Hero Kids pipeline...

People often come up to me in the street and ask, "Justin, what's next for Hero Kids?"

It's a great question, so here's a list of the things I'm working on:
•  Update all of PDFs to the new format monsters
•  Update the core Hero Kids PDF and print book
•  Write Reign of the Dragon
•  Create a Hero Kids monster compendium
•  Update the pirate monsters

Update the PDFs

I've been progressively updating all of the PDFs to reformat the monster standups into the new landscape format.  This horizontal format allows me to put more monster and hero stand-ups onto each page, more monsters cards fit on each page, and DMs don't need to cut the 'boss' monsters off the pages that include the monster cards.

Update the Core Rules

In the background I've been working on some minor updates and refinements to the core rules.  These updates include:
•  Expanded glossary to better define key game terms (such as 'engaged')
•  Added section on Equipment and Items
•  Added Advanced Combat section
•  A couple of new monsters, as explained below

I still have a few more bits to do:
•  Role-playing section with guidance for DMs
•  Update the print version

The hold-up with releasing the updated core rules is the print version.  I don't want the PDF to get out of sync with the print version so I need to update the print files and then get new proofs from DriveThru before I can release this updated version to the public.

Reign of the Dragon adventure

This is likely to be a premium adventure, and is taking a while...

Pirates

I recently received this comment over on DriveThruRPG:
"Are the skeleton archer, skeleton swordsman, and skeleton warrior supposed to have exactly the same stats and special abilities as their pirate counterparts?"

The answer is 'no'.

These are some of the very first monsters that I created for Hero Kids, and not even I realized they were identical!  So I've redesigned the pirates with a new bonus ability (Timid instead of Rattled):

Old:

New:

So these new pirates will be included in the updated core Hero Kids rules. There's also a couple of new pirates included:

The Pirate Recruiter amuses me... :-)

Monster Compendium

The monster compendium (maybe Hero Kids - Fantasy Expansion - Threats to the Brecken Vale) is where most of my efforts are going at the moment.  Before I started the compendium I had released about 40-50 monsters across all of the fantasy adventures.  For the compendium, I'm working towards over 100 monsters.

To achieve this, I've been working on all my unused unique monster artwork and my mannequin monsters.

The current mannequin monsters are usually the humanoids to which I can mix and match equipment and weapons to create variations of the base monster type.  This includes the goblins and skeletons, as well as these nefarious brigands:

I have a few unique monsters I haven't used yet, like this crone, wraith, and zombie:

I've also commissioned a bunch of new monsters from Eric Quigley, so here's a preview of these new baddies:


That feels like a lot of stuff.  So here's a sneak peek at the developing list of monsters for the compendium:

Phew!  That seems like a lot!