C is for Calidar

I suppose I could write about Cerilia, the continent of the Birthright campaign, but I would prefer instead to mention a world that I know much less about, but about which I am much more curious. I am talking instead about Calidar, the latest brainchild of Bruce Heard.

Bruce, for a long period of time, was a stalwart caretaker, designer and developer of the D&D Known World (back in the days before it became Mystara). He is one of the unsung heroes (well, lesser sung) in the development of that line. At the time he was officially wrangling the freelance talent at TSR, but worked hard to create an extremely potent line of products, not only in the quality of the writing and design, but also in the unique appearance of such things like the maps.He pushed hard for the exploration of the Hollow World, and wrote articles for DRAGON involving his not-a-spelljammer-at-all ship, the Princess Ark.

Huh. It IS a small world after all.

Indeed, in the years since, he looked to WotC for permission to continue his work on the now-defunct line. Much to his frustration, the company rebuffed him. Now this makes a modicum of sense for WotC - if permission is granted, WotC either has to make sure the license reflects well upon the company (which is an expense on their point) and if it is too successful, they could be staffing up their competition (Hel-LO Pathfinder!).

Most men would be crushed, or at least deterred, but Bruce is not most men. He instead fell back, recalculated, identified what he liked about the original Known World, and started his own Kickstarter for Calidar. It is funded, and he is working on getting bits and pieces of it turned over to the editor even as I type.

I'm not contributing to this one (unlike parts of Midgard or Golarion), but I look forward to see what Bruce comes up with. And the rest of you lot should be keeping your eyes open as well.

More later.