What’s new in heaven and hell? Patrons of the Dark Roads & Golden Hells planar project and patrons of the Midgard campaign setting got news on project status and had a chance to define a part of the Mharoti Dragon Empire live and in person with lead designers Brandon Hodge and Wolfgang Baur on Saturday morning at Gen Con.

The new elements were pretty straightforward and encouraging:

Progress! Midgard is 80,000 words in manuscript form at this point, plus it has partial maps for two regions. Brandon and Wolfgang have both delivered text for patron review and editing, including the Seven Cities, the Wasted West, and (coming by the end of August) the Pantheon. (Read more beyond the jump!)

The project would be one-half done if the original goal of 160 pages were still the target. Which led to the announcement….

An Expanded Setting: The project is now 50% larger than originally outlined, and the setting will likely be 250+ pages when complete. The price is unchanged and remains at $29.99.

Bad News: The new length means more writing, development, review, editing, and layout time will be required. It’s much less likely that the bigger Midgard will ship in 2012.

The Dragon Bloodlines: Wolfgang gave a quick summary of the Dragon Empire’s founding, and patrons and audience members riffed on what this might mean for the nobility of the empire. The old DragonStar setting and even Council of Wyrms came up as examples, as did the fine idea of status based on the degree of dragon blood an adventurer from the Empire has. Much more to come on that, but it was a nice taste of in-person collaboration on design.

Coming Up Next for Midgard: Jeff Grubb has completed his outline for the Domains of the Princes, and Wolfgang has finished the brainstorming for the Tsars and Baba Yaga region of the Rothenian Plains. They’ll be the next regions the project patrons and designer tackle.

Much more discussion on other topics covered planar elements, gods and demons, and connections between Midgard and the Dark Roads. All in all, this was more of a chat and meet up than a “Let us talk at you” panel, and if the project adopts the use of Google+ hangouts or something similar, it won’t be the last such live design meeting.

Thanks to everyone who visited! Sadly, there’s no audio for this panel, but ask in the comments and maybe Brandon or Wolfgang will expand on the discussion.