Many of our loyal readers have asked how mysterious historical documents pulled through a multidimensional door by a former newspaper editor in a fog-shrouded Midwestern town get translated and turned into role-playing game materials. That’s why I’m starting this blog – to as best we can give some insight into the process, and to show how you can get involved.
Have you ever thought something seemed too suspicious to be true? That’s how I felt when the Translator approached me some years ago and said he had stacks of historical records from an ancient kingdom no one had heard of and needed to find a publisher. Then he added that these records—fading travel guides, property rolls, diaries, maps and ledgers—had been in a library in that ancient kingdom, and the Editor had pulled them through a multidimensional door. Amazing. Furthermore, the Editor did not speak ancient Kestevan. He had met the Translator at a county fair, recognized the Translator’s skill with languages and asked him to translate as much as possible into Modern English.
So when the Translator said this Editor, whom we have to this day not met, wanted Royal Road West to publish the translated material, we naturally said yes.
You would have done the same, wouldn’t you?
Here is the process of bringing the world of ancient Kesteva to you.
- First, the Editor collects material through his multidimensional door. We are not entirely sure where this door is. Apparently it is in the fog-shrouded Midwestern town he lives in. We do know it leads to an ancient Kestevan library that seems to be closed for the weekend when he enters. We do not know if he is able to walk about the ancient Kestevan land, or if the doors are locked inside and out.
- Then the Editor ships his new material to the Translator. The Translator tells us this happens about once a month and that the papers, books and scrolls arrive wrapped in brown packaging paper secured with twine.
- The Translator snips the twine, unrolls the bundle and sets about converting the ancient words into modern English. We at Royal Road West have asked him how long this takes, given that he is the only person on modern Earth who has been able to translate ancient Kestevan. He said the first translations took him months, even years, to sort out but that Kestevan is similar to some of Earth’s old languages. He examined word frequency, correlated illustrations with captions and made a few other guesses that led to him slowly and then rapidly decoding the ancient texts. He is still learning and adding to the secret vocabulary lists he keeps, but the process is much more rapid now.
- The Translator sends Royal Road West the translated text. Often, he also sends photocopies or photos of the original material so that we may reconstruct not only the words but the formatting of the original and attempt to reproduce the illustrations.
- We then put the draft product through our own editorial process, which typically includes adding game master notes, finalizing formatting, proofreading and other such steps.
- And then we offer it to you. Some products are put up for sale to help us sustain the business, but much goes directly onto our website or into free ebooks. The Editor conceived of the project with an educational and research mission, so we offer as much free of charge as we can.
So that’s what it is. In the main, we are dealing with primary sources from a hitherto-unknown land. This brings challenges of translation, on which we look to the Translator, and of further interpretation, which our dedicated staff at Royal Road West – and you – provide. Join us as we
Next time, I’ll dive into the Editor’s great project and why on earth he thought a publishing company like Royal Road West should publish his findings. In the meantime, what do you think of our process? Would you have accepted the proposal the mysterious Editor put to us?
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