It has been an unseasonably cold summer in the sleepy little village of Heldren. There are even reports that it has snowed in the Border Wood! When an injured caravan guard arrives in town, our four heroes answer the call to save Lady Argentea from her captors. Little do they know that their journey will take them to the far north, to Irrisen, the Land of Always Winter, and beyond. From humble origins, these youths will face an army of witches, a misogynistic cult, and terrors from beyond the stars.

Welcome, one and all, to my Reign of Winter development log thread. Reign of Winter is an Adventure Path for Paizo’s Pathfinder TTRPG, and it is a story I’ve been a fan of for some time now. I will be converting the AP to an RPG Maker (OG PS1 version) game. Specifically, I will be converting my own version of the campaign that I played with my friends, starring their characters as the heroes. I know, making an RPG based on your D&D campaign, can it get any more nerdy? (Yes it can, because I’m also making Magic cards based on it.)

Of course, there are limitations that I will have to overcome. With a TTRPG, the only limit is your imagination, but there are just some things that I won’t be able to do with this system. That being said, I will remain truthful to the soul of the story of the campaign (my version of it at least) with some stuff cut out or added to make for a better gameplay experience.

If you are interested at all in playing this game, I encourage you to NOT look up the Reign of Winter Adventure Path. Even the titles of the books have some pretty big spoilers, and I’d hate for it to be ruined for you.

DEV LOG 0: The Story

My group began playing through Reign of Winter in October of 2017, and we wrapped up the game after about three and a half years. This, coupled with the fact that the AP has been around since 2013, means that the story of the game has pretty much already been written. My players and I kept extensive notes throughout the campaign, and they will serve me well as I craft this game. All I have to do is translate it over to RPG Maker, with some tweaking as I’ve mentioned before.

NEXT STEPS:

My first step towards actually making this game will be to compile a list of all the characters, and find appropriate sprites and/or monster graphics for them all. By my count, there were at least 80 unique characters in our campaign. Once I know what characters I will be using, who I will be cutting, and who I will have to add to make this game work, I will then write a script. I’m looking to make this a 30-50 hour game, so that means it will be a LONG script. It will probably actually be a little bit before I touch RPG Maker except to mess around and get a feel for it again (it has been about 20 years after all). I anticipate this script-writing will take the better part of about a year (hey, just because the story is written doesn’t mean that I have all the dialogue figured out).

As progress is made on the script, I’ll post some examples here, so you can get a taste of what you’re in for with this game. I’ll also be posting character bios for the four main heroes and a couple of NPCs, though I’ll have to be mindful not to spoil anything. A piece of art depicting the heroes is also in the works, so keep an eye out for that!

That’s all for now! I know this forum has seen livelier days, but I still look forward to chronicling my game creation here!