Hey folks,
This month we have another art preview for you. Finalizing the art for a book and waiting for it...
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Green Ronin Publishing
about 2 months ago
October Update: New Layout Previews
Hello backers!
Things are proceeding apace with the Fifth Season RPG. We've gotten the second draft of the setting map in and that will be going over to N.K. Jemisin f...
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Green Ronin Publishing
3 months ago
September Update: Poster Map Preview!
Greetings, Fifth Season fans!
Hiromi Cota here with a guest update. For folks who don’t know me, I’m one of the co-developers for the Fifth Season Roleplaying Game core book an...
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Green Ronin Publishing
4 months ago
August Update
It’s something of an understatement to say that August did not go as planned. We kicked it off with Gen Con, which as our biggest show of the year sucked up a lot of time and re...
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Green Ronin Publishing
5 months ago
July Update: Release Estimate and Gen Con
I know the primary thing you want to know is when you can expect the finished game, so I’m going to give you an estimate. If everything goes well, we will release the PDF in Oct...
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Green Ronin Publishing
6 months ago
June Update: Creating Nuveen
Hey folks,
This month's update is brought to you by Steve Kenson, detailing how a Comm is set up and created for the game, and using Nuveen from the Quickstart as an example.
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Note that if you are already a backer, this is not the place to add things to an existing pledge. We'll have the pledge manager up and running soon, and that will be where you can add any dice, books, or the GM Kit to your pledge, as well as enter your shipping info.
This month we have another art preview for you. Finalizing the art for a book and waiting for it to be completed is nearly always the most time-consuming part of a project. It can a little frustrating when the book is so close to being finished, but you're still waiting on just one or two more pieces.
We've had a LOT of new art come in this month, and every piece brings us that much closer to the book's release! Here's a few highlights with commentary from Hiromi.
This is a look at the Miroq Festival, which is both the name of the adventure in the core book and the name of the festival that the players’ characters will visit during the scenario. As some Broken Earth fans might already know, miroq is the name of a grain that was the staple crop of the Nomidlats and Somidlats (and by extension, the Equatorials). The Fungus Season in 602 Imperial wiped the crop out. While the crop has been extinct for around 2,200 years, the festival in honor of a successful harvest season has remained off and on in certain parts of the Midlats. Art by Danil Luzin.
These are the three Leaders of the comms participating in the Miroq Festival: (from left to right) Zeah Leadership Tozon (the PCs’ leader), Niyomi Leadership Estra, and Aleke Leadership Rowene. Zeah is a tough woman who needs the festival to go well as the comm hasn’t been doing well lately. Niyomi is the festival’s charming host. And Aleke has been the headman of Rowene for an unusually long time, given that he’s only in his early 30s. He hates Zeah and blames her for his husband’s old injury. Art by Danil Luzin.
This is part of the PCs’ convoy, departing Tozon and heading for Estra, the site of the Miroq Festival. Art by Danil Luzin.
And finally we have a new preview of the map in color! Although it still has some minor revisions needed, so this isn't quite the final version yet.
Things are proceeding apace with the Fifth Season RPG. We've gotten the second draft of the setting map in and that will be going over to N.K. Jemisin for approval before the cartographer finalizes it. More art is also rolling in. We were delighted to bring Brazilian artist Claudio Pozas in on the project. We've been friends with Claudio for over 20 years now—since the early d20 days of the company—and in recent years he's done a lot of work for WotC on D&D. His work so far has been superb.
Today I've got three more layout spreads of the game to show you, courtesy of graphic design maestro Hal Mangold. You can see some of Claudio's art in these (I love his emerald obelisk piece). Finishing the game is Hal's number 1 priority. We want to get the PDF out to you and send it to print as soon as we can, although we don't have a specific timeline for release just yet.
Hiromi Cota here with a guest update. For folks who don’t know me, I’m one of the co-developers for the Fifth Season Roleplaying Game core book and the developer for a few of the stretch goals.
Speaking of stretch goals, we’ve received the rough draft of the poster map! And it is gorgeous!
Cartography by Kate Moody
I didn’t make it easy for the cartographer; my brief for them was 14 pages long! I laid out huge amounts of vital information, as well as additional information that they could add if they had room to do so. They delivered in a big way! I love how the map looks ready to use in a game and how the features feel geologically-sensible and book-accurate. For example, Palela and Brevard, the first two towns we saw in Damaya’s tale, are about 40 miles apart or “a hard [day’s] ride” apart, which is reflected in the map.
A little behind the scenes for a portion of my process: I scoured through the books, looking for any mentions of what roads connected which cities and how far apart the cities were. For many connections, miles weren’t given, so I had to take my best guess, based on how many days it took to complete the trek and whether the characters were on horse, wagon, or foot, and what kind of terrain they were traveling over. Not all city-to-city travel sequences mentioned days, so I had to read through and take my best guess, based on temporal clues in the prose (e.g. sunrise, meals, nightfall).
Why would I go through that much effort?
Well, 4 reasons:
I care.
I have AuDHD.
I know there are superfans who will be looking for precise, accurate details, and I didn’t want to let them down (or risk their wrath).
Green Ronin doesn’t own the copyright to the map that appeared in the novels, which means we couldn’t use it, and we couldn’t base the new map off of it. Since we had to start from scratch, I wanted to make sure that the cartographer had all the data they needed to make the absolute best map that we could deliver to you.
A few additional fun facts about the map:
The geometric elements of the inset map are of Corepoint, while the organic shape ‘infecting’ the center is Warrant. It’s both metaphorical and a possible depiction of how the corridors of Warrant were “beaten and clawed out of the shield volcano over a period of days or weeks—hurriedly…” (The Stone Sky, p. 186).
I didn’t actually specify what kind of geometric shape, but the cartographer selected one of the most appropriate ones, as Corepoint has a rectangular motif!
If you look to the Western Coastals, you’ll see Deejna is just west of supervolcano. That’s “Madness,” the one that caused the Madness Season.
It’s something of an understatement to say that August did not go as planned. We kicked it off with Gen Con, which as our biggest show of the year sucked up a lot of time and resources. The show was good, but the aftermath was not. Half the team came home with Covid, a real danger when you get 71,000 people in one place and very few take precautions. This was a particularly bad variant, and we had people sick in bed and quarantining for up to two weeks. Then our graphic designer on Fifth Season got food poisoning. So, I am sad to report this cursed month was not very productive.
As a mea culpa, we’re sending a $10 coupon for our online store to all backers who pledged at least $30. You can get a nice discount on a book or take advantage of our many PDFs under $10 at no cost to you. Recent PDF releases include Trades of the Expanse: Trader/Smuggler for you sci-fi fans, the Fantasy AGE adventure Return to the Valley of the Whispering Titans, and Engine #1. The latter is a magazine in support of all our games that are powered by Adventure Game Engine. That, of course, includes the Fifth Season.
Here's to a better September. Chris Pramas
Check your email inbox (or spam folder) for a message from Backerkit containing the code for the Green Ronin Online Store. Or check the "Digital Downloads" section on your backer survey for this project. The code is being distributed after this update goes live, so it may take a little time for it to reach everyone.
As usual, please reach out to us at [email protected] if you run into any issues using or receiving the coupon code.
