For almost five years now, I’ve shared bits and pieces of my home campaign with you in articles and adventures. And because Open Design is, well, open, “sharing” meant more than merely “publishing.” Those who became patrons of the design projects set in the world I eventually came to call Midgard brought their astounding creativity to bear, making the setting something more and better than I could have ever imagined.
Now the time has come to take a great step forward. I’m announcing the largest and most ambitious Open Design project ever.
I invite all of you to join me—and my co-designers Brandon Hodge and Jeff Grubb—to build the Midgard campaign setting.
Project Launch
With your support, Open Design will launch the world of Midgard as a standalone campaign setting. From its northern wastes to the central city of Zobeck, and beyond to Sikkim and the haunted western wastelands, the seven regions of the world will be yours to run with.
In the tradition of all our recent projects, this world’s design will be guided and critiqued by patrons as we go. We will start with an existing map and all of my campaign notes, expanding, clarifying, and deepening. Patrons can choose to take the world in a variety of new directions, and can add villains, cities, kingdoms, even whole pantheons of gods from their own home campaigns. The world will be shaped for the systems that patrons prefer: that means OGL and Pathfinder RPG and 4E Dungeons & Dragons, of course, but it might also mean using the AGE system from the Dragon Age RPG. If 4E or DA don’t get support, of course, we’ll focus on a single system.
When the project is complete, Midgard will be a seamless whole loaded with hundreds of adventure possibilities, dungeon sites, characters, and plots. We’ll stray far beyond the familiar realms to the Duchy of Perun’s Daughter, the harem of the Mharoti Sultan, to dragon kingdoms, gnomish hells and the distant spires of lost cities and mysteries undreamed-of.
Limited Edition Hardcover, Designer’s Handbook, and More
The resulting worldbook will be released as a high-quality hardcover (our first!) with professional editing, art, layout, and printing. Patrons who join at the Sponsor or Champion level are invited to join a private Midgard game run by one or more designers at PaizoCon or Gen Con.
As the setting develops, some well-known setting creators will also share 8 design essays on world design, from the basics to advanced techniques. Using specific examples from patrons and the Zobeck campaign, these essays will talk through particular problems and reveal how to construct small and large regions for maximum play value. They’ll also be collected in a special Worldbuilder’s Handbook.
Make no mistake; this project is a fire-breathing monster. We small-but-fierce kobolds are launching an ancient red dragon skyward, with the goal of releasing the hardcover before, during, or shortly after Gen Con Indy 2012. Along the way we have all kinds of fun stuff planned: a blog series chronicling the evolution of Midgard over the years, live chats with the designers (some public, some patron-only), contests and meetups. It’ll be fantastic.
The fires of a singular task burn strong! Review the project details and the video, then join the Midgard project today, and become a fan of Midgard on Facebook—and let’s get started!
Now this, this is some daring, exciting stuff.
Daring it is! I think it’s going to do rather well based on the response so far.
Please do join us!
I’m in.
Let’s rock it out. :D
-Ben.
As am I!
If we start with a patronage can we upgrade at a later date to Senior?
@Tom Allman: Presuming nothing has changed in how this project will be run, yes, you may. You can upgrade to any level you want– barring lack of availability. There comes a point when upgrading to Senior becomes less worthwhile, but it would appear that it’s always worth going to donor or sponsor.
And given the timeline of this project, it seems there will be a lot of time to contribute.
Hopefully i can put together some funds to put into this!
@Tom, as Ben says, upgrades are always possible.
The timeline is actually 7 short timelines, as we’re doing the project by region. The first text ships in less than 90 days. Additional PDFs ship every couple months after that, and then we compile the lot to make the whole thing.
It would suck to have to wait 18 months. So you don’t have to. :)
OH….MY….GOD.
I am so, so in.
This is probably the project I am most excited about from Open Design, past or present.
Really stoked about this project! I love every OD product I’ve bought and cant wait for this.
But I have a question regarding system support. Will this be a generic setting (a la Harn) with little or no system crunch in the material, or will key npc’s, monsters encounters etc be detailed in multiple systems? I’m just wondering since the systems have such varied approach’s to powers, feats, magic and skills.
Finally! I think I urged this something like a year and a half ago! I would work on this project in a heartbeat, if grad school time permits.
I’d like to request the rules bits be separate. So with in a separate book or at the end. That way if someone runs something like True20 which won’t be one of the supported rules sets, they don’t have to filter out stats from every page and can focus on the setting.
It would be a dream to help you work on this. While I tried to detail some areas via ‘Soldiers of Fortune’, I would love to help flesh the world out on a larger scale. Best of luck in this project! I can’t wait to see how it all works out.
Awesome news, Wolf!
@Craig, the setting will have stats for whatever systems patrons want.
@Dan, yes, patrons definitely get the final word on how the rules bits are integrated into the text.
@Neal and @Matt, I look forward to working with you and other patrons on this.
I’ve been contaminating…
…. err…
con-tributing.. to OD and Proto-Midgard from almost the beginning..
I’ll be there at the dawn too. After all, I’m a troublemaker.
The chance to see a new world in the making…
I am now part of the adventure my friends!
Will the printed texts be available for order?
Leslie, a softcover version will be available to the public. The hardcover will be limited to the project patrons.