Update for survey delivery issues, new lock date, fix for digital backers with physical Early Backer Rewards.
Hello!
Thank you for all of the input over the last week. We have been working with the BackerKit team to resolve a the issues that have been brought to our attention. Here are the solutions they have helped us with!
You selected Pay Over Time, have completed payments, but did not receive a survey when they were initially sent out.
Backers that have selected Pay Over Time will not receive their survey until all of their payments are complete. Thank you to the backers that let us know that they had completed their payments but did not receive surveys. We worked with BackerKit and apparently they have to manually run a chore to"refresh" those backers into the mega pledge manager and that had not been done in their review. It has since been done and we can confirm that all backers that have all payments complete as of last Friday should have received their survey this week!
You selected Pay Over Time, but have a remaining payment(s) and have not received your survey.
All Pay Over Time payments should be completed by October 6th. After that our BackerKit rep will run the chore again to refresh these backers so they can receive their surveys as well, which will take about a week. BackerKit did not clearly communicate to us that the surveys could not all be sent until all Pay Over Time funds had been collected. (This is only our 2nd project using this feature and for the last project we opened the Pledge Manager Survey after 4 months of the campaign ending.) All surveys will be sent by mid October, therefore we are pushing back the lock order date to October 16th. Most backers will have answered their surveys by this time and even if you have not answered it, you will not be affected by them locking, as an incomplete survey cannot be locked. We cannot wait too long into October to lock orders because we need to prepare for the early fulfillment of the OSE Referee's and Player's 2026 Printing Books to the backers in those pledge tiers.
You didn't do pay over time and you still can't find your survey.
Please make sure that if you are not accessing your survey via the email invite, that you are selecting "Old-School Essentials Month" Pledge Manager Survey. This is the group shipping survey and includes the Pledge Manager Surveys for the following projects:
Digital Backers that received physical Early Backer and OSE Month Booster Pack physical rewards in their cart causing a shipping charge to appear.
All digital backers that received the physical Early Bird Old-School Essentials Demonic Grimoire - Hell Realm Postcards Set or Old-School Essentials Demonic Grimoire - Monster Deck Foil Booster Pack as a reward for backing Demonic Grimoire + 6 OSE Month projects, those two physical items have been removed from your carts and replaced with the digital versions.
If you are a digital backer that would like to pay the shipping to receive the physical version of the reward despite being a digital tier, we are happy to add it back in for you if you reach out to us at [email protected] or to BackerKit Support.
If you are a digital backer that paid $6.66 for the exclusive pre-launch reservation Old-School Essentials Demonic Grimoire - Limited Edition Demonic Grimoire Monster Deck then the shipping amount you are seeing is the shipping price for that physical item you purchased before the campaign began.
I'm still confused, please help!
If you need assistance with your pledge or need to report any issues, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at [email protected] or to BackerKit Support for any questions or assistance.
Exalted Funeral Customer Support has been receiving a very large number of requests this week so it may take a little longer than normal to get back to you, but we are working through the requests and we will get back to you as soon as possible. We want to make sure every backer is taken care of.
Ok the Smoke Test has been sent for the Pledge Manager Survey! In case you are not familiar with what this is, it is a test of the Pledge Manager Survey where it is sent out to 5% of backers (301 backers in this case) to give us an opportunity to correct anything before it is sent out to everyone! Usually after 24 hours or so, if everything is looking good then we would send out the remainder of the surveys. I'll check in on responses tomorrow to see how everything is going. If you encounter anything odd, please reach out to us at [email protected] instead of BackerKit over the weekend, since they are out of the office.
As soon as you answer your surveys you should get the available PDFs for Demonic Grimoire in your survey. Many of the other projects participating in group shipping have likely been communicating with you about how they are delivering their project's digital files. We will let you know if there are any other projects that we will send PDFs through this BackerKit Survey as well.
We will have another update when the Smoke Test is complete and all of the surveys are sent as well as when the Pre-order Store opens.
First thing first, thank you so much for your patience while we had a delay on our end with the pledge manager survey!
We really appreciate your support for this project. We know a lot of you have been wondering when those PDFs will finally materialize. We also know that our previous update gave a timeline that has, shall we say, wandered a little deeper into the abyss than we originally expected. And we've seen your comments. The excitement, the "ETA?" questions, the frustration, and everything in between. We appreciate all of it.
So rather than making you decipher another prophecy from an ancient demonic scroll, we're going to give you the important bit up front:
PDFs will be delivered to backers via the BackerKit Survey as planned. We expect this survey to be sent out at the end of this week, by Friday August 28th. However, we are also providing all of the PDFs for the projects via this update at the drive link the the backer only section.
While we don't normally send out PDFs this way, we know you are eager to receive them and didn't want you to wait any longer while we work out the remaining kinks in the complicated Demon Month Pledge Manager (different than a normal Pledge Manager build). ACCESS TO THESE LINKS WILL BE REMOVED ONCE THE SURVEYS HAVE BEEN SENT, since you will then be able to download them via BackerKit.
When Pledge Manager Surveys are sent out, Backerkit will also send out PDFs automatically. The PDFs will be available on the BackerKit Pledge Manager as soon as surveys are sent. No need for orders to be locked or cards charged!
All files are complete for all components and we have final quotes with our selected manufacturers for all products. Some items are in already almost done with the prepress process, meaning they will start printing soon and others are still in quoting. We’ll have further production updates to communicate the next steps in that process, but for the moment our focus is getting these PDF’s into your hands so that you can begin summoning horrible things on your players.
We're sorry the waiting is frustrating. You backed this project, and you deserve to know what's happening. And hopefully this helps while we get the pledge manager together, the goal is to have that sent out by the end of the week.
Thank you for sticking with us, for asking questions, for keeping us honest, and—most importantly—for being excited about these demons that you helped turn into a full Grimoire. We can't wait for you to start playing with them..
Pledge Manager coming soon, Files being sent to printer, PDF delivery
Hello everyone!
A quick update on what's happening now and what's coming up.
Pledge Manager Survey
We expect to have the Pledge Manager Survey out to backers in the next couple of weeks. We have been working with our BackerKit rep as they set up the group shipping pledge manager, which is more complex than a normal one. They just us know that their work is done and we are now able to start our part. We will send out another update close to the end of the month with an update on the progress and ETA for surveys being sent.
Manufacturing and PDF Delivery
All files are complete for all components and we are finalizing quotes with manufacturers. We expect production to start on the books next month. Manufacturing for the other components will begin shortly after that.
As soon as the Pledge Manager Surveys are sent out we will also send out PDFs via BackerKit. No need for orders to be locked or cards charged!
Beware the creeping Ebony Horror! (Art by David Hoskins)
OSE Month 2026 is over and — thanks to your support — it has been an overwhelming success!
What Next?
Now that the campaign is over, our next stage of work begins: getting the Demonic Grimoire and other products off to the printers! We've already prepared the final print files, which should be going into technical approval with the printers soon. We'll keep you updated as things progress.
PDFs and Surveys
We plan to send out pledge manager surveys to you all around mid/late July. This is the survey asking for your shipping address, paying for shipping fees, purchasing add-ons, and confirmation of other details like T-shirt size (for those who ordered shirts).
Filling out this survey will also have a fabulous benefit: you'll get access to all the finished PDFs included in your pledge level! We hope you'll all enjoy seeing the Demonic Grimoire and other products in their full, hellish glory and planning how to integrate the new monsters and material into your campaigns.
The pre-order store will also be open when surveys go out in case you have friends that missed the campaign and want to pick up a copy!
Thank You For Your Support!
We have tons of exciting plans for further OSE supplements and adventures, and the resounding success of the Demonic Grimoire and OSE Month means the world to us!
The Necrotic Gnome team is already working on a sequel / companion to the Demonic Grimoire entitled the Necrotic Tome. This OSE supplement delves further into realms of dark fantasy, with a focus on undead and necromancy. It details the Land of the Dead, 4 new deities (including everyone's favourite bad guy, Orcus!), a horde of new sinister monsters, a full necromancer class, and lots more necromantic goodness.
Thank you for all of the input over the last week. We have been working with the BackerKit team to resolve a the issues that have been brought to our attention. Here are the solutions they have helped us with!
You selected Pay Over Time, have completed payments, but did not receive a survey when they were initially sent out.
Backers that have selected Pay Over Time will not receive their survey until all of their payments are complete. Thank you to the backers that let us know that they had completed their payments but did not receive surveys. We worked with BackerKit and apparently they have to manually run a chore to"refresh" those backers into the mega pledge manager and that had not been done in their review. It has since been done and we can confirm that all backers that have all payments complete as of last Friday should have received their survey this week!
You selected Pay Over Time, but have a remaining payment(s) and have not received your survey.
All Pay Over Time payments should be completed by October 6th. After that our BackerKit rep will run the chore again to refresh these backers so they can receive their surveys as well, which will take about a week. BackerKit did not clearly communicate to us that the surveys could not all be sent until all Pay Over Time funds had been collected. (This is only our 2nd project using this feature and for the last project we opened the Pledge Manager Survey after 4 months of the campaign ending.) All surveys will be sent by mid October, therefore we are pushing back the lock order date to October 16th. Most backers will have answered their surveys by this time and even if you have not answered it, you will not be affected by them locking, as an incomplete survey cannot be locked. We cannot wait too long into October to lock orders because we need to prepare for the early fulfillment of the OSE Referee's and Player's 2026 Printing Books to the backers in those pledge tiers.
You didn't do pay over time and you still can't find your survey.
Please make sure that if you are not accessing your survey via the email invite, that you are selecting "Old-School Essentials Month" Pledge Manager Survey. This is the group shipping survey and includes the Pledge Manager Surveys for the following projects:
Digital Backers that received physical Early Backer and OSE Month Booster Pack physical rewards in their cart causing a shipping charge to appear.
All digital backers that received the physical Early Bird Old-School Essentials Demonic Grimoire - Hell Realm Postcards Set or Old-School Essentials Demonic Grimoire - Monster Deck Foil Booster Pack as a reward for backing Demonic Grimoire + 6 OSE Month projects, those two physical items have been removed from your carts and replaced with the digital versions.
If you are a digital backer that would like to pay the shipping to receive the physical version of the reward despite being a digital tier, we are happy to add it back in for you if you reach out to us at [email protected] or to BackerKit Support.
If you are a digital backer that paid $6.66 for the exclusive pre-launch reservation Old-School Essentials Demonic Grimoire - Limited Edition Demonic Grimoire Monster Deck then the shipping amount you are seeing is the shipping price for that physical item you purchased before the campaign began.
I'm still confused, please help!
If you need assistance with your pledge or need to report any issues, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at [email protected] or to BackerKit Support for any questions or assistance.
Exalted Funeral Customer Support has been receiving a very large number of requests this week so it may take a little longer than normal to get back to you, but we are working through the requests and we will get back to you as soon as possible. We want to make sure every backer is taken care of.
When I access the digital downloads, there are two files each for both the Player's Book and Referee's Book. One of the links has "(Early Shipping)" after the titles.
They appear to be the same documents when I look through them. Am I missing something or are these in fact different documents?
Ok the Smoke Test has been sent for the Pledge Manager Survey! In case you are not familiar with what this is, it is a test of the Pledge Manager Survey where it is sent out to 5% of backers (301 backers in this case) to give us an opportunity to correct anything before it is sent out to everyone! Usually after 24 hours or so, if everything is looking good then we would send out the remainder of the surveys. I'll check in on responses tomorrow to see how everything is going. If you encounter anything odd, please reach out to us at [email protected] instead of BackerKit over the weekend, since they are out of the office.
As soon as you answer your surveys you should get the available PDFs for Demonic Grimoire in your survey. Many of the other projects participating in group shipping have likely been communicating with you about how they are delivering their project's digital files. We will let you know if there are any other projects that we will send PDFs through this BackerKit Survey as well.
We will have another update when the Smoke Test is complete and all of the surveys are sent as well as when the Pre-order Store opens.
