Let's finish up our first week with another big manuscript section! It's time for the Infernals!
One quick thing to note before we get into the manuscript.
Shipping Costs will be Collected in the Pledge Manager
First up, it's amazingly expensive to ship, especially from Onyx Path's home base in the US. And that's as of today - we're all in the dark about how things will look in 2 years. We get that, but there's not much we can do at this time. Onyx Path is in a difficult space where the company is big enough that they're not saving money by fulfilling out of Rich's garage, but small enough that they haven't been able to set up ongoing international partners to handle portions of the fulfillment. So we are where we are - for now.
The best we can do at this point is to plan carefully, advise everyone up front that shipping will likely be expensive (see our projections on the main page) and only charge what it costs us when the time comes. We’ll be charging for shipping in the Pledge Manager once the books are being printed and we can deal with the actual shipping charges rather than using our best-guesses this far out. If you aren't sure you want the hardcover or other physical items, you can pledge to the PDF tier now and upgrade your pledge in the Pledge Manager once we know the final shipping costs.
Draft Manuscript Previews
Over the course of these 4 weeks, backers will receive the entire current draft manuscript for Exalted: Essence Player's Guide, but it's not going to come to you all in one go. The previews will come out in Exalt-based sections throughout the campaign. This helps me seem interesting over the the 28 day campaign, 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: https://forms.gle/sqmxdW6u87pT3Mhg8
You can use this Feedback Form to share your thoughts directly with the Exalted: Essence creative team to 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 "Learn More" link on the bottom and I'll see you below the Exalted emblem.
Thanks to the 100+ folks who voted for what spread we'll reveal today.
With a commanding 47% percent of the vote, you chose RAG & BONE MAN, so here it is!
I just rolled 1, 2, 2, so at the moment, for me the Rag & Bone Man has the date of my death etched into his bones, with rags made of funeral shrouds, and is reading my thoughts as I think them.
How's he appear for you? (roll three six-sided dice to find out)
This update is primarily for EU/UK residents. We just posted this update a few days ago and typically I wouldn't clog your inbox with two updates in one week, but we have news from our UK fulfillment partner since April 11 that is worth sharing.
In short, our UK fulfillment partner has just confirmed the Purple Planet inventory arrived at their location. They're currently setting up pick lines and anticipate the first packages going out next week, or maybe even a few by the end of this week.
So, EU/UK backers, at long last you should finally get something in the mail sometime soon. As we get tracking numbers we will upload and continue to communicate with you.
I’m sure you know by now, but Murka is a high-fantasy playable parody of the all-too-real, capitalist hellscape known as the United States of America.
What makes Murka different, you (didn’t) ask? I’ll tell you. Furry druids, dragons with guns for faces, food magic, Walmoria, gunchucks, explosives, items that aren’t just cursed, but cursed... You get the picture.
This world is a labor of love that my friends and I have been working on for 10 yearsoh my god, has it really only been five years? Are we in the finale episode of some television show jumping its 13th shark? What the hell is going on?
I hope you have fun with this little nearly 60-page sampler PDF. We picked stuff that we thought was bite-sized and funny, but there’s around 800 more pages of content where this came from.
We'd love to meet you, answer your questions about Murka, and welcome you to our community. Just click here to join us on Discord!
Cheers, thanks for reading this far. See you all real soon. Jaron R. M. Johnson, and the Action Fiction Faction
Dropping a quick update to remind everyone that campaign surveys and the pre-order store lock in a few days, so please make sure to submit your address, adjust your order, pick your add-ons, and/or place your post-campaign order (if you missed the campaign) ASAP!
After orders lock, I'll be sending out the solarpunk game trilogy digital copies and calculating shipping based on the list of countries and associated packages submitted to the surveys. I plan to send out the shipping collection survey within a month to prep for fulfillment.
If you have any questions, please let me know! Steph, TTRPGkids.com
We have good news, and an urgent request for everyone who hasn't completed their surveys.
The good news: we anticipate the delivery arriving soon!
The urgent request: if you have not completed your pledge manager survey by end of day today, your shipment will go out "at the end of the line." For international backers in particular, this may mean a delay of 1-2 months or more. We'll explain this in more detail below. The main message is:
Complete your pledge manager survey TODAY if you haven't already done so!
Why will late surveys be delayed? When the containers arrive, the first thing we will do is package international shipments "in bulk" and send them to the freight forwarder. Even though international shipments typically arrive to customers "last", we actually ship them "first" to minimize the delay as much as possible. If we don't have your survey complete, your goods will not go onto the boat to your destination country. At the end of the fulfillment, we will circle back and re-pull all late surveys. At this time we'll send a second shipment of late-pledge items to the international fulfillment partners. That means late surveys will be on a second boat leaving perhaps 4-6 weeks after the first shipment, maybe even later.
So: moral of the story is, please complete your surveys immediately if you haven't done so already!
Dungeon Denizens 2 - March Monster Madness & More
Dungeon Denizens 2 is crowdfunding now and gaining momentum. Every day we're doing a new monster fight. Fill out your bracket and check out today's fight - it's a fun mini-game inside the campaign!
Plus stretch goal monsters, really cool add-ons, free PDF, discounts from MSRP... great deal for those who play 5E or DCC. If you haven't already pledged, consider checking it out!
Quarterfinal matches are set for the March Monster Madness bracket! Vote now in today's fight!
Today, we wanted to share a few things with you and ask you a question (in the linked poll).
A Place to Call Homebrew
First, we wanted to announce that we’ve created a channel in our Discord server for your Indominant homebrew to be shared and discussed! We’ve already had one community member create their very own homebrew Powerset: Time Manipulation! They have already gone and created everything up to Level 5, meaning they have an Inherent Effect, Base to Tier 3 Powers, and Tier 1-2 Talents for all 5 Archetypes!!!!! We are blown away at this idea and would love for people to see it and give them some love. Join our Discord server to check out the homebrew and even share your own!
Community Event Poll
Now for another exciting bit of news… we want to run a community event with everyone, and better yet, we want your ideas for what the community event should be! This is taking the place of our Community Event Stream reward for when we hit the 250 Backers Achievement! We are updating that Achievement to reflect this change of plans.
But what will that community event be? Well, we want your input! We’ve linked a poll to this update that has 3 options:
#1 - Character Concept Challenge
This is a challenge that we previously ran when our community was a lot smaller, and we had to put it on hold until we grew our active community (which this Backerkit campaign has done!). The idea behind this challenge is that participants submit a story and build for a character concept of their own making, and once submissions close, we will create a series of knock-out votes to determine a winner, with 2nd and 3rd place rewards too!
What does the winner get? Well, if we fully fund, the winner will get a full body, full-color image of their character concept drawn by Milton Aguiar, paid for by our team here at Odin’s Key Gaming!
#2 - Team Player Versus Player Tournament
For this one, it is quite simple. Participants would create a team of 2-3 players (we haven’t decided team size yet) and compete in combat against other teams. We would set up brackets and stream the combats, with the final Team getting a reward (reward is TBD).
#3 - Other
For this option on the vote, you would need to comment what your alternate idea is, and if any of these ideas gets more upvotes than option 1 or 2, we would go with this option.
