alhoon wrote:I'm also interested to know more about this "curse of the Golden spear" adventure that has so many maps and cities. It seems so far more a campaign setting than an adventure.
When I first created Kaidan, my intentions were to create both a setting and an adventure series. Steven Russell of Rite Publishing suggested I create an introductory campaign arc, first, to sell the idea of Kaidan. If the adventures proved successful and a fan base desired more, we'd create more.
So The Curse of the Golden Spear was the first products released for Kaidan, but as adventures set in a land without a defined campaign setting. All 3 adventures of the mini-campaign are both adventures and setting material. The first adventure has in the appendices the Kaidan rules for Death and Reincarnation - which though not the same as "Dark Powers check", it's Kaidan's darkest quality (you cannot be raised, reincarnated, or resurrected as per spells, they do not work in Kaidan - when you die, you will be reincarnated using Kaidan's unique ruleset).
Adventure 2 features a new class archetype (Ranger yojimbo). All 3 adventures feature new monsters and monster templates, and new magic items. The appendices serve as setting material mostly.
The Kaidan setting handbook to be created and released this year will include much of my 3 racial guides (Kappa, Henge, Tengu), much of my 4 faction guides (only 2 created so far - Yakuza, Samurai, coming will be Shinobi/ninja and one for the dark classes that support the shogunate). The book will include traits, feats, spells, magic items, artifacts, monsters, monster templates in the player portion of the guide. The GM's portion will contain articles on the imperial government, the office of the shogunate, taxes and economics, the social caste system, religion in Kaidan, as well as a gazetteer of the 3 major islands and several other locations (including Ryukyo - sea dragon city). Of course the reincarnation rules and cosmology fit in the GM section too.
I originally proposed creating the above first, however, Steven has more game material marketing than I, so I created and released upon his concerned schedule.
After the setting book is released, if successful, my hope is to create a full 1st - 20th (maybe) adventure campaign featuring PCs as locals (samurai, yakuza, etc.)
Several of the reviewers commented the same that The Curse of the Golden Spear was as much setting material as adventure.