A Status Update
about 9 years ago – Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 11:37:31 PM

There's not really much to say about the past week. 

We've been working, designing cards and plating them up, at about the rate we'd planned to: but we haven't been catching up on ourselves, so we're still a few weeks behind schedule.

With that said, it's time for you to get a preview card, and me to get back to work.

Be Well

-Ste

A Manic Month
over 9 years ago – Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 06:28:03 PM

It's been a month since our last update. Unfortunately, that was unavoidable due to two separate disruptions.

Over the last month Loz has been suffering from an ongoing severe medical issue, while I had to move homes unexpectedly. This dual distraction meant that neither of us had the time and energy to make a proper update (and, indeed, I had no proper internet access, meaning I couldn't upload any card images for you) and unfortunately that led to us leaving you in the dark for a while.

In terms of our schedule: We're three weeks behind our ideal schedule now, and our schedule only had a fortnight to spare with four decks (with three we'd be fine). That means the digital decks will probably be coming out late, but we're trying to catch up and avoid delays. The physical decks are less pushed, as we have some slack in our schedule between the two, so they may well come out on time.

We'll be giving you regular updates on progress from here on out, and we'll have a prepared update ready to go in case something else goes hideously wrong.

If only I could ask today's preview card for a bit of forward information...

 Be Well

-Ste

Surprising Numbers - What's In Store - Video Violence
over 9 years ago – Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 11:56:48 AM

Surprising Numbers

We've just received our final numbers on payment from Kickstarter, this project has given us nine thousand, eight hundred and seventy six pounds, fifty four pence.

That is to say: £9876.54.

Don't worry, that doesn't mean we've had a lot of failed pledges, it's simply the expected cut taken by Kickstarter and the payment processors. In fact, they've taken a lower percentage than we're used to, probably because we've had a higher average pledge.

So that's two pleasant surprises at once: more money to work with, and a very pleasing sum. Hopefully the elegance of the money is a good omen for how smoothly the work will be going from here on out.

What's In Store

We've finally gotten around to creating a web store. 

Well, not creating exactly, we're using Backerkit's pre-order system. It will allow you to pledge for T-Shirts once those are finalised, and to increase your pledges at any time, as well as allowing other people to pre-order at a slightly higher cost than that of the kickstarter pledges.

In a bit over a week Backerkit will have finished their review process, and be launching their section. We may even have T-shirt designs ready by then, for you to pick up if you like

Video Violence

When we mentioned the attempted destruction of the prototype box, several of you requested a video of the destructive process. So, here it is. Unfortunately, our camera is not very good quality:

 If you find yourself outside in a thunderstorm, make sure you keep your box in a bag. If you find yourself in a hurricane, the decks will probably the last thing on your mind.

Be Well

-Ste

One Day Left, Getting the Shirts to a T, &, Runes Have Numbers?
over 9 years ago – Sat, Jul 11, 2015 at 04:06:36 PM

One Day Left

We're entering the last day of this kickstarter, which often (but not always) means an upsurge in activity. Fingers crossed that it will, and at least one of us will be here all day to make sure no questions go unanswered.

Getting the Shirts to a T

For reasons that are, unfortunately, outside of our control we've had less time to work on the T-shirts than we would have liked. Loz in particular (the more visually artistic of the two of us) has been swamped.

We've got a set of designs underway, but we want your feedback before we set anything in stone. There's one for each suit, the hearts draft is below:

Unfortunately our desire to make them as good as possible means that we won't have them done in time for the end of the project. But we will make them available.

There are a few options for how to make them available.
1) We put the designs on one or more print on demand site(s), such as Spreadshirt, and allow you to buy them there. This saves on shipping for US backers, and doesn't cost UK backers any more (and for Australian and NZ backers we might be able to find a local options for you guys too).
2) We run another kickstarter for the T-shirts with a really low goal, so that you can pledge the same way as usual.
3) We go to BackerKit, and work with their Post-Kickstarter Add-Ons option. This has an innate set-up cost, but could help us set up a web-shop and take pre-orders from people who can't make the pledges on kickstarter at only a slightly higher rate (rather than full retail).

& 

I find this symbol very interesting. The Ampersand stands for "and", but it's actually not a modified "a", as I often thought, but rather a combination (ligature) of the letters e and t. 

As we're currently involved in some wordplay work with one of our Book of Dreams backers it just seemed appropriate to point the oddity out.

Runes Have Numbers?

We've decided to try something new with the runic cards. The Norse runes of the Elder Futhark, which are the runes we use, come in 3 sets of eight, called ætts (which, despite being pronounced the same as the number is apparently unrelated).

We always put the cards in the deck in the correct runic order, but without actually knowing the Futhark by heart you're unlikely to be able to put them back that way. So we're considering adding the numbers to each rune, to indicate where they belong:

So after all that talk we come to the end, and, importantly, the comments section. 
All feedback is welcomed.

Be Well

-Ste

The Beast Hungers! The End Times Come
over 9 years ago – Sat, Jul 11, 2015 at 04:06:31 PM

The Beast Hungers

The Voraxi existed, by another name, in two campaign settings I've run so far; and their city has existed in many others as well. Why? Because of one of the largest threads in RPG.net Forum's history, The City Built Around the Tarrasque. 

The idea started off simple, but grew into something far more complicated. The Voraxi are a distillation of the version we used in our primary D&D setting (named Twissen for its twin suns). Now, it might seem like this is a case where we had to change the name, for copyright reasons.
The Tarrasque is, after all, a product of D&D... except that's not entirely true. The Tarasque is a mythological beast, so we'd only need to remove a single letter to make everything okay.But we chose not to do that, because the Voraxi are more interesting when their true nature isn't obvious, and them taking the name of their beast is a key part of the personality of our version.

On the topic of names, Vorax is a latin word meaning "Glutton", connected to the suffix "-Vore" on omnivore, carnivore and herbivore. The great beast's name is, when translated, simply "Eater"

End Times

With only 10 hours left, we're currently £1,400 short of our final goal, making 2 new games for the Epic Creatures and Epic Treasures decks.

That could mean as 14 new backers, who wanted to go all-in. We're currently on the hunt for people who want the decks (and just don't know it yet), and we'd love it if some of you could share the project through social media, on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Reddit, Voat, or wherever it is you frequent.

On a related note, we thought some of you might appreciate this detailed (and concise) explanation of the backing options from /u/xgamer4 on reddit.

Be Well

-Ste