Category: Publisher’s Blog

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?

Do you want to keep up to date on the latest news from Royal Road West and ancient Kesteva? Sign up for The Town Crier, our weekly newsletter.

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?

Do you want to keep up to date on the latest news from Royal Road West and ancient Kesteva? Sign up for The Town Crier, our weekly newsletter.

Welcome, welcome, welcome!

Publisher Publisher's Blog , , , , ,

 

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?

Do you want to keep up to date on the latest news from Royal Road West and ancient Kesteva? Sign up for The Town Crier, our weekly newsletter.