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Ultimate Guide to Foraging, Harvesting & Natural Discovery

Created by Nord Games

The definitive handbook for expanding fantasy worlds with crafting materials, items, and downtime activities for 5th Edition D&D!

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Backerkit Surveys and The Oracle Character Generator
over 1 year ago – Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 03:05:09 PM

Greetings Adventurers!

We're sorry for the delay, but between vacations around the holidays for Nord employees and Backerkit employees we have only recently been able to finalize the Backerkit survey. Expect the survey in your inbox this week. If it doesn't arrive please check your spam folder. If it's not there please contact [email protected] and we'll get you a direct link to your survey.

The Oracle Character Generator

As we said during various livestreams during the campaign for Foraging, Harvesting & Natural Discovery: we've been working on lots of products to enhance your gaming experience. We are launching a Kickstarter campaign on Tuesday January 24th at 9:00am PT for The Oracle Character Generator.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nordgames/the-oracle-character-generator-for-fantasy-rpgs?ref=ak50j3

Some of you may have backed the previous campaign in the series The Oracle Story Generator. This newest addition to The Oracle series is designed for any fantasy tabletop RPG and follows the same format as our Story Generator, this time applying it to character creation. The Oracle Character Generator takes only seconds to create the Role, Personality, Motivation, Flaw and Intrigue for either player characters or NPCs. A massive time saver for players and GMs alike to be used before your game sessions or on the fly as your adventures take various twists and turns you weren't prepared for. Please check out the project and share it with your friends!

Happy gaming!

-Chris

WotC and OGL 1.1 (It's Complicated)
over 1 year ago – Mon, Jan 09, 2023 at 04:39:18 AM

Greetings Adventurers...

We have entered the realm of the unknown. For 23 years OGL 1.0 has enabled everyone who abides by the rules in it to publish content for D&D. It was updated after 5th Edition was published and Nord Games has been using it since 2016 to play in Wizards of the Coast's (WotC's) sandbox, publishing many books and card decks to enhance your gaming experience. 

Last week a copy of OGL 1.1 was leaked. The new version of the OGL which WotC intends to force 3rd party publishers onto. It contains A LOT of really bad stuff so I'll break it down:

1. The new license attempts to invalidate all other licenses. This would mean all of our books and PDFs designed for 5E would be unsellable and we will not be able to publish 5E content moving forward, unless of course we sign the new OGL 1.1 license...

2. The new license puts a 25% fee on all of our revenue after we've sold more than $750,000 in a calendar year. This might not seem like a big deal, but it actually is. Nord Games currently sells a lot more than this every year and giving 25% of it to WotC would have a major impact on how many products we are able to publish and how many people we employ such as staff, contractors, artists, writers, etc. This could literally kill thousands of jobs across the industry.

3. The new license states that all of our content using the OGL 1.0 and 1.1 becomes the property of WotC. Additionally, they do not have to pay us for the use of that content. They can also terminate our license at any time for any reason, even if we do not violate the terms of the new license. So for example they could take our Treacherous Traps book, re-publish it word for word as their own, AND demand that we destroy all of our physical copies in our warehouse AND demand we not sell it in PDF format ANYWHERE.

There are many other issues with the OGL 1.1 but these are the main 3 to focus on for Nord Games. The OGL 1.0 was never designed to be unauthorized, only revised and updated as time went on. This has been WotC's stance in the past on their website and in various statements over the years. Even the person who wrote the original version of the OGL has come out declaring it was not meant to expire or be nullified by any subsequent licenses. 

This whole thing is an obvious attempt to squash the competition AND steal all of our IP in one motion. Pathfinder and many other game systems use the OGL 1.0 as the basis for their game system. Let that sink in for a moment and you start to understand just how insane this situation is.

We plan to continue honoring our part of using the OGL 1.0 and delivering to our fans high quality supplements for your 5E games. If WotC wants to sue us over it we're ready to challenge them in court, as are dozens of other publishers we have spoken with. The hope is that WotC and their parent company Hasbro (who appears to be the instigator of this entire debacle) back off and leave the OGL 1.0 out of the contract for OGL 1.1.  We really don't care if they want to close things up for One D&D which is what OGL 1.1 is meant to go with. We hope it's a good system and many people will enjoy playing it, but it's allegedly backward compatible which means our 5E products would work with it anyway.

What can you do? Well #OpenDnD has been trending all over social media, so that can't hurt to continue to share. You can also go to WotC's website and let them know how you feel through the contact form, or even the One D&D playtest survey...

Thank you all for your continued support. We couldn't do this without you and the OGL 1.0, so we are doing what we can to keep our fans happy and keep D&D truly open.

Stay tuned for more updates about our progress on The Ultimate Guide to Foraging, Harvesting & Natural Discovery as the PDFs are made available and we begin production of the physical products!

-Chris

Thank You So Much!
almost 2 years ago – Sat, Dec 03, 2022 at 04:08:21 AM

Greetings Adventurers!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your support! The past couple of years have been challenging to say the least, but it appears as though things may be returning to normal. Supply chain issues have been resolved and the cost of freight shipping is only 5X what it was in early 2020 instead of 10X like it's been up until recently. We will take the small victories where we can get them. We hope that your lives are on a similar trend. 

What Now? If your pledge includes any PDFs then you should expect playtest versions of those PDFs fairly soon. As you could see in our countdown livestream, all the writing is done and we are just waiting on some artwork. Once PDFs are in their final versions we will begin production of physical rewards. Production and freight shipping timelines have come back down to around 4 months from start to product being in our warehouses. We intend to have your rewards delivered as quickly as possible.

What's Next? As we mentioned on the countdown livestream, we have continued to develop products this whole time while waiting on production of outstanding Kickstarters. This means we have a large backlog of products that we are preparing to bring to Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms. Keep an eye out for those in the coming months via our Newsletter (sign up here). 

In the meantime we hope you are getting plenty of game time in with your friends and family. Thank you again for believing in us and supporting our various projects with such excitement!

-Chris

The Final 48 Hours!
almost 2 years ago – Fri, Dec 02, 2022 at 10:12:14 PM

Greetings Adventurers!

We've reached the final 48 hours of the campaign and we might set a new record for total funding!

Livestream. We are having a Countdown Livestream on Thursday from 11am to 1pm Pacific time if you'd like to join us. We will be creating magic items, reviewing content from the book, and not going off topic whatsoever... we hope... but that's unlikely. Please set a reminder in your calendar through this link: https://www.addevent.com/event/vW15653870

Friendly Shout Out. Our friends at Legendary Games have a Kickstarter campaign called Ultimate Faeries: Fey Monsters & Campaigns that is ending tomorrow! Please check it out and share it with your friends!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/legendarygames/ultimate-faeries-fey-monsters-and-campaigns-for-dnd-5e-and-pf?ref=3n151a

Thank you for backing our project! We look forward to seeing you during the livestream!

-Chris