Monday, April 13, 2015

Reconstructed Covers for "Soldier City: Shaylle" and "Intrigue in Plaize"

As mentioned in my previous post here regarding proposed but never released TFT materials, there were two items that ultimately were published, but changed to fit a different game universe than originally intended. Specifically the two modules mentioned above, intended as part of the "Land Beyond the Mountains" campaign setting for TFT, and companions to "Warrior Lords of Darok" and "Forest Lords of Dihad", were made part of Gamelords "Haven" setting. Retitled and with some parts rewritten (sometimes lightly and sometimes heavily), they were shoehorned into Haven, but much remains of the original TFT substrate that an effort can be made to reconstruct the modules in their original form. To that end, I have restored the covers to what was likely their original appearance, assuming that the cover art was not changed (which I believe is likely the case, as they were trying to salvage as much of the work as possible). Without further adieu, here they are:


 




I'll probably be tweaking these a bit in the future. For example, some of the description on the back cover of Shaylle is not quite right, owing to the extensive rewrite of the backstory that was done, and the front cover of Plaize will need a spot of work on the border of the center artpiece (the blue shades don't quite match.) Other than that, though, I think these are pretty close analogs to what should have been published in 1983, in a better reality...

Hopefully I will be able to release notes on what was done to convert the text of the modules to better resemble what might have been originally written. Many of the encounters are fairly easy, even trivial, to convert, but some of the backstory has been considerably altered, and it is sometimes hard to distinguish the original plot points.

Special thanks to the creators of Paint.Net for their excellent picture editing program - that really made much of this possible.

Enjoy the covers!

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