Hello friends!

A quick update today, but packed with information. Please read all the way to the bottom so that you get all the info you need!

The whole game industry (and a lot of others) are talking about it, so we wanted to address the elephant sized T word in the room - Tariffs.

As of right now a 145% tariff has been levied on the entire board game industry. Obviously this is crippling, not just to us but to all of our fellow creators and friends working in a career which is already never guaranteed and very expensive. Most of us who work in games tend to do so out of love and passion, and so it's absolutely heartbreaking to see and hear so many of our friends and colleagues doing the math and coming to the sobering realization that their businesses may not survive the coming years due to a pointless, counter-productive, and fully self inflicted set of poorly though out policy decisions. 

What this means in real terms is that if a game normally costs $10 to make, it now costs fully $24.50 to produce and get to the USA. It's also worth noting that nowhere in North America is capable of producing board games or ttrpgs in any sort of cost effective way, and many of the resources required to do so simply can't be found here. 

Here's the good news for everyone who backed our campaign: We're going to figure this out. When you supported us, and when we launched this campaign, none of us could have possibly seen this catastrophe coming. That's not our fault, but it's REALLY not your fault either. We're going to work out how to make this work for everyone, ideally without delaying too far, or bankrupting ourselves. 

Ok, the bad stuff is out of the way, now the fun stuff! 

In order to get surveys out to everyone so that you can select your rewards, and we can start working with the folks who are designing their own NPCs to appear in the Familiar Tales module, we need to do something called a Smoke Test. During a smoke test, around 5 percent of backers will receive their survey first. Assuming we don't find any problems with the survey, we'll be releasing the survey to everyone else shortly after that! 

The survey is a great place to add-on anything extra you'd like! The most exciting thing, we think, is the Wilds of Willowmere module! We didn't quite reach it as a stretch goal during the campaign, so it won't be bundled BUT we're offering it as an add on at HALF the price it'll be retail. This is the only time it'll ever be offered at this price, so grab it while you can! Speaking of the Wilds...

So we said that the Wilds of Willowmere module, taking place off the edges of the known map, would be written by some awesome guest writers, and we're very excited to say we've gotten all four of them on board, and we have our first meeting next week! Over the course of the next updates we'll be announcing who they are with appropriate fanfare and celebration, but for now we just want to build some anticipation xD

If you happened to miss the Familiar Tales campaign, NOT TO WORRY! We have our pre-order store open HERE where you can get anything you'd like! Please check it out, signed limited edition copies of the book are still available :D

As always, thank you so much for your support. We can't create and build worlds without you, and we appreciate you so so much. 

With love and gratitude, 

Michael and Morgan