Good day! We've got a lot of interesting stuff coming at you this week, including another artist spotlight, an RPG designer diary, and an update on miniatures.

Most of the feedback on the last update was about more info on miniatures, and all that will be discussed below, so let's get to it!

The last of fulfillment is finishing up! Product to the Israel fulfillment hub is set to arrive at the end of week, with all other hubs having received product and have delivered it to backers. This means that by the next update, we should be able to fully put waves 1 & 2 to bed. If you haven’t yet received your Wave 1 (Frosthaven) or Wave 2 (Buttons & Bugs) items, please contact support to check on your order!

We are catching up on some support tickets from over the weekend, but we're still seeing turnover within a couple days, so we're going strong there. Let us know if we can help with anything at [email protected]!

So now let's talk miniatures, and we'll start with an updated progress graphic:

While we do have the updated progress here, we are unfortunately still finalizing the timeline with the factory. They've given us some preliminary dates to work with that have us finishing the molds and entering production at the beginning of quarter 2 of next year, but there's still some questions we need to resolve with them before we are comfortable presenting you with a confident timeline.

Now that the last of the sculpts are coming in, we've been able to more effectively communicate with the factory about dates and get things moving faster on that end. I know you haven't gotten a good update on miniatures since March, and I am sorry about that, but going forward, expect regular updates about the progress and what is going on.

For info on where Gloomhaven is at, here is an update from Arch:

Our Gloomhaven component graphic designers have shifted their focus to punchboard development. Making all these creatures, map tiles, and tokens fit efficiently onto a board is one of the most technical production aspects of creating a game of this scale. Layne and Andrew have been doing incredible work to make this happen, and I’ve been working with them to make sure the punchboard assets are formatted properly for placement. 

We’ve got some much appreciated Gloomhaven alumni help as well. Aaron Estepa, who put together the normal Frosthaven scenario books and the Frosthaven play surface books, has been closing in on finalizing the scenario book after several rounds of edits. And Jason Kingsley, who created the rulebooks for Jaws of the Lion and Frosthaven, is hard at work on the rulebook. Expanding our collaborative team has allowed us to make strides across all aspects of the project simultaneously, but having the knowledge and wisdom of legacy teammates makes a huge difference in helping us deliver the consistent experience you expect. 

While we finish up graphic design, we're also moving forward with proofing with the factory. Price and I have received white box samples of the full boxed game and all its components, and we will be reviewing those this week. We’ll be looking at the configuration of its contents to ensure that your games all arrive in good shape, unjumbled, and ready to unpack and enjoy!

– Arch

We’re continuing our artist spotlight series with Fabian Parente! He worked with us on the Gloomhaven project to shine a new light on an old foe and help fully define the appearance of another, offering creative angles that we hadn’t yet considered and working with Isaac and I to create these updated entries. 

Tell us a bit about yourself!

I’m Fabian Parente, a self-taught illustrator with a deep passion for fantasy and art. My fascination with vivid illustrations in role-playing, card, and board games from a young age sparked my journey into the world of illustration. Over the past eight years, I’ve had the privilege of working as a freelancer with prominent clients within the TTRPG community, contributing to various exciting projects. I’m excited to continue creating compelling images and am always eager to learn and grow as an artist. I look forward to the possibility of collaborating on more incredible projects.

I love Aesthers the most because of their mystical and enigmatic nature. Their deep connection to powerful magic and otherworldly origins resonate with my love for fantasy and the unknown. 

One of my hobbies is practicing martial arts, which I enjoy for its discipline and the mental and physical challenge it provides. I also love traveling, as it broadens my horizons and inspires my creativity. Playing the bass is another passion of mine, allowing me to express myself musically. Additionally, I've been learning Italian and Japanese for several years, which enriches my understanding of different cultures. Living in Japan for the past four years has significantly influenced my creative perspective. I also have a rescued injured Japanese bird as a pet, which adds a special touch to my daily life.

My favorite subject to draw is fantasy because it lets me bring to life the worlds and creatures I've always imagined. There's something magical about creating characters and places that don’t exist in reality—it's like turning dreams into something you can see and feel. Fantasy art gives me the freedom to be as creative as possible, and that's what I love most about it. My all-time favorite video game is the Baldur's Gate saga. It’s a classic in the RPG genre, offering deep storytelling, memorable characters, and a rich fantasy world that has had a lasting impact on how I approach both playing and creating games. Plus, who can resist the nostalgia of those epic adventures?

The illustration I'm most proud of so far is actually one of the pieces I did for Cephalofair. I genuinely think it's some of my best work yet. It pushed me to explore new techniques and capture the essence of the fantasy world in a way that felt both challenging and incredibly rewarding.

We are really thrilled to have met Fabian through this project and we're pleased to introduce him to the Gloomhaven community! In addition to creating commissioned art for game publishers, he makes frequent contributions to the TTRPG community through Oracle Press via Patreon where he creates magical content to elevate D&D adventures. You can also find more of Fabian’s work on his Artstation page!

All the information on where the RPG is at is in Danielle's latest designer diary:

Greetings Mercenaries!

It’s time for the July update… in the middle of August. Yeah, I know it’s been a minute, but better late than never, am I right? I wanted to wait until after Gen Con so I could talk about how that went, but I got sick at the tail end of the convention and spent all last week recovering. 

But! That gave the game enough time that I can report some pretty amazing news! The entire text of the RPG (sans a small item appendix) is finished with editing and on to layout! With the full edited text of the draft complete, graphic design becomes the new hotness. I’m sure I’ll share some images of what that looks like in the coming months.

We’ve been through several small tweaks over the course of writing and design that happens over the life of any brand new RPG. We might make extremely tiny changes, such as to a number here or a line there, during proofing. Usually, once the text is fully edited, we try to make as few changes as possible so as to not introduce any unintentional errors (this means all errors are in fact intentional!). Layout always feels like the home stretch because I’m not going to be making any large text changes beyond this point. While we’re still playtesting and ensuring mechanical structural integrity, the game part is DONE.

Which is great, because we've been getting stellar feedback from fans who have had a chance to interact with the RPG at conventions. Our friends at Lurking Fears ran games for us at Origins Game Fair and Gen Con, and their players were all having a great time. At Gen Con we made characters in the booth, and then ran through a short combat and a short social scenario. People were thrilled to get a chance to look at how easy it is to create an RPG character, which even explaining the game to folks who were entirely unfamiliar only took at most 30 minutes. Everyone had great fun running through both the short combat (eager to start the next round, though I had to shoo them out to invite the next group in) and the social scenario.

Last month I shared some Mindthief Skills with you, and I saw some folks asking about the conversion from hexes to feet. In specific, why 5 ft, why feet at all, and why not just keep using hexes? While we think it’s easiest to run the RPG combat using a hex grid, we didn’t want to limit people’s accessibility and enjoyment if maps and minis just aren’t their thing. We wanted to ensure folks could use the theater of the mind to a certain degree. And while using exact numbers and distances isn’t always easy to think about, it’s far more grounding and narrative than saying 1 or 2 spaces. So we abstract a number and set it to a real life unit of measurement, and we then just say 1 hex = 5 ft. And we chose feet because we’re an American company, and it's the unit of distance we’re most familiar with thinking about.

Finally, some RPG teasers:

Because we made characters at Gen Con, I wanted to share the materials folks saw at the convention. I give you both the simplified creation steps handout that Monica created, and the demo character sheet created by Wilting Moon we had for folks during the show.

And speaking of how during character creation you start with choosing your ancestry, I wanted to share an ancestry excerpt that would give you an idea of how we characterize the ancestries and their Skills. 

Play a quatryl if you want to portray a hyper-intelligent individual who has a penchant for following their impulses and indulging their curiosity. Quatryls might be small in stature, but they are big in personality and presence. Quatryls become mercenaries as a way to make a living, satiate their curiosity, and travel in a semi-nomadic lifestyle. 

Fighting Styles 

What a quatryl lacks in sheer strength, they more than make up for with ingenuity. No matter what their chosen profession, a quatryl knows how to handle most weapons, especially ones that require gunpowder or flint. Quatryls are cold and calculating in a fight, watching their opponent and waiting for an opportunity to strike a fatal blow. They tend to be fast, and others underestimate their strength and fighting skill, much to their detriment. While some quatryls might be duelists, guards, or other martial professions that give formal combat training, most quatryls learn how to fight the hard way, by getting beaten and then figuring out how to defend themselves. These quatryls aren’t above fighting dirty and employ an arsenal of ready-made gadgetry and weapons to ensure they don’t ever suffer the same fate twice. 

Beyond a natural curiosity, quatryls tend to be friendly. Some are high-strung and anxious, always needing to be working on a new project or goal to feel normal. Others are easy-going, taking life as it comes at them and treating every new experience with childlike wonder and joy. Sometimes the same quatryl will oscillate between both states, making it hard to relate to others. As mercenaries, quatryls lend their talents as fixers, problem solvers, and sometimes thrill-seekers to their fellows, earning a reputation for often mad-hat enterprises. 

Classes 

Many quatryls never leave their university, but those who do take their training with them. Many quatryls are tinkerers, using their engineering studies to create new and deadlier weapons to deploy against their enemies, or innovating ways to keep their allies healthy. Quatryls make excellent quartermasters, always keeping stock of the company’s wares and ensuring everything is in proper working order. Quatryls who have taken up the arts tend to be soothsingers, wielding their robust knowledge to read other people. They use this to encourage their allies and demoralize their enemies in equal measure. Quatryls who take an interest in magic tend to be spellweavers, finding the dichotomy between Ice and Fire a satisfying quandary to puzzle over for a lifetime. 

Common Names 

Quatryls tend to have names associated with their interests. While all quatryls have given names that they use when they are young, they often choose their own names as they get older. Sometimes they append titles to their names to designate their specialties. Other quatryls show a great deal of reverence to the title of Master, Professor, and Magus, even if the quatryl using them has never stepped foot into a higher-degree program. 

Examples: Archmaster Trini, Colbert, Dean Hubert, Inventor Olga, Klein, Lord Lightning Brass, Master Clock Smith, Professor Jules, Senior Agriculturalist Prizz, Top Engineer Madrigal, Warden Hall, Xander, Zeze
 

Ancestry Skills 

Quatryls all have above-average intelligence, which they often put toward invention and experimentation. Even those who do not follow the life of an engineer find an affinity for technology and study. Their culture encourages unreserved curiosity, which can lead them to great things and get them into big trouble. They are also smaller in stature than most other ancestries, leading people to view them as weak. 

Gain a bonus to Attribute checks when the quatryl uses their Ancestry Skills to study, understand, avoid, activate, or otherwise interact with a piece of technology. Additionally, gain this bonus when they make checks to satisfy their curiosity, come up with a quick solution to a problem, prove someone wrong about them, show off, or surprise someone, especially someone who has underestimated them in some way. 

Technological Affinity 

Level: 1 

Initiative: 42 

Primary: Recover up to 2 Expended items. Then you may immediately play a different Skill or Talent to perform one of its actions. 

Secondary: Jump up to 25 ft. Then give one adjacent enemy the Wound condition. 

Bonus: Advantage, +1 

There isn’t a single piece of technology in this world that is foreign to you.

Underestimated 

Level: 1 

Initiative: 14 

Primary: Make a ranged attack 4 on one target within 15 ft. All attacks targeting you this round gain Disadvantage, and you Taunt until the end of the round. 

Secondary: Heal yourself for 3, and you Taunt until the end of the round. Whenever you are attacked this round, the attacker gains the Immobilize condition. 

Bonus: Advantage, +1 

Those who don’t know you would never suspect what you’re capable of. 

Quick Thinking 

Level: 1 

Initiative: 10 

Primary: Make a ranged attack 3 with pierce 3 on one target within 15 ft. 

Secondary: Gain retaliate 1 until the end of the round. The next enemy that suffers damage from your retaliate this round gains the Pacify condition. 

Bonus: Advantage, +1 

Until next time!
– Danielle

                                   

And that will do it for this update! I had an absolutely wonderful time at Gen Con earlier this month, and I just want to sincerely thank all the fans who came out to talk to me about their experiences with all our games. And to the one marvelous fan who came cosplaying as the Saw! Stuff like that really energizes me and the team to keep doing what we're doing, so thank you!

We also released a new promo scenario at Gen Con for Buttons & Bugs, which you can also find at the Buttons & Bugs website. And check out this graphic for info on where the team will be in the near future!

See you next time!