Evil Hat Productions has released updated details on their revised and expanded four volume edition of Designers & Dragons, a comprehensive historical guide to the role-playing game industry.  The books will release to trade in January 2015. The project is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter.
 
The four volume revised set of Shannon Appelcline’s comprehensive history of roleplaying games was first announced in 2012 (see “ Expanded 'Designers & Dragons'”), a little over a year after the first edition printing by Mongoose Publishing released, and quickly sold out.  The 442-page hardcover chronicled the history of the RPG industry from the beginning in 1974 to the present, and detailed the history and products of almost 60 companies. 
 
This new edition has been split into four volumes, each covering a corresponding decade, and according to Fred Hicks of Evil Hat, will include 300 to 400 pages each.  The 6” x 9” black-and-white softcovers will include cover photos of many game books detailed.  Each volume will feature a foreword by a noted gaming professional: Greg Stafford (1970s), Mike Pondsmith (1980s), Peter Adkison (1990s), and Lisa Stevens (2000s).  Cover artwork for each volume is done by Andrew Bosley.  Each volume has an MSRP of $20.00.
 
Hicks shared additional information about the updated release, “Each article for a company is complete (rather than spread across multiple volumes), and lives in whatever volume contains the decade in which the company was founded.  Every volume has expanded entries based on a few additional years of research and interviews.  There's new cover art and a different arrangement of pictures inside.”
 
The company turned to Kickstarter in hopes of funding simultaneous printing of all four volumes, and actually reached its modest $7,500 goal before official launch (due to soft-launch to test the live links for PDF content).  In two days, it has raised over $47,000 from nearly 1,200 backers as of this writing, more than enough to fund the printing of all four volumes at once.  The Kickstarter offers a retailer level for multiple copies of the book(s), which are due in to backers in December, just before trade release.