Nightmare Fuel: Snakes, Bugs (well, arthropods mostly), and Evil Plants for the DFRPG

[DouglasCole]

Tomorrow Gaming Ballistic launches our latest support for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG and anything else that requires some creepy opposition:

Nightmare Fuel.

These sequels to the Nordlond Bestiary and Enemies Book provide themed monsters of classic ookiness: Snakes, Bugs, and Evil Plants.

This is the first project Gaming Ballistic is running on Backerkit Crowdfunding; we hope you'll help Nightmare Fuel bring three more volumes of monsters to the Dungeon Fantasy RPG!


Click here to sign up to be notified on launch!

Thanks! See you tomorrow!

[DouglasCole]

Nightmare Fuel is now LIVE on Backerkit Crowdfunding!

[Varyon]

Nice, I'll be certain to join in when I get home tonight. Of course, upon seeing the cover mock-ups, it occurred to me it would be hilarious if there were another stretch goal that would make available a version of the book with all the artwork redone in the cutesy style of the mock-ups. No change in stats - the giant snake will still crush your bones in its coils and swallow your broken corpse whole, but it'll look adorable the whole time.

EDIT: Just to make certain I'm understanding the setup correctly, the quick reference deck/pdf and Foundry VTT modules are only available as add-ons, correct? They are not included in any of the default options?

[mehrkat]

found my own answer sorry

Submitted pdfs and vtt addon. :)

The Beastiary has been a really great tool for my game and recommend supporting based on that.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Nice, I'll be certain to join in when I get home tonight. Of course, upon seeing the cover mock-ups, it occurred to me it would be hilarious if there were another stretch goal that would make available a version of the book with all the artwork redone in the cutesy style of the mock-ups. No change in stats - the giant snake will still crush your bones in its coils and swallow your broken corpse whole, but it'll look adorable the whole time.

EDIT: Just to make certain I'm understanding the setup correctly, the quick reference deck/pdf and Foundry VTT modules are only available as add-ons, correct? They are not included in any of the default options?

Your second part first: https://www.backerkit.com/c/douglas-...dge_levels#top

Complete Nightmare ($105) and Complete Digital Nightmare ($50) both include the QR cards and Foundry VTT modules. So do the All the New Things ($125) and All the New Things (Digital) ($60) pledge levels. If you follow the link above, you'll see photos of each pledge level, which should help.

The "cutesy" books would be fun; I've been asked to provide cutesey covers, but it would need to sit there at like $73K to re-do all the art. There's a LOT of bespoke art under commission (or there will be once I get my art direction done).

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Your second part first: https://www.backerkit.com/c/douglas-...dge_levels#top

Complete Nightmare ($105) and Complete Digital Nightmare ($50) both include the QR cards and Foundry VTT modules. So do the All the New Things ($125) and All the New Things (Digital) ($60) pledge levels. If you follow the link above, you'll see photos of each pledge level, which should help.

Ah, thank you. I thought it was odd for them to only be available a la carte.

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

The "cutesy" books would be fun; I've been asked to provide cutesey covers, but it would need to sit there at like $73K to re-do all the art. There's a LOT of bespoke art under commission (or there will be once I get my art direction done).

My original draft of the response had an eyeballed $100k, basically as "approximately double the Omnibus stretch goal," but I figured you'd have a better idea as to what it would cost. Art ain't cheap!

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Ah, thank you. I thought it was odd for them to only be available a la carte.

Indeed. No, I tried to provide a best guess at what folks would want.

"Everything new since the last project," which was the big Nordlond Bestiary, seemed appropriate. Print/PDF and PDF-only of just the new books, likewise.

Right now, "All the New Things" (which includes Shields Up), "NF PDF-only," and "NDF Print/PDF" are basically running tied. "Complete Nightmare in Print/PDF" is 2/3 the quantities of the other three.

Everything else is onesy-twosy.

My original draft of the response had an eyeballed $100k, basically as "approximately double the Omnibus stretch goal," but I figured you'd have a better idea as to what it would cost. Art ain't cheap!

The Omnibus stretch goal is out there a while because I wanted to be 100% double-dog sure that the project was successful before I started giving hardcover books away.

But yeah, the art budget here would be about $14K or so to redo everything in what amounts to the Munchkin art style. Not a bad thing...but it would be one of those things that would only pay for itself migrating the creatures to other games.

Hmmm...

[ravenfish]

I've backed.

On a semi-tangent on the subject of art, how do you think the emerging "computer-generated art" that we're starting to see will affect this sort of thing? If, in a few years' time, you can type in "creature with a man's upper body but a snake tail instead of legs, wielding a scimitar" and have a neural network produce a reasonable quality picture matching that description after a minute's waiting, how much does that ease/speed up the process of creating a fantasy bestiary?

[johndallman]

25% of the way!

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

I've backed.

On a semi-tangent on the subject of art, how do you think the emerging "computer-generated art" that we're starting to see will affect this sort of thing? If, in a few years' time, you can type in "creature with a man's upper body but a snake tail instead of legs, wielding a scimitar" and have a neural network produce a reasonable quality picture matching that description after a minute's waiting, how much does that ease/speed up the process of creating a fantasy bestiary?

Depending on how usable the images are, it might help. There are a few things that mitigate against:

1) Some of the art that I've seen - and I get that machine learning improves with iteration - is great impressionistic stuff, but looking closely and things get odd. Oh, sure, it's a hydra from a distance, but zoom in a bit and what the holy heck is that even?

2) I'm not sure any of the stuff I've seen to date would produce an image like the montage on my Nordlond Bestiary or the action scenes that will grace the covers of Nightmare Fuel.

3) The details are never going to be exactly right. I can specify the precise armor and weapons to be used, and provide visual references. Maybe there will come a time where I feed such images into a generator and poof.

4) I like helping artists eat.

I've nothing against AI per se, and if it gives me usable images, so be it. It may be that what you wind up doing is feeding data/instructions into the machine, generate the art, and THEN make the monster so that the details of the creature match those of the art.

But for now, I'd rather go with the bespoke art from the team I've built over the years.