We're just a little past two weeks from the end of the campaign, and things are progressing along nicely. I've been creating more tiles with Dyson and Andrew has been writing our High Seas deck and our artists have been finishing more art.  Andrew expects to be done writing within a month.

For the Hex Map Tiles set, we'll have 80 tiles, so 160 possible designs when double sided.  Since we can do the coasts with clings, we'll just be reserving about 20 as light blue sea tiles and about 20 more as sub-grid-only white tiles for you to make custom tiles as needed.  So we'll end up with a robust 120 different designs! 

Here are a few of the new ones.  Note that the red and blue lines won't be on the finals, these are cut (red) lines and safety (blue) lines that are guidance between me and the printer:

And here are a few samples of new art:

I am looking for ideas on what you'd like to see in the last few cards of advice/guidelines/guidance. I've got ideas listed for each deck, but I don't want to miss a great idea. For example, the sample deck has what is planned for the Wilderness deck with hex crawl guidance: travel rates, roles for characters to improve travel, stocking hexes, etc.

I'm holding off on our survey until we get closer to delivering. While tariffs won't impact the majority of our backers (we're printing in the US and our printer has plenty of paper stockpiled) they may impact some international backers--although I'll do my best to minimize that of course.  I'd hate to have an unexpected extra 20% charge if I'm the customer.  If it does come to that (and like I said I'm almost positive we can avoid/minimize it) I'd give impacted backers a chance to choose a refund instead.

Finally, I've got two other projects of note from creators I'm involved with:

ZAMANORA: Ballad of the Witch inspired by the grim, cautionary tales of Slavic and Balkan folklore has less than a week left. It introduces heaps of new content. Immersive mechanics, more than 20 character options, over 75 monsters, spells, curses, ceremonies, folkloric relics and adventure locales sprung from the realm of myth are only a part of what this rustic setting has to offer. Moreover, everything is going to be compatible with a number of different TTRPG systems: namely D&D 5e, D&D 2024 and the Legend in the Mist RPG!
Back it here.

Free5e: The Open-Source 5e Alternative launched a few days ago. Free5e is a fully free, open-source alternative to 5e, designed for unrestricted access, customization, and global availability. Fully compatible with 2014 D&D and featuring conversion guides for 2024, ToV, and A5e, it includes a Player’s Guide, GM Handbook, and Free Range Monsters, all available now as free manuscripts on DriveThruRPG (Get the download from the link on the Kickstarter page). The Kickstarter funds professional editing, layout, and original CC-BY artwork, ensuring Free5e remains free and accessible forever. Backers receive exclusive handcrafted rewards while supporting a system that removes financial and licensing barriers, giving everyone access to the D&D experience forever.

Thanks again! We'll have another update in about two weeks.
Joe

Congratulations--because I know you're going to love the final product of this crowdfunding!  (And if you just missed the deadline and you'd like to make a late pledge, please go here.)

I'm thrilled that this project blew past its initial goal! And while that goal was low, it was truly what we needed for a small print run of 100 or so copies. Making several times the goal lets us pay back our up front/development costs, fund a larger print run, pay for the upgrades, and fund the additional work of managing it all.

Next your bank cards will likely be charged now/very soon.  Then BackerKit has a two week period (like Kickstarter) to allow folks to update cards with issues and otherwise fix pledges.  At that point the funds come to me and I can use them as needed to pay freelancers for some additional work related to our stretch goals, and of course pay for our print run/manufacturing.

We'll set the pledge manager to open soon after those two weeks are up--probably the first week of April.  We'll be finishing and editing the PDFs and Hex Tile images through April.  In May we'll get those files out to you and six weeks or so after that we'll get the physical products in your hands!

You can expect bi-weekly updates posted here starting in about two weeks until we've finished shipping.

Happy Gaming!

Joe

Our Hexploration Decks crowdfunding campaign ends tonight at 11pm US eastern time!

If you're not backing for the Hexplorer's Kit, and you're on the fence, I'd highly recommend it--the value there is getting better too!  Like the 4 Decks pledge level it gets you the bonus deck and like the Hex Tiles pledge level it gets you the extra 16 tiles--at no extra cost. And I expect us to hit the $60,000 stretch goal today to improve the box that will hold all the decks & tiles and will look great on your shelf!  (Even if we don't hit it formally during the campaign, late pledges will almost certainly get us there.)

And don't forget, we've got two other add-ons that you can pick:

The first is "Restless Encounters", a deck of encounters for when the party is resting.  How often does the party rest, you roll for random encounters for each watch, get one, and not have anything planned better than "orc patrol"?  These cards give you an intriguing encounter idea on every card--some combat, but many are social encounters too!

And the second add-on is our "Encounter Builder" three deck set.  Create a random encounter in a way similar to a tarot reading.  Lay out a few of these art cards and look for connections in your mind that will create an encounter idea!  Don't see a connection at first--with art on both sides, flip a few over and try again.  Or lay out a couple more cards.  Each of the three decks has a theme: Dungeon, City, and Wilderness.

Finally, on to new previews:

We'll be posting more updates throughout the day, at least in the following places:

Thanks again for your support!

Honestly, with everything else going on with this project--showing off the scenarios Andrew has written, the HexLands free hex mapping web app, etc., I haven't done as many previews as I planned.  (To be fair, those were all 100% worth doing.)

We'll rectify that now! Here is a link to a 7 card preview from the Underrealms Hexploration deck! (Note: It was only edited once--2 more rounds to go.  If you spot something, let us know.)

But for anyone who doesn't want to download the small PDF, here are image versions of two of the cards, front & back:

As I think you can see, many of the points on each card can inspire a few sessions of Underrealm exploration!

And we've been making progress on the map tiles too!  Here are a few of those (including extra area for bleed when we send them to the printer) as well as some new icons:

And last night, we hit our stretch goal to do the extra 5th deck!  Even better, because of quantity price breaks that we get, you'll get it at no extra cost if you're backing for all 4 other decks! (At the $60 or $100 reward levels as well as the $20 PDF decks level.)  

How about one more stretch goal? For folks picking the $100 Hexplorer's Kit reward, we're going to add a goal to make the sturdier box for all of it (5 decks, tiles, clings) if we hit $60,000.

I hope you're as excited about these as we truly are to make them!

If you haven't backed yet, now is the time!  With all our expansions (80 tiles instead of 64, a 5th deck for free if you get the other 4, etc) the value is incredible!

Joe