I was one of the Kickstarters for Dwimmermount. I finally have the hardback, map book, and image book in hand. I like them a lot. It was a very long, turbulent process, but the final product is actually quite good. I can easily run a campaign for years with this book.

Parts of the dungeon are fairly standard, which is a good thing. But it also has a lot of pseudo-science/technomagic bits which work quite well.

The background is cool, and there are different groups of monsters in the dungeon, and their relationships are mapped. Some work together, others hate each other. If the players are smart, they could easily gain allies to help them.

The art if very old school in style. The book is big, and looks like it will take a lot of punishment.

Overall, I'm glad it is finally here. The final product looks to be very usable, and well thought out. Congrats to everyone involved in finally getting this setting into print!

I have shipping notifications for my stuff. I hope it gets here soon!

Does it bear obvious scars of its troubled production?

Quote from: danbuter;784660I was one of the Kickstarters for Dwimmermount. I finally have the hardback, map book, and image book in hand. I like them a lot. It was a very long, turbulent process, but the final product is actually quite good. I can easily run a campaign for years with this book.

Parts of the dungeon are fairly standard, which is a good thing. But it also has a lot of pseudo-science/technomagic bits which work quite well.

The background is cool, and there are different groups of monsters in the dungeon, and their relationships are mapped. Some work together, others hate each other. If the players are smart, they could easily gain allies to help them.

The art if very old school in style. The book is big, and looks like it will take a lot of punishment.

Overall, I'm glad it is finally here. The final product looks to be very usable, and well thought out. Congrats to everyone involved in finally getting this setting into print!

Cool, good deal. I personally cant grapple with the idea of playing the same dungeon for years. But that's just me.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;784802Does it bear obvious scars of its troubled production?

The only troubled production was no one worked on it for 2 years. The manuscript was written by the end of 2012.

It just sat there for basically 2 years until Autarch picked it up early this year and polished it. But probably 90% of the text is the same, if not more. What they really did was turning it into a PDF and then book, at probably no profit for them. They cced the invoice from Lightning source, basically the hardcover+illo and map books cost $35 and change, and you got that for a $40 pledge.

I've been going over the final PDF comparing it to the final draft, and the differences really aren't much.

For instance, this is probably the biggest change I noticed:

QuoteLevel 1, Room 41 (Original)

This large chamber is the lair of the demonic spider known only as the Spawn of Arach-Nacha. The Spawn establish the dwarf Guran (Room 40) as the ruler of the kobolds by intimating that it knew a means to transform inert dwarves into living ones. The Spawn knows no such thing and has been using both Guran and the kobolds to extend the reach of its master into Dwimmermount

The creature possess little treasure of its own (two gems: malachite and zircon, worth 10 gp and 100 gp respectively) but secreted in its lair is a weird metal disc that can be used to summon the elevator in Room 56.

QuoteFinal

This large chamber is the lair of the demonic spider known only as the Spawn of Arach-Nacha. The Spawn tricked the dwarf Guran into pledging himself to its demonic master in exchange for the power to transform inert dwarves into kobolds. The Spawn now uses Guran and the kobolds to extend the reach of its master into Dwimmermount.

(... text about the Spawn offering PCs powers to further its own goals)

The Spawn possesses little treasure of its own (two gems, malachite and zircon, worth 10 gp and 100 gp respectively), but secreted in its lair is a weird metal disc with a cross-and-circle symbol on it that can be used to operate the Elevator (Room 56)

Quote from: JeremyR;784860The only troubled production was no one worked on it for 2 years. The manuscript was written by the end of 2012.

It just sat there for basically 2 years until Autarch picked it up early this year and polished it. But probably 90% of the text is the same, if not more.

That is an EXCEPTIONALLY inaccurate statement.

James' 2012 draft was 127,530 words. Autarch's final 2014 draft stands at 231,799 words. Tavis and I added 104,269 words. 45% of the ENTIRE text is completely new. That doesn't include editing of existing text.  

James' dungeon chapters (8-20) were 81,677 words long. Autarch's were 118,343 words long. We added 36,666 words in those chapters, or 30%.

James' draft of Chapter 1-7 and Appendices stood at 45,853 words, with much of that simply being extracts from the LL Advanced Edition Compendium. Autarch's were 113,456 words long. We added 67,603 words, more than doubling the size, and more than tripling the original copy.

In addition, a large percentage of the original text had to be re-written due to inconsistencies in the text from one chapter to another. Simply documenting these inconsistencies was itself a process that took several months.

Finally, we made several aesthetic decisions about the dungeon, such that the explanation for how the antagonist came to be captured, the NPCs present in the City of the Ancients and the Prison, the backstory, and more, were all changed.

All of these drafts were made available to backers as they were written and the above facts can be easily verified.

QuoteI've been going over the final PDF comparing it to the final draft, and the differences really aren't much.

Please see above. I suspect you are not actually looking at James' original draft but probably looking at one that Tavis or I had already re-written. Either that or you are missing what we added by starting with what James wrote and looking up that text in our draft, and thus not even seeing the sections we wrote that don't exist in his draft.

QuoteWhat they really did was turning it into a PDF and then book, at probably no profit for them. They cced the invoice from Lightning source, basically the hardcover+illo and map books cost $35 and change, and you got that for a $40 pledge.

This part IS correct. At present it looks like I will have to add about $2,000 of my funds into the project to carry it to completion. That's fine. We're grown ups. We'll take our lumps and move on with our next products.

I think you could reasonably claim it would have been a better business decision to release the 130,000 word 2012 draft. (We didn't do that because we didn't think it met our standards. It's more important to me that Autarch products be excellent.)

I think you could reasonably claim we were unwise to add so much text to the book, because that pushed the printing cost so high that we couldn't turn a profit. (See above).

No one could reasonably claim that we did basically nothing or wrote less than 10%.

Regards,
Alexander Macris
Autarch LLC

amacris, are PDF/POD copies of Dwimmermount going to be available to non-backers to buy?

Quote from: Warthur;784986amacris, are PDF/POD copies of Dwimmermount going to be available to non-backers to buy?

I have seen the pdfs available at Drive Thru already.

Quote from: Warthur;784986amacris, are PDF/POD copies of Dwimmermount going to be available to non-backers to buy?

The PDF of the Labyrinth Lord version is available now at DriveThruRPG. Richard shared a layout proof of the ACKS version yesterday that looks great, so its PDF will be available soon as well too.

Both versions will be available as POD when their hardcovers are in stores through distribution, so you'll have a variety of options for getting the books in print.

I'm hoping that we can get some of the more known OSR folks on the web to give Dwimmermount some full reviews. Unfortunately, this might be hindered by the large page count. Also, some might be waiting for the ACKS version to be published. I'd like to hear some feedback (positive and negative) on this from someone not as invested as a backer, which I am (but won't be getting my books until the ACKS version arrives in the mail).

When the product has fully shipped I think it would also be useful if the Autarchs could make a short 'Lessons Learned' document/presentation so that others (creators, backers, etc.) could learn from this experience. Do this in a way that minimizes a flame war breaking out. I think many points have been brought up before, but they're scattered across the internet. Hopefully, the Autarchs will be able to find some time to do this amongst everything else going on.

A full review by someone who has spent some time playing this would be great. I just picked up the pdf and am enjoying it. If I'ld been involved in this project I suspect I would have boiled the first 100 pages down to 1. I'm not really that interested in the creator's house rules for dwarves and clerics and so forth; this stuff is all so group-specific that it doesn't translate well. Even the background material about the setting, history of the dungeon, etc. is all likely to be flipped through quickly by people other than the creator and his group. But I love the maps and location write ups and the overall structure of the dungeon; it seems like a really great gaming environment.

out of curiosity, how's JMal doing these days? amacris/tavis, have you guys had much contact with him recently, with the project at late stages? anyone else? i hope he's well, and am glad to see dwimmermount make it out the door, though i'll never play it myself.

Quote from: Larsdangly;785027A full review by someone who has spent some time playing this would be great. I just picked up the pdf and am enjoying it. If I'ld been involved in this project I suspect I would have boiled the first 100 pages down to 1. I'm not really that interested in the creator's house rules for dwarves and clerics and so forth; this stuff is all so group-specific that it doesn't translate well. Even the background material about the setting, history of the dungeon, etc. is all likely to be flipped through quickly by people other than the creator and his group. But I love the maps and location write ups and the overall structure of the dungeon; it seems like a really great gaming environment.

Well, much of the lower levels of the dungeon only make sense within the framework of Telluria. All of Level 6B is built around the true nature of the dwarves. All of Levels 8 and 0 are built around the true nature of the gods. And so on.

It's a megadungeon campaign setting more than a run-this-in-any-setting dungeon.

Quote from: stuffis;785031out of curiosity, how's JMal doing these days? amacris/tavis, have you guys had much contact with him recently, with the project at late stages? anyone else? i hope he's well, and am glad to see dwimmermount make it out the door, though i'll never play it myself.

He and I have not spoken in over 18 months.

Quote from: amacris;785036Well, much of the lower levels of the dungeon only make sense within the framework of Telluria. All of Level 6B is built around the true nature of the dwarves. All of Levels 8 and 0 are built around the true nature of the gods. And so on.

It's a megadungeon campaign setting more than a run-this-in-any-setting dungeon.

That may be true but I would say, if so, it is an unfortunate characteristic of the dungeon, and one that is out of step with some of its audience. The OSR crowd is relatively into molding their own settings. A dungeon that is only playable with a certain view of religion, races, classes, etc. is a pretty small tent.