Latest from the Creator
PROJECT UPDATE
Evil Hat Productions
CREATOR
18 days ago
Project Update: Production update + Tariffs
Hello folks,
Since the current administration seems intent on taking a flamethrower to a century of sensible economic policy, we feel we owe you a status update and explainer.
On tariffs:
Our books are manufactured in the USA and the price of this print run was locked in prior to the announcement of the tariffs. So in this instance we don’t expect to see cost impacts on the books themselves.
When it comes to whatever game we print next, we may be forced to raise the cover price - in return for zero additional value to you the consumer.
The only other possible exposure we have on this project in regard to tariffs are the “Hunter’s Coins” and “Slayer’s Dice”—they’re made in China. Our research suggests that will add roughly $3500 due to tariffs. At this time we have chosen eat that added cost on behalf of the backers who pledged for the coins or dice.
But let's be clear: As a small company that's positioned in the leisure segment of the economy, these ruinous and outdated policies threaten our ability to keep taking risks on the innovative indie TTRPGs you've come to expect from Evil Hat.
We encourage you to contact your congressional reps and ask them to reassert their authority over taxes and tariffs. Congress could easily end all of this fiscal chaos with a couple of votes.
In terms of the current timeline for production:
Since the current administration seems intent on taking a flamethrower to a century of sensible economic policy, we feel we owe you a status update and explainer.
On tariffs:
Our books are manufactured in the USA and the price of this print run was locked in prior to the announcement of the tariffs. So in this instance we don’t expect to see cost impacts on the books themselves.
When it comes to whatever game we print next, we may be forced to raise the cover price - in return for zero additional value to you the consumer.
The only other possible exposure we have on this project in regard to tariffs are the “Hunter’s Coins” and “Slayer’s Dice”—they’re made in China. Our research suggests that will add roughly $3500 due to tariffs. At this time we have chosen eat that added cost on behalf of the backers who pledged for the coins or dice.
But let's be clear: As a small company that's positioned in the leisure segment of the economy, these ruinous and outdated policies threaten our ability to keep taking risks on the innovative indie TTRPGs you've come to expect from Evil Hat.
We encourage you to contact your congressional reps and ask them to reassert their authority over taxes and tariffs. Congress could easily end all of this fiscal chaos with a couple of votes.
In terms of the current timeline for production:
- According to the printer both runs of the Hunter's Journal and Slayer's Survival Kit should be complete by the end of this month
- The Investigator's Casebook should arrive at the end of May.
- We have done a couple revisions on the Hunter's Coins to make sure everything has a proper fit and are awaiting final samples before we greenlight the full run.
Short version: We are still on track, if not ahead, of our July delivery date.
We'll get you another update in May as we receive deliveries from our printer and production of the rest of the rewards begins to firm up.
Finally, we wanted to end this fairly business-heavy update with some preliminary photos of the Hunter's Coins.
As we said earlier, we have asked for some minor tweaks but overall they're looking really great.
If you're getting physical copies of the books, there's still time to go into your BackerKit Survey and add the tokens and dice to your order for the same price we listed during the crowdfunding campaign.
Thank you again for your support, we'll have another update in May.
PROJECT UPDATE
Evil Hat Productions
CREATOR
28 days ago
Project Update: Design Diary: Playtesting The Abandoned
Design Diary: Playtesting The Abandoned
by Luke Green
I recently ran a series of one-shots to playtest the Abandoned playbook and get opinions from a few different players. All told we had sixteen players split across five one-shots resulting in five different takes on the Abandoned. Some mystery elements were based on player votes, and other elements came from the mystery inspiration tables Michael Sands is putting together. However, each one-shot had two elements in common. The first of these was that the problem for each mystery involved something or someone that had been abandoned. The second was that I incorporated the Phasmophobia music box, since I had a convenient replica on hand to use in the form of a Christmas gift from my nephew.
I recently ran a series of one-shots to playtest the Abandoned playbook and get opinions from a few different players. All told we had sixteen players split across five one-shots resulting in five different takes on the Abandoned. Some mystery elements were based on player votes, and other elements came from the mystery inspiration tables Michael Sands is putting together. However, each one-shot had two elements in common. The first of these was that the problem for each mystery involved something or someone that had been abandoned. The second was that I incorporated the Phasmophobia music box, since I had a convenient replica on hand to use in the form of a Christmas gift from my nephew.
The first group’s Abandoned was Carli, a 13 year old castaway who had been stranded in the wilderness after her father fell off a cliff turning their holiday into a fight for survival. They had just come off a bitter divorce, so when she got down from the wilderness she was still alone. They encountered a series of visions washing over a part of town due to the egg of a mothman which was stuck in an abandoned research facility. They freed the egg into the world, though they alerted the owners of the defunct lab in doing so and Carli herself was changed by the energies and took on some moth-like features, including some cute antenna, which she made permanent by taking the Premonitions move.
Jesse Stein was the Abandoned of the next group. A young adult with a tall frame and stitched flesh, Jesse’s family of monsters had been mistakenly identified as a threat by a group of monster hunters who killed them and “rescued” her, leaving her the sole survivor of her family. Her group was dealing with the appearances of giant centipedes around a poisoned lake, and they discovered an abandoned lab. The central computer of this lab was a pillar in which a discarded clone had been plugged in as a processing unit. As she lost control, containment was broken. Jesse used her hacking skills to safely disconnect the clone while her team handled the giant centipedes attacking them.
Meanwhile, out in the wilds, a boy named Ray between 13 and 15 years old, was the Abandoned of this group. He’d been lured into a portal under his bed and stolen away into a magical world. Now he and his team were investigating the appearances of black-eyed children whose presence caused despair and cancer. Tracking it to an observatory deep in the national park where the forest was dying, they discovered a bunch of amateurs, possibly influenced by the being that kidnapped Ray, had summoned something to this world and left it trapped here. The black-eyed children were its attempts to seek help.
In another place, a local mall had been experiencing a series of bizarre accidents, drawing the attention of Dani Walker and her team. Dani is a young adult who grew up lost in the system and now hunted monsters alongside a hunter who may know something about her mother. As they arrived at the mall, another incident occurred and the mall management tried to stop witnesses reaching out to the police or any other official authority. Dani called them out on the duplicity and started a worker-revolt when she inadvertently exposed salary issues. It turns out a young man whose family had been scammed and forced off their land to build the mall had been making summoning bombs that called gremlins to the mall to wreak havoc.
The last group was tracking strange weather patterns, with deep snow dropping in the middle of summer around a small cabin up the mountain. A team of multiversal explorers, all yeti, had had an accident leaving only one intern left. His attempts to get out of the pocket dimension was causing the weather issues. The team that came to investigate this included a robot named Maxxx Vex. He was the Abandoned, an exploited heir whose creators failed to recognize him as sapient and exploited his abilities. Within the dimensional fluctuations as they solved the main problem, they had a vision of their creators making a new robot to exploit.
Each hunter came across as a very different sort of Abandoned and I ended up with many useful opinions on the playbook. This resulted in a few changes to the original draft of the playbook as well as inspiring some ideas for the Abandoned hunter stories. It certainly inspired confidence that I had made something fun.
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If you'd like to get an early look at Luke's Abandoned playbook, you can find the working files here.
If you'd like to get an early look at Luke's Abandoned playbook, you can find the working files here.
I know i will need to settle up soon and finalize my pledge. I was wondering if the premium dice and tokens will be available after this kickstarter. If not, this will inform my pledge.
PROJECT UPDATE
Evil Hat Productions
CREATOR
3 months ago
Project Update: Smoke Tests & Surveys
Hey friends,
We're gearing up to shift the campaign into pledge management mode!
What this means for you:
We're gearing up to shift the campaign into pledge management mode!
What this means for you:
- Within the next week we'll be sending out pledge fulfillment surveys. A small percentage of you will be in our "smoke test" group and receive your survey tomorrow.
- Your backer survey will enable you to enter your address, update and confirm your pledge, and add-on any items you didn't include in your initial pledge.
- Some of the premium add-on items will have limited quantities. Once we reach that limit, we won't be bumping it up. So take a look at any add-ons you might want and reserve them.
- We are not close to fulfillment. (We're still waiting on art.)
- We will not be locking orders for a couple months. So if you're moving soon, do not sweat it.
- We are not ready to charge you for shipping. That will happen down the road when the printer has the finished producing the books. We'll give you a heads-up.
In terms of production, we're still cruising along with our project plan. We've got artwork for the Slayer's Survival Kit finished. The art for the Hunter's Journal is still underway. We recently completed another full editing pass. We don't have any deliverables to share at this time because the text is not fully finalized.
This step mostly enables us to take pre-orders from people who missed the crowdfunding portion of the campaign, so if you have any friends who want to get in on it, let them know.
That's the update. We're moving forward!
PROJECT UPDATE
Evil Hat Productions
CREATOR
4 months ago
Project Update: Check-in PLUS: Playtesting opportunity
Hey friends, short update here.
First, Luke Green has completed a first pass on one of our stretch goals! The Abandoned is a new hunter playbook. Like Newt from Aliens, this character was left alone through tragedy, neglect, or other circumstance.
You can check out this first draft of the Abandoned by clicking here.
Luke would like to hear how this PC plays at the table so if you have have a chance, please feel free to playtest the Abandoned. You can leave feedback directly on the linked google doc in the form of comments.
Second, progress continues behind the scenes. Art has been commissioned, roughly a third of it is in but these are two big books. We're waiting for all the pieces to come in so we can drop them in and finalize the layout.
Work on our other stretch goals continues, we're happy with where we're at with our project plan. We'll have another update for you when we hit the next milestone.
Happy New Year from all of us at Evil Hat.
First, Luke Green has completed a first pass on one of our stretch goals! The Abandoned is a new hunter playbook. Like Newt from Aliens, this character was left alone through tragedy, neglect, or other circumstance.
You can check out this first draft of the Abandoned by clicking here.
Luke would like to hear how this PC plays at the table so if you have have a chance, please feel free to playtest the Abandoned. You can leave feedback directly on the linked google doc in the form of comments.
Second, progress continues behind the scenes. Art has been commissioned, roughly a third of it is in but these are two big books. We're waiting for all the pieces to come in so we can drop them in and finalize the layout.
Work on our other stretch goals continues, we're happy with where we're at with our project plan. We'll have another update for you when we hit the next milestone.
Happy New Year from all of us at Evil Hat.
