Crowdfunding a tabletop RPG on IndieGoGo is not always an easy task, but Griffon Lore Games is building an audience with their project, Burials of Teganshire. I spoke with Christophe Herrbach, Lead Designer and owner of Griffon Lore Games, about the project, why they went with IndieGoGo, why they are building this adventure for D&D 5e and Pathfinder 1e, and more.
EGG EMBRY (EGG): What is Burials of Teganshire?
GRIFFON LORE GAMES (GLG): Burials of Teganshire is a 32-page standalone or campaign module, along with a 14-page gazetteer, for Fifth Edition and Pathfinder 1E. It is the first module in our new Tales of Lothmar collection, and also the starting point of the Circle of the Blood Moon adventure path. Our objective is an adventure that DMs can include in any campaign setting, commercial or homebrew, and take players through an original story with colorful NPCs and antagonists.
EGG: Will the adventure include any original content (monsters, magic items, etc.)?
GLG: Yes, totally! I would say that half of the monsters in the adventure are original and presented with complete stat blocks. It is an introductory module for characters of level 1-3, so it is purposely light on magic items players can acquire, but that will for sure change as the adventure path develops. We’re fans of the OGL— we also include monsters and magic items from the open gaming license.
EGG: Looking at your offerings, VTT maps are a primary product for Griffon Lore Games. Do you feel they’re a critical part of gaming?
GLG: Oh, we love maps! From an adventure design perspective, we think maps are critical for DMs’ and players’ imagination. They are a great tool to present the location of the adventure and also allow DMs to explore and enrich our content. Anna Meyer is our Director of Cartography, and we humbly think she makes the best maps in the industry. You can check her work on the Greyhawk maps [here]. All our maps are 300dpi resolution: they can be used for VTT, but some can also print up to 24×36 in size and display on your gaming table. We will also provide in our store complete map packs with high-res files to download.
EGG: What’s your approach to designing adventures? What reaction are you trying to elicit from the players?
GLG: Great question. We’re all about character development through stories—specifically their stories as they interact with the setting and plot. Our modules propose different options for players to resolve, and even a “lose” condition is valid and has meaning. In Burials of Teganshire, we present four possible endings to the adventure that will carry over to the second module we will publish in October. We also try to describe NPCs through both their motivations (what is making them behave a certain way) and their dispositions (what they do if they are Friendly, Neutral, Indifferent, Hostile, etc.). We hope this creates an experience where players feel they can take the adventure where they want to and transform the world around them without burdening the DM with extraneous detail. There is nothing worse than feeling you are playing in someone else’s campaign.
EGG: This is for D&D 5e and Pathfinder 1e. It makes sense to embrace 5e’s large footprint. With the options of Pathfinder 1e or 2e, what makes PF1e the right choice to support?
GLG: It has been both a historical decision and player feedback-driven one. Our first adventure, Curse of the Lost Memories, was published before PF2 was released, and we had built an audience with PF1 players. That community is looking for new and original PF1 content, and based on the in-progress status of our crowdfunding campaign; we sit at a 50/50 split between PF1 and 5E orders. It is also not a massive effort to do a proper conversion from 5E to PF1 – some encounters need to be tweaked to remain comparable in difficulty. Still, it is an easy decision to undertake that effort to make our PF1 players happy.
EGG: As you mentioned, you have another product, Curse the Lost Memories, for both 5e and PF1e. Can you discuss how much the PF1e version has sold compared to the D&D 5e version?
GLG: About the same. We have a good core of PF1 players, and our Discord channel is filled with requests to continue supporting PF1. At the time we wrote Curse of the Lost Memories, our group was actually playing PF1, and it was the first system that we wrote the module for. It turned out that converting a PF1 module to 5E is much harder than the other way around, and we decided to start writing Burials of Teganshire for 5E first.
EGG: When we first discussed doing an interview, one of the reasons I wanted to was that you’re funding it via IndieGoGo. That’s not always an easy platform for RPGs to gain traction on but you’re finding an audience. Why IndieGoGo, and what’s your experience there been like?
GLG: It is our first Indiegogo campaign, and so our experience there is limited. As a creator, I found the Indiegogo UI and creator tools excellent and easy to work with (much more straightforward than other platforms we have used). Launching Tales of Lothmar, we also felt that these short modules would do better on Indiegogo, which is famous for funding comic books and similar small prints. It is harder to come to Kickstarter with a $1000 project, as campaigns there tend to be more significant. We are also a bit old-fashioned in our approach to crowdfunding in the sense that we only want to use it as a tool to help us cover our production costs. We feel that mainstream crowdfunding sites have become marketplaces and stores instead where larger companies seek to realize sales and extensive margins, and it is much harder now for small indie companies like us to compete for attention.
EGG: Beyond Burials of Teganshire, what projects are you working on?
GLG: We are just getting started with Tales of Lothmar! We are working on three adventure paths for this collection and releasing a new module every three months. The second module after Burials of Teganshire (BOT) will be named Fire on Claymore Woods and will continue where the action in BOT left off. Our other adventure paths in this collection include Castle Mornay, where players will get a chance to refurbish and run a castle in the wilderness and Rise of the Gekk. In this campaign, PCs are young lizardmen discovering their ancient heritage. We are also working on a sequel to Curse of the Lost Memories, and our campaign setting, Kingdom of Lothmar.
Along with Burials of Teganshire, we are also releasing a free 14-page gazetteer for the Viscounty of Kandra, one of the thirteen provinces of Lothmar.
EGG: That’s a good roadmap. Thanks for talking with me. For fans interested in learning more, where can they follow you?
GLG: Please check our Burials of Teganshire campaign on Indiegogo! To engage with us, you can use any of the following:
Burials of Teganshire from Griffon Lore Games
End Date: 8/25/2020
“Gruesome deaths, arcane wards, ancient rituals, and an old bridge: a 5E & Pathfinder 1E adventure.”
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