This update is for AUS/NZ backers. Here is the latest on the fulfillment situation. As you all may remember from this earlier update, the pallet headed to Australia was lost and eventually found.
For today’s update, let’s start by quoting verbatim what the fulfillment company recently provided to us:
Just a heads-up — this isn't a great email to be writing. We accepted delivery today of the pallet containing the Purple Planet shipment, but unfortunately, it's arrived significantly incomplete. I've attached our goods receipt so you can see exactly what was received.
I've followed up with the depot teams at Threshman and ICAL to understand what’s happened. They've advised that the shipment had been broken down after delivery and has since been moved around the depot quite a bit. What we received today is everything they were able to identify.
As you'll see from the attached receipt, there’s a substantial amount missing — including what I suspect are the hardest-to-replace SKUs like the stretch goals and limited editions.
For context, we’re approaching end-of-financial-year here in Australia, and nearly every major warehouse is currently in the thick of annual stocktake. I’ve paid for ICAL to do a full audit of every bay where this stock could have ended up, but due to their internal EOFY stocktake, they won’t be able to complete this until Thursday or Friday next week.
I’m not sure what the chances are that the missing items will turn up, but I’ve gone ahead with the search anyway in the hope that we can recover the limited edition and other high-value items.
Will keep you posted as I hear more — just wanted to flag it with you early.
So, what’s next? AUS/NZ backers, I think we’re at a crossroads. Here is what we’re considering, so please provide your input.
First, as a preamble, know that we do anticipate having enough stock to fill most if not all orders, just not necessarily “in Australia right now.” We always overprint by about 10%. We’ve actually taken flak for this in the past, because if we have leftover Kickstarter exclusives we put them up for sale in our online store. But this scenario is a perfect example of why we overprint. Most of our crowdfunding projects suffer some degree of “lost or damaged by the mailman,” and we use the overprints to replace those. This is the first time we’ve had a full pallet disappear, and thank goodness we have extras! I suspect we will be able to replace everything on it, though the overprints goods are probably in the USA, UK or Canada.
So here are the possible options. Think of this as “taking the temperature of the room.” We are still waiting to find out what the final inventory comes out to be. Options are some mix of these:
Fulfill your pledge using a mix of “inventory in Australia” and “inventory shipped in from other markets” – this will honestly vary pledge-by-pledge at this point, and we won’t know for sure until we get the final inventory count
Offer a full refund
Some sort of makeup item. We were already planning to give a credit of some kind when the fulfillment finally finishes. I’m now wondering if we should perhaps also create some special Australia-only item for Purple Planet backers. “My shipment went to the Purple Planet and back, and all I got was this lousy sticker!” Or a one-page mini-encounter. Could be something fun or something more substantial or “all of the above.”
Some combination of the above
What are your thoughts, friends and backers down under?
P.S. We will continue to post updates as we get more information.
As the year comes to a close, it’s time to wrap this project up for good. Based on your feedback, we’ve upgraded three of the DCC RPG Roll20 modules with the existing VTT maps and tokens. DCC #66.5 Doom of the Savage Kings, DCC #67 Sailors of the Starless Sea, and DCC #68 People of the Pit are all updated on the Roll20 Marketplace and DriveThruRPG. Finally, the last bug fixes and requested feature updates submitted to Metamorphic were made and are now live. This concludes the Roll20 for DCC crowdfunding project.
The link to submit bugs and suggestions for feature improvements to Metamorphic remains live should you discover anything that was overlooked during the bug-stomping and upgrading period. That link is: https://support.metamorphic-digital.com/
In closing, we’d like to thank you once more for your support and we’re already planning on how to provide further Roll20 support for the DCC RPG line in the future. We look forward to a continued relationship with Metamorphic in that capacity.
Hello, all you high-rollers! It's May and we've received more news from our friends over at Metamorphic Digital Studio about progress on the Roll20 For DCC project. Right now all the core rulebook's images are loaded onto Roll20's servers, which is going to speed up the creation of the compendium once the cascading style sheets are loaded onto the platform as well. This will hopefully be done before the end of May and then things can really get chugging along. Then it's time to start tackling adventures!
Speaking of sheets, the devs have been adding flavor and decorative elements to the character sheets while this is all underway. When you choose your class, the character sheet style will change as well. Here are some examples of the decorated character sheets that Metamorphic shared with us. Anyone who knows the great artwork that goes into DCC products will be happy to see that the Roll20 version isn't skimping on these!
You can tell this is the Thief character sheet thanks to the highly-useful rope and grappling hook.
When you're a Dwarf with a hammer (or an axe), all your problems start looking like nails (or necks).
The handy pull-down menu allows you to quickly customize the character sheet to your PC's chosen class.
Two staves, no waiting, for this Wizard!
We here at Goodman Games are quite pleased with Metamorphic's progress and we'll continue to keep you fine backers updated as we receive regular status reports from their DCC Roll20 team. We're all looking forward to the day people around the globe can hop onto Roll20 for a new DCC RPG campaign without a ton of work needed. More to come when we hear it!
And for those who might have missed it, Roll20 recently announced that Roll20 will be coming to Discord as an Activity. Yes, you can now have you Roll20 peanut butter in your Discord chocolate! You can read about that here.
Backers might be interested to know that signups for advance notification of Goodman Games' next crowdfunding project are now live. Coming in less than two months will be Caverns of Thracia for both DCC RPG and 5e. This legendary adventure is jam-packed with more than 100 new monsters, a five-level dungeon, a ruined city, an island archipelago, plus new magic and spells, and offers a year or more of adventure around the table. Suitable for levels 1-10 (5e) or 1-5 (DCC), Caverns of Thracia makes for the perfect next installment in Goodman Games' ongoing OAR line of adventures. Please stop by the Caverns of Thracia landing page and sign up to be notified when the campaign goes live. Don't miss out on this one!
We're happy to report that Metamorphic is hard at work converting the DCC RPG rules over to Roll20. As you can imagine, with so many tables and charts, this isn't an easy or quick job, but the fine folks at Metamorphic are proving to be up to the challenge.
Just recently, they shared with us some details of the work in progress. We're greatly pleased with how things are going in just the short time they've been at work. Here are some screenshots of what they’re working on! . Check these out!
DCC fans will recognize that border pattern from the character sheets, now in digital format.
Anyone need a cleric? Maybe not with that much disapproval!
Heeliu, what do your keen elvish eyes see?!!
No dungeon party is complete without a thief!
That ape-man has magic missile! With a +12 modifier! Run!!!
And of course we'll need a way to keep track of all our loot.
The text/math on these graphics are just placeholders for now, so don't worry if thing looks a little wonky. We want to make sure the big picture is working properly before we get down into the nitty gritty details. Bear in mind, too, that everything is still in the early stages and what you see here might not reflect where things end up.
Once we get the majority of the DCC rulebook ported over to Roll20, work can begin converting the modules too. In the meantime, we here at Goodman Games haven't been idle. We're already at work on the cool art assets for the tokens and reviewing the module maps to see how best to convert them over to Roll20. This is going to be awesome!
We'll have more to report as Metamorphic sends us status updates and we'll share the news with you as we get it. Keep an eye our for more as we receive it!
Thank you all for supporting the Roll20 for DCC Backerkit campaign. We said at the start of this campaign that it would be up to the fans to determine if there was a desire to bring DCC RPG to Roll20 and you showed us without a doubt that there was. Your belief in this project was 100% responsible for it becoming a reality and we can’t thank you enough.
We ended last night a mere $140 short of the final stretch goal to add a seventh DCC module to the planned six Metamorphic is converting to Roll20. So, although we can’t thank you enough, we can say “close enough” and call that last stretch goal achieved! Those of you who backed at the DCC Core Rules + First 6 Adventures tier will receive a seventh adventure as well (title to be determined). The converted seventh adventure will ultimately be available for purchase separately via Goodman Games and Roll20 for those of you who chose to back at a lower tier.
Now comes the hard part: the waiting. We’ll be making the final arrangements with Metamorphic to start converting DCC RPG and the adventures over to Roll20 and will update you once we have more information about that process. Metamorphic has an established track record of creating stellar products for Roll20 and we know were in good hands. Hopefully, this is just the beginning of a long history of making DCC RPG and other Goodman Games’ products available for Roll20. Thank you again for supporting this Backerkit project and believing in DCC RPG for Roll20.
May your (virtual) dice always roll in your favor!
Congratulations, you're getting a charactermancer!
We're here at GAMA Expo this week. I had a chance to sit down with the Metamorphic team for breakfast. Metamorphic (formerly known as Sigil) has coded some of the best Roll20 conversions out there, and they're the ones who will handle DCC on Roll20.
Here we are, plotting world domination...and also talking charactermancers! We're able to make the charactermancer work at $29k so we are going to call that stretch goal CLEARED. Congratulations everyone, you're getting a charactermancer!
Goodman Games x Metamorphic: Joe Goodman on the left, Jan and Amy of Metamorphic on the right
With that in mind, we've set up one more stretch goal. Help us clear $32k and we can throw another DCC adventure into the mix. Fair warning: it will be a "skinny module" not a huge hardcover. We had some great suggestions in our recent poll so we will definitely consider the results of that poll in the selection.
Today is the last day for this crowdfunding. Really only half a day remains. Please tell your friends and let's bring DCC to Roll20 in the best possible way!
Again, thanks to all our amazing backers who have come out to support the Horde is startling fashion! We’ve knocked off two more stretch goals: Sandbox Notes for the regions around the Orb, and the Bestiary! Now onto tech loot and another mini-adventure, The Rift that Breaths!
Mini Adventure Update Speaking of mini-adventures, we made a mistake with the free mini-adventure available to those who back within the first 48 hours. The original plan was to add Caves of the Orb Thralls as a $2 add-on after the first 48 hours had passed.. but we accidentally set the date incorrectly so the add-on was available from the very beginning. Unfortunately , once someone adds that add-on (and 25 of you did), we can’t delete it.
So the updated plan is we’re now creating another mini-adventure called Death Sentries of the Orb Shadow, which is now the free mini-adventure offered to all you wonderful backers who have backed the campaign in the first 48 hours. It will become available as an add-on after the free period passes. This also means that Caves of the Orb Thralls will remain up as an add-on that all who are interested can add to their pledge. Sorry for the confusion: and thanks for your incredible support!
This update is for AUS/NZ backers. Everyone else can ignore - or frankly you might want to read it, for it's an improbable tale.
Short version: AUZ/NZ backers, fulfillment will start very soon, probably late next week. I know we have said this several times, but our fulfillment partners has given us strong reason to believe it's actually true this time. Over the course of the last two weeks, we learned that the Purple Planet pallet had been completely lost, and has now been found, at what we can only describe as "a random freight depot somewhere in Australia."
Long version: This is a tale that goes back several months and which we're now calling The Mystery of The Missing Pallet. At each step along the way, the story changed and we got different answers. In the end, it took old-fashioned detective work and people actually physically inspecting multiple locations in the USA and Australia to figure out what happened. We've been on the phone to Australia every night for almost two weeks (our nights = your days, Aussies), and also spoken to people on site in locations in Portland, LA, and several spots in Australia. Here is the sordid tale.
One important thing to note: there's a big difference between digital verification and physical verification. At each step in this process, the digital record showed "everything is on track." The problem is, at a certain point the digital record deviated from the physical reality.
On February 3, the pallet left our USA fulfillment partner in Portland. On February 4 it arrived in LA. On February 24th, the pallet was loaded on to a container at the port of LA. We have a photo from that day showing the pallet and all the documentation matches (weight, height, carton count, etc. - you can even see our logo on the cartons).
On March 29th, the container arrived at the Sydney port. There is concrete documentation of the container arriving at port.
A couple days later, the container was unloaded at the local hub and then delivered to the fulfillment partner's warehouse. Our Purple Planet pallet was one of roughly 20 pallets on the container. There is supposedly a Proof of Delivery document showing that all the pallets arrived. (We haven't actually seen this document, but we've been told "it matches.") The fulfillment partner's local staff noted that one of the pallets on the container did not match the height / weight listed on the manifest. There is purportedly a photo of that one "mismatch" pallet. However, there are no photos of the other 19 pallets. In addition, the fulfillment partner's receiving crew didn't file the appropriate paperwork indicating there was a receiving discrepancy. So it's hard to say with 100% certainty if the error was introduced here or upstream of here. But we believe the error happened at the local hub, and the delivery to the fulfillment partner's warehouse was in some way incorrect. This also ties back to the local fulfillment partner moving warehouses, which we'll come back to in a bit.
From this point forward, it appears that the physical record does not match the digital record. It's also important to remember that there is a big difference between "warehouse workers just doing their job" and "the management team who know the plan." What appears to have happened is that the local warehouse workers noted the discrepancy in the pallets, wrote it down... and then just moved on. It appears they recorded digital inventory that matched the pallet's "digital contents of record" without doing a physical count, even though they had noted that one pallet didn't match the records. Therefore, the digital record showed that our pallet has arrived, even though that didn't match the physical reality. The management team referenced the digital record, believed Purple Planet had arrived, and queued it up for fulfillment.
At this point the details get a little fuzzy, but what we speculate is that Purple Planet "got to the top of the queue" for fulfillment a couple times. At each point, the local staff simply couldn't locate the inventory that their digital record indicated was on hand, so they skipped it, moved on to the next project, and Purple Planet fell back down in the queue. Each time we inquired as to the status, it was always "in the queue after we finish This Project and That Other Project." None of us caught that it was in a perpetual loop, and the digital records didn't match the physical records.
As we started pushing more aggressively for updates on the timeline, and eventually started asking for daily updates, the management team started paying closer attention to the Purple Planet project. At this point it became clear that something was seriously awry. Over the course of multiple phone calls with our Australian fulfillment partner, they discovered that the physical inventory was completely missing. We've been on the phone with Australia every night for most of the last two weeks, and spent a big chunk of today talking to the contacts in Portland and LA to verify "physical reality" against what the digital record shows.
As of two days ago, the Australian fulfillment partner was telling us the pallet was still in LA at the freight forwarder. As some of you know, there are protests in LA. Yesterday, the freight forwarder couldn't get staff into their facility to do an inspection. Today, we spoke with the LA forwarder, and they were able to get staff to physically walk the warehouse searching for the pallet. They verified it really wasn't there, so the physical reality matched the digital reality as of that point in the trail.
After more conversations with Australia tonight, our partner there agreed the pallet must be in Australia somewhere. They had previously had their old warehouse location inspected for it, and now agreed it was possible that the pallet was somewhere between Sydney and the old warehouse location. So the local agent started calling all the freight depots between the port and their former warehouse. And this is where they got lucky. Remember how we mentioned, in this update from three months ago, that the local fulfillment partner had moved warehouses? Our pallet evidently had been delivered to the old warehouse. But by the time it was delivered, the old warehouse was empty and vacant, and the telephone number was disconnected. So the freight company didn't leave it on site, but stashed it in the "lost freight" corner of the local depot, where it has sat for months. When the local agent phoned today, they were told, "Yeah, we do have an undeliverable pallet here that matches those dimensions, and it's full of some sci-fi books and dice..."
The local freight depot had partially opened several of the cartons on the pallet in an attempt to identify who it might belong to. They are currently re-packing the pallet. It's possible some stock is damaged or missing by the local depot's well-intentioned attempt to identify the pallet's owner. We'll find out when it finally gets delivered to our fulfillment partner's local warehouse.
Australian and New Zealand backers, we are very sorry for all the delays and this insane tale. We'll stay in close contact with the fulfillment partner. By the way, they are EXTREMELY apologetic and can't wait to get this project cleared off their docket, so I think they will ship it very rapidly when the pallet finally moves out of that freight depot to their warehouse. For quite some time, the story we'd been told kept changing. But now that we have talked to quite literally everyone in the chain from Portland to LA to Australia, we're fairly confident we have the final, accurate version of what has happened. We will keep you informed as to what we hear next...
I am an EU backer and still haven't received a shipping notification. I tried to contact via Backerkit, but they said I should write an email to [email protected]. But I didn't get an answer, so I suppose this was not the right address for my inquiry. Can someone please inform me on how I can reach Goodman Games in order to get some insight into what's happened with my pledge?
Thanks!
