Hi all,

We're gearing up for fulfillment on Five Hundred Year Old Vampire. The games have landed stateside, cleared customs, and are scheduled for delivery to our New York warehouse on Friday, Sept 6 (that's tomorrow!). How exciting! That leaves only the FYOV keepsake journal stretch goal/add-on still yet to come (its container ship is in or near the Panama Canal right now, scheduled to arrive in New York at the end of next week). Once that and our add-on copies of Thousand Year Old Vampire arrive (uh, there's a sequel out there crowdfunding in the wild right now, in case you have been dead and buried for many years now -- check it out!), we'll have all the pieces in one place. Wundebar!

The next step is to get shipping added to your accounts and charged to your credit card on file. Starting sometime next week, you should be able to head over to Backerkit and see the shipping charges applied to your account.

For just a single copy of the base game, plus the keepsake journal and Beguiling Whispers stretch goal add-ons, shipped in the US to a US address, we've landed at around $15.00, which is a little bit higher than the range we quoted last summer, but our picking and warehouse fees have gone up from last year, so that needed to be accounted for. Additional copies and add-ons max out at no more than $20 for everything.

International backers will have higher shipping costs for obvious reasons that vary from country to country; however, European backers will have customs friendly shipping already baked into their costs. We will have those costs added next week as well.

To check out the shipping costs on your order when they are added, you can head over here to access your survey again:

https://five-hundred-year-old-vampire.backerkit.com/

Additionally, Backerkit itself will be sending you an automated email with a link to your survey roughly 48-hours before we charge cards. We'll give you more heads up on this as we go forward.

We will be charging cards again for shipping costs on Friday, September 27. If you see anything wonky in the costs added to your account or have any questions about anything, please reach out, so we can troubleshoot that.

Once shipping is charged, we'll proceed with fulfillment. US domestic fulfillment will be quicker than international fulfillment. We will first need to sea freight the requisite copies of everything over to our international fulfillment partner, GamesQuest. That process will get underway in late September/early October. Once GamesQuest has the stock, they tend to fulfill pretty quickly.

Finally, if any followers who haven't backed yet would like to jump on the FYOV bandwagon, you can preorder FYOV through our CMich Press website right now (https://cmichpress.com). Go on, do it. Do it.

Stay goth, everyone!

Hi all,

A quick update on where we are at.

The games are on a boat, specifically the container ship COSCO FAITH. It is somewhere past Japan at the moment, heading for the Panama Canal, and eventually New York. Assuming there aren't any egregious delays, it should arrive in port by the end of August and in our warehouse sometime in September.

As we get closer to landfall, we'll start getting the final shipping charges set and added to your accounts for review. And then we'll get final fulfillment spun up in earnest!

If you know of anyone out there interested in preordering FYOV, you can send them to the CMich Press website for all that preorder fun.

https://cmichpress.com

Stay sanguine, everybody!

Dear Beloved Undying,

We find ourselves in a moment where our prime vampire is clearly showing us that we are far too young to control the world. 

A plain and simple update for you all: The games are almost through the manufacturing process, yay! Unfortunately, they will not make it here in any form to be shipped to you all prior to Gen Con. We also won't have any at Gen Con for sale. The biggest obstacle we are facing at the moment is shipping. A drought in Panama affecting the Panama Canal, Houthi firing on ships in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal , and the Baltimore bridge falling have all created a bit of a logistics delay. And given everything that has already happened, we're not counting out additional blips. Thank you for your patience. We want to get these out to you as badly as you want to receive them. 

On the upside, if you will be at Gen Con, we will be at Trade Day and we will have a table on Community Row for the four day event. We will have either the Production Prototype or the Pre-production prototype of the game and the journal at our table for your review. Both will occasionally wander away for a few hours in the middle of the day each day for use when Jason Cox (esteemed designer) runs the game. If you haven't signed up for one of his sessions yet, you might think about doing so!

Happy gaming and may you find safe harbor in the shadows and dark places of the world.

To our umbral siblings we offer greetings and an update on progress,

We only have a few updates this week. Files are in with the manufacturer and the best estimate is that we will have production copies in our grubby undying fingers around June 10th. Shipping from China to our distribution centers will most likely start at the end of June. We would love for this to go faster, but despite all of our vampiric powers, we cannot make that happen. We believe our Prime Vampires are just messing with us because they can. There are global shipping challenges as well right now (war in Gaza is affecting the Red Sea shipping, drought in Panama is affecting canal traffic there, and the bridge collapse in Baltimore means that our main port of entry (New York) has greater traffic as well. We want you to know that we want the games in your hands as badly as you want them. We are working towards that end.

On the upside we will be at Gen Con running Five Hundred Year Old Vampire. Even more importantly, Jason Cox (our designer) will be at Gen Con and he will be running the games! If you are going to be there and want to play, the details of the sessions are below and you can start signing up this Sunday via Gen Con. We are hoping to add a fourth smaller session for Trade Day (the Wednesday prior to Gen Con) about how to deploy the game in classrooms for any educators out there.

Gen Con Details:

Thursday 2024/08/01 

01:00 PM (4 hour event)

Five-Hundred-Year-Old Vampire

RPG24ND256153

$4

McClellan Hall

01:00 PM (4 hour event)

Five-Hundred-Year-Old Vampire

RPG24ND256159

$4

McClellan Hall

01:00 PM (4 hour event)

Five-Hundred-Year-Old Vampire 

RPG24ND256159

$4

McClellan Hall

Of note: We are hoping somehow to have copies of Five Hundred Year Old Vampire at Gen Con. As fellow gamers, we have often been frustrated to see games we back at conventions for sale before we receive our copies. This is not something we want to do, but the financial push is real. Our priority is our backers and supporting you for what you have allowed us to create here. Once we know if it will even be possible to have copies of the game at Gen Con (beyond the manufacturer's prototypes Jason will be using to run the game) we will update here.

Of note the second: We acknowledge that we have not fulfilled FYOV and we launched another game during that time. That game, Hydrologic Cycle, did not take away any of our development time as it was a game started prior to the pandemic. We have another game launching at the end of June, Eyeball to Eyeball, that has been with us for a while as well. Similar to Hydrologic Cycle, the development, art, and most everything beyond the funding, was completed before crowdfunding for FYOV started. We have delayed the launch of the game until FYOV is scheduled to be somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. If you have any concerns please let us know. We realize this is less than ideal, but hope you understand the need. If you have a moment and are interested please take a moment to follow the project: https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/65400cf5-b2c8-4a6c-97d9-16aa5b3d6659/landing. It is a cold war simulation/parlor LARP of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

As always, thank you for supporting us. And beware the sun!

The CMich Cohort

Hi all,

Just a couple quick updates. Let's go!

Earlier today, we uploaded and pushed out the Five Hundred Year Old Vampire Curriculum Guide by designer Jason Cox (along with its companion Resource Packet). Emails should have gone out from Backerkit to those backers who have this as a reward. However, if you haven't seen that email, you can visit your survey page for FYOC in Backerkit and access digital downloads there. 

On the manufacturing front, there's no specific news to give you all as an update other than to say that manufacturing is proceeding. We expect to see the mass production proofs (i.e., test copies they pull off the line while running production) in a week or two. Assuming those are good, our manufacturer will wrap things up and get FYOV on a boat.

Finally, we're getting fairly close to having shipping rates locked down. We anticipating adding shipping charges to your orders around mid-to-late May and charging those fees in early June. We'll give you plenty of warning when we add the fees, so you can check them out before we charge. 

Stay bloody, everyone!