Some years ago, while working on the Echelon Reference Series, I reached a point where individual titles would take months to put together (the diagrams were horribly time-intensive). I shifted direction and decided to release the ‘Rough and Fast’ (RAF) versions of the titles, without the diagrams and all the value-add elements, so at least they existed.
There also is an intermediate version before completion, ‘Work In Progress’ (WIP) that has some of what I add… not all, but more than the RAF versions.
The RAF and WIP versions could be had at a discount (50% and 25% respectively), and my plan has always been to upgrade the documents to better versions as I completed them. To my embarrassment, that really hasn’t come to pass yet.
It is, however, still the plan. My recent work has made big inroads on getting to where I can start achieving my plans here.
Data Sets and Domains
The books, as they stand today, have two versions.
- PRD-Only versions contain only information from the Pathfinder Reference Document. The text was readily available, and it makes a base for everything that follows.
- 3pp+PRD versions contain the above, plus the third-party publisher content I have captured over time.
I aim to reformulate these. I have ‘PRD’ and ‘3pp’ data sets above, but I want to add a third one: ‘PZO’, the Paizo open game content that has not made it into the PRD. This involves a great deal more work than the PRD content because unlike the PRD content, this needs to be cleansed of Product Identity.
I propose to create two new versions.
- PZO version contains PRD content and cleansed content from other non-PRD Paizo sources (starting with Ultimate Intrigue, Ultimate Wilderness, Horror Adventures, and Planar Adventures, and making my way through the companions, adventure paths, and other splatbooks).
- Full version that contains the above, plus third-party content.
Because of the volume of content, I also expect to separate the NPC sections of the class books into standalone titles. The class books are getting very big, to the point I would not want to try to print and bind them (which is my ultimate goal).
What This Means
At first, nothing much. My current titles will remain as they are for the time being.
I still want to honor my earlier plans. To do so, I expect to:
- Create new titles with the new formulations (PZO, Full) and split (character options and character codex).
- Retire the existing titles.
- Create bundles that have the new title paired with the original title, with the new title as a $0 product.
So, once this has gone into effect, my store will have
- Echelon Reference Series: Cleric (PZO)
- Echelon Reference Series: Cleric Codex (PZO)
- Echelon Reference Series: Cleric (Full)
- Echelon Reference Series: Cleric Codex (Full)
- Echelon Reference Series: Cleric (PZO) [Bundle]
- ERS: Cleric (PZO) free, ERS: Cleric (PRD-Only) full price
- Echelon Reference Series: Cleric Codex (PZO) [Bundle]
- ERS: Cleric (PZO) free, ERS: Cleric Codex (PRD-Only) full price
- Echelon Reference Series: Cleric (Full) [Bundle]
- ERS: Cleric (Full) free, ERS: Cleric (3pp+PRD) full price
- Echelon Reference Series: Cleric Codex (Full) [Bundle]
- ERS: Cleric (Full) free, ERS: Cleric (3pp+PRD) full price
Echelon Reference Series: Cleric (PRD-Only)GONEEchelon Reference Series: Cleric (3pp+PRD)GONE
You won’t be able to buy the current product (directly) anymore, but if you’ve previously bought the current product you can get both the class book and the class codex free.
Getting In Early
For those who want to get in now, before the updated and upgraded versions go live, you can find them all at the Echelon Game Design store at DriveThruRPG.
And if you really want to take advantage of this, The Beacons Are Lit! bundle for Owen KC Stephens is still live, and gets all the Echelon Reference Series class and spell books at a great deal… and hundreds of dollars more content at the same time.