Production Update: April
5 months ago
– Thu, Apr 25, 2024 at 11:49:36 AM
Well met, summoners!
We were holding this April update until our manufacturer made our sample, but that's proving to take them more time than we anticipated. So, we have a short update to keep you in the loop!
All of our final files are with our manufacturer, and they are processing everything a little slower than we had hoped. This part of the process is also a series of back-and-forth file trades to communicate our design ideas in a way that they understand perfectly. Once they’re satisfied they understand the format and every card and box file is perfect, they’ll run the manufacturing sample.
This back-and-forth isn’t unusual and happens all the time when working with a print manufacturer. Printing a large order for commercial use takes a lot of attention to detail. Luckily, through this process, we’ve identified the odd typo and misprint that slipped past our digital QA pass, so it’s not all in vain.
Because we may make further adjustments to appease the print gods, we’re waiting until all files are signed off by our manufacturer before packaging our digital files for distribution. We wouldn’t want digital backers to get a PDF with errors that were fixed in the manufacturing process.
Until next time!
Nayan & Lee
Projects We Love: Into the Wilds Battlemap Books
Into the Wilds is a collection of 9 fully customisable, biome and region themed physical battlemap books for your favourite TTRPG. They are ideal for pre-set or random encounters, so you can be fully prepared no matter which direction your players choose to head in.
Volume 3 Introduces three new Urban themed books to the series, while the returning Volumes 1 & 2 include Overworld and Underworld themed books. The maps are all completely hand-drawn by well known cartographer Tom Cartos, and are customisable with the included re-usable asset stickers, your own 3D terrain, or a dry erase marker.
Backing at any tier also includes the complete digital bundle for online play or at home printing.
Get your free sample set of digital maps and assets from the Kickstarter HERE
Find out more and back the Kickstarter HERE
Production Update: March
6 months ago
– Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 11:33:15 AM
Well met, summoners!
The votes are in, and it's close, but it looks like the folded card is the preferred format for the Deck of Encounters!
There are a lot of you out there voicing your preferences for the standard card format, which is why we’re happy to announce that all digital PDFs of the Deck of Encounters will have both the folded AND standard card format so you can print your preference! We would have loved to provide both formats for you in physical form, but minimum order costs and price break points would make it too costly for us.
Now that we have a clear direction on format, we plan on having all design and content finalized for print by the end of this month. That means our manufacturer will hit us with a final sample for approval, then we press the big red button to start the printing process. Digital PDF rewards should be going out around this time as well!
Projects We Love
After a successful Kickstarter with over a thousand backers, The Eren Chronicles have opened the gates one last time for those who missed the campaign! This is your last chance to pre-order EXORDIUM: Origins of Mythos and any of its add-ons!
EXORDIUM: Origins of Mythos is a 5e supplement with epic-level content for all tiers of 5th edition. Within its 250+ pages this compendium will allow you to follow the paths of Mythic Heroes, forge your own Legacy, gain power beyond measure and eventually, draw the ire of your direct counterpart; a formidable Mythic Nemesis.
Follow this LINK to learn more!
That’s all we have for now! See you next time!
Nayan & Lee
Production Update: DoE Survey
7 months ago
– Tue, Feb 13, 2024 at 09:52:21 AM
Well met, summoners!
After our last update announcing the change of the Deck of Encounters cards from folded to standard card format, we’ve received some feedback from a few backers wanting to keep the cards folded. So before we start moving forward with those changes, we thought we’d put out a survey to gauge your feelings on it!
As we said previously, we thought these changes would improve the efficiency of the product by reducing the dimensions of the box (saving a little on shipping) as well as keeping the cards consistent (elegance in design, I guess?). We’re happy to do either format as long as it’s what our backers want! Folded cards ARE our signature format, and who DOESN’T want to show off cool artwork to players?!
Link: Deck of Encounters Card Format Survey
Follow the survey link above to voice your preference on the change as soon as possible so we can confirm with our manufacturers and get production started!
Until next time!
Nayan & Lee
Production Update: February 2024
7 months ago
– Wed, Feb 07, 2024 at 10:33:22 AM
“I swear I hit publish on the December update, looked away to continue production, and then turned back to see it’s already February!” - Lee
Well met, summoners!
We’re back with another production update, and things are progressing nicely!
When it comes to raw content, all of the decks are written! What we mean by raw content is the actual line entries have been created and exist in their spreadsheet forms, awaiting editing and transfer to their pretty card formats for printing. This is after the overhaul we did to the raw content back in December that brought longer line entries, better loot and encounter balancing, and more unique loot effects.
Of the raw content, the Deck of Loot I and the Deck of Encounters are edited and being prototyped with our manufacturer. This is so we can identify any design problems early while we finish the content instead of idling while prototypes go back and forth. Through this process, we’ve come to an important choice regarding pack design.
As seen in our Kickstarter, the Deck of Encounters cards have been designed to fold like our Tome of Summoning reference cards, while The Deck of Loot has been designed to be a standard poker-sized card. In the early stages, the Deck of Loot was also intended to be folded, but we changed the design after playtesting as the card was usually referenced a handful of times immediately after encounters before being put aside.
We continued designing the folded encounter cards as many game masters liked having them stand behind the screen during travel sequences or as a reminder to roll for an encounter after a period of time. The folded aspect also allowed players to see the artwork when draped over a game master screen. However, after considering feedback from our testing, it seems that the folded aspect may not be the most useful.
We take convenience and design seriously and want to make a product that helps game masters improve their game without clutter and complication. Our creature reference cards, which are referenced constantly throughout an encounter, made perfect sense to have on folded cards and hang on game master screens in full view of a game master. Our loot and encounter cards, while equally useful, are not looked at as frequently.
This leads us to our Deck of Encounter cards. As fun as they are folded, we believe they may be more convenient in poker-card format like the Deck of Loot. This means a smaller card that takes less space and paper with a smaller box to store and ship them, which we see as a win for us and our backers.
TLDR; We’re changing the Deck of Encounter folded cards to standard cards like the Deck of Loot, which will make them more convenient, space-saving, and cheaper to ship. Their content will remain the same.
Let us know what you think about this change!
Looking forward, our next update should be when we finish our content editing and have everything laid out for final print and digital publication!
Sorry for the wordy update. I must like to hear myself talk, or I guess type, especially about design.
See you next time!
Nayan & Lee
December Production Update
9 months ago
– Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 04:52:11 PM
Well met, summoners!
Time is whooshing by, so let's give you a rundown of what we’ve been working on!
First things first, production has been delayed due to unforeseen production circumstances and personal obligations, such as when Nayan and I suddenly packed up our lives and moved back to the USA. This will put us into manufacturing closer to spring 2024 and fulfillment around summer 2024. We apologize for the delay, but it also gives us more time to make some awesome improvements, as we’ll talk about next!
Before we even launched the Kickstarter, we already had many tables created for the Deck of Loot and Deck of Encounters, all designed around a consistent loot value and encounter design system. This served us well when making tables for posting online, but after further development for print, we’ve found a few improvements we could make to cram more content into these cards and balance loot value even more granularly.
After testing font sizes and adjusting card design, we could pack a few more words into each table line, allowing us to create more interesting and detailed entries! This meant we needed to go back and spruce up some of our older tables to be more interesting and engaging. This was also necessary as, after further playtesting, many of our encounters were over-tuned and needed readjusting. Luckily, we made these system changes now rather than after creating the tables in their entirety. That would have definitely not been fun to readjust!
Speaking of balancing, we overhauled our loot value system after more playtesting and research! Previously, we had a tier-based loot value approach, which had some wiggle room to have lower or higher-level creatures in each tier to drop lower or higher-value loot, typically measured in gold pieces. This felt too arbitrary.
Now, we took a more mathematical approach to calculate the best range of value for each creature, taking into account their difficulty as well as the context in which they’re typically found. We also wanted more magical loot, which required a better understanding of loot impact on the typical 5e game. These needed more space for details, which works out now that we’ve expanded our table entry sizes!
After all this development and testing and the previously mentioned delays, we’ve still managed to finish the Deck of Loot I pack and are now finessing it for print with our manufacturer to get a production sample made. We’re doing this with one pack first, so if changes need to be made, we won't have to readjust the other packs and can adjust our production to make it right the first time.
Once again, we apologize for the delays, but we hope the improvements that were made during it are worth the wait!
That’s it for production! See you next time!
Nayan and Lee
