We reached 300% funding in less than a week, and there's less than a week left. Amazing. There is one final bit (some writing and layout) left to do for the Mega-Edition, and it should be done before the final day. I'll then be sending it out to the printer to get a physical proof because I gotta make sure it looks good before it goes into full production. I don't foresee any problems. Once the money clears, I'll be purchasing a batch of ISBNs, packing materials, boards & bags, etc. But until then, let's talk about Van den Danderclanden.
in full color!
Brett Miller was a player in the early days of my DCC RPG (BETA) campaign. He answered a random "looking for gamers" post in a long lost gaming forum (I can't even remember), he came over and joined the group. He remained part of the group for a couple years until he moved to New Zealand. Unknown to me at first, was he was an animator and effects supervisor at Dreamworks, as in the company that made How to Train your Dragon and Shrek. Van den Danderclanden was his wizard, and DCC's patron system inspired him to create his own patron, and that's where the first 3rd-party patron came from. His patron was his own character from the imminent future. He submitted the patron and some art to go with it, including this Aleister Crowley inspired piece:
When Crawl! fanzine no.1 was released, the spells for the patron were incomplete. There was only a loose idea for the spells, they had names and some ideas for effects. I ended up finishing the spells based on that info. The spells were completed by the time no. 3: The Magic Issue was released, and so they were included in that issue. Future prints of no.1 (starting with the "Special Edition" in 2014) included all the spells, and the complete patron was released as a free downloadable pamphlet.
One piece of trivia worth noting was the original name of the 2nd-level patron spell, SNAFUBAR. It was originally called Cluster F**k. I thought it was funny, but I wanted to keep the zine rated PG, so I changed the name to a combination of two popular but similar acronyms, SNAFU and FUBAR. The bad word is hidden in there. I hoped to it would make up for self censorship.
I got to visit Brett once when he was still working at Dreamworks. He signed a bunch of copies of no. 1 for me, (they're out in the wild). I got a tour of the studio, got to see the secret hidden bar, and eat some amazing world-class commissary food. Brett ended up moving to New Zealand to work for WETA, and later NVidia. You might be familiar with some of the movies he did special effects for.
There is only a week left to back both Crawl! Mega-Edition no. 1 and Thorin's Seekers ov the Other Worlds. If you back both, you'll get our cross-collab incentive: a sticker featuring Van den Danderclanden in the Lodge-in-Between.
