December Update: Arc 1, Player's Guide, Merchandise Updates, and Paid GMing
over 2 years ago – Mon, Nov 27, 2023 at 11:31:52 AM

Happy December! We're pleased to bring you your monthly progress report.

Progress Report

I'm happy to announce that the stickers have all been manufactured and we're in the process of getting the pins manufactured as well. We're underway with having all of our Kickstarter merch produced and ready to ship alongside the hardcover books once those are completed as well.

Regarding Arc 1, after listening to some comments sent to us responding to the previous update, we've decided to take a little bit of time to complete the Player's Guide. To play the game ideally, people ought to have access to the most recent iterations of both game mechanics and world lore. We'll send over PDFs of both at the beginning of December in lieu of rushing production. This gave us an opportunity to commission and include more art into the books. Once again, we appreciate your patience as we make sure to get the best possible versions of our books and merchandise out to backers.

5e, PF2e Paid GM Games

I'd also like to announce that I'm looking into running paid-GM games come January after the holidays to help fund future projects we're excited to work on. They'll be run digitally over Discord and through either Roll20 or Foundry depending. I'm looking to open two groups: one 5e and one PF2e and the games will be decided by popular request.

Personally, for 5e, I'd love to run Curse of Strahd or Out of the Abyss as I don't have experience with either. For PF2e, we're at 3-4/6 players and they've decided on Season of Ghosts, a supernatural, very Japanese mythology-inspired adventure path. If you're interested or know anybody who is interested, please let me know!

That's all we've got for this month. We'll return in January with more good news! Please enjoy your holidays and see you very soon.

Please feel free to leave a comment, contact us at [email protected] or any of our social media accounts, or chat with us in the NHP Discord server:

November Update: Sequential PDF Releases
over 2 years ago – Fri, Oct 27, 2023 at 12:16:31 PM

Hey everyone!

Happy Autumn, we're heading smack dab into the fall season! To fill you in on what's been happening, we're making excellent progress. I've written out the promised one-shot "The Great Pagoda Heist", formerly known as "Curse of Nangweon Temple". Not only that, but I've started a regular project converting older edition and PF monsters to 5e on social media. Just something in between work.

We're also formatting the PDF. It's a big task and it might take a little more time than expected, but I'm not here today to announce a delay. Instead, we're going to deliver each of the 6 arcs of our adventure book sequentially, one arc at a time as we head into the final hardcover book release.

This enables us to receive more playtest data pertinent to the story itself. If there's any need to put forward erratas, we'll have early data that can help us save time later down the line since we needed some broader player reviews. That way, the final book release will ensure the adventure is in its most perfect form. Think of this as a closed beta: everyone who preordered or backed us will receive a chapter per month release.

You can expect arc 1 to be delivered sometime around November! We'll send you guys each a completed arc leading up to the final product within/before a month.

That in mind, here's a preview of our layout:

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to hit us up on Kickstarter, email us at [email protected], or join us at our Discord server!

October Update | Big Bad Con, Progress Report
over 2 years ago – Tue, Sep 26, 2023 at 11:49:26 AM

The eclipsing hound of the Emperor of Darkness; as he coveted the light of the heavens, he sent his Bul-gae to seize the sun and the moon, which proved too big a task for its jaws. These shadow creatures can assume aspects of both radiant and necrotic energies.

Hello, folks, happy Tuesday!

So far, we're making good strides with the book. Illustrations are finished which gives us time to get to commissions for both the Daewang and Mountain God Tiers. So far, half of those commissions are either in progress or have been sent out to their recipients.

As for the book itself, our very detail-oriented English to Korean translator Dan is giving it one last look so that we can say with total confidence everything is as it should be. In sum, we will be able to finish formatting the book by the end of the year as promised a while ago. Meanwhile, I've completed converting the 5e rule set to Pathfinder 2e. It's being reviewed by a handful of playtesters to make sure that balancing-wise, nothing is amiss. Following that, I can fully dive into our one-shots and then Cloudbreaker Alliance.

Big Bad Con

Announcing it here, but I will be at Big Bad Con! If anyone wants to meet me or say hello, definitely hit me up and I'd be happy to stop by. I will also be a panelist for the Appropriation or Appreciation? panel on September 30th at 9AM (Cypress Room C (113)) alongside some amazing fellow creators. 

In general, we'll be speaking on what it means to appreciate and share the cultures we've lived appropriately in the TTRPG sphere vs. minimizing or removing context from others' cultures. It's definitely something I've had to put a lot of thought into while working on Undying Corruption! Especially as I learned more about and did my best to respect my own country's folklore and indigenous faith.

If you have any questions or concerns for me, please feel free to comment here or contact me at [email protected]. Otherwise, you can always find us in our Discord server!

As a semi-regular exercise, I've started converting 3.5e/PF2e monsters to 5e, and I'd love your thoughts on those.

September Update: Cloudbreaker Alliance collaboration!
over 2 years ago – Thu, Aug 24, 2023 at 08:07:40 AM

Good morning! Slightly early update this month. We're pleased to announce our collaboration with CJ Leung on producing a conversion of Undying Corruption to Cloudbreaker Alliance! 

Their Kickstarter is still running and on their way to clearing more stretch goals! Cloudbreaker Alliance is a counter-apocalyptic fantasy tabletop game that draws inspiration from Eastern and Western sources. The setting features a world that was once enshrouded 2000 years ago by impenetrable clouds. Four regions have since advanced isolated from one another, but the clouds are beginning to break apart with the Cloudbreaker Alliance spearheading a new age of exploration and diplomacy.

All you need to play Cloudbreaker Alliance are 2d6's with an animated tutorial to help you get started. Please help them clear their stretch goals! I see that the next stretch goals waiting to be unlocked are for new art and playable content like the Korpocle lifeform, new vehicles, and items.

If you back Cloudbreaker Alliance, you'll be eligible for a 10% discount code for the digital download of our converted module.

Check out their Kickstarter page here!

Progress Update

Progress continues apace. We're in the final stretches of map work, which will clear the deck for us to devote our attention fully into preparing the book's final layout. I'm almost finished with converting the book into Pathfinder 2e meanwhile and all monster stat blocks have been converted into Korean. Groundwork for future updates past the initial book launch is well underway.

In the meantime, here's a preview of some item art we've got:

The Dragon King Angler is one of many original magic items that you can find in the Undying Corruption adventure. Not only can you use it as a fishing tackle, but it'll serve you well in battle as a whip that'll help you snag your more slippery foes. Please look forward to more details!

If you have any questions or comments, you can reach us at [email protected], find Nine Heavens Press on Twitter, or join our Discord server!

August Update | Progress Report and Previews
over 2 years ago – Thu, Jul 27, 2023 at 12:00:14 PM

Hello, all! Hope you're all doing well despite the summer heat.

We've got a couple things to share, but before then, just wanted to let you all know that we're almost finished with all art assets for the book. Layout will commence in earnest and we're on schedule to put the PDF out later in the year. Everything's going very well and once the PDF is out, we can keep our ears peeled for reviews and any possible need for errata.

Previews

In addition to working on the book, the Nine Heavens Press team started planting the seeds for smaller projects we're in process of launching in the future. Towards that end, we've teamed up with CeeHaz to create new character and creature designs that you can use in your games. Here's one such preview of what we've got in store for you.

If all goes well, we're going to continue expanding the world of Danguk even beyond this book and also work on homebrewing additional stat blocks, art assets, lore, the works for GM and player use!

We've also been hard at work with translating the book into Korean! This will take some time of course, but we're almost complete translating stat blocks, subclasses, and mechanics. Afterward, we're going to press onward with the main body of the book. We expect much of this work to press forward into next year, so we thank you for your patience up till now. Just wanted to let you know that we are doing our best on all sides!

Playtest Update

We've gotten additional comments from playtesting higher tier chapters on how to improve some of our subclasses. Way of the Dosa Monk in particular has been tweaked in light of newly established lore in Pathfinder 2e's recently published book, Rage of Elements. It's not a tremendous deal, but due to our conversions, we want to keep consistent with their lore concerning the five phases. For example, we conflated Wood and Air together for Undying Corruption, but Air is considered a separate sixth element that all other elements feed and transform into when they take immaterial form.

I thought this was cool and this helped provide the seeds necessary for me to balance (strengthen) the Dosa monk a little. To add more versatility to gameplay relating to the Dosa's ability to shift between cycles per turn, we added the Air element as a phase that Dosas can choose to shift into. It's a small change, but I think the subclass has been made a lot tighter for it, not to mention some additional fun mechanics we've invented in the process.

The Art of the Monster Slayer Tactician also got an overhaul in the past month. We thought at first there was a lot going for it, but its jack of all trades nature doesn't leave much room for it to master in any particular field. We chose to shelve the concept in favor of something new that fits into our inspiration from the tiger hunters of Korea, the sancheok.

We've come up instead with the Way of the Sancheok subclass! Your sympathy with monsters and research into the occult lets you simulate a false reincarnation within your trusted mount, allowing you to bestow on them actions and traits of creatures that you've encountered over your adventure. You carry a bestiary that serves as kind of a spellbook for these traits and actions, recording your observations and analysis of these creatures. Not to toot my own horn, but I think I've found a good way to balance this feature in such a way it doesn't break the game terribly WHILE letting you use, say, a dragon's breath weapon or a certain aberrant orb's eye beams! All in all, the Shapechange spell served as a good ceiling for what would be the strongest expression of this power.

Anyway, everything's going well and so far, I'm heartened to hear that reviews for the game and the one-shot have been positive. It's our first work after all and we're very keen on improving from our experiences here and presenting the strongest work we possibly can to readers and gamers.

Thanks so much and I hope to hear from you guys if you have any questions or comments! If so, you can reach us at [email protected], comment under this post, or join our Discord server here: