Three Versions of the "Spore Room"

As some may know, I get inspired now and then to "play" with Photoshop.  In designing a particularly weird encounter for the Castle El Raja Key product release, I was inspired to render these images.  I am not giving away the encounter details, but let's say it is a rather unusual encounter.

Castle El Raja Key Front Cover Final (Sample)

Castle El Raja Key Update 2

Andy Taylor finished the full page print that will be included in the release of this project.  IMO it is his best work to date.  Andy will also be drawing some interior illustrations for it.   Eric Bergeron has finished the HI-RES cover (included on the sample cover was a LOW-RES version).  I am now 5,000 words (plus or minus) into the MS.  I am laying it out inline as I proceed.  The map versions being used are scanned by GRODOG and are better than the original ones scanned during the auction (like 5x better).  I am including historical anecdotes when these occur, mostly relating to EGG's adventures upon the 1st-3rd levels when he was a wee Mordy.  All around this is looking more exciting than the Bottle City adventure.

Updates and an "Ancient Sample"

The progress on Castle El Raja Key is proceeding nicely and it's looking more and more like an end of January release.

I am also preparing for publication (most likely in PDF form because of its immensity) the release of "Lost City of the Ancients" (aka Lost City of the Elders).  From my auction scans I pieced together the map which was unfinished at the time of auction.  However, not all parts align perfectly (probably my inexperience with Photoshop).

There are over 100 jpeg and pdf files related to this as well as many other MS pieces I have added since then.  The product is way beyond PPP's means to publish in print format due to its size and content, which has a heavy weight on maps (with the combined 40 x30 color hex map there are at least 15-20 other maps from interior buildings, sewers, etc) and illustrations, and probably over 60,000 words of text.

Due to this I have apportioned my time thusly:  Castle El Raja Key levels, Old Castle Levels, Memoirs and have added this project as a PDF only, which will allow it to be released, otherwise, it's a no-go.  I have had hundreds of inquiries over the years about this project.  Its scope has always been too large for a print endeavor and would eat away at my time to a severe degree just ordering its parts for print, but in PDF it becomes viable in the not do distant future (mid to end 2010).

Though I generally dislike polls, I would like to poll at least the readership here to get an idea of the reception of such a PDF product which would otherwise leave a part of RPG history resting in the hands of those who bought the originals at auction several years ago.  I have no idea what I would charge for such a thing, as well, but  the content will be huge, including a short story of EGG's first adventure into it.  Here's an extracted part from the Intro:

"...Historically this is the first off-world (or planar) adventure from the Original Campaign.  The city as is historically recorded existed out of the current time stream and out of known space.  It was a place of unknown and unfathomable events.  So too was it an experiment and thus of great interest to those vested in discovering the arcana that derived from it.  Its legend is only whispered among the seekers of arcane knowledge and its mere mention summons images of dread demons and less savory kin called from the depths of cold space.  Its total history will never be known lest the god who created it foretells such a time when this might pass.  Its ancient magics and beings have defeated the greatest of wizards, driving many to an early death or into the oblivion of irretrievable insanity.

The inspiration for creating the city is manyfold:  rolled into its vast and ancient mysteries are the vagaries of a god’s experiment gone awry and the resultant chaos, of loss, rebirth and the horrors unleashed from tampering with the ultimate of forbidden magic. It hints at the mysteries of the Pyramids, of the dreaded wastelands and cities of ancient Hyperborea as richly described by Clark Ashton Smith, of the interstellar intrusions of primordial beings by Lovecraft, of the lost continents of Atlantis and the myths of Lemuria rolled into one, and in many parts it embodies the stricken City of Brass as related in Burton’s tale with all of its vainglorious emptiness and ancient opulence. It is the desert which whispers of curses yet to come, the lonely place on the hill, the twice forsaken edifice, a ruin of ruins.  In awe inspiring streets, beneath burnished towers casting their last and dreadful double shadows, and amidst boney hands still clenching their final triumphs of life, there lurks within and about it an ultimate power that only death will reveal...."