House of the Petrified Frog

This kickstarter is funding one item: House of the Petrified Frog, our first item in the Sandbox Set Piece series of products. House of the Petrified Frog is designed to be an important drop-in location, fit for any setting or campaign.

House of the Petrified Frog can be many different things in your game--a hiding place for worshippers of the evil amphibian lords, the abode of a particular evil amphibian lord disciple, or a long-abandoned temple to those amphibian lords that devote so much time to politics and terror in the lives of mortals. It is up to you--we provide the details, you provide the motivation to visit.

This project is a deluxe limited edition concept, with two main versions:

The House of the Petrified Frog is a boxed set with complete description of this unique abode, plus three card sets to help explore and visualize the locale. Those three card types are: sensory cue cards, adversary cards, and locale cards. 

Sensory Cue Cards

Sensory Cue cards  provide players with direct snippets of sensory information that they control and decide how to present to the rest of the group. This mimics the real world, where we each sense a space just a little bit differently from those with us.

Sensory cues can be supplied just as a table with a Luck check driving who gets the individual snippets of observation, then you can write them out as notes or whisper them to the players. But in playtest we have found that there is a vastly superior way to experience them: Luck check followed by a random card draw with those observations already on it.

These cards draw players into the experience. They get to decide whether they tell the group what they have sensed, or whether to omit those revelations, or even to lie about them. This creates a lot of nuance to the moment, based upon the player's character. It shifts part of the responsibility of narration from the judge to the player. In doing so,it helps draw the players into the moment and gives them more ownership about what happens.

For this limited edition of House of the Petrified Frog, we are offering the cards as part of the experience. They come with the set-piece for you to enjoy.

Adversary Cards

Adversary cards provide the players direct images of the opponent's they face.

This comes from the frustration of running many wonderful adventures, but not being able to show the players the art, because it reveals too much of the moment in question.

To solve this problem, we created player facing art: the players get to experience the full art in the form of cards demonstrating their foes. The judges get a thumbnail of this art, to help guide them if there is a question about the opponent.

For this limited edition of House of the Petrified Frog, we are offering the adversary cards as part of the experience. They come with the set-piece for you to enjoy.

Locale Cards

This locale has visuals that are essential for players to understand, so we provide these visuals as locale cards. After all, an image is worth a thousand words! These locale cards augment the brief locale descriptions.

Like the sensory cue and adversary cards, locale cards increase immersion, and provide important clues as to what is really going on in this place.

Designed to be used

House of the Petrified Frog  will continue the design ethos we began in our Smoking Wyrm Monograph line. These are products designed by judges and players for judges and players.

Art for everyone.

We emphasize art for everyone: no more art that only the judge can see. Adversaries are designed for players to look at them and evaluate the situation in a glance. Magic items come on cards so folks can see what they look like. Everything is designed to be functional.

Linking critical story elements.

It happens all the time: judges searching through books to find the other place a magic item was mentioned. When two locations of our text are linked, we call it out in the same way that monks in the 12 century did--with a manicule (and a note on where to go). Check it out on these two page comparisons:

Of course, we will have cool frog themed manicules in mind for the book!

Props players can hold

House of the Petrified Frog features props designed to draw the players and their characters into the locale. These are physical props you can hold in your hand.

The map: Is it fake? Is it real?  What are the strange runes on the side of the map? Tied into the rumors about this place is the map--something someone drew who witnessed the horrors of the House of the Petrified Frog and lived to tell about it. But is it real? That is something your players will have to discover for themselves.

The Journal Entry: written by one jealous disciple of the Evil Amphibian Lord, this journal entry provides insight into the nature of the House of the Petrified Frog.

Frogstones: an artifact taken from the House of the Petrified Frog and delivered into the hands of characters eager to know it's secrets, frogstones are the physical proof that the House exists and holds real artifacts of power.

There are 4 types of frogstones in this locale. While we present these as cards for the basic boxed set, for those who go in on "The Whole House" we are developing these as physical props that will come in the box, ready for players to use in game.

Proper Storage for your Tools.

You have seen it countless times--you purchase a crowdfunded project that comes with all sorts of cool extras. They arrive at your home and you notice one thing: they forgot the storage!

We hear you, and want it known we love storage! We have produced several storage box solutions for ttrpgs, be it Tales from the Smoking Wyrm boxes, or Wyrm Vaults. We make the storage other companies won't commit to.

House of the Petrified Frog will be no different: it will come in a bespoke box to hold all your adventure booklet and card needs. No more loosing things you know are essential to proper game play!

These two box designs are the same quality in our box designs: 60 pt chipboard, wrapped in quality paper stock and foil stamped. Jae Tanaka will be designing the box art, like he did for the Wyrm Vaults.

Limited Edition

We produce high quality products, but we don't produce them forever. While our Tales from the Smoking Wyrm series lives on in standard editions, our Smoking Wyrm Monograph series and this new Sandbox Set-piece Series of products are limited run items.

Your support will allow us to produce a single production run of this work. There are a lot of moving parts in a product like this--the game book, different card types, boxes, etc. It is not feasible to produce this product indefinitely, so we prefer to produce a high quality product once and then move on to new products.

This stems from our experience that trying to produce an item scaled to the production run of larger ttrpg manufacturers is not something we do. Rather, we make the best product we can once. 

This is where you, the backer, come in.  Your support allows us to produce one print run for our product. Without you, this product will not happen.  Help us pay Jae Tanaka, our artist, and produce one really glorious print run of this special locale!

The Book

• Digest size: Approximately 5.82" x 8.26" (A5 format)
• Page count: ~52 pages cover to cover
• Full-color interior; 2-color art

The Cards

Professionally printed, the sensory cue and adversary cards are tarot sized, while the environmental cards are large format cards.

The Box

Hand-made in Marion Indiana, the box will be made by the same folks who made the Tales from the Smoking Wyrm and Wyrm Vault boxes. This box will include custom foam for holding the frogstones secure when you travel!

We are offering these add-ons!

• $10—0-Level Character sheets (pad of 50)
• $10—Judge Tracker sheets (pad of 50)
• $10—Smoking Wyrm Coaster set 1 (4 total coasters)
• $10—Smoking Wyrm Coaster set 2 (4 total coasters)
• $10—DCC Character Folio--DCC Day edition!
• $15—Premium storage box (holds 3 issues)—LIMITED!
• $20—Standard editions of Tales from the Smoking Wyrm (price for each issue; issues 1-10 available)
• $25— House of the Petrified Frog soundscape! Designed for use in each room--hours of background thematic sounds for your gameplay.
• $30—Tales from the Smoking Wyrm PDF bundle (issues 1-11)
• $30—Limited edition Risographic Tales from the Smoking Wyrm #7—LIMITED!
• $30—Limited edition Risographic Tales from the Smoking Wyrm #8—LIMITED!
• $30—Limited edition Risographic Tales from the Smoking Wyrm #9—LIMITED!
• $30—Limited edition Risographic Tales from the Smoking Wyrm #10—LIMITED!
• $30—Limited edition Risographic Smoking Wyrm Monograph #2.1—LIMITED!
• $50—Frogstones set of 4! Physical prop produced to demand.
• $50—Cloth map! Show the players the map—and it folds so they can't see the unknown.
• $200—Tales from the Smoking Wyrm standard edition bundle (issues 1-11) which come stored in an exclusive Wyrm Vault. That is a $50 savings!—LIMITED!

Is this the first time you have heard of us, and not sure what to think?  Will our work live up to expectations? Check out these reviews of our products from other fine gamers, like yourself concerning Tales from the Smoking Wyrm!

The first thing you'll notice about this zine is that it is erudite. The creators discuss their sources as well as the history of the hobby. If that sort of thing excites you, then you will certainly enjoy this.

—Daniel Bishop, DCC Trove of Treasures

Tales from the Smoking Wyrm is perhaps the finest general fantasy fanzine for Dungeon Crawl Classics. Think along the lines of Crawl! but more packed in per issue. A comparison to Crawl! is extremely high praise if you aren't hip to it...These things smell good too, like actually printed thing.

—Weird Realms, Cleveland, Ohio

This zine is a work of genius, go buy it now.

—Stephen, Stephen's Hobby Workshop

The entire zine is great, each article is well crafted, usually zines have an article or two that isn’t as good as the others, but all the articles in this zine are high quality and worth your time to read and implement in your DCC game.  I like that a lot of the content is easily portable to other games.  The question is implied at the end of the editor’s note, do the authors see a little further as they stand upon the shoulders of giants?  I say, yes, you all see further together and have provided us with an excellent product.

—Jim May, Dragon Treks

I got Tales from the Smoking Wyrm in their magnificent Risograph printing and it is glorious! Not only it's a tome of wisdom and great gaming content, it's sturdy, has great paper and is filled with great art and beautiful layout!

—Diogo Nogueira

Sometimes 3PP get off on tangents about what their particular flavor of pizza is, and can lose customers. The content of Issue #1 (only one I got to read so far) was so in my wheelhouse, I feel like they snatched it right out of my brain. I probably won't use 100% of it in game, but EVERY article made me think about my own setting, and how I could improve it. That's rare. A+

—Skeeter Green

Digital Fulfillment

All digital fulfillment will occur through DriveThruRPG.com. You will need to have an account set-up with them, and be able to provide us with your email for that account at the end of the campaign.

Note that we include digital fulfillment notes for the add-ons items of this campaign.  There is no digital version of House of the Petrified Frog, it is a physical product only.

Shipping Costs

We will be using USPS® Media Mail® wherever possible. All packages are shipped with tracking. Each order will ship in a sturdy cardboard envelope via media mail. Per Kickstarter recommendations, SHIPPING AND HANDLING COSTS ARE NOT INCLUDED IN PLEDGE LEVELS. Shipping and hanlding will be charged at a later date, using Kickstarter's new pledge manager. Add-ons incur their own additional shipping and handling charges.

We have also started offering shipping to the EU and Canada along with our standard shipping to the United States. Shipping to EU and Canada comes with tracking. Backers are responsible for Tariffs in their own countries.

• Trevor Stamper—Trevor has had aspirations of being a Not-Quite-So-Dark Master for numerous years, tormenting players in home campaigns on at least two continents. At the age of 10, Trevor was launched into an AD&D game with his friends on Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. But once he moved to England, he lost touch with the game and explored other classics—Indiana Jones, Twilight 2000, Gangbusters, Traveller 2300—until Joel Phillips reintroduced him to D&D BECMI style when he was 15. From there it has been a life-long passion for gaming and creating things other players can enjoy. Trevor has published before in minor ways—a few articles in the now defunct ENWorld Journal, and some really minor contributions when Kobold Press was doing Open Design. Recently he designed a few monsters for the Dungeon Denizens II from Goodman Games. He has also extensively playtested material for almost thirty years—starting with Werewolf first edition for White Wolf, to most recently a plethora of Fantasy Flight Games' offerings in the Warhammer 40K and Star Wars ranges. After over 400 Kickstarters as a backer, this is his fifteenth one as a creator!
• Brian Gilkison—Nowhere near as evil as Trevor (more of a clueless minion, really), Brian first came to gaming through the Holmes box set for D&D; in that same summer, Star Wars was released, and he first read The Hobbit—so he feels like he comes by his madness honestly. He has bathed in the waters of diverse game systems, including DCC (of course!), D&D, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, Top Secret, Gamma World, and numerous others,  and takes every opportunity at conventions to try out all the games he once saw advertised in Dragon magazine but never got a chance to play while a mere wyrmling. He was an administrator, writer, and DM for the Ohio region of the RPGA’s Living Greyhawk campaign, and a writer and DM for the followup 4th edition campaign, Living Forgotten Realms. Like Trevor and John, he was also a playtester on the 40K and Star Wars lines from Fantasy Flight Games. He currently serves the Dark Master as an editor, and it is possible that he may secretly be in charge of his local chapter of the Esoteric Order of Dagon.
• John Olszewski—John is a scientist, Marine, amateur woodworker, and of course, gamer. Born in a small town on the shores of Lake Erie in Western New York, he is also a lifelong Buffalo Bills and Sabres fan, traveled the world (four continents and counting) and played or ran games everywhere he’s gone. Starting out in junior high school, back in the 1980s with 1st edition D&D, he has been playing ever since. Of the many systems, his favorites include D&D/Pathfinder, World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Warhammer 40K, and now DCC. In that time, he's playtested extensively for Fantasy Flight Games on their Warhammer 40K and Star Wars games, as well as Cubicle 7's 40K RPG, Wrath & Glory, and products from Paradigm Concepts and Eden Studios, and been a member of the RPGA and the University of Buffalo’s Strategists and Role Players Association (UB SARPA). John playtested HPF several times.
• Jae Tanaka—Jae is a long-standing freelance artist who has worked on Tales from the Smoking Wyrm and Smoking Wyrm Monographs for several years now. Based in Spain, Jae brings a wonderful whimsy and technical brilliance to the art.
• Caitlin Stamper—Caitlin grew up in a gaming household. Whether it was playing a precocious intelligent mouse at the age of 5 (squeak!), or a groovy witch at the age of 20, she has never known a life where there is something other than a bi-weekly game table (or better yet—weekly—those were the days!) to beckon you to adventure. A Purdue graduate in professional writing and graphic design, Caitlin has the built-in skill set to enable our ideas to bloom on the printed page! She is now seeking the adventures of adult life—editing and designing things to make the world a better place. Caitlin has now gone on to her first professional job as a designer for a major book publisher, so the Smoking Wyrm is something she does out of love of the game.