Sands of Doom - A 5e Campaign

End of January Update / OGL News
almost 2 years ago – Tue, Jan 31, 2023 at 09:55:54 AM

The end of an era, but the beginning of a dynasty. 

For those of you unaware (who I imagine are probably few), Wizards of the Coast has relented on their attempt to de-authorize the OGL 1.0a. Further more, they have decided to instead liberate the entirety of the SRD by releasing it onto the Creative Commons. I will spare you the details since I can only imagine you have heard the news quite plenty. But how does this affect us? 

Impact of the OGL change. With the SRD under the Creative Commons, we can once again use the word "Tiefling" in Sands of Doom. Which of course is really good news considering they are the majority of the residents of Al'Kirat. In addition a very interesting opportunity has opened to us since the words "Beholder" "Mind Flayer" and "Yuan-Ti", among others, appear on the SRD which is now licensed under the Creative Commons. And without having to attach the OGL 1.0a onto Sands of Doom, we are not longer prohibited from specifically using those words. This means that theoretically we can add those monsters onto the adventure provided that we don't really describe them or use their Monster Manual stat block (among other things). In particular I am quite interested in potentially adding some Yuan-Ti as they would fit rather nicely with some of the desert themes (think Conan the barbarian). 

All in all. This is great news and should make the writing process continue smoothly. Thank you all who fought on the trenches for all of us third party creators. With the SRD free from chains - you should expect better content now from all of us. 

Preorder Store. Sadly there were many who lost the chance to either back the kickstarter in its entirety, or missed out on a particular addon. For those of you who did I have now worked behind the scenes with Backerkit in order to open a Pre-Order Store for you. The store should be accessible through the link presented at the top of the main Sands of Doom kickstarter page. Otherwise you can use this link: https://2009000129.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

You will notice some of the products on the store are a bit more expensive than their versions on Kickstarter. These prices more accurately reflect the retail price of the product, rather than the discounted versions that were exclusive for the fundraise Kickstarter event. By popular demand, I have also added a way for you to purchase the Composed Music & Voice Acting as an individual product. Further I have added a lot of clarifying descriptions for some of the Monster Classes so that you know what each of the products will give you. 

Purchased Digital Product. For those of you who purchased the Magic Items, Armor Redesigned, and Monster Classes PDFs; I am really close to being able to send those to you. I will send all of these together in a batch so I am just waiting for the Monster Classes PDFs to be done, which hopefully should be in a few more days. I finished up the rebalancing process, redesigned the layout, and finished up some new artistic choices for them. Currently my proofreader is finishing on Monster Classes 2 while my editor is doing some final touches on Monster Classes 3 to make sure that it follows the same new artistic direction. 

Tasks for February. Since I am writing this book myself, I have to be careful with balancing the work load and I have to be efficient in what I focus on. I was hoping to do some Monster Classes work this month so that I could give you play test material as soon as possible, but it appears I will have to change plans a bit. I need to invest this month almost fully on writing in order for me to be able to give my artists as much information as I can on as many characters as possible. 

Art takes a lot of time and so I need to get that going asap. My current plans involves around 30 full character pieces, and the thing about full character pieces is that they need a lot of input and descriptive detail! I also need to finalize many of the dungeons which is another matter entirely. Dungeon Maps are very precise and so I need to be certain that all the alleys, rooms, and details are 100% decided and done before I can have my artists work on them. 

Overall I am hoping for 10-15 half page art pieces. 30 full characters. Around 10-15 portraits. Around 20-25 different battle/exploration maps. About 15 miscellaneous small pieces. A big map of the Al'Kirat region, a map of the city of Kirat, and potentially 2 full page pieces. The faster I can confidently tell my artists exactly how each thing will be, the smoother this whole process is going to be. In fact - whether we managed to release Sands of Doom on time will be entirely depended on whether we can get the art done in time. So for this month my focus will be entirely on this. 

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Thank you all so much once again for the great support you all gave to Sands of Doom. I will kee you updated as much as I can and will be uploading some of the art we get here for you all to see as we get it :D

End of Kickstarter Update - Absolutely Incredible!!
almost 2 years ago – Fri, Jan 13, 2023 at 12:52:39 PM

I can't say I understand what happened, but the last 48 hours were incredibly kind to us in getting us here. We made it to just shy of 390k for Sands of Doom and I have no words to describe my appreciation to all of you for such a successfully funded project. 

My expectations were somewhat low considering that campaigns are typically not that popular since (most of the times) only DMs buy them, so believe you me when I say that the massive outpour of support we got these last couple of days have been nothing but shocking to me. 

I would like to spend some time here to reiterate for those of you who might be a bit scared of the OGL situation currently blowing up everywhere, that I am very confident that I will be able to finish this book without the need for an OGL. The only problem I foresee is the word "Tiefling" which (as far as I understand) can only be used with an OGL. The city of Kirat is a Tiefling city so they are quite populous in the adventure, and so I will have to figure out a different term for them. But other than that we should be smooth sailing. 

The adventure will continue to be 5th edition compatible and will be released as such. However I am VERY interested in creating converted versions for some of the new systems currently being announced, such as the MCDM's and Kobold Press' systems as well as Pathfinder. I have to see how much it will cost to do each of those convertions and whether the popular support to do them is there. I have already been quoted a 40k price for a pathfinder conversion which feels too steep for me, but I am not going to make any decisions yet until I know more about the future. I will keep you guys updated with any plans, and will most likely ask for feedback as well. 

The verdict is still out there on whether companies like Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds will allow 5th edition compatible products to be released on their platform without an OGL 1.1 license, so once we know more about that I will let you all know. 

Lastly for those of you who purchased the "What They Don't Tell You About Magic Items"  "Armor Redesigned"  or the "Heaven & Hell" / "Heavy Hitters" / "Blood & Leaf" addons. Expect to obtain those PDFs by around the end of the month. 

Our first order of business is going to be to get you all to vote on what the new subclasses will be for the Extra Monster Classes Softcover Book which should be happening on the 1st of February. Through mid February I will also be sending you guys some playtest material for the Sands of Doom Monster Classes (The Gnoll, the Earth Elemental, and the Troll). So keep an eye out of those updates!

Thank you all so much for all the support. Again, I was NOT expecting for it to blow up the way it did. I will make sure you guys get the absolute best content I have to give you. And more importantly, I will make sure we pay artists well for this project. I know that's what you guys would want. 

-Fermin (MrRhexx)

Final Stretch Goal - UNLOCKED!
almost 2 years ago – Wed, Jan 11, 2023 at 10:01:06 AM

It appears we blew through the very last stretch goal overnight and now all content has been fully unlocked for a truly complete 5e Adventure! This is absolutely great news. 

What does this mean? 

For me it means A LOT more writing, but for you guys it means playing officially as the bad guy is now an option. Players always had the opportunity to be tyrannical and destructive in their effort to suppress and fight the advancing undead horde, whether it meant intimidating monstrous races into compliance or killing key NPCs in order to obtain greater power. But never was there an option to join the undead horde in the siege, until now. Players will now be able to quest for Lord Ammu and join him on his dark crusade if they so desire. 

My intention was to keep the book at around 250 pages long if possible, but after this stretch-goal - it is now a possibility that I will have to extend that a bit in order to fit this extra content. Overall not too much of a concern, but I will strive to keep the book at a decent size in order to avoid increasing shipping fees.

With all the stretch goals unlocked, we can consider this Kickstarter run to have been a great success! I will update you all further in 2 days once the run ends proper. 

Thank you all so much for all the great support! I will strive to make you all proud for putting your faith in me.

-Fermin (MrRhexx) 

Sands of Doom has been successfully funded!
almost 2 years ago – Mon, Jan 09, 2023 at 12:25:21 PM

Hello everyone! This is Fermin (MrRhexx) and I am incredibly grateful for all the support you guys have given me by backing the project and believing in it! 

With only a few days left and all but one of our stretch goals surpassed - I think it is high time I gave you guys some updates as to what to expect in the days to come and which kind of content will be rolled out first. 

Extra Monster Classes (PDFs). First things first - those of you who purchased monster classes that have already been previously released, will be getting them about 2 or so weeks after the kickstarter's end. So expect them close to the end of this month. I have updated these monster classes with a lot of balance changes (counseled to me by both fellow designers and through community feedback) and have changed many of the classes abilities to make them easier to understand and use. The content is done and the PDFs are currently being put together by my editor, so these will go out fairly quickly. 

Extra Monster Classes (Softcover). Polls will be sent out a few weeks after the end of the kickstarter run in order for you guys to vote on what wil be the extra subclasses we will be adding to the book. We will start with a few monster classes first, probably the dragon and the lycanthrope, and we will slowly cover every single one throughout the next couple of months. I should be quite fast in sending out playtest material for these subclasses a few weeks after each poll goes out. 

Sands of Doom - Monster Classes. Playtest material for the Troll, Earth Elemental, and Gnoll should be coming out at around March. Based on what you guys think of the material, we will change and adapt as you guys see fit. In an effort to make use of time, the playtest material will have the 3 monster classes together and I will be accepting feedback for all of them at the same time. Your feedback should be usable by me for most of the production process, meaning, as long as you send your feedback generally before October or so of this year - I should be able to use it. 

As far as updates for the Sands of Doom book proper, I will be sending out some of the cool art we have in store as it becomes available - including little snippets of dungeon art. There will be some polls as well relating to certain directions we can take with parts of the book, but I don't want to talk too much about it this much in advance - so expect an update on that in the future. 

Thank you all so much for the great support and I can't wait for you all to get your hands on some of this great playtest material. 

-Fermin (MrRhexx)

[EDIT] 

Regarding the OGL discussion. It is hard to for me to give you all a direct plan that deals with the OGL problem since we still don't quite know if thats the direction that Wizards of the Coast will be taking with the license. However do know that, provided that they don't revoke OGL 1.0a, then we shouldnt have anything to worry about.  If they do, then I will consult an IP lawyer in order to make sure we can write the book without an OGL. My understanding leads me to believe it should be perfectly doable, albeit a bit annoying since I will have to change a lot of wordings that the player base has gotten accustomed to seeing. If for whatever reason my hands are tied, and I am forced to sign a draconian OGL 1.1 agreement, then I will do it simply just so that you guys get the book you payed for. I am willing to grant Wizards control and rights to my book if it means you guys get to have it and enjoy it. Whatever happens know that you are getting this book, whatever I have to do to make it happen.