Auran Empire Sourcebook

As a late bonus goal to Domains at War, we wooed Lamentations of the Flame Princess players by offering to write a separate supplement called Guns of War, with rules for gunpowder. It funded, so I had to write it.

Sadly my knowledge of the Early Modern Era is not as robust as my knowledge of the Ancient and Medieval Eras, so it’s been a toughie.

Kickstarter’s a funny beast these days. It does seem the most successful kickstarters rely on the reputation the producer has generated from successful delivery of previous kickstarters, but that such successful producers have a tendency to get bogged down in stretch goals, which ultimately slows product release a lot.

I would probably back either or both of L&E and AE, though. I expect L&E would provide me with more useful automation-fodder, though… :stuck_out_tongue:

Have a look at the Renaissance RPG (a BRP derivative) which might give you some ideas. Also, Pete Cakebread and Ken Walton (the authors) are top draw gentlemen who I’m sure would be more than willing to help.

My go-to references for early gunpowder are Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe, by Bert Hall, and the National Park Service’s Artillery Through the Ages (available at http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/source/is3/is3toc.htm).

I’ll definitely be looking forward to GoW as a supplement for D@W. I don’t think I personally would want my campaign to go past very early matchlocks and wheellocks, but I’m sure others will be interested in further developments, since flintlocks and cap-and-ball would both be useful for westerns or steampunk games.

Thank you both for the recommendations on the sources!

The rules will cover matchlock, wheellock, and flintlocks. They are being designed to be backwards compatible with Lamentations of the Flame Princess’ gunpowder rules. I’m 90% done; but still finalizing artillery.

Considering the past kickstarters I would gladly back anything from you guys. :slight_smile:

So, its almost next year. What’s the update on Kickstarting Auran Empire? Will you include a draft for immediate consumption of backers? (Based on your good example with Dwimmermount I’m leaning towards a personal policy of not backing any gaming project that doesn’t give backers access to drafts.)

All future Kickstarters will occur AFTER draft completion.

As such we are not ready to do an Auran Empire kickstarter. We do have several other products that are nearing readiness. These include:

Sinister Stone of Sakkara
Lairs & Encounters
Guns of War
Barbarian Conqueror King
Heroic Companion

Hurray L&E

What is Barbarian Conqueror King? Also, how is your experimentation with variant Thief skill progression going?

BCK is developed by Omer Joel. It’s a campaign supplement for a post-apoc barbarian planetary romance fantasy. Barbarians riding dinosaurs confront spaceships.

Sounds like one can run a Thundarr the Barbarian campaign with it. I’ll look forward to seeing more about it.

I would say Thundarr is probably one of Omer’s biggest inspirations, though he really is better suited to confirm that than I.

The Heroic Companion will be awesome for crafting campaigns similar to early fantasy (Howard or Leiber).

tell us more :slight_smile:
very interested in the Heroic Companion what’s there beyond the new magic system

Here’s what is currently in Heroic Companion, Fabio:

New Healing Mechanic (variable healing from spells based on the target’s level)
New Classes: Ecclesiastic, Elven Spellsinger, Loremaster, Nobiran Champion, Nobiran Wizard, Occultist, Runemaker, Zaharan Sorcerer
New Proficiencies: Bright Lore of Aura, Ceremonial Magic, Ceremonial Focus, Destined, Farseeing, Second Sight
Heroic Deeds
Heroic Codes
Heroic Funerals
Heroic Fate Points
Heroic COmbat
Revised Natural 20 Rules
Critical Hit Rules
Special Maneuver: Clamber
Special Maneuver: Sweeping Attack
Thievery (buffs to thieves)
Attack and Armor Penetration of Large Monsters
Eldritch Magic
Shades of Magic
Corruption
Spellsinging
Ceremonial Magic
Ceremonial Traditions - Antiquarian, Chthonic, Liturgical, Runic, Sylvan, Shamanic, Theurgical
Ceremonial Trinkets
Ceremonial Talismans
Eldritch Spell List - 50+ spells
New Monsters - Draugr, Hag, Haugbui, Hoarflesh, Nosferatou
Heroic Secrets
Naming Arms and Armor
Pinnacles of Good & Recovery from Corruption
Custom Classes (updated rules)
Custom Spells (updated rules)

That sounds awesome!

can’t wait… I just love this game :slight_smile:
and with POD it’s even better :wink:

cross posting from a conversation on Discord today.  The gist of that conversation was An Auran Empire Sourcebook KS is no where near a possibility at this time.

I imagine finalizing the Auran Empire sourcebook will be a significant effort. There's plenty of other areas that I'm sure would be able to occupy Autarch for the next couple years. However, I wonder if a different approach might be considered. Perhaps a Gazeteer per province/region would be a more fruitful approach. One would have to have the discipline to not try to make each new gazetteer more 'awesome to the extreme' than the last, but I think Alex has that discipline. Another consideration with the gazetteer approach is that it may turn out that some provinces just may not be interesting enough to justify the effort for it to have its own gazetteer. Perhaps such provinces could be viewed as reserved for each individual GM to flesh out on his own.