After Winter’s Dark Kickstarter & setting discussion

While I realize that there has been some small discussion in the “Just Discovered Castles & Crusades” thread, including me posting the link to the kickstarter for this topic that I’m making, I wanted to spin off a discussion of the Kickstarter and Aihrde in general to get some people’s thoughts on it.

I’ll be paying off a major debt this weekend, which will leave me with a bit of extra money to spend on just frivolous stuff. I’m not normally one to crowdfund things, due to some poor experiences 7 years ago, but the After Winter’s Dark Kickstarter from Troll Lord Games has me intrigued. Here’s the link:


Full disclosure: I love Castles & Crusades. It feels and plays like what I was expecting whenever I played AD&D 2nd Edition with my friends. Further, it’s what I wanted from an AD&D 3rd edition, but never got, as the design ethos changed (not judging, as I did enjoy 3.x quite a bit).

I had been working on a DragonLance campaign conversion to C&C, as I love Krynn, and thought that it would be lots of fun for my Gen X group, my wife, and my kids. However, what I’ve read of Aihrde is just so much a better setup for a campaign without a major meta plot. The world has just emerged from hundreds of years of rule by a really bad guy, who had immense power (like, he turned the world into a globe because a flat earth offended his sensibilities). There’s lots of bad guys left, lots of secrets from the previous age , power vacuums, and an all around great setup for adventures to actually be a thing. Additionally, TLG has several beautiful boxes with sequential adventures set in the world.

That said, I am cautious, having been burned by crowdfunding before, and still waiting on my SWADE core rules and Fantasy Companion to arrive. I had thought to already be running that, but the stock situation has left me high and dry for now.

For those of you who have played in Airhde, what are your thoughts on it? Is anyone else contemplating dropping $90-150 on this to get it? I have to say that the covers are absolutely gorgeous and I am a sucker for that style of fantasy artwork (late 1e and early 2e era, to put in D&D terms).

just one big problem: shipping cost and no POD (with LULU , so UE friendly and not DriveTh that is only UK friendly...) support. C&C anf Frog God are only for USA and near state market.
(i had the pdf already..but want physical books)

BHH

Buzzqw said:

just one big problem: shipping cost and no POD (with LULU , so UE friendly and not DriveTh that is only UK friendly...) support. C&C anf Frog God are only for USA and near state market.
(i had the pdf already..but want physical books)

BHH

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Yeah, I've read some stuff about how expensive it is to import in UK, though I also saw something somewhere about a UK store that carries the books, and that the Trolls are looking for a UK distributor. Sucks for getting the Kickstarter, though. Sometimes I forget how fortunate I am to be American and have access to much of this stuff without exorbitant shipping fees.

I am reading this now and I think it is some of the best world-building I've seen in a very long time.

I believe the After Winter's Dark Kickstarter is a reprint of their previously released adventures, all put in one volume. So I would expect they'll be able to deliver on it.

They do have over a dozen projects still in development (After Winter's Dark, Armory, Codex of Angels, Codex of Demons, Gygax's The Hermit, Gygax's 8-volume Fantasy Campaign encyclopedia set, as well as creating OGL-free versions of all 3 core books.) And they're a very small team (of what, two writers?)

I'm worried something's going to give - major delays, quality drop ... something.

They publish an amazing amount of stuff for such a small company. I am enjoying their work.