About this project

Very recently I had the chance to start a creative project with longtime TSR and Dungeons & Dragons artist Jeff Easley, and the success of that project right here on Kickstater allowed me to begin the process of expanding the universe that Jeff and I created.

Enter my old friend David R. Deitrick.  David is perhaps the most recognizable artist in the role-playing genre that has very little name recognition.  His work inside the industry started in the very early 80s with the science fiction game Traveller, and later spilled over into Star Trek, Battletech, and Space: 1889 to name just a few.

As a former military man and naval officer, David’s artistic nature has always been best placed in ship design, as seen in his science fiction images, but it wasn’t until Frank Chadwick created Space: 1889 that something truly special happened.

In that game, David was charged with creating images for something brand new, the genre we know today as ‘Steampunk’, a Jules Verne type universe where the power of steam runs the world in a way that somehow corresponds with modern technology.

David’s drafting brilliance shows through in this era he so loved as a child, and when he approached me about what Jeff Easley and I had done together on Kickstater, there was an instant connection about the untapped possibilities before us.

What if, we asked, Jeff’s High Fantasy world evolved over thousands of years into a kind of modern fantasy amalgamation?  What would the genre be called, how would it look, and what kind of story could derive from such an advanced timeline?

Well, that’s where a ‘Magepunk’ novel comes into play.  Using the foundation built in Easley’s ‘Nameless Realms’ David and I advanced a timeline to a distant yet frontier-like period we called The Gun Kingdoms. 

This Kickstarter project will allow us to explore and expand this new timeline as David does what he does best, create a world of steam and wonder while I throw in a bit of old school magic and some RPG inspired high adventure. 

Our vision will stick to the same small press and dime store standards that the Easley project did, meaning this will be a fast and furious read of no more than 50K words with art included that draws the reader forward with each new chapter.  David will also provide his vision of this timeline with a new cover that harkens back to the great 80s art we saw coming out of the gaming houses like Game Designers Workshop and FASA.

David has already signed on to create five wonderful interior black and white illustrations, but why stop there?  For every $150 this Kickstarter gets above our initial goal David will produce a new piece of chapter art for the project up to fifteen brand new pieces!  Yep, a fully illustrated novel with a piece in each chapter of the book.

If you’re a fan of gaming art, of being a part of something that is breaking against the current state of the big bookseller markets, then this is something I hope you’ll help us with.  I will say this, together we have more power than any corporation could dream.

So that’s our project, and we hope you are with us in our desire to recreate something that has been lost.  Thank you for your time and support.