About Royal Road West’s attempts to create a multidimensional door

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A darkened passage with light at the end. Two figures move toward the light.

This website came about because once upon a time an anonymous former newspaper Editor from a fog-shrouded Midwestern town discovered a multidimensional door into the ancient kingdom of Kesteva.

How hard can it be to build a multidimensional door that accesses other universes? As it turns out …

Royal Road West gets regular shipments of translated historical documents from the Editor, who we think sends us what his Translator has sent him. I should stress at the outset that our relationship is solid and productive, if, well, maybe a little weird given that we have neither seen nor spoken to the Editor and all of our communication with one another is by snail mail at the Editor’s insistence.

So it was not out of a competitive sense that not long ago we embarked on an in-house project to create our own multidimensional door.

The project charter mentioned business opportunities in the way of charged admission and tours of the ancient library the Editor draws his material from, and of the possibility of unlocking further universes to discover and turn into role-playing game material. I can’t take credit for the idea. That belongs to my IT helpdesk guy, who after proposing the project to our executive team during a free-pitch day open to all employees won appreciation for his outside-the-universe thinking and was immediately appointed project manager and given a sizable budget.

The PM and the war room

Helpdesk calls went unanswered for two weeks as the PM set up a war room we gave him on the ground floor of a warehouse we were renting to store print products. Finally we brought in a temp and then made the position permanent; too many computers needed to be shut down and turned back on again and could not wait. The executive team also had thought the project would take only a couple of weeks, but after a month of getting the go-ahead, the helpdesk guy was rarely seen or heard around the office. I paid a site visit about a month into the project as part of a regular check-in and was amazed by what I saw. The IT guy, Kenny, had transformed the space we’d given to him into a tiki bar, with potted palm trees, three dozen varieties of liquor and rows and rows of tiki torches illuminating the conference tables. The fire alarm system had been disabled.

“Now that’s a space for creativity, Kenny!” I said, and he raised a hurricane glass with four varieties of rum in it.

“The team’s at lunch,” he said. “I’m holding down the ranch.”

I should also say that in and among the potted palms and Christmas lights were dozens of wheeled whiteboards, smart boards and other creative tech.

Much to my relief, the whiteboards were covered with scribblings, numbers, graphs and matrices.

For his team, Kenny had recruited a street magician, a palm reader, a Ph.D. mathematician from the local university, a dog walker, a carpenter, an electrician and a physician’s assistant.

“Why the physician’s assistant?” I asked.

“He’s our scribe,” Kenny said. “He also might help diagnose any radness with the situation of pulling live bodies into and out of multidimensional space.”

Looking for results

To date, the team had tried these approaches and noted these results:

  • Built a door frame. The carpenter made it out of specially ordered wood. Then the street magician jumped through it. He emerged on the other side. “Maybe should have said ta-da?” read the field notebook.
  • Added wire wraps to the frame. No change.
  • Connected power to the wire wraps. No change.

Discussion item: Does anyone have tips on how to build a multidimensional door? Anyone? Anyone? How do we build it?

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How Royal Road West got its name

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Man reading a book

Names matter. Royal Road West’s history begins with the anonymous former newspaper Editor from a fog-shrouded Midwestern town who pulled a cache of historical records from ancient Kesteva through a multidimensional door.

The Editor tried to get universities and academic journals to treat his find seriously, but he was ignored or shown the door. In one case, he may have been carried through a university building’s exit bodily, but we have little information about the incident. For that matter, we have little information about the Editor. To this day, we have neither met him nor had a phone conversation with him. Our intermediary is the Translator—whom we also have not met.

Out of desperation, the Editor turned to those of us who would become the future Royal Road West.

We try not to take it personally. Instead, we put Royal Road West into motion.

The name comes primarily from the Royal Road, a marvel of ancient Kesteva. The Road is the ancient kingdom’s highway, main post road, telegraph trunk, watchtower network and lodging system rolled into one. It stretches from the eastern mountains to the western sea and connected Kesteva with such efficiency that, according to our preliminary research, economic activity rose at least 25 percent in its first 10 years of operation.

Given all that, we thought “Royal Road” would be a good name for the Editor’s great project.

“West” comes from a couple of things. First, the story of Kesteva’s founding is the story of Aelfric & Aelin’s flight from the Old World, with thousands of their closest followers, and their subsequent march from the mountains to the sea.

That is, their westward march.

The company also is located in the western United States. And so “Royal Road West” was born.

Discussion question: If you were to name your own adventuring company, what would you call it? What elements would you try to capture in a name?

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What on Earth Do We Know About Kesteva?

Publisher Publisher's Blog
An image of a castle atop a hill, with a section of Kesteva's Royal Road climbing to it.

Some time ago, an anonymous former newspaper Editor in a fog-shrouded Midwestern town pulled a trove of historical records through a multidimensional door. The documents concerned the ancient kingdom of Kesteva.

Ever since Royal Road West agreed to convert ancient Kesteva’s documents into a role-playing game based on Dungeon World, the Editor has shipped us stacks and stacks of material.

I have no idea how what his system is, or whether he has a system at all. One week we get a bundle of Ulric’s Little Descriptives, one month we get a pile of drafts for the Kestevan Chronicle, another month we get a recipe for bread pudding with bourbon glaze.

And we didn’t think Kesteva had bourbon.

How old is Kesteva? Who knows? The Editor doesn’t seem to know. But month after month, he sends us ephemeric clutter of such variety we wonder whether he found his multidimensional door was into an ancient library or into that ancient library’s basement. If he hadn’t been pulling the material from another time, another world, we would say the Editor is a hoarder. But he keeps sending, and we keep publishing.

So our comprehension of ancient Kesteva is broad and inconsistently deep. We know …

That Kesteva was a world unlike ours. It had:

  • Dragons and other sentient non-human species
  • Schools, libraries, & etc.

All of these topics are covered in the sourcebooks and gaming aids Royal Road West is producing as part of the Editor’s Great Project. Our forthcoming free eblook Discover Kesteva gives a definitive introduction to the subject. As the Editor continues to send us more translated material, so we continue to publish it.

Sometimes I wonder if the fact that the Editor recovered all this material from a library skews our perception of Kesteva. Did the average Kestevan think of the grand library known to the Editor on a daily basis? Or was her or his mind filled with other daily thoughts–of work, of fresh air, of sex, of sports, of beer?

What do you think? If you were an ancient Kestevan, who would you be? What would you do? What thoughts would occupy your mind?

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What is that sword?

Publisher Discover
A medieval-looking sword

One curious artifact recovered by our anonymous former newspaper Editor from a fog-shrouded Midwestern town is a scrap of paper illustrating a sword that looks much like one from Earth’s European Middle Ages. Is it evidence that metallurgy in ancient Kesteva is much as it is on Earth? If so, what are the implications?

These are the kinds of questions we at Royal Road West ponder as the Editor retrieves his findings from the multidimensional door between our world and ancient Kesteva.

Image of a sword
Illustration of a sword, recovered by the Editor through the multidimensional door between our world and ancient Kesteva

No. 1703, Ulric’s Little Descriptive of The Wild Wood, now live on DriveThruRPG

Publisher News
Drawing of forest and distant montains

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Royal Road West staff, our translation and reproduction of another travel guide from ancient Kesteva is live and available for purchase on DriveThruRPG.com. Ulric’s Little Descriptive of the Wild Wood is packed with tips, lore and scraps of legend. It’s designed to be printed on two sides of an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet and folded just like the original.

Packed with tips, lore and scraps of legend, this gaming aid is a translation of an original Little Descriptive produced by Ulric of Skara’s copyhouse! Print it on two sides of an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet and fold it just like the original version.

The original was brought into our world through a multidimensional door* discovered by an anonymous former newspaper Editor in a fog-shrouded Midwestern town.

The download also includes Gamemaster Notes that give background and tips for adapting the contents for Dungeon World. Inside, find:

  • An overview of The Wild Wood, one of the biggest blanks on a map imaginable
  • Lore and scraps of intel on the forest’s inhabitants
  • Information about Lost Cities, and Ragnarokists’ interest in them
  • Adventure hooks, including The Hoard of Magister Twelis, The Lich, and Secret Ingredient
  • An excerpt from a text pertaining to Ragnarok

Use Ulric’s Little Descriptive of The Wild Wood as a gaming aid or as inspiration for your own Dungeon Worldadventures! Great steading, great adventuring!

 

 

 

 

How would YOU keep track of a new kingdom’s story?

Publisher Learn
Illustration of a book

You may have heard of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or Records of the Grand Historian. Like these modern-Earth records from England and China (though strictly speaking, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was a collection of annals), Kesteva of the ancient past had its own project of national storytelling: the Kestevan Chronicle.

In the year 25, King Alfred commanded a narrative of the kingdom be compiled to celebrate the people’s deeds and provide their descendants with a coherent history of their New World. His Great Instruction laid out the manner of creation: Each Founding City should appoint one Recorder to oversee the creation of annals. These annals would form the Chronicle’s running story thread. The archivists also were charged with gathering memorials of people who had served their cities well; tables of property ownership, town revenues and disbursements, militia numbers; descriptions of important places; and narratives of important events above and beyond the basic entry. In time, the Royal Librarians oversaw these duties and added material as they saw fit, endeavoring to create as complete a record of their cities’ occurrences as possible.

Once a year, a clean copy from each Founding City, and those of many more towns, is shipped to Kesteva City. There they are edited and integrated into a single, voluminous record that becomes the official Kestevan Chronicle.

For gaming purposes, the K-Chron, as it was affectionately called in Kesteva and we confess by ourselves at Royal Road West, is as close to a Great Big Book of Everything as can be found in the kingdom. Ulric himself … well, as you might expect, the prodigious writer wrote about the Kestevan Chronicle as early as 290, a year after his arrival in Skara.

The Royal Libraries themselves may make for interesting adventures, or the starting points of adventures, for it is the royal librarians who centralize knowledge for each city, and they are hungry for texts and artifacts from the lost civilizations that can be recovered only by sturdy adventurers.

Peterborough.Chronicle.firstpage
The initial page of the Peterborough Chronicle.

What the Editor hopes to achieve with his great project

Publisher Publisher's Blog

Why on Earth is Kesteva the subject of a role-playing game?

Some time ago, an anonymous former newspaper Editor in a fog-shrouded Midwestern town pulled a trove of historical documents through a multidimensional door. The documents concerned the ancient kingdom of Kesteva. And now they’re translated, formatted, and in front of you.

What?

Even before I became Publisher of Royal Road West I took on some unusual projects. Once I went undercover on the Internet as a troll to experience the culture and learn the profession’s secrets. Another time, back when I was editing my own small-town newspaper, I arranged for a time traveler headed into the future to send weekly postcards to my readers.

They were to be printed on Page 3 as Dispatches From the Future, but once the time traveler left I never heard from him again.

Publishing Kesteva as a role-playing game is another matter. First, it wasn’t my idea at all. Credit goes to the Editor, the same one from the fog-shrouded Midwestern town who recovered our source material for all of these gaming aids and literature.

In his correspondence with me, the Editor says that once he went through the multidimensional door and wound up in an ancient Kestevan library, he knew he had to bring this wealth of knowledge to the world. He tried and tried to get universities’ ancient studies programs to examine the papers. He even tried getting serious academic journals to publish his own research as that of an independent scholar, but the Editor’s only credentials were a lapsed membership in the Society of Professional Journalists and a membership with a local club he will not specify.

Distraught and desperate, he turned to Royal Road West. “You are my last hope,” he wrote to me. “None of the serious journals and scholars will take me seriously. But you will take anyone, won’t you? Oh, god, oh, god, if Royal Road West of all places will not publish my work I will be at rock bottom, in the depths of the ocean, the oil stain on the bottom of a barrel …”

We chose to take his words as a compliment.

The Editor proposed that Royal Road West not simply publish translations of the historical records but that we instead turn the material into a role-playing game of some sort. In fact, he insisted on the Dungeon World system, which is all about drawing maps and leaving blanks. The Editor told me that he had recovered only a tiny fraction of the material he saw inside that ancient library, so he thought there were many blanks to be filled.

In a postscript, he said he also liked dragons, that Kesteva had dragons, and Dungeon World also had dragons.

I sent a positive letter in response, and shipments began arriving the next week.

To this day, I have never met the Editor, or the Translator. I suppose that casts some risk of inaccuracy on the Editor’s great project, but I think when you throw a multidimensional door into the equation, all bets are off.

What do you think?

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Welcome, welcome, welcome!

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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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