Wow, I'm feeling very blessed, my fellow Overlords!
Not only did we hit our $70,000 funding goal in just 16.5 hours, but we're now officially past the $100,000 milestone and it's all because of you: the 850 incredible Overlords who jumped in during our first week.
It's so exciting to see this project come to life and to see this level of passion right out of the gate!
Thank you all for your steadfast support, for making this launch a massive success, and for helping me keep this momentum going by telling others about the project! It's gonna be epic! I can't wait to share more with you next Tuesday.
It's Tuesday, and we're opening the gates to the very heart of The Overlords of Steel: the megadungeon Exesed Mordax, an enormous lost city buried beneath the wastes of a hidden mountain valley deep in southern Qa'rood. Potent magics and primordial technologies mark this ancient, mysterious place. And today, I'm sharing a selection of its incredible maps with you that were hand-drawn in painstaking detail over the last five years by my friend, the talented Mark Pileggi. As we speak, these maps are being digitally re-drawn in full-color by my little brother, Marc. We hope you like them very much!
Lost City Under the Earth
Exesed Mordax is the principal adventuring site of this mega-adventure book: a vast, interconnected underworld composed of ~30 full-color maps, originally designed by hand at 17" × 22" apiece, and containing well over 1,000 keyed areas.
The megadungeon's ruins descend beneath two surface towers, through buried districts, forgotten complexes, natural caverns, ancient works, and unfathomable regions swallowed by the earth. And the deeper the adventurers travel, the stranger the city becomes.
The diagram below shows the overall depth and structure of Exesed Mordax.
"Megadungeon Sideview," by Mark Pileggi.
The Surface
The ruins begin on the valley's rocky surface. Your stalwart heroes will discover 4 possible entrances into the megadungeon's early levels via the western tower, eastern tower, and an expanse between them containing evidence of a primordial battlefield.
Other secret avenues into Exesed Mordax exist that are not depicted on this map, however, and determined adventurers may eventually find them.
"The White Tower," by Mark Pileggi.
"Jaquays-ed" to be Explored
Exesed Mordax is an interconnected environment containing alternate routes, hidden passages, vertical connections, magical shortcuts, cunning factions, sealed vaults, and technological discoveries that can change the way adventurers navigate this dangerous place.
Within its depths, the adventurers will encounter the mysterious remains of a forgotten civilization: corridors, chambers, workshops, vaults, shrines, and bizarre machines left behind by a civilization whose mastery of arcana and pseudo-science technology far exceeded that of the present age.
As the buried city intersects with the natural world beneath Qa'rood, its passages open into immense subterranean environments: sprawling catacombs, underground waterways, alien caverns, and astonishing rifts. These places have evolved for centuries in darkness, as have their violent inhabitants...
"Level 2B - West," by Mark Pileggi.
Faction Interplay
The megadungeon is also home to multiple competing factions, each with its own goals, territories, rivalries, and ambitions. These groups are not simply enemies waiting in stasis to be fought and killed. Adventurers may negotiate with them, manipulate their fears and rivalries, trade information, strike temporary alliances, play one faction against another, or make enemies whose influence reaches far beyond the dungeon level being explored.
Relationships can shift over the course of the campaign as factions gain or lose territory, suffer setbacks, discover new routes, or react to the party’s actions. Clever players may find that diplomacy, deception, and carefully chosen alliances can be just as powerful as spells and swords.
"Level 3 - West," by Mark Pileggi.
Campaign Variety: The Spice of Life!
But importantly, the complex is not intended to be cleared from top to bottom, room by room, nor is it designed so that your band of heroes must spend the entire campaign exploring its dark halls.
Factional developments in civilization will vie for the players' attention back home, challenging them with new obstacles and compelling goals far away from Exesed Mordax, meaning they don't have to stay in the dungeon all the time. These unscripted events occur organically throughout the campaign.
This intentional design keeps the game exciting and gives players a variety of adventures to pursue and enjoy. And because of this, I think you'll enjoy the final product very much!
Wow, everyone! We're closing in on $100K! Immensely happy with this campaign's performance. I really could not have done it without you. THANK YOU!!!
Later tonight, I'll be on Friday Night Live with Ron Meischker, and wouldn't you believe it, but the legendary "King of Crunch" himself, Kevin Siembieda, will be on-air with me! You have no idea how cool that is to me, haha! When I first got into gaming back in the early 90s (I was born in '82), everyone I knew talked about Palladium and RIFTS in hushed, reverent tones around the summertime Boy Scout campfires. Definitely a surreal experience when I finally got a chance to meet him (and have dinner with him in a sleazy pub diner!) back at PAGE 3 this past January in Philly.
Anyways, check out the interview tonight if you can! And enjoy your weekend!
Finally got my sugar and coffee down the hatch--and here we are, FULLY FUNDED!
We did it! A huge thank you to everyone for believing in my project and giving me your support. I couldn't do any of this without you. I've got great things in store for this book. I think you'll really enjoy it.
My plan is to do some "Timed Releases" in lieu of stretch goals. Every Tuesday I'm going to post an update that shares a little bit more information about Overlords: new art, maps, design choices, and other bonuses that may arise from high funding. (Thanks to Lance, my colleague in the board game industry, for giving me this idea. May your beard touch the bottoms of your toes, friend!)
And if you ever have any questions and can't/won't use BackerKit's discussion feature, please don't hesitate to reach out to me directly: [email protected].
Wow, I'm feeling very blessed, my fellow Overlords!
Not only did we hit our $70,000 funding goal in just 16.5 hours, but we're now officially past the $100,000 milestone and it's all because of you: the 850 incredible Overlords who jumped in during our first week.
It's so exciting to see this project come to life and to see this level of passion right out of the gate!
Thank you all for your steadfast support, for making this launch a massive success, and for helping me keep this momentum going by telling others about the project! It's gonna be epic! I can't wait to share more with you next Tuesday.
It's Tuesday, and we're opening the gates to the very heart of The Overlords of Steel: the megadungeon Exesed Mordax, an enormous lost city buried beneath the wastes of a hidden mountain valley deep in southern Qa'rood. Potent magics and primordial technologies mark this ancient, mysterious place. And today, I'm sharing a selection of its incredible maps with you that were hand-drawn in painstaking detail over the last five years by my friend, the talented Mark Pileggi. As we speak, these maps are being digitally re-drawn in full-color by my little brother, Marc. We hope you like them very much!
Lost City Under the Earth
Exesed Mordax is the principal adventuring site of this mega-adventure book: a vast, interconnected underworld composed of ~30 full-color maps, originally designed by hand at 17" × 22" apiece, and containing well over 1,000 keyed areas.
The megadungeon's ruins descend beneath two surface towers, through buried districts, forgotten complexes, natural caverns, ancient works, and unfathomable regions swallowed by the earth. And the deeper the adventurers travel, the stranger the city becomes.
The diagram below shows the overall depth and structure of Exesed Mordax.
"Megadungeon Sideview," by Mark Pileggi.
The Surface
The ruins begin on the valley's rocky surface. Your stalwart heroes will discover 4 possible entrances into the megadungeon's early levels via the western tower, eastern tower, and an expanse between them containing evidence of a primordial battlefield.
Other secret avenues into Exesed Mordax exist that are not depicted on this map, however, and determined adventurers may eventually find them.
"The White Tower," by Mark Pileggi.
"Jaquays-ed" to be Explored
Exesed Mordax is an interconnected environment containing alternate routes, hidden passages, vertical connections, magical shortcuts, cunning factions, sealed vaults, and technological discoveries that can change the way adventurers navigate this dangerous place.
Within its depths, the adventurers will encounter the mysterious remains of a forgotten civilization: corridors, chambers, workshops, vaults, shrines, and bizarre machines left behind by a civilization whose mastery of arcana and pseudo-science technology far exceeded that of the present age.
As the buried city intersects with the natural world beneath Qa'rood, its passages open into immense subterranean environments: sprawling catacombs, underground waterways, alien caverns, and astonishing rifts. These places have evolved for centuries in darkness, as have their violent inhabitants...
"Level 2B - West," by Mark Pileggi.
Faction Interplay
The megadungeon is also home to multiple competing factions, each with its own goals, territories, rivalries, and ambitions. These groups are not simply enemies waiting in stasis to be fought and killed. Adventurers may negotiate with them, manipulate their fears and rivalries, trade information, strike temporary alliances, play one faction against another, or make enemies whose influence reaches far beyond the dungeon level being explored.
Relationships can shift over the course of the campaign as factions gain or lose territory, suffer setbacks, discover new routes, or react to the party’s actions. Clever players may find that diplomacy, deception, and carefully chosen alliances can be just as powerful as spells and swords.
"Level 3 - West," by Mark Pileggi.
Campaign Variety: The Spice of Life!
But importantly, the complex is not intended to be cleared from top to bottom, room by room, nor is it designed so that your band of heroes must spend the entire campaign exploring its dark halls.
Factional developments in civilization will vie for the players' attention back home, challenging them with new obstacles and compelling goals far away from Exesed Mordax, meaning they don't have to stay in the dungeon all the time. These unscripted events occur organically throughout the campaign.
This intentional design keeps the game exciting and gives players a variety of adventures to pursue and enjoy. And because of this, I think you'll enjoy the final product very much!
As we close in on our funding goal, I wanted to take a moment to share some of my evolving design principles that I've implemented in this new book project.
A Massive Campaign Designed for Faster Play and Usability
One of my goals with The Overlords of Steel is to evolve the way I write and present adventures at the table.
If you enjoyed the enormous scope, detail, and worldbuilding of Gods of the Forbidden North but sometimes found its traditional, prose-heavy presentation difficult to navigate during play, I’ve heard you.
While Overlords will retain that epic trilogy's narrative depth, it will adopt many of the best information-relaying techniques pioneered by modern designers, like Gavin Norman, Kelsey Dionne, and Ben Milton.
That means this new mega-adventure will boast the following slick features:
referee-facing control panels
tightly structured encounter keys
bolded interactive features
two-page-spread layouts that keeps critical information directly in front of you
adventure reward summaries tracking monster XP, treasure, and magic items
print-friendly, space-saving creature stat blocks by section
intuitive map-to-key cross-references
a comprehensive glossary of people, places, and things
a meticulously hyperlinked PDF index
The goal is simple: less searching, less memorizing, less prep, less page flipping, and more actual adventuring, while still giving you an epic campaign that is huge in terms of its content but that also doesn't feel huge (or intimidating) when you're trying to run it at the table.
No More Lore Homework
That means I’m also changing the way Overlords delivers its deeper narrative. The result I’m aiming for is simple: You shouldn’t have to study the campaign before you run it.
In Overlords, there will be no giant history chapter to memorize before you run the campaign. Instead, the book opens with just 2-3 short paragraphs and 4 optional beginning scenarios giving the referee and players enough context to begin exploring Qa'rood. That’s it.
The land's ancient history—its kingdoms, catastrophes, forgotten peoples, and events stretching back 40,000 years—will be broken into what I’ve been calling NARBs: narrative bits. Rather than explaining the “true” history outright, these NARBs appear as objects, ruins, monuments, artwork, inscriptions, relics, architecture, and other environmental discoveries scattered throughout the campaign.
Players encounter the evidence and piece together the grand story themselves. And importantly, they may never know whether their interpretation is completely correct.
Think of the environmental storytelling found in video games like Elden Ring: the world has a history, but the adventure doesn’t stop so the referee can lecture the players about it. The history becomes part of exploration.
This doesn’t mean withholding information that actually matters at the table. An NPC’s motivation, secret agenda, personality, or immediate actionable history will still appear right where the referee needs it if it impacts play right then and there.
But these NARBs are being designed for the deep background lore, the sort of information that traditionally gets buried in a 20-page campaign history or an appendix.
I actually began experimenting with this writing technique while drafting GotFN: Volumes 2 & 3, though I couldn't go "full NARB" until now with Overlords.
In any case, I hope you like what I've done.
All Best, Rob "An Old Dog Learning New Tricks" Alderman, Pulp Hummock Press
Wow, everyone! We're closing in on $100K! Immensely happy with this campaign's performance. I really could not have done it without you. THANK YOU!!!
Later tonight, I'll be on Friday Night Live with Ron Meischker, and wouldn't you believe it, but the legendary "King of Crunch" himself, Kevin Siembieda, will be on-air with me! You have no idea how cool that is to me, haha! When I first got into gaming back in the early 90s (I was born in '82), everyone I knew talked about Palladium and RIFTS in hushed, reverent tones around the summertime Boy Scout campfires. Definitely a surreal experience when I finally got a chance to meet him (and have dinner with him in a sleazy pub diner!) back at PAGE 3 this past January in Philly.
Anyways, check out the interview tonight if you can! And enjoy your weekend!
Finally got my sugar and coffee down the hatch--and here we are, FULLY FUNDED!
We did it! A huge thank you to everyone for believing in my project and giving me your support. I couldn't do any of this without you. I've got great things in store for this book. I think you'll really enjoy it.
My plan is to do some "Timed Releases" in lieu of stretch goals. Every Tuesday I'm going to post an update that shares a little bit more information about Overlords: new art, maps, design choices, and other bonuses that may arise from high funding. (Thanks to Lance, my colleague in the board game industry, for giving me this idea. May your beard touch the bottoms of your toes, friend!)
And if you ever have any questions and can't/won't use BackerKit's discussion feature, please don't hesitate to reach out to me directly: [email protected].
