The first D&D adventure written by a woman was the Palace of the Silver Princess, and TSR hated it so much that almost every copy is buried in a waste heap in Lake Geneva.
The author was Jean Wells, who ignored TSR’s instructions to make it kid-safe, and wrote of naked women, bondage and torture instead. Now Preston Poulter has a crowdfunding campaign for a 5e version inspired by the original Kickstarter.
You can read about the shady history of the original Palace of Silver Princess on Kotaku.
Poulter is crowdfunding not just a 5e module but a comic book and has a limited edition watercolour. It’s not the Palace of the Silver Princess but the Palace of the Golden Princess.
There’s a Pay What You Want OSR introductory adventure for the female-dominated world of Alluvia, the one featured in the comic, from Preston Poulter and writing partner Courtney Campbell on DTRPG.
Rejecting the modern notion of roleplaying which seems to have evolved into what can best be described as “fantasy superheroes,” Courtney and I dispatch the modern notion of character “builds” straight away by declaring that character stats should be generated by rolling 3d6 for each stat in the order the appear on the sheet, just like you would have done back in 1981 to play Jean Wells original work.
Preston’s Kickstarter strategy is also about keeping things limited and rare. So, with that in mind, let’s look at the pledge levels with rewards attached.
At $10, bakers get DRM-free copies of the Palace of the Golden Princess comic, RPG module and character sheets.
Alternatively, for $10, you can get the main retail cover version of the comic in print.
At $20, there’s both the comic and RPG module playtest and a guide to OSR-style play with 5e rules.
STLs join then fun at $25. Then there’s a leap to $85 and $135 in which the bonuses the Kickstarter has been working on are added in. These bonuses include alternative covers of the Kickstarter, a Deck of Many Things and miniatures.
As usual, there’s shipping to calculate for the print versions.
The shipping date for the campaign is as early as August 2022.
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