What a crazy 48 hours! The community stepped up and we are still going strong! We funded in just minutes, smashed through not only the two early bird rewards but FIVE stretch rewards:
Welcome to the second and final campaign for Gary Gygax's Castle Zagyg! Pledge today and reap the rewards!!
Holy Carolina!
What a crazy 48 hours! The community stepped up and we are still going strong! We funded in just minutes, smashed through not only the two early bird rewards but FIVE stretch rewards:
UNLOCKED - $100,000: Stickers - "I Survived / I died in Castle Zagyg"
UNLOCKED - $300,000: Double Copies of all the Maps
Up Next:
$350,000: Custom CZ Patch and Sticker
Please Share Where You Can!
Here we pass beyond the Citadel (Vol. 1), the Ruins (Vol. 2) and the Cellars (Vol. 3), to plunge into the Mad Mage's darkest depths with The Dungeons (Vol. 4) and The Caverns (Vol. 5). If ye dare to pass through all these, you'll reach the heart of the darkest mystery in East Mark; the site of Zagyg's endgame.
Gary Gygax always went above and beyond in answering people's email and comments on message boards. He LOVED to engage with the community that he dedicated so much time and effort to help create. Gamers of all stripes were always welcome. We want to keep that spirit alive with the second and final campaign for his mega-dungeon (THE mega-dungeon) Castle Zagyg.
You can do that AND earn badges! The more you engage with this campaign, the more points you get. The more points you get, the better badge you get to display next to your username. You can track these on your own sidebar!
Creating a discussion reaps you a whopping 50 points!
Leaving a comment in a discussion board grants you 25 points!
This is the second of two crowdfunding campaigns. The first, Castle Zagyg Galleries of the Arch Mage Act 1, was a huge success thanks to this incredible community. At last, we are back with Act 2, which includes all the dungeon levels, maps, and encounters needed to forge your way through the Mad Mage’s labyrinthine castle. These materials have never been published before; we are working tirelessly to produce the complete megadungeon that Gary envisioned.
Included in this campaign you will find:
Castle Zagyg Vol. 4 The Dungeons (dungeon levels 6-9 and sub-levels), Box Set and Hardcover
Castle Zagyg Vol. 5 The Caverns (dungeon levels 10-17 and sub-levels), Box Set and Hardcover
With your help, we are halfway through our efforts to bring to shelves worldwide Gary Gygax's Castle Zagyg in all of its glory. It is a monstrous project; one with an incredible legacy! Our goal is to see all the material in Castle Zagyg released in 5 full color, hardcover volumes, each in its own box with relevant game maps. Castle Zagyg is written and designed to be played with Castles & Crusades.
The five Box Sets are as follows:
The PREVIOUS campaign covered:
Castle Zagyg Vol. 1 The Citadel (the town of Yggsburgh), Box Set and Hardcover
Castle Zagyg Vol. 2 The Ruins (Castle, East Mark, Mouths of Madness, and dungeon level 1), Box Set and Hardcover
Castle Zagyg Vol. 3 The Cellars (dungeon levels 2, 3, 3a, 4, 4a, 5 and 5a), Box Set and Hardcover
These three volumes are available as add-ons!
This CURRENT campaign covers:
Castle Zagyg Vol. 4 The Dungeons (dungeon levels 6-9 and sub-levels), Box Set and Hardcover
Castle Zagyg Vol. 5 The Caverns (dungeon levels 10-17 and sub-levels), Box Set and Hardcover
Castles & Crusades is a TTRPG that focuses on imaginative gameplay, allowing everyone in the gaming community to utilize whatever play styles they desire. NOW with revised non-OGL content.
Its primary purpose is to give those who play the game an adaptable, responsive, easy to use mechanic that does not force any one style of play on the participants, and which does not restrict any playing style.
The system was designed to be rules light, allowing new players to learn the system in under 15 minutes and make their characters in the same space of time.
To achieve this, a simple and logical attribute check system, the SIEGE Engine, was created. By downplaying the role of rules in the game, it encourages imaginative play, unrestricted by predetermined rule sets.
Castles & Crusades was first created in 2003/2004 and debuted in Christmas of that '04. It was the first to use a simple attribute based system as its key mechanic. It predated and in many ways sparked the OSR publications that followed and heavily influenced D&D 5th edition. The core of this game has remained unchanged but for minor edits and a few revision. It has played the same all these years. Now with the revised non-OGL content, though it plays the same, even faster!
The amazing Peter Bradley will be illustrating the interior maps. You may recognize Peter's name as not only TLG's art director and one of our longest contributing artists, but also from working with us on the original Castle Zagyg project alongside Gary Gygax. Below is a sample of this original castle itself!
Each of these volumes, as with the first three, come in their own box. The box is designed to hold the small mountain of maps that are required to play through and in Castle Zagyg. Vol. 4 The Dungeons and Vol. 5 The Caverns have 9 and 10 full size 11 x 17 maps, respectively.
Castle Zagyg. Those words carry two meanings. In one instance, they refer to the massive setting and adventure sandbox created by Gary Gygax. This sandbox includes the Free Town of Yggsburgh, the environs around Yggsburgh called East Mark, the castle of the mad Arch Mage Zagyg, and the dungeons beneath the castle – all 27 levels. In its second meaning it refers to the castle itself, which has long since crumbled into ruins and now houses villains of the most dangerous sort.
Gary Gygax, one the founders of TTRPGs, created the dungeons of Castle Zagyg in the 1970s to playtest the then-infantile game of Dungeons & Dragons. He continued to play in these dungeons through the 70s and into the 80s and beyond. This was his personal campaign setting. In time it grew monstrously massive: 27 dungeon levels and growing, a castle, the area around the castle, towers, caverns beneath, and lastly the city of Yggsburgh.
He worked on this off and on for 50+ years. It was never published because he didn't really intend to publish it until much later. Gamers of all stripes began to call for it; time and again, they attempted to summon his pen to paper and the legendary dungeons that started it all to life.
He began work on publishing Castle Zagyg in earnest in 2003 with Troll Lord Games. He brought many writers to his side, most notably Jeffrey Talanian, but others like Michael Stewart also helped dive into this colossal undertaking. The first of the books was released in 2005, and more came after. We actually managed to publish all the way up to the 1st level of the dungeons. But after Gary Crossed the Bar, work on the project stopped.
It languished until Luke Gygax and others resurrected it, and very generously brought in TLG to help bring it back to life. We have jumped in with a gusto.
Last year we ran a Backerkit crowdfunding campaign that raised over $600,000 in funding to bring the first three volumes of the massive work to print. As of this writing, Vol 1. The Citadel and Volume 2 The Ruins are both in layout and we are wrapping up on the writing for Volume 3 The Cellars. You can add all three of these volumes to your pledge as add ons.
Who is Writing It? Volume 4, The Dungeons is written by Michael Stewart and Jeremy Farkas. Volume 5, The Caverns is written by Michael Stewart and Jeremy Farkas.
We are relying upon Gary Gygax's original notes and maps for encounters, flavor, and unusual circumstances; we combine what we find in his notes with the Outline and Manifest (this last is Steve's name for it), which Gary wrote in 2002-2003.
Leaving behind the long chambers and stone plinths of the Eternity Galleries (Vol. 2), you pass into the deeper dungeon of the Mad Mage's castles. But the world beneath changes, for on sudden you stand in a weird and wild underground habitat where bizarre fungi and creeping earth greet you. These hide the burial vaults and multifarious crypts that carry the bones of the dead.
From the chess board from hell to the disappearing Jeweled Man, The Dungeons unleash all the weird that the arch mage can conjure!
The Dungeons picks up where we left off with The Cellars (in production now). After level 5A The Catacombs, your characers plunge ever deeper into the castle dungeons with Level 6 Menagerie Grotesque and on into the Upper Crypts (6A), The Lairs Abominable, Lower Crypts, Warrens of Woe, Vaults of Horrors and so much more. The Caverns covers Levels 6-9A (each level here has its own sublevel).
Plunge into Castle Zagyg Vol. IV The Dungeons, and explore the deeper works of this mighty world beneath our own.
What to Expect:
9 maps
Menagerie Grotesque
Upper Crypts
The Lairs Abominable
Lower Crypts
Labyrinth of Perils
Warrens of Woe
Infinite Chambers
Vaults of Horrors
Gruesome Mausoleum
Hundreds of encounters and encounter areas!
The Gruesome Mausoleum gives way to the full madness of the Arch Mage; the Hopeless Maze opens the way into the caverns. Delving ever deeper, though ever more carelessly, Zagyg created a byzantine network of chambers and corridors, stairs and ramps, all through the living rock of caverns hundreds of feet beneath the earth.
The Caverns bring one to the uttermost depths of Zagyg's imaginings and his tortured desires to torment and tease, from where rules the jester Jack Pudding to the city under the lake! Chimeras and gorgons, mazes, pits and traps and in the end . . . well, only the mad arch mage can reveal what lies beyond the Point of no Return!
Venture into Castle Zagyg Vol. V The Caverns, if you dare; here be the darkest horrors of the Mad Mage!
✨ Early Bird!: Pledge within 24 hours and you'll be entered into a raffle to receive a Castle Zagyg keepsake, signed by Gary Gygax himself. More info on this raffle is coming, but you surely won't want to miss it. Pledge within 24 hours of launch to have your name added to the raffle!
✨ Early Bird Part Deux!: Pledge within the first 48 hours to receive a FREE PDF copy of Gary Gygax's Gord the Rogue: Saga of Old City!
🏰 $25,000 || Volumes 4-5 fund!! We go to press with both books, and create their respective PDFs. Boxes are included!
🏰 $100,000 || Stickers!! Who doesn't love a good bundle of stickers! We'll include, in your physical shipment for anyone who buys 2 volumes or more, a bundle of stickers that include "I Survived Castle Zagyg" and "I died in Castle Zagyg"!
🏰 $150,000 || Custom Inside Cover Endsheets! Much like you saw in our recently published Gary Gygax's Hermit, we will reprint some of the key maps as Endsheets on the insides of each of the three volumes. These Endsheets come with all pledge levels who receive a physical book.
🏰 $200,000 || Ribbons! On adventures like this, it is critical to remember where your players are, or where they've been. We'll include a nice gold ribbon marker in each of the three volumes to help track your campaign progress! The ribbons come with all pledge levels who receive a physical book.
🏰 $250,000 || Personalized Leathers! Each of the leather books will come with YOUR name stenciled on the front cover. This reward is available for anyone who purchases or has a pledge level containing a leather bound copy of Castle Zagyg Vol 1-5.
🏰 $300,000 || Double Copies of the Maps! We’ll include an EXTRA set of maps in all two boxed sets, allowing you to keep one set pristine and others to use at the table. The $54. $99 and $135 pledge levels receive a PDF version, the $140, 300 and $380 pledge levels receive both PDF and Print versions.
🔒 $350,000 || Patch and Stickers!! You've enjoyed C&C patches for you jacket. We'll design and produce a Castle Zagyg Gary Gygax Patch and create stickers of it (for those who live i Key West and don't need jackets)! These will be available for the 99, $140, 300 and $380 pledge levels receive both PDF and Print versions.
🔒 $400,000 || Original Gary Gygax Content Unlock #1 Gary did a great deal of work on the playable side of Castle Zagyg, working toward making it easier to navigate for the CK, more interesting and real. He left us some of that content! If we hit this level we'll release the first batch of it...here.
"Occasionally have a small poisonous spider, centipede, snake, gila monster-like lizard, insect grubs, or some other dangerous thing hiding or growing in a trash item in the room, especially when there is an item of value to be found." It is rich with Gygaxian flavor! The $54. $99 and $135 pledge levels receive a PDF version, the $140, 300 and $380 pledge levels receive both PDF and Print versions.
SHIPPING in the US, Canada and Outside of Europe: We will be handling these shipments. Fees & taxes VAT / GST will be included in the shipping fees when we send out your BackerKit survey.
SHIPPING UK and European Union: We have partnered with GMS distribution in the United Kingdom to deliver pledges to the UK and European Union. Fees & taxes VAT will be included in the shipping fees when we send out your BackerKit survey.
Fulfillment of PDF / Digital Products: Delivery will be through your BackerKit survey, when they are ready to be distributed we will upload them for you to download directly from Backerkit.
This amazing project deserves great art. With that in mind, we have brought on several new artists to help with upgrading the art, layout and overall visual experience for Gary's Masterpiece. It is important to note that any art / graphics displayed on this project page or anywhere else is currently just conceptual art and not final.
We would like to give our heartfelt thanks to you for taking the time to support us and this project, be it as a backer or just even reading through and commenting. We are extremely privileged and honored to have the opportunity to pick back up where we left off, bringing the works of Gary Gygax to all of you!
We know its a struggle sometimes to back all these amazing crowdfunding projects out there and still be able to meet everyday needs as well. We are happy to now be able to offer the ability to split payments for backers! You can opt in to this at checkout. Given the current parameters of this BackerKit feature, this will only be available for purchases of at least $140 USD. Please see our FAQs if you have any questions about payment processing.
Please note:
Your pledge will be split into 4 monthly payments beginning in April.
We will not ship any rewards until you have paid in full.
If you do not complete all your payments, we will not provide refunds on partial payments.
Due to logistics on the backend, you cannot access your survey in the pledge manager until after you have paid in full.
Shipping and sales tax (if applicable) will be a 5th payment after you fill out your survey.
