Frank Mentzer's Empyrea Fantasy Setting on KS

[MageInBlack]

Claude is grilling it!

He keeps typing "Mr. Mensers". Is he doing it on purpose? I mean the title of the page clearly says "Mentzer".

[Philotomy Jurament]

Don't know if this was posted earlier, or not, but there is some detail about what the actual campaign setting is like, here:
http://worldsofempyrea.com/what-is-empyrea/

• Empyrea is based on three premises: magic instead of Technology, a sentient but indifferent Planet who knows how everything can be in balance, and royals who place quality of life (for all) above unbalancing mass whims (like war and wealth).
• These premises have far-reaching consequences, and I have spent decades extrapolating the results and applying them to an entire continental society. (I have over a thousand chatroom game logs, i.e. my laboratory.)
• Our story is about Empyrea at its height. It is geographically constrained on all four sides, and Evil wants to spoil the party. But at the moment it’s a comfortable Realm, the sort of world in which your current player characters have thrived. They’ll find a second home in Empyrea.
• Empyrea is on the mysterious and isolated continent of Aquaria, east of Gygax’s World of Greyhawk™ setting. Until now, knowledge of this portion of the world has remained largely a mystery, as the broad and dangerous Solnor ocean separates the two. The continent is briefly described in the Advanced D&D® adventure “Egg of the Phoenix” (Mentzer & Jaquays, TSR Inc., 1987).
• Unlike others, Gary approved this personally. Empyrea combines both traditional fantasy and science fiction elements. Magic is dominant, but technology lurks. And it’s one Realm… this isn’t a cluster of medieval city-states like Greyhawk.
• Empyrea was settled by demi-humans (elves, dwarves, hobbits, etc) who fled from Greyhawk to escape the warring human states. A century later, human colonists arrived in the style of Columbus, intent to loot and conquer the new continent. The demi-humans successfully repelled their invasion and the humans were forced to live by their rules. The demi-human rulers are benevolant hippie types, who want everyone to live in harmony with nature, care for animals, and so on.
• Orcs were at one point treated as slaves by the civilized races, but have recently been emancipated. They are now struggling to build their own society so they can be accepted by the other races. Some of them want to get along, others want to return to their savage ways.
• The present situation is unstable. There is an evil army to the south threatening invasion, while to the north is a race of hostile giants. To the west, contact with Greyhawk has been cut off by an empire of giant squids that now rule the ocean.
• The world will include a magical art gallery where the game master can provide portals to other campaign settings.
• The setting is designed to be easy to get into and start adventuring in, so that players don’t have to read lengthy setting guides before playing. The core areas are very standard fantasy like you expect from D&D, the weird stuff is hidden in the background.
• The setting does not include an original pantheon.
• SPOILERS: Additional sub-plots involve orcs trying to be civilized, dragons deciding not to be adventurer-fodder any longer, an undersea race of giant squid who actually rule the planetary ocean, a Lost World right next door, giants who may have an off-planet heritage, and Immortal beings who might just erase everything and start over. But that’s all in the background, and won’t affect you… much.

[blackprinceofmuncie]

About the funding that was sought back in 2009 for the launch of Eldritch Ent, I know from pretty reliable sources, one of which is a first-hand account (they were one of the investors/backers), that they did in fact raise something approaching $250,000 in private placement capital. Over the ensuing 6 or 7 years, they pretty much burned thru that capital, and really don't have a lot of that original investor capital left.

Wow! Well that puts a whole different light on this. I always kind of assumed that Eldritch Enterprises failed to go anywhere because they had big ambitions but never really had the capital to get anything going. Knowing that Tim and Frank (who made such a big deal about being "Professionals" at the time) squandered that much of other people's money with nothing to show for it... And now Frank is asking for another quarter million to do basically the same thing that he said he was going to do at EE... And he's doing it through Kickstarter which offers basically zero protections for the people putting up money...

This just doesn't sit right with me.

[TRP]

About the funding that was sought back in 2009 for the launch of Eldritch Ent, I know from pretty reliable sources, one of which is a first-hand account (they were one of the investors/backers), that they did in fact raise something approaching $250,000 in private placement capital. Over the ensuing 6 or 7 years, they pretty much burned thru that capital, and really don't have a lot of that original investor capital left.

[Landifarne]

So, approximately $40K the first day and $10K the second. I doubt that it will even hit $100K.

How is it that none of the Eldritch Ent backstory (regarding actual monies collected) ever got around?

NDAs?

If it's found to be true, or even partially true [perhaps Frank and Tim burned through $150K...?], the current KS is doomed.

[Chainsaw]

So, approximately $40K the first day and $10K the second. I doubt that it will hit $100K.

$47k on Day 1 and $4k on Day 2 (so far) by KickTraq's reckoning, but your point's well taken.

http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/extsr/ ... hart-daily

[thedungeondelver]

This looks hellaciously bad, like the worst of c. 1988 TSR. Where are Rose Estes and Jean Rabe?

Jean Rabe, with whom I am friends on Facebook (not for D&D purposes though! Long, convoluted story*), seems to want to make money so she writes mystery novels and not D&D/RPG products.

...

*=she is a Boston Terrier owner and became fb friends with an IRL friend of mine who has one, then I realized, oh hey that's THAT Jean Rabe when I saw the two posting to one another so I threw the friend request her way

[T. Foster]

This looks hellaciously bad, like the worst of c. 1988 TSR. Where are Rose Estes and Jean Rabe?

Jean Rabe, with whom I am friends on Facebook (not for D&D purposes though! Long, convoluted story*), seems to want to make money so she writes mystery novels and not D&D/RPG products.

...

*=she is a Boston Terrier owner and became fb friends with an IRL friend of mine who has one, then I realized, oh hey that's THAT Jean Rabe when I saw the two posting to one another so I threw the friend request her way

She used to work with my dad (before she started working for TSR, obviously) and encouraged him to take me to my first gaming con (which she was the coordinator of) when I was 11 years old. As far as I know she's a perfectly nice and decent lady. Alas, she also wrote or co-wrote several of the all-time worst AD&D adventures :/

[rogatny]

"If you consider a quarter million dollars in cash merely finance... te salud, Don Corleone."

[Geleg]

I feel a bit like a vulture watching someone crawling in the desert, but I can't stop reading the comments to this KS. As noted above, one backer (Claude) asked about degree of completion: here's the response from FM himself:

Claude (percentage completed)
-F- I have my 40 years of notes used in running the actual campaign. Part of it is written in publishable form, but most of that work is yet to come. Steve and Anne, the Editors, won't start until November I'm sure. If we're done by May, our printing schedule will meet the July/August targets (the latter for GenCon; subscribers get theirs first).
-F- The guest authors are creating Locations in Empyrea. We have a ship, an inn, and more, selected by the individual writers, tweaked slightly for the setting. The guest artists are also free to select topics within the setting, working with Darlene and other 'core' artists, and we thus expect outstanding creative artworks, not bound by typical publisher constraints as 'illustrations'.
I’ve emailed the designer managing the conversions side of things and am waiting to hear back about the edition of 1e/2e D&D.

Yikes!

[bobjester]

40 years of notes? ...a ship, an inn, and more...

Is Frank intentionally underselling this KS? This reads pathetic. I can't believe this is all he has to entice potential backers aside from PMs to drive up the drama-factor.

They start typing it up in May? Release date in July? That doesn't sound like enough time for proof-reading and last minute adjustments to the format to me.

[MageInBlack]

They start typing it up in May? Release date in July? That doesn't sound like enough time for proof-reading and last minute adjustments to the format to me.

You just need to have faith that Frank is an expert typist and won't take the quarter mil and leave town.

[EOTB]

I feel a bit like a vulture watching someone crawling in the desert, but I can't stop reading the comments to this KS. As noted above, one backer (Claude) asked about degree of completion: here's the response from FM himself:

Claude (percentage completed)
-F- I have my 40 years of notes used in running the actual campaign. Part of it is written in publishable form, but most of that work is yet to come. Steve and Anne, the Editors, won't start until November I'm sure. If we're done by May, our printing schedule will meet the July/August targets (the latter for GenCon; subscribers get theirs first).
-F- The guest authors are creating Locations in Empyrea. We have a ship, an inn, and more, selected by the individual writers, tweaked slightly for the setting. The guest artists are also free to select topics within the setting, working with Darlene and other 'core' artists, and we thus expect outstanding creative artworks, not bound by typical publisher constraints as 'illustrations'.
I’ve emailed the designer managing the conversions side of things and am waiting to hear back about the edition of 1e/2e D&D.

Yikes!

Sounds like Frank wants to turn over to the editors what Kask claims was turned over to him for the Blackmoor supplement.

I suspect what will come out of this is that Frank detailed what was actually necessary to run specific adventures, and the rest has been 40 years of stage lot facades, western-movie-town-style, and he now wants you to pledge so he can outsource the actual design of all this other stuff to sell as "his Empyrea".

[Falconer]

They start typing it up in May? Release date in July?

I dunno, for a project this unambitious, I think the timetable is probably fine.

“The basic setting is Average Fantasy. We don’t go into ANY extremes, because it has to work for everybody. YOU can go to extremes, whatever trips your trigger…. but I have to start easy, vanilla, usable, fast learn, no conflicts with individual styles.”

“This campaign setting is presented in broad strokes that allow you to fill in as much detail as is necessary.”

“Empyrea is a backdrop. It's a Setting, not an adventure.”

“We offer Empyrea as an option, a second home. Use it occasionally, perhaps as an ‘alternate reality’, or start a whole new story.”

“We'll make the process easy, and give you starting background options and feed you the information you'll need.”

“We have a ship, an inn, and more.”

???

[Juju EyeBall]

Ah.... anything in this general area, right in here. Anything, below the stereo, and on this side of the Bicentennial glasses. Anything between the ashtray, and the thimbles. Anything in this three inches. Right in here, this area, that includes the Chiclets, but not the erasers.