifice what you must sacrifice at night to feed the camp fire (nights are very cold in this desert), while trying to hunt / survive since you can't long rest for a considerable amount of time. It is going to be tricky to see in which direction to balance it, to either make it very gritty and harsh but with plenty of tools that the DM can use to ease it if necessary; or ease up on the throttle but then add tools that the DM can use to ramp up the intensity. The harsh rules for the dunes of the setting work perfectly for traveling through them at the mid levels, which is when you will be doing most of your dune-exploration; but I need to find a good balance for this one early survival arc. 

Supplements 

I have finished doing all of the re-writes and rebalancing of Monster Classes 5 (ie. Sands of Doom Monster Classes - Troll/Earth Elemental/Gnoll) and it is currently in the layout process, as it is being put together with all the art and everything. It should be done in a few weeks, after which it will receive another pass for any errors/typos/etc, and it will be then sent to all of you in PDF form. If you guys find any errors, between now and final printing (which will happen a few months later), then those errors will be fixed for the printed version - and likely you will be send another PDF with the errors corrected then as well. This is going to be our M.O. for most products. 

I have also completed all of the extra subclasses I promised for the book compendium of Monster Classes 1, 2, and 3 (named Extra Monster Classes in the supplements). We ended up with an alternate Ogre called the Ogre Magi, the Fang Dragon for the Dragon, the Imp as a subclass to the Familiar, the Werespider for the Lycanthrope, and the Fungal Treant as an alternate form of the Treant. I will also spend some time and go through all of these monster classes and do one last set of rebalances based on feedback and playtest - hopefully I can spend some time in a few weeks to do that. I ended up liking the Imp so much that I am actually considering putting it on the Sands of Doom book, but it depends on how we do on the number of pages. 

We are close to being done with all of the arts for the Magic Item Deck, so soon I will start ordering some printed samples for the cards, and hopefully we don't need too many iterations before we are ready to do the big printing of them. All of the mechanics for the magic items are completed, though they are currently undergoing proofreading for any errors / mechanical issues. Many of these were really cool desert-based magic items from previous editions that I thought would do incredibly great in Sands of Doom. So I deconstructed them and redesigned them, some for the adventure itself and others exclusively for the deck of cards. Others were must-haves for me, like a custom-made flying carpet, a magic lamp, and others that I really wanted to personally create. And then of course, some are magic items from the adventure itself. 

The OST for Sands of Doom is coming along really well. Travis Savoie from RPGMusicMaker and I have been working together to come up with a really thematic set of tunes that encapsulate the feeling of the campaign. We are doing 16 background pieces, about 1 minute and 30 seconds long with a good looping rythm, that are meant to play in an non-intrusive way in the background during your session. This includes multiple songs for combat, boss music, a good vibe for desert traveling, tunes themed to most of the regions, etc. Then we have 2 full themes, which are about 3 minutes and a half long, that are meant to be more set-piece songs. One of them is the official theme of Sands of Doom while the other is the theme of Lord Ammu, our main villain. Now, I am very well aware - being a DM myself - that 99% of you are more than happy using a lot of the epic music that you can find on Youtube. I mean there is no way we can compete with a lot of what's out there, whether we are talking about some of the excellent World of Warcraft background atmospheric tunes, dark souls boss music, or classic dnd soundtracks such as the OST of Pillars of Eternity. This is why I specifically wanted to do something a bit special with the Sands of Doom OST, and will be customizing a lot of the music with sound effects specifically pertinent to the topic that the track is meant to represent. For example, a lot of the combat music which is specifically designed to be used during encounters with gnolls, will have atmospheric hyena-sounding effects - of course used in aesthetically pleasing ways in a professional style so as to not drown out the music. You will also of course be getting a version of the tracks without these effects, versions that Travis will also be uploading to his patreon supporters - but I am working with the mindset that if you purchased Sands of Doom music, you likely want something very very custom-made and specific; something that will make your Sands of Doom experience better. Please feel free to check out Travis' spectacular dnd music over at https://www.youtube.com/@RPGMusicMaker/featured

I am leaving the voice acting supplement until much later, because it is very quickly to record and produce, and to allow for me to be completely certain that the script is final. See, in Sands of Doom, characters are introduced to a Sphinx that can see the future and wishes to help the characters, but suffers from a particularly interesting condition that prevents her from speaking plainly. To keep it short, the Sphinx helps the characters by giving them riddles which the characters can solve to figure out where to go next and what to avoid. Since the riddles are static, meaning they will always be the same and shouldn't normally change, I can hire a cool voice actress to narrate them, and then add any necessary effect or tune to go along with it. Now, there are a lot of riddles for a lot of different things since the Sphinx can answer almost any question given to her - but in riddle form. So i can't possibly cover every single answer she can give, but I can get some awesome voice work for all the major ones. Anyways, I am still play testing the riddles to see whether they feel right, whether they give the answers too easily or whether they are too difficult, etc. I also find myself constantly changing the flavors of how the riddles are presented to try and find a perfect theme or style to them. So basically, it is best for me to leave this until after the book is fully complete and I know 100% that the riddles are what they are. 

For the Tactical Map Pack, there's not much that I can do right now as I have to wait for the art of the maps to be completed of course. However, I can tell you that based on how all the designs look like, and the fact that I can only fit so many maps onto the pack; that it was important that I themed out the right set of maps onto the pack. What I ended up deciding on, was to make the pack hold all of the important maps for the siege of Al'Kirat. It was a hard decision because there are soo many wonderful maps that I think would look fantastic in poster form, but ultimately I think that there is just far too much value in having a complete 'siege' pack that has every map you need to run the climactic end of the campaign. Now you can have all of the final and most important encounters in Sands of Doom as big set piece fights, as they deserve to be!

The only supplement that I am struggling to complete is the DM Screen, specifically because it is just too difficult to figure what to leave out and how 'specific' to be with the content. As a forever DM, I have a lot of incredibly valuable stuff that I think would benefit all DMs to have...and I really want you to have that content. But most of it is not Sands of Doom specific, its just stuff that is awesome to have in any adventure. Normally I would follow my instinct on this, which is to put this useful information, but I did open up a poll about this to let you all vote on what you wanted; and you voted that you wanted the DM Screen to have information specific to Sands of Doom. It also makes sense to make it very campaign specific, because you guys all probably have your own screens and don't need another 'general use' screen. So yeah, I have to think further on this and see what good middle-ground I can find. 

Stretch Goals

I am been extremely happy with how successfully I have been able to integrate the Stretch Goals seamlessly into the story. 

Kunaten Keep which originally had a much smaller role in the adventure, was transformed into an important part of the story. A sizable prologue was added where characters can explore the settlement and get to know the community, with a lot of fun interactions. Its destruction has been rewritten in such a way that allows the players to experience it in an indirect way, making its destruction feel way more personal to the players. It is also much more tied up with the initial events that trigger the main conflict of the story. And lastly, the actual promise of the stretch goal itself, characters can return much later in the story to the now ruined settlement. We have two full maps of the location, and it is designed to be filled with references to the things that the characters do during the prologue. The people they help and some decisions that they make will have an impact when they return much later on. 

The Red Sphinx has been included as a completely optional side venture that the characters can do, but I am really happy with its addition because it has allowed me to explore a very different part of the story that didn't fully fit with the "main quest" so to speak. It also allowed me to have a lot more "traditional" riddles in the game, since the main Sphinx of Sands of Doom functions less like riddles with defined answers and more like clues with a lot of metaphorical language that is hard to decode. But yeah, not much to say here otherwise. 

The Anubian Tiara stretch goal ended up being far more transformative than I originally thought. There was always the intention that many of the things you did throughout the adventure, had some form of effect or change in the last chapter. But generally the ending was about the same: you defeat the gnolls and save the day. Regardless of how you accomplished it, the crux of the ending would be roughly the same. The introduction of Killoh' as a potential 'replacement' for Lord Ammu as a new Pharaoh, inspired me to dig deeper into the story and rework some elements so that I could have three fully unique endings. These endings are indirectly tied to three very important NPCs which you can meet throughout the game. Basically, Sands of Doom is fairly open in how you progress through it. Between level 1 and level 4, the story is a bit more linear but you can make a lot of decisions along the way that changes important things here and there. Then between level 5 and level 8, the game is very open with which specific content you want to do and how you approach the story. There are three important characters in the story that thematically push you in three different directions, and help you complete different objectives in different locations. You eventually meet all of them, but one of them is considered your 'Fated Ally', which is dependent on what exactly you do in Chapter 2. This fated ally is met much earlier than the rest and will be automatically predisposed to help you, where as the others might need some convincing. DMs can also choose to pick one of them, if they feel like their story / route will be the most fun for their table. 

Here's a small primer on each of them and what they bring to the table:

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Brigga

Characters who survive the dangers of the pyramid and seek refuge at the nearest oasis encounter Brugi, a banished storm giant who befriends and protects them.

Quests. Allying with Brigga guides the players towards the gnoll subplot of the adventure. In this questline, the characters unravel the truth behind the Anubian kingdom’s downfall and confront the true enemy that lies dormant deep underground.

Flavor. A campaign with Brigga as a primary ally is hopeful and wholesome. Players will travel atop a giant’s shoulder, solve riddles, combat vast swarms of insects, and rally allies to protect and save Kirat.

Ending. Fulfilling Brigga’s questline guides players towards the Peace Ending of Sands of Doom. In this conclusion, a vanquished Ammu is dethroned, and a new Pharaoh is consecrated. This Pharaoh leads the gnolls on a pilgrimage back to their sacred land, where they can rebuild their civilization in peace.

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Malicia

Characters who are captured, crucified, and left for dead at the beginning of Chapter 2 will eventually encounter Malicia, an undead black dragon who saves their lives.

Quests. Allying with Malicia guides players towards the genie subplot of the adventure. In this questline, the characters will locate the four imprisoned genies in Kirat and liberate them to harness their powerful magic.

Flavor. A campaign with Malicia as a primary ally is fantastical and chaotic. Players will soar across the dunes atop an undead dragon, reshape the landscape with awe-inspiring wishes, and research the corruption of the land by performing experiments.

Ending. Fulfilling Malicia’s questline guides players towards the Genie Ending of Sands of Doom. This conclusion transforms Kirat into a fertile green oasis where the tieflings can thrive in their paradise. However, this comes at the price of exterminating all gnolls, peaceful or otherwise, and wiping their ruins and riches from the land forever.

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Souk

Characters who stray from the two primary paths in Chapter 2, find themselves engulfed by the sandstorm of an ancient demigoddess. They are then rescued from eternal imprisonment by Souk, a heroic werecrocodile.

Quests. Allying with Souk guides the players towards the divine subplot of the adventure. In this questline, characters engage with the ancient Anubian gods, systematically slaying them while confronting Ammu head-on.

Flavor. A campaign with Souk as a primary ally is dark, fast-paced, and aggressive. Players will travel deep into enemy territory, combat the gnolls on their home ground, and unravel ancient mysteries by engaging with tainted deities.

Ending. Fulfilling Souk’s questline guides players towards the Deicide Ending. In this conclusion, the Aru are slain and forever banished, the Ankh of Life is destroyed, and Ammu is destroyed, granting Al’Kirat a resounding victory in the war.

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Killoh' forms part of Briggas route, which allows characters to have an ending where instead of fully destroying each other, the tieflings and the gnolls find a way to live in peace. So yeah as you can see, the addition of Killoh' into the story prompted me to expand the possibilities for how DMs and players can approach the story of Sands of Doom. 

Caught By The Horde, which is meant as a section of the book that adds content for what happens if the characters are caught by the gnolls, is currently in stand-by. This is actually one of the few sections of the book that still needs to be designed, as I have been focusing on other aspects of the book first. Not much to report on this yet. 

Much like with Killoh', The Armored Serpent was a great inspiration for a lot of the final plot of the story and some of the routes/endings of the book. In particular, the Armored Serpent became one of the main targets of Souk's route - which if you follow, you can find a way to fully slay and claim the great power hidden within it. If you don't, well...then you better hope to stay as far away from it as possible. 

Our penultimate Stretch Goal was for me to add a section specifically dedicated for Desert Magic! I am supposed to craft 20 new spells, but I have fully completed 18 of them. Here are a few samples that you can see:

And the last Stretch Goal (which you guys completely demolished by the way...I should have definitely added more stretch goals) was for me to create the possibility for an evil ending. Specifically for you guys to be able to join Lord Ammu in his attack against Al'Kirat. Based on the nature of how Sands of Doom is structured, you could have always been 'evil' without disrupting the flow of the plot - other than simply refusing to fight in the war all-together which does disrupt the last chapter since...well the last chapter is about the siege. But being scrupulous, murder-hobo, insane?; none of these things necessarily stop you from progressing through the adventure. However, having a dedicated set of instructions, custom-made encounters, and overall - content - for joining the villain was something that I was extremely interested in trying out; especially in a campaign like Sands of Doom. To make this happen, I have been careful in designing many sections of the adventure to allow for the players to have Lord Ammu's best interest in mind when completing them. 

In Sands of Doom, Lord Ammu will interact a lot with the player characters as they make their journey through the adventure. The interactions are designed to be mostly confrontational, as the players and the Mummy Lord will have opposing goals, but these interactions are not always fights. There will be official "ambassadorial" meetings, messengers, projections, person to person conversations, full on fights, or even moments where the characters are captured and forced to submit themselves to his judgement. If for one reason or another, the interests of the two align, the players will now be able to work with Ammu - all the way to the end. 

The content that you will experience following Lord Ammu will not be as 'unique' as any of the three possible Fated Allies, as each of them have full blown dungeons dedicated to their route - and it would be too much for me to make a full dedicated dungeon with new NPCs + Art for the evil path. However, there will be a specific route that he will offer, guiding the characters to specific set of locations within the adventure for his own nefarious reasons - empowering the characters and turning them into great leaders of his army. Much of the content presented in this section will be focused on having directions,  a proper narrative, and specific rewards that Lord Ammu would grant to those that serve him. But where the bulk of the design work will go to, will be to on the instructions needed to run the siege of Al'Kirat from the side of the villains, including the re-balancing of the encounters. Do note however that the amount of design work it would take to fully reverse the entirety of the last chapter, and the amount of pages it would take to write such a thing, prevents me from committing to the same level of detail and quality that you get by going through the siege in the normal way. I will endeavor to be thorough in my instructions and guidance, but ultimately the most complete and satisfying way to play Sands of Doom will always be to fight Lord Ammu rather than to ally with him. 

Art Gallery 

The art is coming along phenomenally! However, I have struggled a bit with finding what is the perfect balance in terms of how many artists to hire for the project. On the one hand, I can hire a lot of artists to work on the project in order to finish the art much faster. But on the other hand, having fewer artists allows for the art style to be more consistent throughout the book. What ultimately swayed me to stay with fewer artists, was that it meant that I could hire them full time - even after Sands of Doom is completed. Basically, I could offer security and consistency to my main three (and a potential fourth!) artists so they know they have work throughout the year, and beyond. If I hired more, I would have less consistent work for my core group of artists, and some of them would have to freelance on the side to be able to make end's meet. 

That being said, I have still hired many artists throughout the year to do one-offs here and there for things that I knew would not be done on time otherwise. This has been particularly important for the battle maps and dungeons, as those take a very long time to make when hand drawn - which is what Dominika, my main dungeon artist, is doing. 

Kim. As our main character-artist, Kim just has the perfect vibe with their art that encapsulates Sands of Doom just right. The grittiness is exactly what I wanted from the get go. The project simply would not had been the same without them. Here are some examples of some of the characters that were completed during the last two months. 

Elena. As always, Elena just does a little bit of everything - and its always amazing. She completed the last remaining Anubian Relics for us, for a total of 13. She's also doing the big half-page arts that will be spread out all across the book, AND she's also helping us with the book's dressing. She will be designing everything from the art that goes around the page numbers, to the tables that will be found all throughout the book, to even the page color! Here are a few examples of the work she did for us since the last update. 

Dominika. Our resident hand-drawn map maker! If it wasn't impossible for Dominika to do every single map on the book, I would have her do them all in a heart-beat. There's just so much personality and care given to every room and every object which you can only get by hand drawing the map, but even more so than that, I can tell her *exactly* how I want each individual object to look like. Here are a few of the maps she made for us since the last update. 

Rose. She hasn't worked for us full time throughout the project, but every single time I have a big project that the team can't handle - Rose is the first person I think of to make it happen. She has been quietly working in the background with us making a lot of the normal magic items for either the campaign or the supplements, churning out amazing work. 

If you guys remember, I was struggling last update to figure out who would be the right fit to make the large map of Sands of Doom - well, I decided it was better to go big or go home. As you know, Rose made the incredible Sands of Doom DM Screen art which is one of the most beautiful pieces of art I have seen, and having that level of detail and dedication to the map of the adventure would be a dream come true. So I was incredibly delighted when Rose accepted the challenge! We are still in the early stages, but I still wanted to update you on it since it is such an important aspect of the book - one of the most important art pieces we will make in the whole project. The full map is scheduled to be done by the end of December, and after that, Rose has also agreed to work on the map for the main city of the adventure - Al'Kirat - which would then be scheduled to be completed end of February. 

Anyhow, here are some examples of the work she did for us recently. 

HeroicMaps. Joe and Sarah over at HeroicMaps have been helping us with many of the maps that Dominika wouldn't had been able to do. In particular, they are working on many of the higher-leveled sections which take on a grittier feel as the war looms and unfolds. Here you can see some of what they have done to help us out. 

Tyndall Doodle. I was honored that Zachary from Tyndal Doodle was able to set aside a huge chunk of his schedule to help us realize the biggest dungeon in Sands of Doom. Taking a lot of inspiration from Castle Ravenloft, I wanted to build a large complex that didn't have a specific "final" room, but rather, was a living-breathing ecosystem that one could explore, with different goals spread around the place.  In the end, the grand fortification (dubbed Castle Tenebrous) ended up being over 100 rooms big. Frankly, I went way too ham on the dungeon and I am genuinely scared this might raise the page count of the book too much, but that's a problem for future me. Here below is a sample of one of the locations. Most of it is still incomplete, and most places don't have lighting yet, but the overall vibe will be close to what you see on the main entrance and the hallways & rooms that you see on the bottom side. Tyler has already spent months on the project, and both of us are going to be making sure that every room is perfect. I am so incredibly fond of this dungeon and I want it to be exactly right. 

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And that's about it for this update! I hope you are as excited as I am :D 

Thank you all for your endless support and I can't wait for you all to enjoy this book. If I could DM it for every single one of you, I would. Thank you for being awesome. 

-Fermin Caballero (MrRhexx)

END OF JULY/AUGUST UPDATE - HUGE UPDATE!
about 1 year ago – Fri, Sep 01, 2023 at 11:55:21 AM

Hello fellas! Apologize for the lack of an update last month as I didn't have much to talk about, but we got some juicy things this time around.

Writing. The writing has been going really fast, which is excellent news. I feel inspired, on fire, and most importantly; I am having so much fun with the book which I think is going to show in the end in the quality of the design. Outside of some bosses which still need some design work, I have finished writing every single monster stat block on the book. As I mentioned before, I am taking quite a bit of inspiration from Matthew Colville's new monster book in creating monsters that feel exciting to play and have more strategy to them. Here's a small preview to some of the Gnolls that I have created:

On our last update, I opened up a poll so that you guys could vote on a myriad of things, including how I should balance Wishes in Sands of Doom. As you all know, or as you should had guessed :D, there will be genies which may or may not grant to the players the ability to craft a wish for them to cast in their stead. You guys voted that there should be some solid restrictions to prevent the game breaking, but otherwise the wishes should be able to grant anything the players desire. I want you to behold THE UNBREAKABLE LAWS OF WISHES. 

In addition to the UNBREAKABLE LAWS OF WISHES *cough* sorry, there are also a small list of "you probably shouldn't do this" that some genies might warn mortals about (if they like them). Such things include adding conditional clauses to your wishes, which usually tend to go awry. Adding conjunctions to a wish is generally a bad idea - these are words like: "then", "and", "or", "if", etc. I will make sure that your job as a DM is the easiest that it can be when dealing with the wishes - though at the end of the day...they are wishes after all so chaos will definitely ensue! There is also a secret UNBREAKABLE LAW that a wish can only directly affect no more than a specific number of mortals, but that may or may not make its debut - depending on how chaotic we want these wishes to be ;)

Lastly, I do want to show you an exerpt that relates to the tieflings of Sands of Doom. It has been a very interesting challenge to write a society whose members carry fiendish blood - and with it the draw of evil - but are also half human which grants desires for freedom, fulfillment, happiness, empathy, other positive qualities (and negatives too). They revere Asmodeus, but a version of Asmodeus that makes sense to them; a version that is compatible with both the real lord of hell and the tieflings themselves. Asmodeus himself, of course, more than happy to play along - provided they follow his tenets. 

I am very interested to hear your opinions on the matter *muhaha*. Leave it to Asmodeus to come up with a creed that exemplifies his aspects, while also figuring out clever ways to rationalize a focus away from "goodness" or "evilness" in his philosophical framework. I am really happy with it. 

There is a lot more work to be done however. Just yesterday I was finishing up all the rules for desert travel, and all of the different natural and magical obstacles that players may encounter: such as mirages, sand spirits, blowouts, sandstorms, quicksand, etc. In particular, I finalized the rules alterations for those who travel the dunes of Kirat. 

Random Encounters, events, traps, and overall shenanigans while on the dunes are intense without being able to Long Rest out there. You have to either make it to an Oasis, or leave the dunes, if you wish to replendish your strength. 

But that's about it! There's a lot more that I have been working on but I don't want stay here forever :D Let's talk about other topics. 

Schedule. Our current deadline for me to finish all the writing, and for all the artists/musicians to finish their pieces, is end of year 31st of December. Since the goal is to have the chapters of the book be proofread/edited, and maybe even sorted on InDesign, as I finish them; I am expecting for fully playable drafts with art included to be coming out by February. In other words, as the current schedule stands, everything ought to be finished by February - which means that I should be able to send you guys everything that is digital by February. For the printed version of the books, it would be wise to give it one or two months for people to look through the digital book, play through parts of it, and give feedback; before we do the printing. It would mean of course that we would be 2 months late at the earliest from our initial delivery estimate, without taking into account the time it would take for the printing and delivery of course. But it would also allow for me to fix potential typos, errors, or improve any particular issue that people might be having. Perhaps there might be a way for me to send the book drafts earlier, if we sent them with less art, to maximize the time we have. I would love to hear your feedback on this, on a potential 1 or 2 month delay for PDF feedback before comitting to printing. I know many of you have been burnt by kickstarters who are late, or never deliver; so I have been very concious about making sure that we stay on schedule as much as possible and to update you as much as I can. 

Art. The art for Sands of Doom is coming along exceedingly well, and we are still on point to get all the art done by the end of the year. I was a bit hesitant before and I used to say a lot that the biggest concern for me was whether we would be able to finish all the art in time, but the closer we get to the goal the calmer I get about it. This was especially rough because I am a one-man team who is personally directing every single artist, while doing all the writing for the book, and also doing the Youtube channel; so it was hard for me to be proactive in analyzing time-frames and keeping a good schedule for everyone. But it seems that things are working out really well on this front. 

There were however some sacrifices that I did have to make. As much as I originally dreamed of every map being hand-drawn, it became clear that I was just not going to be able to make that happen. I had some great talent on board to make it happen, but I needed them on other parts of the book that I could not do without. The fortunate thing of course is that they are absolutely killing it on the art they are making, so it is very hard to complain. I have brought on board some really talented map makers but I don't have anything to show you yet, so I will introduce them to you all once I have a sample for you to see. 

Concerns. My main concern at the moment does have to do with art, but it is specifically on the world map / city map front. I haven't quite found someone to help me illustrate the maps in a way I like them, and all of the cartography-centric artists that I have approached have all been booked - seemingly years in advance o.O . We do have some incredibly talent on board, many of which could illustrate them to absolute perfection, but I was hoping to get someone new so that I wouldn't have to pull my artists from their tasks. If I can't get someone within the next two months, then I might have to see if I can persuade Elena (sorry elena :D) to do it for us cause I know she would blow it out of the water. David Yáñez might be up for it too honestly, his art is more cartoony than what we have on the book but that might look great on a map. 

HERE IS THE ART GALLERY OF WHAT WE CRAFTED SINCE OUR LAST UPDATE!

David Yáñez has been killing it with his Monster Classes renditions and he is almost done with all of the main pieces for the book. All we need is the Witchkeeper and all of the smaller decorative pieces that will go all around the pages. Here are some samples:

Elena Nozdrina is about 3 days away from finishing the art for the remainder of the Anubian Relics, the main artifacts that players will be gathering throughout their time in Sands of Doom. After that, she will be delighting us with more half-page art for the book. Oh and she also finished up the main art for Castle Obsidian! And its a banger. 

Kim Van Deun who is bringing to life all of the character for Sands of Doom has been integral in consistently raising the bar everytime with the quality of their work, and also to help maintain a grittier feel for our adventure! We got many more characters finished and will have many more characters to come. Here are a few:

David Chen as come back to work with us to help us with some half-page pieces that Elena wouldn't have had time to fit on her schedule. This ended up working out really well as it removes some stress from Elena's shoulders and we get to enjoy some more of David Chen's work! He brought to life a "somewhat secret" hidden Anubian city for all of us to enjoy. 

Dominika Denes has been hard at work producing beautifully hand-drawn maps for us! I feel bad because she has to deal with my terribly drawn sketches for how the maps are meant to look like, but somehow she always finds a way to save them :D As always - not all of these are final versions as we are leaving some things for the end (in case i need to change something on the map), and we have to do some color changes and additions. But anyhow, here's the latest batch:

And then lastly, but certainly not least, Rose has been producing nonstop winners for our Deck of Magic Items. I am so happy that she was available to do all the magic items, since we needed to do so many and having them all share an art style was super important. Her art style is so unique and vibrant and I am happy to show you more of what she was made for us!

Conclusion. And that's it! That's what I have for you for this update. We do have a bunch of music designed for the book, but I will wait until next update to show you guys. This whole update took me about 4 hours to create and I have to get back to book writing! I actually really like the two month update schedule a lot more than on a per month basis, I feel like I can update you about more stuff. So expect the next update to be early November. And do please give me feedback on anything you saw today, it is all incredibly useful! Thank you so much for all the support. 

-Fermin Caballero (MrRhexx)

Quick Sands of Doom Polls
about 1 year ago – Thu, Jul 20, 2023 at 10:39:51 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

END OF JUNE UPDATE - THE STORM AFTER THE STORM
over 1 year ago – Thu, Jul 06, 2023 at 09:32:19 AM

Hey everyone! Its time for yet another Sands of Doom update :D 

On the docket today we have three main points I want to go through. One is writing updates. Two is art updates! (my favorite). And three is Monster Classes playtesting material. Let's get started!

Writing. My design time this month was spent on the biggest dungeon/quest location of the adventure, and man did I went nuts on it. 

The Obsidian Castle resides on the Plains of Molten Glass. Because of the volcanic heat that rests underneath the dunes of this zone, and the permanent thunderous clouds above which blasts the sands with lightning, the sands have melted into glass. The jagged terrain is dangerous itself, but the lightning strikes are pervasive and deadly as well. Furthermore, geysers of hot steam threaten to burst out any second - exploding the glass surface onto the air before the piercing glass rain comes down again. Players will have to traverse the most inhospitable region on the map in order to find the Obsidian Castle. 

When the gnolls bound themselves in holy wrappings and interred themselves under their tombs, they did so to escape a devastating calamity. They expected to wake up 300 years later, but instead, rose thousands of years after. Players and gnolls alike can find the truth of this mystery on the Obsidian Castle, the domain of a high priest bound to usurp the pharaoh and create its own unholy Ankh. 

The keep itself has 3 full floors, a basement/underground section, and a towering ceiling that players can explore. Currently I have over 100 areas inside of the keep. Functionally it works similarly to Castle Ravenloft, where most areas within are atmospheric and meant for exploration and roleplay; with only a small select number of them being designed encounters. From a design perspective, this is not designed as a megadungeon, but an exploration heavy descent into an Anubian Castle. Also much like Castle Ravenloft, there's a heavy emphasis on rollable tables in order to add life and variety to the keep. There are many events that can transpire anywhere on the keep, and it will be fun for DMs and players to experience those events in different areas of the dungeon, as well as having some of the dangerous encounters happen in different rooms and floors; rather than in a designated spot. 

The Obsidian Castle is designed for characters of level 7-8 and will be one of the last things players will do before the climactic siege at the end of the adventure. 

Here are my current design drafts for the castle. These drafts are mostly just visual with a small amount of notes so that I can keep track of things, most of the information is written down on my docs. I have designed the castle so that they all have the same dimensions, and so you can put all the floors on top of each other and have them match 1 to 1. For example, if you put the floors on top of each other you will see the stairs, chinmeys, etc are exactly on the same squares. There are locations on the upper floors where you can also see down, and the squares should match perfectly with that as well. 

Art. We got a lot of stuff this month that I am so excited to show you! 

Elena managed to complete two pieces for us this month, though unfortunately she will be on hiatus for a month or two to finish her own personal project. After she is done over there however, she will be able to give us full time focus for the rest of the year. 

 ^You might recognize part of this piece from our What They Don't Tell You About: Magic Items". Elena did that piece for our magic item PDF but I ended up falling in love so much with it that I decided to have her re-do it in order to fit Sands of Doom. 

Dominika has been on full blast creating dungeons and maps for us. She finished the Dryad's Lair I teased last update, as well as a bandit's lair, and started work on a fancy mansion from the city! Just how I was hoping, the hand drawn art is really helping give a lot of character and personality to each location. Do expect some of these maps to change here and there before release, to accommodate changes and updates to the locations. 

^This is still a work in progress that was sent to me today. I decided to change the flooring to stone instead of the wood that you see here, so expect that to change for the final product. 

Recently, Elrose Balan started working with us on some of the Magic Items for both the campaign and some of the Kickstarter addons. You guys might remember her from her astonishing work on our GM Screen. You can find her site here: https://www.instagram.com/the_d12rose/

This is some of her work this month for Sands of Doom.

And last, but certainly not least, we got Kim who has been hard at work creating some of our characters and monsters! I am happy to finally be able to showcase some of her work, which I haven't been able to do up until now. Our first batch is done and here are the receipts!

and more! We are scheduled for about 8 of these a month at the moment. So our art game is looking rather strong! 

Monster Classes. It took me most of the month to do so, but I have finally finished the playtest material for the Sands of Doom - Monster Classes, also dubbed "Monster Classes 5". Once gain, this includes the Earth Elemental, the Gnoll, and the Troll monstrous classes. 

You can find the playtest material here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SLGPMv85ajI2qkRYA_8mnCNqH_syP3dy/view?usp=sharing

If you have any criticisms, suggestions, or just any form of important feedback that you would want to give me; you can do so by leaving a comment on the PDF. To leave a comment you must do so only on the link i gave you, otherwise I won't see it. You just highlight a word or sentence and then click the comment button on the right side. To my understanding, this cannot be done on a phone, you must use a computer.

My editor/proofreader hasn't gone through the document yet so there might be plenty of typos, and most of the feature aren't written in the classical 5e standard yet, but that will be done once I have fully ironed out everything. So please don't focus as much on typos, the focus needs to be on the mechanical and balance nature of the features; unless of course it is my choice of wording that damages the feature in some way. 

Also, Dominika is the one that usually does the art for my Monster Classes but since she is busy working on the dungeon maps for Sands of Doom, I have enlisted the help of David Yáñez to illustrate this work. You can find his artstation here: https://www.artstation.com/davidyanezart He is doing an amazing work at making these monsters come to life! Here are some samples of his work so far:

Polls. Like I promised you guys last update, we are going to have polls this month. I have a couple of inquiries that relate to the difficulty for Sands of Doom, what extra subclasses I should design for my existing Monster Classes, and a few other topics that I want your opinions on. Expect these polls to drop in about two weeks or so. 

Thank you guys so much for all the support! I will keep myself hard at work creating this adventure for you guys and I will let you know how things are progressed next month. See ya later!

END OF MAY UPDATE - THE STORM
over 1 year ago – Tue, Jun 06, 2023 at 08:19:02 AM

Hey fellas! I am delighted to say that things have advanced considerably this month, thanks to the fact that I was finally able to devote real time once again to the project. I expect to be able to devote as much time for both June and July, before I will be forced to likely take a whole month off in August in order to catch up on my Youtube work. Even though as I have explained before, the real bottleneck for this project will be the art - not the writing/design, I am still endeavoring to finish my part as early as possible to prevent any hiccups. 

In any case let's start breaking down where we are in our work for Sands of Doom!

Design. I have completely finished up designing another of the major 7 dungeon locations, which means I am currently 5 / 7 for the big dungeons. I spent some time improving some of the old dungeons, revamping their encounters, and adding extra details; which did take a considerably amount of time. I am trying for each dungeon to be as perfect as it can be. Anyhow, here's a little bit about this new major dungeon:

-Kunaten Keep (This is a kickstarter milestone reward!) was a forward fortress built around an oasis deep within the dunes. It was designed to become a proper settlement, and sizable village had already flourished around it, but it wasn't quite fated to last. When the Pharaoh awakes and its undead army rises, the adventurers and mercenaries within the pyramid are the first to perish; next was Kunaten Keep which could not stand the immortal lord and its cursed legion. The keep is used as the main center camp for Ammu's army while he plans his war against Kirat, but after he marches towards the city, it instead becomes a beacon for all the spectral dead dozens of miles in all directions. The wielder of the Anubian Hourglass, domain of the grave, is calling on all spirits for a profane ritual. Players must wait until after the gnoll army marches out, before they can sneak into the keep and explore its darkened halls. 

I have fully designed 5 new "featured locations" that players can find out in the world, locations that are not mandatory (some of which many players might even miss) but provide fun roleplay, loot, or in some cases even improve on the ending of the campaign. The climax of the adventure, the final siege between the undead gnoll army and the city of Kirat, has a lot of moving pieces and players can find extra help out in the wilds if they find it. Each of these "featured locations" will have their own map, which has also been fully designed. These locations include:

-A hidden oasis underground where a dryad child has been innocently performing terrible experiments on people, in hopes of extending her green paradise against the otherwise barren and desolate wasteland.

-A collection of underground tunnels bored by gigantic sand worms. As the tunnels quickly fill with sand threatening to bury everyone alive, the players will have to sprint through the tunnels and obstacles to make their way back to the surface. 

-An ancient gnoll noble couple built for themselves a burial bunker to survive the foretold cataclysm of their people. Players can break through the tomb and loot the noble's belongings, before the guardians awake. 

-The ancient gnolls imprisoned and bound four powerful genies, to use their endless magic as catalysts for their wars.  A massive bridge spanning a river of lava is what separates the players from the sealed door holding a powerful efreeti, but getting to the other side will not be easy. Platforming through broken bridges while jumping over lava will be the least of your problems, when you realize you only have so much time to solve the door's puzzle before you are also bound forever. 

-An undead gnoll outpost has been built in order to protect one of the few passages leading from the dunes, over to the holy land where the Pyramid is located. If players want to return to where it all started, they will have to think strategically and overcome what will otherwise be a very deadly encounter. Overcoming a gnoll fort will not be easy. 

I have finalized what will very likely be the final draft for the Anubian Relics, the main items that players can go out and grab in order to withstand the might of Lord Ammu. Each is a legendary item in its own right, blessed by a gnoll god to represent the pinnacle of a particular clerical domain. There is a relic for every single Cleric domain. Non clerics will be able to use them as well of course, though clerics in particular will get extra bonuses from wielding them. Wielding the relics protects you against the vast amounts of Necrotic damage that Lord Ammu and his high priests will be dishing out and will prove to be crucial in stopping the undead tide.

I am also currently about 25% of the way done with the design for the Siege, having already completed the main and most important section - alongside the design of the map for said section. 

Monster Design. The balancing process has been particularly interesting and has required a fair bit of testing to land where I currently am for the difficulty of the game. In Sands of Doom, players get access to very powerful relics (akin to legendary items in terms of power) and further get access to a vast market where they can buy almost any magic item they desire, including fairly cheap healing potions (think Potion of Greater Healing for 100gp). This means that I have to make sure that players are properly challenged.  This was made even more difficulty thanks to the fact that the Gnolls on the monster manual - or really most monsters in that book - are severely lacking in strategy and flavor, without even mentioning the fact that many of them are not even strong enough to reflect the CR they possess. 

So I decided to completely redesign the stat blocks for the gnolls, formulate an entirely new "racial strategy" for them (so no more rampage), and further designed many many versions for all of the different styles and clases of gnolls that players will find in the campaign. Currently I have over 24 new creature stat blocks designed, most of which are different kinds of gnolls. Ultimately when you have a massive army, regardless of whether you are talking about humans or gnolls; you are bound to have soldiers, priests, mages, archers, rogues, assassins, elite units, champions, generals, and more. I have created this and more. 

Each gnoll is created with a strategy in mind, a strategy that is meant to work in tandem with other gnolls, to create a cohesive fighting style to the gnoll army. You will not see "i move to the player, make my attack, and end my turn" from these gnolls, or really from most of the monsters I am creating for this adventure.  

Most balance testing however will happen in about 2 or 3 months, so for now I am just focusing on creating tactical monsters and interesting locales for the encounters to happen. For now I am using Xanathar's rules for CR in encounters (pg.90), combined with 5e.tools CR Calculator & the monster stat table from the DMG (pg. 274)  to come up with offensive and defensive numbers for the features and so far they have been extremely good in my own testing, like shockingly good, but testing is a long process so we'll see.  

What is Left. The main portions of the campaign that still need to be designed are:

-The remaining 2 major dungeons of the campaign. 

-I still need to design the last 40% of the city of Kirat, and the entirety of the other 2 hubs in the campaign. This would include designing the 3 maps. This is probably going to take me a very long time and might end up costing me all of July. Probably the biggest chunk of content left to be done. 

-About 75% of the big finale still needs to be designed. This is about 2 levels worth of content. All the pieces are there and the concepts are formulated, but I have to sit down and put numbers to them. 

-I still need to set some boundaries and design quests for the evil route, for players that wish to join Ammu in his conquest of the city. The adventure itself is designed in such a way that this is already a very easy avenue without me necessarily "allowing it" by adding a chapter, but I do think having some extra quests for it would go a long way. It will take me a long time to balance out the evil route and create meaningful and fun encounters for the siege on the evil side, but it shouldn't take too many pages for me to add this. 

-I have to design the "getting caught" mini chapter, where I describe what happens if the players lose an encounter or become imprisoned by the gnolls. This would include access to a gnoll war camp and a few other activities that players can do within if they escape. This would of course likely include a map as well that I have to design/draw. 

-And lastly there are of course many many small things that would be impossible to mention. I will likely be adding a lot of small extra locations, featured encounters, fun awesome NPCs, stuff that will come alive throughout the design process. There's also stuff such as Random Encounter tables, Sphinx riddles (hehe), and many other such things. 

Art. The art is coming along very very nicely. Kim who is working on the full character art and portraits has just confirmed to me that we are perfectly on schedule to have 30 full character arts and 15 portraits by the beginning of December, with more if we need to by the end of the year. Kim started working for the project full time mid last month, and they are working in big batches, so I currently don't have much to show you on that front yet. I have tons of WIPs but I don't think she wanted me to show any work-in-progress pictures, so you guys will have to wait until next month! I believe we should have almost 16 pieces done by next month's update most likely. 

Dominika has fully finished the first major dungeon of the campaign, fully hand drawn of course. Because these pieces take so long to make, I will have to sign in another artist to help us out in drawing dungeons as well, but I am expecting for Dominika to be able to do a ton of them by the end of the year. Here below you can see the draft of the map as I designed it, and what Dominika ended up making for me by the end:

Elena completed 2 half-page arts for us this month and a bunch of Anubian relics to boot! We are not fully certain how much art (half page) we will ultimately need for the book, but she is committed to make sure we have the best illustrations possible :D

Music. I am thrilled to announce we have signed on Travis Savoie to compose the music for Sands of Doom! He came by highly recommended by my own fiancé of all people, who is a fantasy music snob and had been using Travis' music for all of her DnD games. You can find his Youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@RPGMusicMaker/videos where you can find a lot of his work. His Curse of Strahd work in particular is unbelievably good. 

Anyhow, Travis has designed for us a draft for the theme for Sands of Doom. Check it out and let me know what you think! 

 Conclusion. I am really happy that the project is moving along rather swiftly, and I am extremely confident that we are perfectly on track for a February release. My only concern at the moment is finding myself a good editor for when I finish writing the book and a good cartographer that can help me draw many of the other maps in the campaign. Hitches can of course transpire when it comes to shipping, and getting samples, and all that stuff; but a fully workable PDF with all the content done for February is looking really good. 

I know I should probably finish up the Monster Classes content so that it can be playtested, but I am frankly on fire right now with the campaign. I feel very inspired and it is resulting in excellent content, so I don't want to stop while the iron is hot. 

Also I will make a dark pact with you guys, and promise I will most definitely have some polls for you guys next month. I have been wanting to let you guys choose certain things in the adventure but I never think to prepare them until I am already writing the Update and it is too late. 

Thank you guys so much for the support!