Hi All,
In this video Francesco Nepitello, lead designer of The One Ring takes time out of his crazy designing schedule to talk with me about The LM's Screen and Lake-town sourcebook, which will be available at Gencon, and then on general release just as soon as the logistics and distribution chain have done their thing!

In part one we talk mostly about the Lake-town book:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBOuguCHEZQ




Updated from the C7 website:
"“LAKE-TOWN WAS REFOUNDED AND WAS MORE PROSPEROUS THAN EVER, AND MUCH WEALTH WENT UP AND DOWN THE RUNNING RIVER; AND THERE WAS FRIENDSHIP IN THOSE PARTS BETWEEN ELVES AND DWARVES AND MEN.”

THE HOBBIT

The Lake-town Sourcebook presents this fascinating setting in detail, including:

• • • •

A guide to Lake-town, its inhabitants and culture
More information on the Long Marshes and the creatures dwelling within
New Fellowship Phase activities
A new playable culture – Men of the Lake

Also included in this product is the heavy-duty card Loremaster’s Screen, which presents useful information for easy reference during a game and features stunning art from The One Ring artist Jon Hodgson.

We will have stock of The Loremaster's Screen and Laketown Sourcebook at this year's Gencon. The screen will then make it's way into distribution and be on sale this Autumn."

Beautiful cover Jon, listening to the video now

Edit: For a brief moment there as you do the introductions, I thought the tenth doctor was on screen

Well that's made my day.

Real nice cover can't wait to make a Lake-Town character!

Thank you! This is really a great video with interesting information. The only thing that saddens me is that people like me have now pre-orderd it, but it will be sold at Gencon first. I would wish I could go there. And I would also wish that C7 would offer the Lake-town sourcebook the same way that they offered the core set: if you want to get it early, pay a little bit more. Now, as it is, I feel like I partly financed the print, but other people will get the first copies.

I don't want to insult anybody with this post and if I did, it is due to the lack of my English skill.

Sounds exciting. Can't wait until if/when I can a) purchase a copy, and receive said copy, apparently only by snail mail.

Well, now I just can't wait to have this book, if only for the map Francesco talks about. Any chance you can just forget the GenCon people (who needs them?) and send out those copies you were taking to the pre-order people instead lol? Pretty please!

Funny enough, I'm off to York soon for a Mystery Play or two, some good olde Jorvik fun and maybe a bit of a medieval festival

That really is a gorgeous cover! ... But watch your fish and chips, folks!

... Still waiting on Dom's email offering to transfer my GenCon special order to this one.

I can understand your frustration, unfortunately it's the way of things that con people always come first. Happened with the original publish of the main set, though we weren't too far behind the con-goers.

I don't know what that means...

It's not that Con people always come first, in this case it's because the Screen/Laketown copies are on their way to the show, and the rest of it is on its way to the container ship.

This situation arose very recently and quickly, and the shipping arrangements were already in motion, otherwise we'd try to do somthing simlar to the core set. I really do sympathise though, no-one likes waiting, I'll see if I can come up with an alternative, at the very least any copies left over from GenCon will be sent to pre-order customers.

That seagull ate my 99!


(Brooke - it is something of a tradition here in the UK to have the childhood seaside holiday experience of a vicious herring gull attacking your food. It's quite frightening, but an essential British experience!)

Edit: Hmmm now there's some terrifying childhood memory material I haven't ever plundered for monsters...

Yes, I wish I knew that! We could have featured it in some way...

Here in Venice the seagulls seem more well-behaved. They only make a mess of the trash people bring out early in the morning!

Francesco

Sorry, Brooke - very much a british experience of childhood that thankfully Jon explained far better than I could! Seeing the seagull though, brought back really vivid memories of weekend holidays at the caravan in Skegness and Ingoldmells. ... Strange how the mind works sometimes.

Great video! Francesco, your hair is wilder than in previous videos.

I can't wait to see the complete map of Lake-town and I really want to hear more about the Loremaster's Screen, as the video didn't really touch it. I have questions, such as, "What does it look like? How many panels? How sturdy is it? What information is included and what has been left out?"

As is appropriate this is a three part video. You might have been expecting two, but it's three.

Stay tuned!

Great news! I will be watching for it.

*On a side note: I need to go back and watch some of the art videos for some digital art tips. My wife and daughter bought me an art pad for Father's Day and I have been fooling around with it trying to do some illustrations for my own TOR Fan docs. But, I really need to take a class or something.

That said, you are a great artist [b]Jon!/b] Thanks for the inspiration.

Yeah they well behave in Istanbul too. Mostly trying to get away with some bagels from the ferries on bosphorus lol.

Also please in future make the books with hardcover. And I heard 38 pages or something like that for the book, isn't it a little short? Well we'll see

If QI is to believed (and who would dare accuse Stephen Fry of being wrong?), they are technically 'Gulls', not 'Seagulls'.

I heard 32 pages, which is pretty much standard for the Screen + Other package produced by most companies.

I shall never call a seagull a seagull again so long as I live!


Right, updated the original post with some pertinent product info from the C7 site.

Can we at least got some clues on Men of Lake Town cultural blessings (1 maybe?) or a fellowship activity?

Any chance of moving Gen Con to the UK this year?

As autumn sounds a long way off and I can't just nip over the pond and pick one up!

Excellent video. Looking forward to this product.

I'm eager to have this screen and sourcebook. I hope screen artwork it's enough 'generic' to represent Middle-earth as a whole (Misty Mountains, maybe?), since this is the only screen we will use now and in the future, from Lake-Town to Minas Tirith (I guess). Anyway, wonderful work!

A bad idea, and a bad haircut! I take the chance to apologise to everyone who will watch the video, sometimes it slips my mind that I am not exactly sitting in front of my computer with no one around...

Francesco

Oh yes! Is there any chance we could see the back of the screen?

I hope this is just a slip, but the news about the screen and sourcebook on C7 says that the screen and sourcebook will be at the Con, and that the screen will thereafter make its way into distribution. Does that mean the screen and sourcebook, or is the screen for some reason hitting market without the sourcebook?

Sorry to be so picky, but frankly, given that C7 is pulling products, etc., I don't really know what to expect.

Screen plus sourcebook - it's all shrinkwrapped together.

... And when will this be available to order in your store?

At the moment we're saying "Autumn" simply because the main body of stock is in a ship en route now, which means there are a large number of unknowns in the timeline - Global shipping, US Customs, logistics in and out of warehousing and the like which make anything more precise very difficult to offer without causing further undue disappointment. Of course, if we play it conservative in this way that will also cause some frustration. I'm sorry we can't be any more precise as yet, but of course we'll let you know the moment it's available for order.

Cheers Jon.

Can't wait to pick this up at GenCon. I am running a TOR game on Thursday night that starts in Laketown, hopefully I can find a bit of time to digest some of the descriptions to include them in my game.

Do we know if the screen is portrait or landscape, yet?

Ack, I just realized how the lack of PDFs are going to really impact this item's release for me. Printing the map. I was able to take the PDF of the original Map to Kinkos and have it printed in it's native 17"x 22" glory and have it laminated. The players use it as their travel map.

I am just curious and I know that this may be an issue of time, but is it possible to get downloads of the maps? or even be able to purchase additional maps in a tube (that haven't been folded)?

Just a thought going forward.

Really looking forward to this release.

"...which means there are a large number of unknowns in the timeline - Global shipping, US Customs, logistics in and out of warehousing ..."

Yeah, I saw a bit of this in action at Origins. One of the companies had expected to have a sizable amount of copies of a newly released game at the Con; unfortunately the shippment was stalled at Customs in Alaska (the shippment was coming over from China). The company did some fanaggaling with US Customs and managed to clear 20 copies (I think) to be overnighted to the Con. Needless to say those 20 copies did not last long. Fortunately, it wasn't a game I was interested in.

It is a good example of how Global Shipping can throw off a schedule. I can completly understand why you guys at C7 are hedging your bets a bit on giving out even conservative release date estimates.

Thanks, Dom, for the clarification re: Lake Town sourcebook. I apologize, too, if I seem too hard on you guys at C7. It's just that I was really looking forward to getting the Lake Town sourcebook, and fear that now, without the PDF, and due to the realities of shipping (which I suspect is even more complicated for those of us who live in Canada!), it's going to be several months from the originally announced date before I can get hold of the product.

Part Two!

http://youtu.be/zzA95kL7RGs

This time there's discussion of the new playable culture "The Men of the Lake" and some chat about the visual design of the rebuilt Lake-town.

Very cool stuff!

Great stuff, looking forward to the Laketown book.

Just a quick question: There was no mention of a Cultural Blessing for the Men of the Lake in the interview, do they get their own or do they share the Barding one?

It's a whole new playable culture, complete with new blessings and everything else the other cultures have, unique to Men of the Lake*. We discuss it a bit more in part three!


*Some of whom are women, I feel I need to add.