On Friday we sent out the notice about locking orders and charging cards. We're now spooling data to the warehouse and we will begin fulfillment of the physical rewards later this week!
As discussed in our last update,we're going to ship out the most basic orders first. The limited edition dice and tokens should arrive in the next 7 business days and we'll tackle those orders next.
In terms of digital rewards, earlier today you got an email from BackerKit with download links and DriveThruRPG codes for the final, accessible PDF of both both books as well as the updated MotW handouts. We delivered the POD codes for both books as well.
If you need to recover your survey to access your Digital Downloads page, you can do that here.
There are a couple digital rewards still pending. The PDF of the Investigator's Casebook is still in development. (We are making it form-fillable.) And we decided to divvy up the Roll20 implementation into discrete modules so you can pick just what you need for your specific game. That means the Roll20 modules are still in progress. We'll update you as we get these things deployed.
Finally, to help celebrate the delivery of the campaign, we are hosting a special livestream event next Monday!
Join Michael Sands, Luke Green, and Marek Golonka next Monday, June 23rd, for a two-hour livestream event hosted by our own Sean Nittner.
They'll share insights on running your own Monster of the Week campaign, tidbits of history on the development of the Hunter's Journal and Slayer's Survival Kit, and more!
Catch the stream live on YouTube at 1:30pm Pacific Time on Monday, June 23rd.
We look forward to seeing you there!
We're excited to get these rewards out to you, we can't wait to hear how you integrate them into your game.
Next week we'll be locking orders and a few days after that, we'll be charging cards. When we pull the switch, you'll get an automated email from BackerKit warning you that you'll have 48 hours to lock your order and finalize your rewards. If you want to add to or adjust your order in any way, now is the best time to do that. (It's a good time to pick up the Codex of Worlds or Tome of Mysteries or even Monster of the Week in hardcover.)
A couple business days after we lock orders, we'll be charging cards. So if you need to update your payment method or move funds, we expect to charge cards in the next ten days.
We're still in the process of calculating shipping and any VAT we need to charge if you are outside the USA but both of these steps will get triggered in fairly short order (a matter of days) once we get that configured.
We don't have a firm date to fire up fulfillment just yet, but we want to give you a heads up: When fulfillment begins, we'll start sending out the most basic pledges first (i.e. "two books"), clear those out of the queue and then work on more complicated pledges (generally, those that contain the limited release items).
The reason for this is that our manufacturer detected some 1mm variances in the metal dice. They didn't find that acceptable and decided to redo the production run.
By starting with the basic pledges first, our plan is to expand the shipping window and gain some time for the corrected batch of dice to arrive. If they're further delayed, we'll review our shipping options and consider sending books in one package and send out the dice and coins in another.
That's the update right now, fulfillment will be spinning up soon. We'll have more exact details in the next ten days or so.
All the physical print rewards have arrived at the warehouse - both books and the Investigator's Casebook. We are making steady progress on the Roll20 module. The final pieces we are waiting on are the Slayer's Dice and Hunter's Coins. We anticipate they will arrive in the next two weeks.
That means in early June we will lock down orders and begin to charge shipping. (Don't worry, we will post an update here to give you a chance to adjust your order and update your payment info before we do so.)
Once the final pledges are locked in, we expect fulfillment to fire up in the second half of June. Our estimated delivery timeline was July, we have high confidence we'll be able to hit that.
Investigator's Casebook Preview!
This week we got our hands on the dedicated notebook we created and christened The Investigator's Casebook. This is set up to be a special ledger for you track mysteries, clues, relationships, and more. Fred Hicks put a ton of thought into the design and... well, we'll let the pictures speak for themselves:
And finally, Fred incorporated a little easter egg into the page layout so that when you look at the edge of the book that's opposite the spine...
We're super proud of how this turned out and we're confident you'll find it a stylish and useful part of your MotW game. If you haven't added The Investigator's Casebook to your pledge, keep in mind this is a limited edition reward and we only have ~100 copies available to claim.
(Please note: This is a physical reward so if you've pledged at a tier that only has digital rewards, you won't see the casebook in the Add-ons.)
Our Next Project, Blades in the Dark: Deep Cuts
Creator John Harper returns to Blades in the Dark with new lore, new character options, and alternate rules options in Blades in the Dark: Deep Cuts!
Next Tuesday, join us for the launch of the print edition for this official supplement to Blades in the Dark!
In addition to the stylish, high quality print treatment you've come to expect from Evil Hat, we'll have campaign-exclusive rewards like maps of Doskvol, a deck of iconic cards, and a notebook tailored to Blades that we're calling The Red Ledger.
We're in the final stages of completing production on the Hunter's Journal and Slayer's Survival Kit. While there's some slight overlap with Deep Cuts, we have full confidence the Deep Cuts campaign will not affect the timeline for delivery on this project.
That's the full update! Thanks again for your support and we'll check back in next month as we ramp up for fulfillment!
Michael, Marek, and Luke have been working away on the stretch goals and before we send them off for final edits and layout, we’d love to share them with you and get your thoughts. For the files in Google doc format you can leave comments in the docs themselves. For the PDFs (or if you just prefer feedback in a single list) you can put any suggestions here.
Here’s all the stretch goals in progress:
Elemental Playbook by Michael Sands - A transdimensional agent correcting cosmic errors—powerful, mysterious, and inhuman. Includes advice and hunter stories. Inspired by Sapphire & Steel. Advice and Stories for the Elemental Playbook here
Ensemble Teams by Marek Golonka - Rules for campaigns that use team playbooks. The players create two hunters each from the start and choose which one tackles a given mystery. Good for focusing on the team theme.
Passing the Torch Team Playbook by Marek Golonka - A group of experienced but weary veterans and fresh young talents who learn from those veterans, with each player creating one of both. Pairs well with the Ensemble Team Rules.
Random Mystery Idea Tables by Michael Sands - A set of rollable tables for inspiring quick mystery ideas.
The Abandoned by Luke Green - A hunter who was left alone through tragedy, neglect, or other circumstance. Like Newt from Aliens or Little Orphan Annie. Link includes a folder with the playbook, advice, and stories
Zoomed in/Zoomed out Combat moves by Michael Sands - A set of moves to change the focus of a combat scene. Zoomed-in combat moves provide more detailed back and forth action, for exciting duels or boss fights. Zoomed-out combat moves quickly resolve a fight or cope with hordes of monsters at once.
Hope you enjoy getting an early look at these stretch goals. When you’ve had a chance to review them, please let us know what you think!
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 theHunter'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.
