Preorders, the Iron Crown and new podcast episode

Hey Bayfolks

A quick newsletter today. On the menu:

• The Lost Bay RPG Preorders are open https://www.thelostbaystudio.com/pages/the-lost-bay-preorders

• New podcast episode with Yochai Gal

• New The Lost Bay third party content https://rossburton.itch.io/phreak-vibe

• A powerful queen, and a mighty Iron Crown

I’m still processing the The Lost Bay RPG Kickstarter campaign. We managed to fund the print run and beyond. That’s pretty unbelievable! I’m so grateful and this is going to have consequences: I’ll be putting out more The Lost Bay content in the next few months. I’ve got plans for more setting and adventure expansions. Though right now I’m focussed on releasing the books as soon as possible. Here are the immediate next steps:

• 1 week: send the Quickstarts to the editors

• 1 week: update the WIP The Lost Bay PDF edition

• 2 weeks: send the WIP The Lost Bay PDF to backers

• 2 weeks: third party creator fund goes live

• 2 weeks: send Quickstarts to translators

If you’ve missed the Kickstarter campaign, don’t worry you’re still in time to preorder the book(s) on our website https://www.thelostbaystudio.com/pages/the-lost-bay-preorders preorders for retailers are also available

The Quickstarts and the WIP The Lost Bay PDF contain a micro adventure, which means you’ll be able to start playing asap. It’s called the Hollow Hitchhiker and I’m super excited about it. Here’s a few unedited lines from the draft

Like every year in the same month, he’s back, roaming the Sinking Marshes back roads, carrying his small backpack and a charming smile. Gas station clerks whisper tales of a love lost in a crash of metal and fire. Superstitious truckers hang futile lucky charms to rear mirrors. A melancholic barmaid swears his heart is filled with sorrow and guilt. She knows! While fresh corpses are scattered throughout the marshes, bitter locals drink away their fear and look for culprits. Was it an accident? Cowardice? Or was it a dark ritual dedicated to an elusive immortal? What has tied the fate of the Hollow Hitchhiker to this forgotten place? No one remembers.

This adventure is set in the Sinking Marshes, on the edges of The Lost Bay. It features a map designed by Strega Wolf van den Berg. We’ve been doing a lot of research to determine the visual style of the maps and we’ve settled on a lo-fi layout that fits super well the 199X setting. Below is one of our preliminary layout studies. The adventure is a pointcrawl with a mini depth crawl touch, I’ll write in detail about its design process once it’s released.  

New friends!

The Kickstarter campaign has brought in new members into The Lost Bay server, and with them new third party content is being produced. Today Ross Burton has just released Phreak on itch, a super cool hacker-type vibe. Power your 56K modem (option: plug cables directly into your own flesh) and start hacking the world https://rossburton.itch.io/phreak-vibe

The Lost Bay podcast: Yochai Gal

We’re one third into Season 3 of The Lost Bay Podcast! Be sure to check our latest episode with Yochai Gal, the designer behind Cairn. Yochai was the first ever guest of the podcast three years ago, and kind of the person who gave me the map of the indie scene world. It means a lot having him back on the show to talk about what he’s been doing in those three years, which mainly summarizes to: putting together a new fantastic edition of Cairn, with new backgrounds, more procedures, and most of all a comprehensive boxed set packed to the brim with gaming stuff.

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

A powerful queen

Today I’ve been visiting a museum, an old chapel actually, where the crown of Queen Teodolinda is held. This Lombard, Germanic Queen ruled over Italy in the ‘600s. She’s been worshiped as a saint by the local population, although never made a saint by the church, and had an important impact on the area, mostly contributing to converting locals to catholicism. But most interestingly she had an amazing crown, considered a relic and an object of political power. The crown has been used for centuries to crown kings and emperors, including Bonaparte himself. Now the crown is held into a safe altar, in a magnificent chapel covered with a visual depiction of Teodolinda’s life. I wish I could show you the opening of the safe altar, but visitors can’t photograph or film the chapel, so I’ve bought and photographed a few postcards to give you a sense of the beauty of it. The crown is called Corona Ferrea, iron crown, because it supposedly contained one nail from Jesus’ cross. Contained as in the past, because in the centuries the crown size has been reduced, possibly because the sections containing the nail have been removed. Nobody knows for sure. The crown is held in a brief procession once per year, but I moved a little ago to this town and didn’t have a chance to witness it yet.

The crown. It’s not sure what part of the crown contains the holy nail, it might be the inner iron ring which you can see in the photo.

Teodolinda, a powerful queen.

A chalice, made of cobalt tinted glass. It’s believed it changes color when filled with poison. Teodolinda used it to offer ritually wine to whom became her second husband. Her first husband died little after the marriage, possibly of poisoning. Coincidence? Myth? 

Teodolinda dreams that she needs to convert everyone to Catholicism. Interestingly Lombards in Germany were Catholic, whereas Northern Italian populations were not, but rather practiced pagan rites or Arianism.

NPC encounter, who are they? 

The town-setting of your next session. Those medieval wonky perspectives are so mesmerizing to me for some reason. The yellowish background is actually golden. Armors and weapons of this huge painting were painted with silver pigments, but unfortunately no postcards of those (although the silver pigments have now oxidized and are not silvery anymore but mostly black)

The red moon, former symbol of the town. I believe this clever and mischievous looking moon has secretly GMed most of the events in Teodolinda’s life.

I don’t play much fantasy RPGs, but this ancient chapel for some reason made me kind of want to.

That’s all I got for today, I need to hurry finishing The Lost Bay Quickstarts and close the laptop before the Hollow Hitchhiker finds me. If you haven’t checked The Lost Bay game yet, hop to http://thelostbayrpg.com/

Have a great Sunday

Iko