Sinclair's Library offers two must have supplements for your table, and all the accessories associated with them. With more than a 150 NPCs and their matching minis, 120 player options allowing you to create new and unique characters, the Library offers content for many of your future campaigns.
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The TTRPG industry has been going through a bit of turmoil recently with WotC's controversial announcement regarding the discontinuation of OGL 1.0a. It had us worried, like everyone else, and we have spent the last few days looking at best and worst case scenarios. Now that Paizo has made their announcement, we finally have enough information to draft our plan of action and share it with you.
For those of you who might have missed the news, Paizo has announced their intent to support, both publicly and financially, an independant SRD and OGL license, including perpetual and irrevocable language, owned by an independent entity free of financial ties to the TTRPG industry.
So what changes right now?
Right now, nothing. For as long as the OGL 1.0a exists, we'll keep releasing our playtest package, as planned, as often as we can, for both systems.
Will this change in the future?
As soon as it is available, we will move all of our eligible content towards the new ORC license, and adapt our existing content to accommodate the minor changes caused by the license transfer.
What about the 5e content?
The 5e side of things is a little more uncertain, but know this: we do not intend to make you suffer the consequences of a company who slighted you. As said, for the moment, it is business as usual. We will keep releasing playtest packages, and hopefully, we'll be able to release the full books without any issue. As things further develop, we will keep you informed, and work with you to find the solution that best meets your expectations and get the best product possible in your hands.
Does this mean further delays?
It might. We hope not. It depends. As long as OGL 1.0a is active, this shouldn't change much to our process. There might be a slight delay cause by the transition from OGL to ORC, depending on when it comes out, how much needs to change and if OGL changes before or after the release of the ORC license.
I'm done with 5e, can I change my system?
Many people have elected to take a moral stance and move away from 5e. If this is your case, you can go on Backerkit and update your order until we lock down orders on the 21st of January. If you wish to change which system to receive your product in past this date, feel free to contact us at any time and we will manually change your order on our end.
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Hi everyone,
We come today with great news: the first book, Sinclair's Almanac, is fully drafted! It's now off to the first edit pass. Now, "first edit pass" might be a little vague for some, so we figured we would use this opportunity to give you a little behind-the-scenes insight as to how we operate and produce content at Sinclair's Library.
The Claim Sheet
For each book, we have a claim sheet, where we manage the book's scope, content, and progress. How does it work? Each category of content (in the example here, subclasses) has a number of slots allocated.
Some slots are filled with predetermined concepts (such as the Pew Pew Mage). These represent particularly resonant concepts, niches we want to fill, or ideas from the team leads that we'd like to see in the book, but don't necessarily want to, or have the time to, write ourselves. We mark the concept and leave it up for grabs, letting one of our writers with a passion for the concept flesh it out themselves.
Some slots are left blank, leaving opportunities for our team of talented writers to pitch something cool. They bring an idea forward—sometimes writing a quick draft to give us a better picture of what they're aiming for—and if the design gets approved, they're off to the races.
Then comes in the team lead. Team leads are, simply, a smaller team of writers in charge of maintaining cohesion. They do the first fresh read of the design, perform an initial balance check, give the writer their opinion on it, and make sure the design will integrate well with the rest of the book's content; this includes checking for thematic or mechanical overlap with existing content, as well as directing the writer to another design (and its respective author) that could interact nicely with each other. Once everyone is happy with it, the team lead greenlights the design for edits.
The Editing Process
Once a design is sent to editorial via the Ready for Edits folder, the design's assigned editor goes through the piece—discussing matters with the team lead if questions arise—performing the second balance check and, well, editing the text. (In the initial edit pass, this is done via comments, giving authors guidance and advice and permitting them to make their own adjustments.) Then the design is sent back to the original writer to address the edits. Edits are made, text is improved, mechanical hiccups are corrected, and the writer tags it "Revised". Once these revisions are completed to their satisfaction, the writer relinquishes the design for final preparation; from there, our illustrious and tyrannical editing lead Isabelle Thorne does a final edit pass, making sure both the writing and balance passes our high quality standards, and sends it to layout.
5E conversion
At any point during the process, the editing lead is entitled to deem a design "ready for 5e". This means a rewrite is now off the table, and no conceptual issues have been found. As this point, the "ready for 5e" box is checked—what would we do without Excel?—and the design is placed on the 5e team's own Claim Sheet, where our conversion director David N. Ross assigns it to a 5e writer. From there, the design undergoes a very similar process, converting the design and making sure it's ready for layout.
Why this process?
Some of you may be familiar with standard industry practices, and so might know that this is an unorthodox method, slower than the usual creative process. So why so many loops; why so many people involved on a single design? Simply, quality. By letting our writers pitch designs, we make sure much of what's written for our books is someone's passion, an idea championed by the writers themselves. By including a team lead in the writing process, we make sure content remains cohesive and aligned with the book's overall concept, and that this conceptual oversight is shared with the writers. By adding an additional editing loop with revisions performed by the writers, we make sure our more junior writers get to learn and improve from veteran editors, with direct feedback on each design submitted; further, this lets writers remain invested in their designs, rather than casting their content into a black box. All these extra steps—while admittedly requiring investments of both time and money—are intended to guarantee the highest-quality content not only for this project, but for the future of the Sinclair's line.
Okay, that's great. What about playtesting?
The Almanac is written, congrats! But I don't see the playtest content anywhere on this process. Unlike the rest of the phases, playtest is handled on a design-by-design basis. Some designs will be sent to playtest after the first edit pass, others after the second edit pass, and the most complex or innovative may be sent more than once. Designing this workflow took some time, trial, and errors; bottlenecks were encountered along the way, and... well, things got delayed. Our online forms and Discord server are ready to receive playtest feedback, and we are simply waiting for the content to be ready. The good news: you won't have to wait a month between each playtest package to drop. As the Almanac is fully written, we're hoping it won't be too long a wait. Trust us, we're just as excited for you to see this content as you are to see it!
Hi everyone,
It has been a long time since our last update, but be assured, it is because we are hard at work. We know many of you are eagerly waiting for playtest material and to finally see some content. We are working on putting together the first Playtest Package, as well as the places for you to submit your comments, feedback and questions. There will be a form and a discord server where all comments and suggestions will be welcome. But most of you already knew that. So we're giving you a little something today, the full index of Sinclair's Almanac, with progress report for each design started this far.
Now this content is still susceptible to change (names being a likely example), but most of these designs have already been pitched, approved, and sent to the first edit pass.