Swords & Wizardry Light - Forum

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Kickstarter - The Grande Temple of Jing - Releasing GenCon 2013? Oh, GenCon 2014 - er, Nope - Ah, Finally GenCon 2015



Way back in 2013 I wrote a post about The Grande Temple of Jing Kickstarter. It was to be the bestest, most amazing megadungeon ever produced - at least best of any based off of a 2001 release of a 40 page adventure for D20.

You too can turn 40 black and white pages into a 300+ page full color hard cover. It might just take 2 years longer than you expected.

In any case the new, improved The Grande Temple of Jing released at GenCon this year. Two years later than estimated (August 2013). I never backed this one so I completely forgot about it until I was poked by a reader.

Why the delay?
The Grande Temple of Jing is the dungeoncrawl that rules them all. It is a megadungeon designed in the spirit of old school games, but with modern rules and sensibilities. It is presented here for the Pathfinder system, but it can be modified to play with your favorite fantasy RPG. It is designed for levels 1-20 but if this Kickstarter reaches its first stretch goal, then we will add content for epic level characters as well. 
A part of the grande temple was originally published in 2000 as a thin, digest sized book, compatible with the d20 system. With your help we will update, upgrade, and MASSIVELY expand that book. In effect, we will make it the adventure it was always meant to be. Our goal is to create a full color hardcover tome that any roleplayer would be proud to have on their shelves. Professional production will ensure that retailers can display the book confidently on store shelves.
So yeah. The first rule of a successful Kickstarter is have 90% written before kicking. 40 pages of a 300+ page book puts it around 13% written when kicked. 12 celebrity creators and fan submissions didn't help.

Strangely enough, the deluxe Tunnels & Trolls kickstarter will also be shipping books soon. It's estimate shipping date? August 2013.

Must be something in the air...

7 comments:

  1. A good lesson not to promise more than you can deliver, that is why I give away my megadungeon for free one day at a time, one room at a time.

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  2. The depressing thing is that aside from a Gencon interview with the publisher I can't find any reviews of it.

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  3. Based on the hyperbole, I skipped backing this one. So now that it's out, does it live up to the hype? Is it in league with Rappan Athuk? And while expanding to 300+ is a big increase, how does the content compare to The Slumbering Tsar Saga which ships with a reinforced bookshelf to hold all 950 pages.

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    1. Just about nothing is in league with Rappan Athuk. But I'm curious to hear what people think of this effort too.

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  4. It seems that back in 2012, I discovered Kickstarter via Order of the Stick and went through a minor midlife crisis at the same time. I went through a wave of nostalgia and threw money at a whole boatload of old school projects in a very short time. As with so many others, I ran the spectrum between good (Adventures Dark & Deep, Castles & Crusades, Shadows of Esteren, Ogre) to ugly (Myth & Magic, Mike Nystuls debacles, and several others)

    Unfortunately, I had not discovered the Tavern yet, or I might have given Jing a pass, but I was still on a wave of Kickstarter Madness and fell for this one. It hit the right combination of chords for me to fail my saving throw against fluff... so if and when I receive it, I will share my impressions.
    I expect that, as with most of the long delayed projects, the shine will have worn off completely by now, and I will find it to be meh...

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  5. Lesson learned: estimated completion times for Kickstarters may vary by at least 2 years. Apparently some people are terrible at figuring out how long it takes to finish projects. In my business we call those people "ex-employees, non-rehirable" but in the interwebz we call them entrepreneurs on Kickstarter.

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  6. I just want to know why it's spelled "grande."

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