Grayshade: Dark Fantasy Novels and RPG for 5E

The Grayshade TTRPG Playtest Packet has arrived!
12 days ago – Mon, Apr 15, 2024 at 10:14:58 AM

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Grayshade TTRPG update!
27 days ago – Sun, Mar 31, 2024 at 08:01:17 AM

Hello, all! Brandon here with another update on the progress of the Grayshade RPG!

Greg and I have had some wonderful conversations with the Alligator Alley team about the mechanics so far, and we’re excited to share with you all that you should get backer access to class playtest material as soon as mid-April! That’s right—in just about two weeks from you seeing this update, you should be the first to see what we’ve been cooking so far regarding the new classes for the game, as well as Faith and some other special fancy stuff we’ve been working on.

The goal should be to give you enough material for you to playtest so that you can not only give us ample feedback about what we already have in mind, but also leaving enough mechanical room for you to suggest other things that you think would make the classes better and more evocative. Backer feedback is especially key during this leg of the process, so we’re eager to hear what you think of what we already have on the table, as well as what comes to mind for you when you think of playing in the world of Cohrelle.

Our next immediate creative landmark is to take your feedback back to the drawing board and keep iterating on mechanics such that there will hopefully be a much stronger document ready in time for this year’s Gen Con—and that we will also get to run it on-site, so if you’re gonna be in the Indianapolis area during Gen Con weekend, definitely pass through and say hello!

We’re still working hard to make sure we can bring this to you very soon and at the best possible quality, so feel free to give us your comments and questions here. Thank you again for your support and your patience, and we can’t wait to hear what you think!

—Brandon

Grayshade forges ahead in the new year!
3 months ago – Fri, Feb 09, 2024 at 08:13:38 AM

Hi all,

We hope everyone's 2024 has started off well, and everyone on the team wishes you and yours a very healthy and happy year to come. As for us, we've been quite busy, and I wanted to post a couple of quick updates on the Grayshade IP:

1. When we last posted an update late last year, I mentioned that I was in the home stretch of the manuscript for Heretic, which is the final book in The Gray Assassin Trilogy. I'm happy to say now that the home stretch is now the home, er--what's the term for even less than stretch...last five hundred feet or something? The point is that I have only a few pages left to go; I'll be submitting that manuscript to Emily in the next ten days, after which she'll do her amazing editing work, followed by the beta reads, copyedits, and my integration of that feedback. We remain on track for an on schedule release in the summer of this year. This will also represent the completion of my first full trilogy, and that's also a pretty cool feeling--when all is said and done, we'll have spent almost 250,000 words with your favorite brooding assassin, which is a pretty wild thing to consider. We're very excited to get this book into your hands.

2. Brandon will have a more comprehensive update for you on the game side of things by the end of this month, but I can tell you that the game has made excellent progress on both the mechanics and worldbuilding fronts--and in fact, it even had a bit of influence in how I considered the worldbuilding for the conclusion of Heretic, which was nice to see. One thing I've been so excited about in this process is how this game is capturing not just the feel of the narrative and the world, but the experience of being someone in the world of Cohrelle via the structure of the ruleset and mechanics. This has touchstones and influences for sure, but in many ways, to really encapsulate Grayshade, it's doing different things from a lot of other TTRPGs, which is super cool. Brandon's doing an amazing job with this, and we can't wait to get this game to you in 2024.

As always, I'm so grateful for your support of and patience with this project, and I think you'll be happy with what you see this year both in terms of the novels and the TTRPG. Happy New Year again, and we'll have a new update to you soon!

     --Greg 

A Happy Holidays update!
4 months ago – Thu, Dec 21, 2023 at 09:34:08 AM

Hi all,

We hope you're all doing well as we rapidly head towards the end of a busy 2023. We wanted to send along two updates on the Grayshade IP, which is making rapid progress on two fronts:

1. In the wake of the successful release earlier this year of Book Two of The Gray Assassin Trilogy, Renegade, I'm now in the home stretch of the manuscript for the final book in the series, Heretic. Once I submit that manuscript, Emily will work her editing magic, followed by our beta reads/copyedits and my integration of feedback from all of the above. I'm very pleased with how everything is proceeding so far, and we should be on track for a release, on schedule, in the summer of 2024.

2. After a fall of conventions and conferences during which the entire team has been distributing flyers about and promoting for the Grayshade TTRPG, Brandon has been hard at work on the game design, and has a longer update for you which I've posted below this message.

Before posting that update, let me take this opportunity to thank you for your support of this entire project and patience as we work through the elements needed for its fulfillment. We're extremely excited to get you, and the world, the conclusion of the novel trilogy and the TTRPG, and 2024 promises to be a great year in that regard. Best wishes from all of us for a happy and peaceful holiday season, and a Happy New Year--we'll see all of you in 2024!

     --Greg

Grayshade RPG Progress Report

Hello, all! Brandon here!

It’s been a while since I’ve checked in with you all, in part because the last few months have comprised many small hiccups in the process. One of the big ones was getting some initial playtesting done—we were very hopeful that Big Bad Con this past October would be a wonderful opportunity to generate more buzz for Grayshade and get to see what the game looks like in motion in the hands of arguably one of the most crucially critical kinds of players (namely, people who are into fantasy RPGs but have no idea what this game is yet!), but sadly scheduling stuff at the con didn’t produce enough players to run an early-alpha version of the mechanics as they stand. That didn’t stop us from sharing the good word of the game, though, which makes us even more excited about getting to the finish line.

While that does nudge our release a bit, we’re still really excited to keep refining the mechanics we have so far and get them to a place where you will be just as excited to use them. With that being said, sometime hopefully in the early new year we should have alpha playtest material available here for you all to poke at, so you can leave comments on it directly to us while we’re still tweaking.

In a similar vein, here’s some downplayed estimates by yours truly regarding what progress on the overall text of the book looks like so far:

•  Mechanics And Play Content: 70% complete. We know what each class does and how they do them, as well as making lots of room for some of the features that are available for all classes at their ability-score-increase levels, such as all the various martial arts maneuvers that are available to study in Cohrelle. We’re just working a bit harder to make sure they feel balanced and fun and fill in a few feature gaps, so that there are lots of good reasons for you to not only pick any class, but engage with those classes in interesting ways without feeling locked out of cool things to do.
•  Worldbuilding Content: 60% complete. Greg and I have been having a lot of fun thinking very deeply about the overall setting and some of the corners of it that you will see more of through the game (and therefore through your own play). One of the other hiccups, admittedly, was a brief loss of some progress due to a series of power outages canceling some unsaved progress, but I’ve been catching up, so it will not be an issue.
•  Adventure Content: 50% complete. Beside the larger adventure initially planned for the book, what I initially assumed would just be a neat one-shot-shaped vertical slice of the game for testing purposes at Big Bad is slowly shaping up to be a good short adventure, so we’re also working on that so you have options for something to play with new players, as an opening window into the game for folks still on the fence about committing deeply to its overall structure, or as a smaller thing to run for a few weeks in between choosing the next long campaign for your table (in the hopes that it hooks your fellow players deeply enough that they stick with it!). We’re also making sure that there are enough places in here and in worldbuilding to offer strong GM principles that make it easy to find ways to pay off Faith, sprinkle in developing world conflict, and more, both in our campaigns as-written and as jumping-off points in your own settings and stories.

Very soon after the holidays we will be checking in again to show the state of the game’s progress in more concrete terms. Until then, please feel free to reach out with any questions about the game and what we’ve already promised.

I hope you all have a happy, healthy, love-filled holiday season this year, and thank you again for placing your extended faith in this project.

     --Brandon

Three-point update from Emily! (Sorry for similar emails all at once, but the middle part is different in each! Does that work?)
7 months ago – Sat, Sep 30, 2023 at 11:58:26 AM

Hello! Thank you for putting up with this three-point update, of which you may receive more than one, depending on how many of our recent campaigns you've supported. And thank you - thank you - for that.

Small Talk of Relevance to Grayshade: Did you see that Greg is doing a subathon this weekend? Lots of my friends will be there! Check out his Twitter, Bluesky, or head right to the channel!

Embroidered Worlds! It's the last few hours of our campaign for the translation and publication of Ukrainian stories in English. If you haven't, please check it out, watch the video, see the extraordinary bookplates that you can only get through this campaign, and enjoy my inexorable hustle on social media until midnight edt. Why? These stories deserve it, these editors deserve it, these writers deserve it - and I think our little small press deserves it. Plus - I really want to send all backers that swag bag and we're so in reach! More info in this email I sent yesterday, available in both professional and half-a$$ (with accompanying illustration) versions.

Sending my love! - Emily.