Out With The Old
Hello, and welcome to APOCALYPSE! Week. This is going to be a very important week here at Necromancers of the Northwest, though despite the grand name it wasn’t always going to be. Allow me to explain.
When it first came time to come up with a theme week for this week, I was struck by the fact that the week begins at the beginning of the year. Okay, yes, technically the articles don’t start until the 2nd, but who’s keeping score, anyway? The point was that it would be a great week for “beginnings” or “creation,” that sort of thing. Well, we’d already done a character creation week, as well as the Book of Beginnings, so it seemed like it might be best to look elsewhere. For some reason, Ragnarok and apocalypse kept popping into my mind as I sat trying to think of what to do. I had to admit it made a certain amount of sense: after all, apocalypses are often about new beginnings; you just have to clear away all of the old before you can begin the new, that sort of thing. Add to that all the baggage the year 2012 has with the end of the world and Mayan calendar hoopla, and it seemed good enough. Besides, everyone likes a good apocalypse in their fantasy games. I penciled it in and moved on to other weeks.
Not much later, we began working around the office to revise our articles, setting new quality standards and generally working to make them better and more interesting. We assigned some new topics to Grave Plots, re-envisioned Masters and Minions, and replaced Foursaken Feature. We were discussing when to implement these changes, and someone thought it would be a clever idea to put them right after APOCALYPSE! Week, just for fun. Everyone liked the idea, so we scheduled that in as well, and I began looking forward to writing an article where I would get to tell all of you about the exciting new changes coming to the Necromancers of the Northwest website.
Then, tragedy struck. You may have noticed that for the past few weeks Joshua and I have been filling in for Justin’s articles. We didn’t go into too much detail at the time, because we were hoping that the situation would resolve itself, but it hasn’t, and we no longer think it’s terribly likely to. Justin has unfortunately been forced to hang up his necromancer’s cowl and set aside his skull ring (all proper necromancers have a skull ring, trust me), apparently for good. For all the demons, devils, and eldritch abominations we’ve dealt with over the last couple of years, he was finally brought low by a seemingly-innocuous little thing called “real life,” and sadly no longer has the time or energy necessary to continue his role here. He will be missed, his time here remembered.
Of course, being down a significant portion of our manpower meant that we weren’t going to be able to continue with our existing schedule. We might be able to continue making books at the rate we had been, or else continue our articles as before, but not both. APOCALYPSE! Week would no longer be a time for a great announcement about our exciting new revisions, it would instead be a sorrowful announcement of our scaling back.
Or, at least, that’s what I thought. We spent a lot of time talking about what we could do to make Necromancers of the Northwest the best that it could be under the new circumstances, and we realized that as long as we were smart about it, we could minimize the effects of the blow, and possibly even make NNW come out even better than before.
First, the bad. If you’re a fan of Dark Designs, Grave Plots, or Foursaken Feature, you’re probably not going to like the new weekly lineup. We’re also going to be scaling back our production schedule for the time being: until we get our bearings again, we’re only planning on releasing a single book each month.
The good news, though, is that we have an exciting new line-up of articles. The more we talked about how to arrange our new article lineup, the more we realized that, currently, our website content is very GM-oriented, and even then 40% or more of it is just us talking. With the drop in book production, it seemed like players were really losing out.
So we completely renewed our line-up, now with a focus on providing crunch and content every day of the week, with a little less editorial from Joshua and me. This new lineup will go into effect next week, so why don’t I tell you a bit about it, so you can get ready.
Best in Class (Monday)
A character’s class and class features are important in defining who and what they are, and so we’re putting this one front and center. This article is going to focus on new class features. This is where you’ll find archetypes for your favorite class, as well as things like new rogue talents, cleric domains, oracle curses, and the like.
Extraordinary Feats (Tuesday)
Class features may be a big deal, but everyone gets feats, and they’re an easy way to customize your character and make him different from all the other fighters out there. This article is going to bring 10 to 15 new feats each and every week.
Magical Market (Wednesday)
Is there anything sexier than magic items? If there’s two things adventurers lust after, it’s XP and GP, and they spend all their gold on great magical gear. If you’re the kind of person who pores through sourcebooks looking for just the right equipment to suit up with, or you need something interesting to fill your magic item shop, this is the place for you.
Obscure Arcana (Thursday)
While it may not seem like it, far more classes use magic than don’t, and a fantasy game without magic is little more than a history game. This article will provide 5 to 10 brand new spells of varying levels each week, to ensure that your wizard is constantly buying more quills and ink pens. And it won’t just be sorcerers and wizards getting love, either: all the spellcasting classes will get their representation here (albeit, not every single week).
Podcast (Friday)
A variety-hour podcast will be our offerings on Friday, with a number of different features, ranging from reviews of various sourcebooks and adventures, to advice on how to mechanically optimize your character, to the sorts of game design discussion and dm tips that you’re used to seeing from articles like Dark Designs and Greave Plots.
As time goes on, and we get our bearings, my hope is that we’ll pick up our book production, as well, and it’s possible that if we do we might re-examine our weekly lineup. But don’t think that we’ll be slacking off here. In fact, we’re beginning work on a top-secret project that we hope to unveil sometime this summer or fall. I can’t tell you much, but I can tell you that it’s going to be exciting, so keep your eyes peeled.
That’s it for today’s article. I’d love to know your thoughts about our new schedule. Think we should just do books? Just articles? Think we should be doing nothing but editorials about good design and DM tips? Want to see all Grave Plots all the time? Send me your thoughts at ariggs@necromancers-online.com.
I’ll be back next week, but not with Dark Designs. Thanks everyone for reading this article over the past couple years, and I look forward to seeing you all (figuratively, anyway) with the new lineup.