Guess who's back? Here's your proper update for The Dose Makes The Poison, and it's a BEAST.
Firstly, apologies for the multiple emails from me last night and today, I made a bit of a digital fulfilment error on Backerkit that should all be sorted now.
Headlines/TLDR
Pre-production Pdf of TDMTP and digital assets have been sent out via Backerkit
Test copies of the zine, poster and bookmark have been ordered, patches are here
The pamphlet of Timed Release is the only thing outstanding and being worked on now
Postage - looking like postage estimates from the campaign will stand, possibly a bit higher for the EU
Will be looking to charge cards in the next week or two (for add ons and shipping), will give 48 hours notice
Orders and addresses have been already been locked, contact me if you need anything changed between now and when I charge cards
More info on all this below.
First a quick shout out. Over the past month or so Chris Airiau has been helping me with final proofreading (the number of errors and typos found should give you confidence that this is a No AI zine). Chris has just announced a new Mothership module, funding in (I think) September and you are duty bound to follow this here, it sounds great:
"Twisting Unseen is a 36pg Mothership RPG adventure inspired by BLAME!, Pandorum, Half-Life, and yokai folklore… the players Build the Superstructure with Map Tiles of Twisted Substrata illustrated by Ripley Matthews, against a Voidcrawl-inspired 1d100 event table of Relics, Omens, Factions, Hazards, and Incursors."
Pre-production Pdf of TDMTP and digital assets have been sent out via Backerkit
Last night you should've received the pre-full-production pdf of The Dose Makes The Poison, and some of you should also have received the digital assets bundle to accompany the zine. This morning the rest of you (that took anything above the zine-only tier) should have received the asset bundle download in a second email. Sending these individually was an error on my part but hopefully all sorted now. Live, laugh, learn, as it used to say above the door of solitary confinement, back in my prison days.
If you spot any typos between now and when I send to print, feel free to add them to the google doc in the below Backers Only section.
I'm really delighted with how everything has turned out. Norgad has done a superb job with layout and artwork in a style that feels fresh and doesn't sacrifice usability.
I've enjoyed getting the audio and video assets together for this, too. Hopefully they'll help sell the setting and add to the immersion for your players. Big shout out to squinch from the Mothership Discord, who's done a great voice acting job on a couple of the audio assets and has been a total breeze to work with, highly recommend!
Test copies of the zine, poster and bookmark have been ordered. Patches are here
I'm expecting test copies of all of the above coming early next week from my main printer, Mixam UK. Which is pretty darn exciting! Pamphlet and stickers are coming from a different printer, soon, and patches have actually been here since March but I forgot to mention that previously.
And while we're here's below is the 'waiting room' poster, which should be giclee print on 300msg archival uncoated stock, unless the test print comes back looking shite or something:
The pamphlet of Timed Release is the only thing outstanding and being worked on now
Exactly what it says on the tin 👆
Postage - looking like postage estimates from the campaign will stand, possibly a bit higher for the EU
I'm waiting to get the test prints to confirm the weight of the zine, but I'm optimistic that I'll be able to stick to my quoted shipping fees from the original campaign (see below) with the possible exception of the EU which think will have to be a bit higher, sorry.
I'll be shipping Royal Mail economy and won't be including any possible customs charges you might incur at your end, but these low cost items should fly under the de minimis threshold for most countries.
I'm currently trying to work out how you post 700-odd packages that won't get me blacklisted by all the Inverness posties.
Those proposed shipping estimates from November:
UK: £4.5
EU: £6.50
USA: £8.50
ROW: £10
Will be looking to charge cards in the next week or two (for add ons and shipping), will give 48 hours notice
I'll be aiming to collect shipping and any outstanding additional add ons paid for, and pre-orders. I'll give you notice so it's not a surprise!
Orders and addresses have been already been locked, contact me if you need anything changed between now and when I charge cards
The eagle eyed of you might have noticed that I've already locked addresses. I did this by accident at the same time as locking orders, just because. If any of you need to change address details just drop me an email and I'll update it manually, I've done this for a few of you already.
If you've read this far I just want to say thanks again for giving me the opportunity to produce this zine for you. It's been a massive learning curve for sure, but I wouldn't have it any other way, and I really hope you enjoy the finished product. I'm already looking forward to the next one - I've even restructured my working week to have a full day each week to work on RPG stuff, which is pretty cool.
I'll be back in touch again soon, till then, don't go changin'.
Andrew
To finish, a pic of Angus looking pissed off at me for spending too much time on my laptop:
Just a quick note to say that the V0.14 pdf of The Dose Makes The Poison PDF should be in all of your inboxes now!
This is the version that I sent away for a test printing this morning.
If you spot any typos, please fire them into the Google sheet in the Backer Only section below.
I've also attempted to distribute the digital assets bundle (Audio files etc) to backers but there seem to be a glitch with this - it looks like it's only gone out to 126 of you so far and I can't seem to increase that number no matter what I try, so I'm going to ping Backerkit a message to see what I need to do to fix that. So hang tight on that, you'll likely get another audio file update from me tomorrow if you backed at the £8 tier or above.
Brackish My guy Norgad has a new module crowdfunding on Backerkit and it looks as good as his previous one, Dead Weight. Put down what you're doing and go and back Brackish immediately.
The Dose Makes The Poison - April
Timeline
As Dr. Hans Zarkoff famously said in Jurassic Park 4: Big Dinosaur in Little China - "Life gets in the way."
I've slipped a little behind this past month, with a few things getting in the way of this project (including, if I’m honest, a week's holiday on a beach - my first in six years). I've got a round of final copy edits on the main book to complete and need to test some mechanics in the add-on pamphlet, Timed Release, too. Boo me.
What does this mean? I'd say we ship in June now instead of May, so not a huge delay, but a bit of a delay. It'll make fantastic summer reading though, promise.
Norg has some layout and other bits to do once I've cut some copy down to fit, but we're close to finishing now - just one last push is needed to get over the line.
Locked Orders
You should've received notification today that I'm locking orders in the next 48 hours. After this, you'll only be able to change your address details, not add anything further to your order. This gives me all the numbers I need to work with so I can plan my orders and work out exciting things like...
Shipping Costs
I'm currently waterboarding myself with thrilling shipping information about delivery to 32 different countries. I'll be working out shipping costs and then charging cards when we're close to shipping - I'd expect this towards the end of May sometime.
Other Bits
All the additional suite of supporting assets - TV ad, music jingle, and voice notes - is close to completion now too. They're sounding pretty darn good, I think, and I've had a lot of fun recording them. I'm going to save sharing some of that for May's update and keep this one mostly about shipping costs, because I know that's what all you peeps really want to hear about. Yassss.
Well hello there, Burt Backerkit! What the world needs now is another update on The Dose Makes The Poison!
Sorry you had to go through those opening sentences, I will try and do better in the future.
But aaaaanyway - I figured since the February update landed in March, you good folks are still due a legit update for this month, so here we go.
Zine
We're knee deep in layout and additional illustrations now. We're sitting at a confirmed 24 page zine now, which is cool. The first half of zine is The Dose Makes The Poison module, and 2nd half features a bunch of lore and plot threads about Hope's Pharma, including a cross section of the corporation head office, The Home of Industry. This is where head honcho, Aneurin Hope, resides along with his ever enthusiastic 𝚌̶𝚞̶𝚕̶𝚝̶ workforce, The New Industrial Union, so hopefully there's plenty more retro weirdness here for you to develop into your games once the initial module is completed.
Some spreads, back of the bookmark and draft of the poster
Additional print bits We've also got a draft of the A4 poster on the go (included in the Lethal Dose pledge tier or as an add on) as seen above. This takes Inspo from those early 20th century ads that had doctors telling you smoking was good for you and the like, that you would see when sitting in your GP's waiting room.
The bookmark for all physical backers (as a reward for all MM project funding) is also in development, the back of which can be seen above (I love the ratio of 1/3rd instructions for use 2/3rds disclaimer text that Norg create for this, his copy is hilarious too). This leaves the sticker and the additional pamphlet as the two outstanding items to be worked on in April.
Audio & Video Files I've had a good run at some of the accompanying audio bits over the past month. By way of an example here's a short snippet of a speech from Aneurin Hope, the founder of Hope's Pharma that you should be able to download off my Google Drive. A big thank you to @Squinch from the Mothership Discord for the voice acting work on this - thank you!
The animator is also putting the finishing touches to the Hope's Serum video ad as we speak, it's looking great as you can see from the couple of gifs in this update. Next for that is updating the audio and adding in some sfx.
These audio and video files will be available to all tiers with digital stretch goals and above.
Has the devil on your shoulder got you down?
Incomplete Surveys There's still 3% (30) of you that have yet to submit your survey. I'll be locking addresses around mid April time and charging cards for shipping around the start of May, so get your survey updated before then. All seems on track to ship in May as planned, although it might be towards the end of May rather than the start.
Yes, I know it's March. You think I don't know it's March? I know it's March, okay?
February, while infinitely better than January, is still a crap month up here in the Highlands. Long dark days, wind blows bits off my house, stuff like that. So I thought I'd skip it altogether and come up smiling when March kicked in.
Updates:
Scriptwriting February was really mostly about script writing. A lot more than anticipated really. Still, thanks to a couple of solid all-Saturday sessions in Inverness library the past two weekends and the help of editor DG Chapman, I feel like there's light at the end of the script tunnel. It's currently too long, but I'm in the process of another shorter draft at the moment and Mr Chapman is looking at further edits of the newer sections as we speak. I would looooove for all this to be done by next week, I've been holding things up a bit with this, but that also means more content... Number of Pages and Layout Last week I fired the draft script over to Norgad along with some rough proposed page headers / order. He shoved into a rough laydown, and the upshot is I think we're now looking at a 20 - 24 page zine now, as opposed to the originally mooted 16 pager, so that's pretty cool. Currently we're at 28 pages but there's a lot to be trimmed, with the goal of 24 pages of cool content that's easy to parse and game.
Norg is working on design now. My dream scenario is still to get the module off to print before the end of the month (would love to expense it all this tax year), but that feels like a big ask. So it might be into April before that happens.
Other bits Most of the other print assets - poster, sticker, bookmark - have been briefed in, and once I get TDMTP script out of the way my next writing job is to finish the Timed Release pamphlet - just need a few more location for that and a bit of structure.
Early Bird Patches The sample for the Hope's Serum patch arrived, and it looks really great. The drop design is slightly different from the mock up as you can't do a gradient with an embroidered patch, but it still looks lovely. A good 9cm in size too so easily big enough to cover a bullet hole in your jumpsuit. Here it is:
Hope's Serum TV ad This has been story boarded and a collection of illustrations from Norg are now with my animator, who started on the job last weekend. Looking forward to seeing this fun lot come to life: Let's zoom in on those creepazoid smiles for a sec: Audio bits I've started working on the additional voice clips to go along with the module, and might even have some to share in the next update if all goes to plan / I can work out how to share audio on a Backerkit update.
Surveys There's still 5% of you that haven't completed your survey yet. No rush really, this will be open till the end of the month and I'll send around a reminder before they are closed off so you can lock down your order.
