Tere! (That's "hello" in Estonian.)

🇪🇪 Moving to Estonia & Osman land reform

In my previous update (to paid members), I wrote briefly about something that, at that time, had completely consumed my life. I was in the midst of moving with my girlfriend from the PNW of the USA to the beautiful Baltic state of Estonia.

A pretty big deal for us, as you might imagine.

The timeline for moving was compressed because it was only one month in advance that all of our paperwork had finally gone through and I knew the move was really happening! (And also, I'll admit, because I procrastinated a little bit.) It was impractical and far too expensive to bring everything with me, so I spent the month of September frantically packing, selling, and giving things away.

While doing all this, I decided to give myself a little extra work (typical!) and offer my lovely supporters the chance to own a bit of the Osman city terrain I'd made in my Paradiso Craft videos, if they could send me their mailing addresses quickly enough. And many did!

So I sent packages across North and South America, Europe, and Australia, and so the city of Osma has begun to spread around the world, which is a delight to me. Will there be more giveaways for paid members in the future? Probably! But not for a while. I do have to make more stuff first, plus figure out how the mail even works here...

(If you got some terrain, I'd love to see a picture of what you're doing with it!)

⚔️ What's new with The Blades of Gixa?

As far as The Blades of Gixa is concerned, the move has just delayed things a bit. My apologies for that. I had hoped to intersperse the work of moving with work on the megadungeon and more updates, but it didn't pan out that way: the move was just all-consuming. But now I'm set up in Estonia well enough to get back to it, and I have. In fact, there's a new video update below!

In this video:

1. Revisions to some of the early pages, the "Greater World" page and the "Town of Baintoch" spread. My playtesting (many, MANY thanks to my amazing friends and playtesters!!!) showed me that the way I'd distributed information on the town spread wasn't really working for me. The original spread (from Update 3) tried to cover both the town itself and, in an inset, the entire island it's on. As a result, both locations suffered for it: the town lacked space for the encounters and more fleshed-out descriptions of services that would make it more runnable, and the island map was just too tiny and its keying too minimal to be useful. The previous update saw me break out the island into its own page, and this one has me updating the town spread to be much more useful. Another, smaller revision came in the form of updating some of the text on the "Greater World" page, which was necessitated by the new island page (everything is connected!)
2. A new Documents section features two in-world documents that can be used as player handouts, the "Baths Plunder" and "Highfleet Embassy" Proclamations, with commentary for the DM on each. These florid documents can be used as-is, or you can just summarize and describe their effects for your players. The Baths Plunder Proclamation is basically the fundamental adventure hook for the dungeon: the noble that rules Montiri puts out a call for adventurers to come delve under the island, clear out "dangers," and recover loot, and offers big rewards for both. In fact, adventurers get to keep half the treasure they recover for her! (Players will of course see this as a 50% tax on their treasure hauls, and they will plot and scheme endlessly to get around it.) And the Highfleet Embassy Proclamation establishes an embassy on the island for the Highfleet, the society of ship-bound elves that sail the Eastern Seas in defiance of the Admiralty. Is this a good-faith normalization of relations between rival powers? Of course not! Both sides bring various ulterior motives to the agreement, which your players can get deeply embroiled in. Some of these secrets can lead inquisitive players deeper into the dungeon and towards some profound revelations about the nature of this world! Or maybe it's background fluff and their greed will do the work.

Plus I gab a little more about the move.

⚫️ What about the rest of Paradiso?

Everything will keep on going, hopefully with a bit more regularity now that the dust is settling! Some things behind the scenes will continue to get shuffled around a bit to deal with operating out of a new country, but that should be mostly invisible to you. I'm still working with the same partners to fulfill shop sales and Gixa orders, so no changes there.

Paradiso Craft, my video series about making stuff, is probably the most impacted, because in the move I sold or gave away most of the contents of my workshop! In particular, my bigger/bulkier tools, like my airbrush, 3D printer, and hot wire cutter, are all gone. As is, as mentioned above, most of my terrain!

I will be gradually rebuilding here, but as I do I will probably be exploring some new methods, new tools, and new project ideas. Which is actually pretty exciting to me! And Osma will be reborn with new terrain. The city is eternal, the city ever changes.