I am back and (relatively) rested up from a wonderful and insanely busy Gen Con. Thanks so much to all the backers who stopped by to say hi! I had some good meetings at the show, and I announced some things as well. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s dive right in!
PUGMIRE EARPLAY AND AUDIO DRAMA
Still in very early stages, but we’re at the “discussing how to spend the budget wisely” stage of things. I’ve been chatting with some professional actors about providing voice work on Pugmire and/or other potential audio projects. Everyone I’ve talked to has been really excited so far, which is very heartening!
PUGMIRE RPG MANUSCRIPT
The magic chapter, enemies chapter, and introductory adventure are all redlined and back to the writers. I should be getting final drafts from them soon. Further, I’ve been heads-down in writing my own chunks of the book, and I’m pretty far along. In fact, here’s a snapshot of where things are at with the manuscript as a whole.
Credits Etc: 939 words
Player’s Prologue: 753 words
Introduction: 3,434 words
Yosha’s Journal: 5,175 words
Character Creation: 21,908 words
Playing the Game: 6,510 words
Magic: 17,061 words
Guide’s Prologue: 685 words
World of Pugmire: 8,655 words
Guide Advice: 0 words
Masterworks: 2,645 words
Enemies: 8,362 words
Adventure: 7,751 words
Afterword and legal text: 1,291 words
Total: 85,169 words (out of 100,000)
My goal this month is a little over 6,000 more words on the world of Pugmire, and 8,000 words of Guide advice. It’s a lot to get through, and wordcount may shift around, but I hope to have a complete (unedited) manuscript by early September. This means we’re still on track to have the PDF out to backers in January 2017, with printing taking place soon after that.
PUGMIRE BACKER LOCATIONS
While working on the world chapter, I’ve gone through the backer suggestions for places. As we mentioned when the campaign was running, I’ve been editing all of the suggestions to fall in line with the world I’m creating, but I have been trying very hard to keep the spirit of the suggestions as much as possible. Here are two of the locations I’ve written so far, to give you an idea of how they’re turning out.
The Spilled Dish and the Dirty Bowl
These two taverns have been rivals for years. The Spilled Dish was built by Tag and Winston Spaniel, along with their sister Sparks and her husband Yogs Bernese. It was meant to be a nice, quiet place for miners and other working class dogs to have a drink and unwind. Soon after it opened, however, a retired pioneer named Mad Guinness Cocker built the Dirty Bowl right across the street as a haven for adventurers, hunters, and free dogs to loudly blow off some steam. The city guard has broken up several fights between the patrons of each establishment, but the tensions between the two won’t die down. The Spaniels have made several offers to buy the Dirty Bowl, but Cocker refuses. He’d rather spend his money repairing the cheap furniture in his place than give up his tavern.
PUGMIRE BACKER CHARACTERS
I’ve also worked on those people who pledged both to have illustrated NPCs and to just have character names added. There are a lot, and not all of them work well, but I’ve got some in there so far. Here’s an excerpt!
Imperial Exploration, and the War
[…]
Jake Staffordshire was instrumental in the development of Waterdog Port, passionate to use the fleet to explore lands beyond the mountains and the forest surrounding Pugmire. He formed “Jake’s Pioneers,” an organization devoted to exploration on both sea and land. He organized and funded a few expeditions that managed to reach a variety of strange lands (most notably the lands where the lizards lived). Only one expedition made it back, but they brought with them a variety of masterwork artifacts. Queen Lilly Springer II, in recognition of Jake Staffordshire’s work and vision, gave his organization royal sanction, and it was renamed to the Royal Pioneers of Pugmire.
PUGMIRE FICTION ANTHOLOGY
One of the meetings I had at Gen Con was to get an editor for the fiction anthology, and I’m very happy to say that my good friend James Lowder has agreed to come on board! I need to work with him on contracts and sort out the writers we want to invite, but I’m extremely comfortable putting this project into his capable hands. If you don’t know Jim, he was heavily involved in the TSR fiction line both as editor and writer, so you know this is someone who understands how to help others make great fantasy stories. Plus, we’ve been talking for years about finding a project to work together on, and now I’m in a place where I can make that happen. Just check out his Wikipedia page to get a tiny glimpse into his amazing career.
PUGMIRE GEN CON ANNOUNCEMENT!
Finally, we made an announcement at the Pugmire panel at Gen Con. I know 2016 has been all about dogs, dogs, dogs. Well, the cat fans will get their turn next year, as Onyx Path has agreed to run a Monarchies of Mau Kickstarter in early 2017! Once the RPG manuscript is in editing, I’m going to turn around and dive into writing “Monarchies of Mau Early Access,” which I’m currently visualizing as Renaissance Italy meets Prussia, but with cats.
SEE YOU IN SEPTEMBER!
So as you can see, things are picking up in the world of Pugmire. I’ll be doing panels at some Pugmire games at Fan Expo Canada September 1-4 in Toronto, so hopefully I’ll get to meet some of the Canadian backers!