Earthdawn: Fourth Edition coming in 2014

[Dark Schneider]

Any word on the Hardcopy of the Player's guide? Last info said it was going to the printers in April, so I was kind of wondering

[Mataxes]

I'll double check, but I think it's expected at the distributor for shipping any day now (if it isn't already there).

[Mataxes]

Sorry for the delay, we have confirmation that the print Player's Guides are at the distributor. (Studio 2). They should start getting sent out shortly.

[etherial]

[Mataxes]

To you. Studio 2 is our distributor -- they ship orders out to customers.

[etherial]

[Spader]

Is it only for soft covers, or hard ones are alse included?

[Mataxes]

Hardcovers are actually going to be delayed slightly to save on some production costs. Because the hardcover print run is much smaller than the softcover (we're only doing enough hardcovers to fill the Kickstarter pledges, with maybe a few left over), we're going to have the covers for the Player and GM guides made at the same time.

As I understand it, the interiors of the hardcover PGs are all printed, just waiting for the covers to be made. Since we don't know (just yet) what the final page count on the GM Guide is going to be, we don't know what dimensions we'll need for that cover. Once we do, then they make the covers, bind the existing interiors into them, and we have hardcover books.

Keep in mind, this is all in my understanding, and I may be off on details.

How does this all shape up in terms of time? It depends on the GM Guide. Of the 13 chapters planned for it, 10 have been delivered to editing. I'm cranking on the setting chapter, I have somebody else working on Dragons and Horrors. 9 of the 10 delivered chapters have been through editorial and pre-layout is being done. Given that one of the chapters in layout is the creatures chapter (the largest one), that will give us a decent idea about likely page count.

It does look like the GM Guide is not going to end up a 500+ page behemoth like the Player's Guide. The original source text files for the PG were about 3.5MB. So far the GM Guide is only 1.6MB. I have one of the larger chapters (setting) still to deliver, but that's including creatures. I thought we were going to be a lot tighter on space, but that doesn't look like it will be the case.

Right now we are trying to do everything we can to get the GM Guide done and out the door. If we're able to get the book to the printer by mid-June, then we'll have print copies in time for GenCon. I'll be honest, it is going to be tight, and given that I only have so much time to work on stuff during the week (thanks to a normal day job), I'm not sure whether it will happen or not.

I really want those two books at GenCon. Player's Guide will obviously be there, but GM Guide... I don't know for certain.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have more work to do.

[Spader]

Thanks for the update!

[Richard]