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The Lazy DM's Forge of Foes

Created by Mike Shea

Preorder Forge of Foes and our related products!

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Forge of Foes BackerKit Surveys sent!
almost 2 years ago – Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 02:40:26 PM

All Forge of Foes BackerKit surveys have been sent!

Please check your inbox, your junk email folder, or anywhere else your email might show up for your BackerKit notification.

You can also access your BackerKit survey here:

https://forge-of-foes.backerkit.com

Even if you’re not getting any additional add-ons, you must fill out your BackerKit survey to get your products!

Once you fill out your BackerKit survey and submit it, you'll get immediate access to download the electronic versions of your pledges and add-ons, except for Forge of Foes (which we're still working on).

We expect to lock down completed surveys in two weeks. You’ll get a 24-hour warning before we do so. So fill out and submit your survey and you’ll be all set.

Once we’ve finished all work on the Forge of Foes PDF, probably in a couple of months, we’ll send an email with information on how to download it.

Then, later this year, we’ll send out physical books to those backing physical rewards.

Thank you so much for your support!

Teos, Scott, and Mike

Forge of Foes Backerkit Surveys Coming Soon!
almost 2 years ago – Mon, Apr 17, 2023 at 01:19:02 PM

We’ve received the funding from Kickstarter and are preparing to send out the BackerKit surveys!

Please keep an eye out for BackerKit surveys! This is the only way you can receive your rewards for this Kickstarter!

The BackerKit surveys will let you lock in your order, pay for shipping of physical orders, and add any further add-ons you might have missed during the Kickstarter campaign. This week, we’ll be sending out test surveys to a handful of randomly selected backers. Assuming things go smoothly with that, we’ll send the remaining Backerkit surveys to all backers. Again, you must fill out this survey to receive your rewards.

About a week after the survey goes out, those of you who backed digital rewards (not including Forge of Foes) will receive emails from BackerKit with links to either directly download your PDF or add it to your DriveThruRPG library.

When the PDF of Forge of Foes is finished (in two or three months) we’ll send out another BackerKit email with the links for the PDF of Forge of Foes to all backers who backed it.

Later this year, when we have physical copies of Forge of Foes back from the printer, we’ll send out physical orders, including Forge of Foes and any other physical books you backed. We’re sending them all at once to minimize shipping costs for you.

If you have any questions, please email [email protected]. Thank you very much!

Teos, Scott, and Mike

We Did It! Next Steps for Forge of Foes
almost 2 years ago – Fri, Mar 31, 2023 at 02:17:24 PM

Thanks to you we just finished an outstanding campaign for Forge of Foes! 

We’re hard at work sending out art orders, revising chapters, and getting the layout locked in. We can’t wait to get this book in your hands.

What Happens Next

First, the most important thing to note:

All products for this Kickstarter will come through BackerKit. 

Please keep an eye out for a BackerKit email to fill out your BackerKit survey in three to four weeks.

The Delivery Timeline

In about three weeks the funding for the Kickstarter comes to us. In the meantime, we’ll prepare the Backerkit survey where you lock in your orders, add any add-ons, and pay the shipping price for physical books, including Forge of Foes and the other Lazy DM books if they’re part of your pledge or add-ons.

We’ll test the survey for a few days to make sure it's working as intended and then send out the BackerKit Survey to all backers. This should be late April to early May.

The BackerKit survey will be open for a couple of weeks to let everyone make their selections. At that point, probably mid May, we’ll begin locking orders and sending out digital products for everything except Forge of Foes (which we’ll still be working on).

Please note that all physical books will be shipped together when Forge of Foes is printed and ready. This saves you paying shipping twice. We expect this to happen later this year. At that point, we’ll ask you to confirm your address when we’re close to shipping the book.

We’ll send future updates as we get new news and to let you know about each part of the process as it occurs.

Thank you all once again for your outstanding support. This book couldn’t have happened without you.

Teos, Scott, and Mike

Final 48 Hours and Videos of Forge of Foes!
almost 2 years ago – Wed, Mar 29, 2023 at 12:55:02 PM

Hello friends!

We’re in the final 48 hours of the Lazy DM’s Forge of Foes Kickstarter campaign! Thank you all so much for supporting our work, and please tell your friends by sharing this link anywhere you wish:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/slyflourish/the-lazy-dms-forge-of-foes-for-5e?ref=8dzodo

Interviews and Videos

Throughout the campaign, we’ve had some awesome interviews and posted videos about Forge of Foes and what you can expect from the book. Here’s a list to enjoy!

When the campaign comes to a close this Friday, we’ll have an update about what you can expect from here on in.

Thank you again for your support!

Teos, Scott, and Mike

Releasing Forge of Foes Material under a Creative Commons License!
almost 2 years ago – Tue, Mar 21, 2023 at 09:16:41 AM

First off, thank you all for the fantastic support for The Lazy DM’s Forge of Foes! We couldn’t be more excited about what we have in store for this book.

Like everyone, we were riveted to the whole OGL situation at the beginning of the year, and were extremely happy to see the 5e System Reference Document released into the Creative Commons. Many other publishers followed suit, releasing more of their material under various open licenses.

While we don’t have stretch goals for this project, one of the things we’ve all talked about was releasing material from this book into the Creative Commons as well. Our intent is to offer up some of the key concepts and mechanics from the book to help other publishers benefit from our work, and to use these ideas and concepts to create their own material.

Thus, once we’ve released Forge of Foes, we’re going to release parts of it in our own Forge of Foes SRD under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0). This means anyone can use the material we release in the FoF SRD in their products, digital tools, or interpretive dance performances as long as they attribute it to us and to Forge of Foes (details on how to do so will be included in the FoF SRD).

Right now, these are the things we’re considering releasing under the FoF SRD. It’s not a complete list, and we won’t know for sure what’ll be in it until we’re done with the book, but here’s what we’re thinking we’ll include so far:

  • The Monster Statistics by CR table in the Quick Monster Builder
  • The instructions for using the above
  • The Common Monster Type Templates in the Quick Monster Builder section
  • The Common Monster Powers found in the Quick Monster Builder 
  • The Common Reskinnable Monsters list in the Reskinning Monsters section
  • The Spell Effects list in the Reskinning Monsters section
  • The Fifteen Engaging Environments list in Building Engaging Environments
  • Material from the Lazy Tricks for Running Monsters section
  • Material from the Monster Abilities and Theater of the Mind section
  • Material from the Building Legendary Monsters section
  • Material from the Running Minions and Hordes section
  • Material from the Dice Rolling Options section
  • The general-use stat blocks from the section of the same name
  • Material from the Monsters by Adventure Location section
  • Material from the Combat Encounter Checklist section
  • Material from the Lazy Encounter Benchmark section

The above can change, of course, as the book continues to go through final development and editing. But we’re definitely interested in offering material to help other publishers build off of our work.

What aren’t we including? Much of the guidance and advice we’ve written won’t be released under the CC. That’s really our words for our book. The ideas, of course, can certainly inspire other products, and we’re hoping the material we do release under the CC helps build off of that inspiration. We’re including a solid list of monster powers and monster type templates, but not all of them. Our goal is to give enough to be directly useful and to help creators build their own awesome character powers and monster-type abilities.

We’re extremely excited to offer this material up to the RPG community under an extremely permissive license, allowing our work go beyond the three of us and strengthen the entire hobby. And we can do this because of the fantastic support you’ve given us.

Thank you again,

Teos, Scott, and Mike