Last week was Badger Week and a lot of fun, but this week is going to be triple packed! Our next chapter has been broken into three sections, each covering a different inhabitant of the Realms of Pugmire! Today, we've got birds!
Digital and Print-on-Demand Rewards
We know times are hard these days, particularly with rising costs and economic uncertainty, so we’ve designed this crowdfunder to be as painless as possible. We offer a wide variety of digital options for backing, as well as leveraging print-on-demand technology to have physical products printed as close to you as possible to cut down shipping and reduce tariff concerns.
Creating and fulfilling physical versions this way gets you the best price, fastest delivery, and excellent customer support!
DriveThruRPG's printing partners are located both within in the USA and the UK (and expanding), making shipping cheaper and avoiding the tariffs incurred by international manufacturing and shipping!
Draft Manuscript Previews
Over the course of these 4 weeks, backers will receive the entire current draft manuscript for Pugmire Unleashed, but it's not going to come to you all in one go. The previews will come out in bite-sized treats throughout the campaign. This helps me seem interesting over the next 28 days, but it's more about guiding the conversation and helping steer feedback for the developers.
Because they want your feedback! These manuscript previews are of the current draft manuscript – the document in its latest, approved form. This may not be the final form after editing and any additional development, but you can consider it about 95% finished, so keep that in mind.
In fact, you can help guide the team through the next stages of development by providing feedback on these manuscript previews! The Onyx Path team has set up a special Feedback Form just for campaign backers for this very purpose: <Pugmire Unleashed Feedback Form>
You can use this Feedback Form to shrea your thoughts directly with the Pugmire developers and help guide them through the next rounds of development and editing.
DRAFT MANUSCRIPT PREVIEWS - BACKERS ONLY
Remember, thanks to BackerKit magic, these download links are visible to Backers only - you must be logged in and reading this on the website to have access to the manuscript preview links. So, if you're reading this via e-mail, click that "Reply to this Update" or "Learn More" button on the bottom and I'll see you below this title treatment.
Summer has finally arrived with a sizzle here in the Northeast US. I hope all are staying cool and enjoying some nice vacation time.
Both main monster books are deep into layout, and most of the supporting books are in various stages of layout. The next steps will be proofing the layout documents and then preparing the files to go to the printer. Two additional topics for this update: We are ready to announce the 14 lucky backers that had their submitted monsters selected for publication. And of course we have more new art to share!
ANNOUNCING THE 14 BACKER-SUBMITTED MONSTERS
We received scores of monster submissions from the backers for both versions of the rules. And it was difficult whittling the submissions down to the very best 14. The selection teams needed to decide between a host of animated constructs, weird aberrations and monstrous beasts. When the votes were tallied, we had our deadly dozen plus two! And don't worry: if a monster was accepted in DCC rules, it will be converted to 5E rules in-house. Same with 5E accepted monsters: these were converted to DCC rules in-house. So regardless of which rules version of the book you are getting, you get all 14 monsters!
Without further delay, here is the list:
Blooderfly by Heath Harris Cinderhowl by Reuben Taylor Corvus Corpus by Bob Nelson Cycloctopus by Shane "Kablooey" Madgett Glowmander by Louis Bouvier AKA Bouvietto Gravel Golem by Jackson Baker Locustomite by Kyle Bascom Mind Shrike by Mehran Baluch Mireling by Paul Penna Necrose by Dusty Harrell Okkar's Table by Robert Wertz Siltfiddler by Chris Harvey-Savage Spellstealer Golem by noideer Tenterhooks by Jonah Buck
Congratulations to all the backers with an accepted monster! We will be in touch with you shortly with contracts and explain the next steps. Based on the name alone, which of these monsters is your favorite? Tell us in the comments, below.
HOW ABOUT SOME MORE ART?
Skin Golem by Steven Gomez
Rune Cloud by Francois Licata
Lamentor by Brad McDevitt
Blood Royal by Steven Gomez
Which one of these monsters, based on the art, is your favorite? Tell us in the comments, below!
We will back with another update in a few weeks, and I'm sure you will not want to miss it!
Sorry about the lack of updates and the long wait, but after a pause we have an update on Sayuri’s Chest of Wonders.
We want to reassure backers that the ball is rolling again on this project. On a business level we’ve had to do a lot of re-building from the ground up, and we appreciate your patience.
We’re keeping this update straightforward just so we can get it out there. For the next one we’ll have a few new visuals to share.
Having spent the last few months taking stock of where things are at, we have the following schedule for Sayuri’s:
Last week of August: Finish Layout.
First week of September: PDF Proofed.
Last week of September: PDF Delivered.
October and November: Print Sample Received & Print Run Ordered & Possibly shipped!
In the meantime, we’ll continue to refine magic items, the adventures, and other writing and design. The entire book has gone through several drafts, but isn’t as clean as we had originally thought, se we’re reviewing and proofing again to make sure it’s the best it can be.
We’re also currently revisiting art requirements for the project, and though we already have a lot of art we’ll likely require a few more pieces. But we hope to have these in place ahead of the layout deadline in August. Again, we’ll have a clearer picture on this by the next update (in July).
Over the next few weeks, other outstanding digital products connected to this project will be delivered, just in case you see emails going out and wonder what’s going on.
But we’ll keep you abreast of those developments too.
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.
Just a very brief update to let you know that we have uploaded the files for this project to the printer!
Whew... it was a lot of pages.
In the coming months we will have photos of proofs as we work through the process.
The question we usually get right now is, "Well if the files are at the printer, why don't I have the e-book PDF yet?" Two reasons. First, through the print proofing process, we always catch mistakes. Better to burn the PDFs after all those are fixed. Second, the e-book PDF is a different workflow than the printer files. The screen-res PDFs have crops, different output specs, hyperlinks, bookmarks, etc. So, once we get through the proofing process, we'll start on the digital PDFs for you all.
That's all for now. More to come once we have some proofs to show off!
This will likely be my last update for a while as all rewards are now available, ordered, or in process (so long as you filled out your survey on time).
I have word that several folks have recieved physical copies of their books and can see the tracking info showing that the rest should be delivered in the next 1-2 weeks, so keep an eye out! If you don't recieved your book by July 14, please email me at [email protected] (that's the fastest way to get it resolved).
Stretch goals for the two digital games have also been filled! You can find No Prob! and Mission Solar System on the TTRPGkids here for free:
There's also a full update on the project(s) here with some more info on where to easily find everything and how awesome it was to get to run a couple sessions of ACN with folks at Origins last weekend! It's wonderful seeing it out in the world.
For any straggler orders that were submitted late or had issues with charges, I'll be handling those on a monthly basis as forms and payment come in. If you fill out your survey late, it can also help for you to email me at [email protected] so I know to go check the campaign and send you your rewards.
To link to the future, please check out my next project, StoryGuider, which is a choose-your-path kind of game (just like ACN) that's made specifically for little kids and early readers! It's a project I've been working on for a few years now, and I'm excited to be hiring artists and hopefully some translation proofreaders to support stretch goals for translating into French, Spanish, and possibly other languages.
And.... with that, I want to express my thanks in supporting this project, and I hope you find connection, adventure, and a creative outlet through ACN. You helped make this possible, and I'm glad to share this experience with you all.
Thank you, and, as always, happy gaming! Steph, TTRPGkids.com
