10 Years and New Horizons

 

In 2012-ish, I started on what would eventually become the Far Away Land Role-Playing Game. That project was a sort of culmination of stories, artwork, and ideas that had been swimming inside my head for several years. In 2014, I ran the first FAL Kickstarter, and amazingly, the game far surpassed its funding goal. Since then, the game and the world of Far Away Land have expanded through adventures and additional expansion books. Skip to 10 years later, and somehow I am still just as dedicated and devoted to building this fictional world.

FAL has evolved and continues to grow into the thing I originally imagined: a big, sprawling, epic world that I could play in, tell stories in, and create maps and artwork in, all while allowing others to share in that experience as well. I look back at the early artwork in those first books where I was drawing with a pencil, scanning, redrawing the images, and coloring on my old computer (the first thing I did with that first Kickstarter money after all rewards had been fulfilled was buy a digital drawing tablet). I think about the difficulty of completing even a single image. Although I had always drawn and painted, I was learning and developing a style that would eventually become my own. I was also developing a world that would grow with time.

Next year is the 10th anniversary of Far Away Land, and to celebrate that milestone, we will be running a Kickstarter for two new books. The first of these books is a second edition set of core rules called "The Far Away Land Enchiridion," which features rule revisions and compilation from all of the previous books, plus new content. The second book is the "Far Away Land Book of Lore," which explores the world/universe of Far Away Land, compiling current lore and adding to it greatly.

Over these next months, we will be teasing artwork, rule revisions, new content, maps (hex maps are back!), stories, and other elements of the new books. This is a huge project with big, thick, colorful books, and I hope that you will join us as we explore all the new awesome.

- Dirk