Hello Citizens of the City State of the Invincible Overlord!
September is halfway finished and we’ve finally recovered from Gen Con enough to check in with you all with a status update. Despite attending the biggest game convention in the nation, which is no mean feat, we’ve nonetheless kept construction on the city state going.
Right now, everything is either in editing or has come out the far side of editing. And when I say “everything” I mean the 1.3 million total words that comprise both the 5e and DCC versions of the City State of the Invincible Overlord boxed set. The main City State book as well as Wraith Overlord are almost finished with the final revisions required to ready them for layout. Once the revisions are in place, we can begin laying out these massive books and seeing where the art needs to go, double-checking details between editions, and otherwise prepping the books for their eventual trip to the printers. With so much content, there’s a lot of back-and-forth referencing to be done, but so far things have been proceeding as expected.
The remaining three books will be finished with editing in the coming weeks and we’ll immediately prep those for layout as well. Our editors are all poring through the manuscripts with red pen at the ready as we speak and, like with the revisions, things are proceeding as well as we had hoped.
I'm sure by now you're asking yourselves, "What can we expect these final books to look like?"
Great question!
The original City State of the Invincible Overlord book leaned towards brevity, but we know gamers today expect more from their gaming products. We’ve done our best to honor the original City State book by leaving plenty of room for DMs and judges to make the city their own, while giving them enough content so that they can easily use what’s in the book without much additional planning or preparation. For example, here's the description of the Bloody Tusk Banquet Hall in the 1976 version:
Compare that with the modern version as converted for DCC. The 5e editions looks remarkably similar with the exception of the system-specific game mechanics. And don’t worry that the rumors aren’t listed in Goodman Games’ version: we have a whole section of using rumors and legends in your City State of the Invincible Overlord campaign.
BLOODY TUSK BANQUET HALL (BB27)
This wooden building resembles a longhouse, making it stand out among its more prosaic neighbors. The sound of laughter, dancing girls’ bells, and the smell of roasting meat and rich mead fill the hall’s interior.
This is the establishment of Halfdan the Smiter, a retired warrior whose mead hall and barbaric cuisine draws clientele from all the city state’s martial population. Halfdan is very old and mute, but customers get plenty of entertainment from the dozen dancing girls he employs and the regular “Toasts of Valor,” where groups compete to raise the most boastful toasts to their comrades. A crowd of 42-52 warriors, soldiers, barbarians, dwarves, and so forth are present every evening.
The menu at the Bloody Tusk consists of mead (3 cp), whale blubber (2 cp), eel steaks (1 sp), and roast pig (10 sp). The eel steaks are served nearly raw and those without barbaric constitutions become violently ill for 1d6 turns (-2 penalty to all actions, DC 8 Fortitude save avoids).
Events and Interactions: Those wishing to participate in the Toasts of Valor must recount the deeds of a fellow warrior then make a DC 11 Personality check. On a failure, the toaster is deemed unworthy of frequenting the Bloody Tusk and thrown out by 3d6 of the guests. A successful Personality check is met with cheers and raised mugs of mead, along with much backslapping of both the toaster and the object of their praise. If the toaster critically succeeds, the Social Level of the object of the toast increases by 1 as word of their deeds spread throughout the city state in the days to come.
Halfdan has been known to spike a drink or two in exchange for a few coins (DC 20 Personality check to convince him, but the DC is reduced by 1 for each gold piece offered to him to spike the drink). Anyone drinking a doctored mug is knocked unconscious for 2d6 hours (DC 15 Fortitude save avoids). Victims are likely to wind up in an alley bereft of their belongings if they're lucky or chained to an oar on a galley bound for foreign shores if less so.
Occupants of Note:
Halfdan the Smiter: Init +3; Atk two-handed sword +4 melee (1d10+2); Crit III/d8; AC 10; HD 3d8 (hp 20); MV 25’; Act 1d20; SV Fort +3, Ref +1, Will +2; AL C; SL 6.
That’s it for this month. We’ll be back again in October with more updates as the project continues to roll towards completion.
