Hi everyone!  Brett here with your monthly update on Fiendish Forge!

Here is where we are at:

Writing: 87%
Design: 74%
Art: 86%
Total: 82%

As we continue developing art for the book, I've been experimenting extensively with the current system. With SRD 5.2 out and able to create for 2024 5e Content, I've been reworking stat blocks to align with 2024 5e's Design.  Fortunately, the changes made in 2024 are now more in line with how we were designing our creatures (I've heard that my finger is on the pulse MULTIPLE times to the point it's driving me  up the wall).  However, because 2024 is embracing more cinematic combat (such as Legendary Actions with Move being a part of them) - I figured we'd also embrace more the 2024 side of 5e. 

Unfortunately, WotC has decided to withhold information on how to create creatures in 5e 2024 systems.  Fortunately, the community has filled in, and started to reverse engineer the process.  In the past few months, the Blog of Holding has been working on a breakdown of how 2024 5e now makes its monsters - and once again - it seems 5e 2024 has taken a page out of our book - making Legnedary Creatures more lethal in Damage stats (but strangely, not increasing their hit points). However, since this design philosophy seems to have taken hold, we're also reworking a little bit how we're handling some of our systems.

One of the biggest challenges with Phase Combat is the Phase Turns, which have led to much inquisition about how these additional turns are handled. We continue to add rules to solve these issues as they arise, but I've felt this approach starts to burden the system with these additions when simpler solutions are on the table.  That's why we're returning to "Legendary Actions" and "Legendary Resistance" as 5e has it, with some modifications of our own.

These Legendary Actions are also a part of "Phases" where you can find the Legendary Actions to take.  Phases present a ruleset on how to run the Phase, including when a Phase Advances (or Reverts in some cases).  We can also introduce Transition Phases - sort of an intermission mid-combat, where there may be some sort of trial the party has to overcome to avoid consequences before advancing to the next Phase.

We'll be playtesting this during the month of June, so be sure to join our Discord and sign up for our Playtests if you haven't done so already. I've got some more accessible Phase Encounters for test, as well as some complex Phase Encounters (such as the Sprite Mother) which features a bunch of new mechanics familiar to MMO Veterans. Stay tuned for that announcement!

Our Io Publishing Discord Server: https://discord.gg/e9RCf8bFke

We will be playtesting many of these values to see if any adjustments need to be made for the encounter's sake, and we're also introducing a "Superboss" category for creatures.  Be forewarned that you won't see many Superbosses in the book (right now, we only have one confirmed - the Astral Tarrasque) - but I wanted to introduce the option.

I want to start showing art pieces that our art team has worked on to get you guys excited. I was initially thinking about holding these pieces until the book's release, but I'm too excited to wait. This piece is the Vampire Lord - which transforms into a Demon when Bloodied!

Thank you for your continued support as we develop Fiendish Forge!  We will have more to show off very soon!
Brett

Hi everyone!  Brett here with your monthly update on Fiendish Forge!
We continue to work on the book and make some progress. Unfortunately, I had a complete computer failure (discovered it was a bad CPU), which slowed things down a little bit. Fortunately, no work was lost, and we have since resumed work!

With that, I'm very excited to share our Progress Report!

Here is where we are at:

Writing: 84%
Design: 69%
Art: 77%
Total: 77%

We have completed all of the Creature art! This means every creature's art piece is done! We're also 88% complete with all of our Quest Art, and are chipping away at Materials/Magic Items art, which will take a bit more time.

One of our bigger roadblocks was the fate of SRD 5.2, which allows us to make content and support for 2024 5e.  WotC has just released this out on the Creative Commons with the same terms as SRD 5.1 - so we can safely say that this book is both 2014 and 2024 5e Compatible!

We still have a while before we can begin the physical production of Fiendish Forge. We manufactured WSD:Fishing in China, so these new imposed tariffs (now at 145%) may cause some issues down the road.

Fortunately, we're working with our manufacturing partner to figure out the best course of action to produce and import our products into the country affordably, including working with different countries. Rest assured, we will find the most affordable way to make our products while maintaining a high level of quality. 

We have no current announcements on how this will affect shipping rates since many changes are expected over the next few months. If this current climate persists, some options may include covering the increased costs ourselves and increasing shipping rates to our backers. While I hope it does not come to that, we will try to find an amicable solution to minimize the increased production costs and any increased costs to our backers. Right now, it's just too soon to tell, so stay tuned for future announcements.

Thank you for your continued support as we develop Fiendish Forge!  We will have more to show off very soon!
Brett

Hi everyone!  Brett here with your monthly update on Fiendish Forge!
We made GREAT progress this month, especially with having to redo art assets we found may have been generated by an artist who used AI (that artist is no longer with us, and their work has been removed from the book). Check out our update here.

With that, I'm very excited to share our Progress Report!

Here is where we are at:

Writing:  80%
Design:  65%
Art:  69%
Total:  71%

We've been trying to streamline Phase Combat a bit more, making it easier for the reader to create their Phase Combat creatures! The more we streamline, the more our system will remain in the spirit of 5e systems.

I'm hoping we may resume playtests in April, but we'll keep you all updated! Playtest docs will also include art assets so you guys can see what we've been working on!

We're still waiting for Wizards of the Coast to release their newest version of the SRD so we can officially state our product is compatible with 2024 5e systems (such as Dungeons and Dragons).  While I was hopeful we would have received an update by now - it's currently still quiet.  There are murmurs that the SRD is being worked on. No matter what the outcome is, this will not slow down our work as we are still able to use the current SRD which is in Creative Commons.

Thanks for your support! Feel free to comment if you have any questions; otherwise - see you all next month!
Brett

Hello everyone,

Wanted to let you know we are continuing to make good progress on the book.  We will hold our monthly update at the end of the month to let you know our progress.  However, some urgent issues have recently arisen, and I wanted to let you know what we're doing about it. In addition, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.  Bottom line: None of these issues shouldn't slow down our book's development, but I wanted to let you know what we've been dealing with, in case it comes up in the future.

Yesterday, core members of our incredible art team spotted some discrepancies with an outside artist we had recently brought to Io Publishing to help with spot illustrations. As we were developing some prop pieces, our art team grew suspicious that this artist may have been using AI Generation as part of their process, and then painted over the result. While the artist claims AI Generation was not used, they did mention their process involved painting over already pre-rendered images they had a license to. Essentially, the artist was combining a bunch of assets and then painting over them, and when we looked closely, we discovered discrepancies that may have suggested AI usage. Because there were art pieces that were put into question with evidence suggesting these pieces were not credible, we ultimately decided to strip all the art this artist made from the book and start from scratch.  Fortunately, it doesn't set us too far back (our art progress after this is now at 59% as of today, down from 61% from our previous update) - it's still a setback.

Fortunately, this artist has not had their work published in an Io Publishing product.

How was this allowed to happen?
At Io Publishing, we thoroughly vet our artists when bringing them in. We ensure they have an established portfolio and some online presence that can be verified, and we have our artists sign a contract explicitly stating that the work they make is of their creation, with No AI-generated art allowed in any way - and that all work is original. The artist in question was a well-established traditional artist with a following, which we verified. The art given initially for the first couple of pieces didn't raise any red flags, but as development continued, their art style changed. Unfortunately, because trust had already been established, we were not on high alert to verify the integrity of their project. Our core art team, who had more of a trained eye, noticed the discrepancies and then began going through all their work to outline where the deceptions were being taken. Personally, my belief that AI is a detriment to the survival of artists led me to believe that a traditional artist would not use AI or any deceptive practice to ensure their credibility. I was incorrect. Sadly, some traditional artists have started to embrace AI Generation as a time saver because their knowledge of the craft allows them to paint over AI discrepancies easily. Fortunately, there are still artists who can see when these methods are being deployed. We've entered a new age of technology, with AI getting better all the time - making it hard to be vigilant when creating a product created by human artists, not AI generation.

What are you doing to prevent this from happening again?
We're putting more checks into place and placing our new artists on a probation period to allow us to inspect any pieces created thoroughly. Our core art team will also keep an eye on new pieces as they are developed, allowing us to become familiar with the artist's style and inquire further when styles have suddenly changed. This will always be a work in progress, but we will stand by our commitment to not allow AI-generated work in our products.

As the world embraces AI, our goal will always be celebrating human achievement, and we want to work with people who believe in that. AI will always take away from human creativity, and we will not knowingly work with artists who have embraced deceptive tactics that take away from that.

First, I want to express my gratitude to our wholesale dice partner, Fanroll, for all that they have done for us with WSD: Fishing and the designs for Fiendish Forge. This is not meant to be a sleight of hand toward them but to inform you about what is happening and why we're redesigning our dice set.

As mentioned, Fiendish Forge is working alongside Fanroll to provide incredible dice sets for you all, since I know Dice Sets are a pretty important part of the TTRPG Culture and to you, the audience.

As you can see below, we were delighted with their design for the Wyvern Blood Liquid Core.

However, in February 2025, I learned that Fanroll had recently gotten a partnership with Wizards of the Coast to make a Dungeons and Dragons Liquid Core Dice set to celebrate D&D 2024's release. When I noticed the dice set they had released, I was very alarmed that the set they are now selling was the same style as the Wyvern Blood Dice Set we advertised for our campaign.  The only exception is that the max dice logo has been replaced with the D&D Ampersand.

Needless to say, I was incredibly distraught discovering this while we were still developing for Fiendish Forge. I contacted Fanroll to inquire further, and they informed me that it was a coincidence and that they were only using D&D's brand colors. They apologized for not catching it on their end.

Because of this, I have asked Fanroll to provide a new design for our Wyvern Blood Dice.  I want our dice sets to reward a unique so that you feel like you're getting something new - and not anywhere else. Finding our dice set was now being sold as something different by another company (the behemoth of all TTRPG companies), but it was not something I wanted our customers to experience.  So, with that, I'd like to introduce our new Wyvern Blood Dice Set!

We are still making some adjustments. I like this style more, including getting the color right on the dice font.  The dice itself has more of a red tint, which I was initially going for to give it a "blood" feel.

I would love to get your thoughts, especially if you are back to set our dice!  Would you want us to stay with what we originally designed, even though another company is now branding it as their own dice set, or do you like the new direction and look we are going for with the Wyvern Blood Dice Set? Does it matter either way to you?  Please be sure to comment below!

Emergency updates in crowdfunding typically spell uncertainty in a project but rest assured; we are still making terrific progress. As we've always stated - the book is done when it's done, and we do not promise release dates or windows if we encounter some bumps. I also believe that we haven't hit any delays.  We were almost wrapped up with our spot arts for quests, but now we have to go back and redo some. Fortunately, the artists developing this were not involved with our prop art development - which was our current focus. We were hoping to move one of our core artists to props, but now they have to work on an additional core illustration for a monster, which will probably take another month - before we move them to props. Ultimately, we're still making significant progress, and I believe we're developing our book after than most crowdfunded books.

At the end of the day, we're still on track to making a fantastic book about Boss Battles, Gathering Materials, and Crafting Monstrous Items for your 5e games (whether you play 2014 or 2024).

It's very easy to be an open book when you're proud of what you're accomplishing. If you have any questions, statements, or concerns, please post them below, and I will answer when able!

Thank you again for your support.

Brett