UPDATE!

We reached our $1,600 stretch goal, so we will redo the interior of Terrain Toolbox, and everybody who contributes will receive a copy of both Advanced Encounters and Terrain Toolbox!

What It’s All About

Advanced Encounters: Alternate Objectives is a DM resource and advice book that presents new ways to challenge your players.

In most fantasy roleplaying games, in battle the goal is almost always to kill the monsters and take their stuff. That’s great, but there is room for a lot more. That’s where alternate objectives comes in.

Alternate objectives are rescuing the hostages, destroying an evil relic, or just holding on to a scrap of land long enough for reinforcements to arrive. In short, they are goals in a combat encounter where the heroes struggle to do something more than bring down the baddies.

Published by Sneak Attack Press, Alternate Objectives will be at least 32 pages long and will feature advice for building a wide range of encounters with goals like escaping, protecting, and negotiating. It will cover reasons to include alternate objectives, how to build the encounters, and what rule tweaks you might consider. It will also feature at least eight sample encounters that show exactly what you can create with alternate objectives. (The sample encounters will be for D&D 4e or Pathfinder, but the advice can apply to a range of systems).

Why We Need You!

The majority of your money will go towards art. While we have a history of well-written projects (like Good Little Children Never Grow Up), our art budgets have been rather meager, and we’ve been forced to rely on public domain art and some clip art.

While we have found a lot of quality art (like the gorgeous cover for Terrain Toolbox), we cannot tailor the art to our product. When we describe a party of heroes racing against a band of orcs to retrieve the Spear of Slaughter we think our customers deserve to see it. To do that we need to commission artists.

We hope to do that for Alternate Objectives, and that’s where you come in!

Our art goals are tiered as follows:

$500 – We will commission black and white interior art for Alternate Objectives

$800 – We will commission professional cartography for the sample encounters.

$1000 – We will commission a color painting to grace the cover of our book.

Some money also goes to printing and shipping the books, and paying Kickstarter its percentage

What You Get Out of This

The basic options are to receive either a .pdf or print copy of the Advanced Encounters: Alternate Objectives. For a little bit more you get to help shape the book. You will have access to an exclusive forum where you can brainstorm, give suggestions, and provide feedback. You also get to read an early draft of the manuscript and playtest the sample encounters.

Higher levels allow you to include yourself or a favorite character in the art, choose the foes for sample encounters, or receive custom made terrain for an encounter of your choice (see sample below).

In addition to the awards listed, all contributors will receive credit in the book.

Other Ways to Help

Beyond just donating money, you can help this project succeed by spreading the word! Post a link on your Facebook page or Twitter account. Heck, even tell a friend using your voice! The more people we reach, the better the book will be in the end.

(Here is an example of 3D terrain that I have built).

Kicking it Forward

We are excited to announce that is project is part of Kicking it Forward movement. We solemnly pledge 5% of the profits from the finished product back to the Kickstarter community to help fund other people's dreams. This is not 5% of our Kickstarter contributions, it is 5% of the profit (after expenses) that the product makes through all channels for the life of the book.

Just as you help to make this book a reality, we hope to support many more projects in the future.