Ah, the last day of June and time to sneak out a monthly update! As a reminder, I'll send these updates out every month to let you know where we sit. We're still in the earliest stages of this post-campaign, where projects make incremental movements along the progress path. A lot of months will be pretty similar, just a quick note to let you know that the Onyx Path team is still working on it. Any time we have a new reward or something of interest to share, I'll include that as well.
Not much to note just yet, but you can learn more about the current and future plans for The World Below from Onyx Path's recent Online Gaming Convention!
Our Advent of Silt stretch goal adventure has moved to the final draft phase, while the developers and art director hammer out the illustration needs for the book. Eventually they'll have that and then figure out artist availability and production schedules and write up contracts.
Rewards Distributed to Backers
The World Below corebook PDF
At the Gates Draft Manuscript
Monster Kingdoms Draft Manuscript
Curesborne corebook PDF
Storypath Ultra Core Manual PDF
They Came From the RPG Anthology! PDF
Pledge Manager
If you need to review your information or pledge status, you can return to your survey by clicking the link in your survey email or requesting your survey link under "Lost your survey?" on our BackerKit project page at https://buried-treasures.backerkit.com/
The June update should be posted later today, so the link may not work until this evening. I will continue to post regular updates every month until the final reward has gone out.
Remember: You can use the links at the bottom of this e-mail to unsubscribe from updates or Manage your notification settings. These status updates are available on the campaign page for you to review at any time.
Onyx Path Discussion Channels
If you've got questions about the rules or setting, or just want to discuss this game with other fans (as well as the Onyx Path writers and developers!), you can check out these Onyx Path discussion zones:
As a reminder, I'll send these updates out every month to let you know where we sit. We're still in the earliest stages of this post-campaign, where projects make incremental movements along the progress path. A lot of months will be pretty similar, just a quick note to let you know that the Onyx Path team is still working on it. Any time we have a new reward or something of interest to share, I'll include that as well.
At the end of each month, I'll include a summary of our rewards and their current status (they'll either be delivered or marked as still pending, possibly with additional details if I know more). I'll also list any relevant Update posts, in case you want to go back and check into something.
Each month, I'll list our "Pending" rewards and our "Distributed" rewards. We'll track the project status of our pending rewards by filling in the stage dots, and I'll note which update (and include a link) with each delivered reward, in case you want to go back and re-read the relevant update for more information. If any of these rewards were on your pledge list, you can access download codes in your BackerKit Digital Rewards page. And once they've been added to your DriveThruRPG library, you can access them through your DTRPG digital library at any time.
Let's dive in!
Pending Projects
Here's our project's "character sheet" - I'll fill in the dots as things move through the progress track and stages are completed. The editing and development teams used your feedback on the draft manuscripts during the campaign to get the "almost final" draft set up so that the team can begin working with the Art Director to figure out the art needs for the project. We're still a bit away from artists getting assigned specific pieces, but this is where they figure out how many and where the illustrations will go, and then the developer figures out what the subjects should be. After that, they'll start looking at artists availability and schedules.
While that work is happening on our main books, our Stretch Goal adventure, the Advent of Silt, has moved into Redlines. Writers have turned in their first drafts, and now the developer is sending feedback and they'll hammer it back and forth until the manuscript is in final draft form and goes to live in the hands of the developer.
We'll note the progress each month in an updated chart.
Rewards Distributed to Backers
The World Below corebook PDF
At the Gates Draft Manuscript
Monster Kingdoms Draft Manuscript
Curesborne corebook PDF
Storypath Ultra Core Manual PDF
They Came From the RPG Anthology! PDF
As detailed in our last update, the existing Add On rewards have gone out to backers. If you added any of these on to your Rewards List and haven't yet claimed them, you can find redemption codes in your Digital Rewards page on your Pledge Manager.
Pledge Manager
If you need to review your information or pledge status, you can return to your survey by clicking the link in your survey email or requesting your survey link under "Lost your survey?" on our BackerKit project page at https://buried-treasures.backerkit.com/
A great place to learn more about pending and future Earthbane Cycle projects is Onyx Path's annual Virtual Gaming Convention! In one week, Onyx Path will be running their online convention - FRIDAY JUNE 5 to SUNDAY JUNE 7.
I will continue to post regular updates every month until the final reward has gone out.
Remember: You can use the links at the bottom of this e-mail to unsubscribe from updates or Manage your notification settings. These status updates are available on the campaign page for you to review at any time.
Onyx Path Discussion Channels
If you've got questions about the rules or setting, or just want to discuss this game with other fans (as well as the Onyx Path writers and developers!), you can check out these Onyx Path discussion zones:
It's been about a week since we started sending out our Pledge Manager invitations. If you haven't yet filled out your backer survey, please do so as soon as possible - you can change it or update it right up until the books are prepping for distribution and we start locking down orders, so quite a long time away. We use the Pledge Manager for all reward fulfillment, so having your backer page set up ensures you'll be getting your rewards in a timely manner.
If you need to review your information or pledge status, you can return to your survey by clicking the link in your survey email or requesting your survey link under "Lost your survey?" on our BackerKit project page at https://buried-treasures.backerkit.com/
Many of the rewards for our Crowdfunding projects take a lot of time and effort to complete. Usually, the campaign is a means of moving the project from an idea (even when it's a mostly-fully-written idea) into the actual channel that turns it into a project/product. It'll be a while before we're ready to talk about delivery of The World Below: Delver's Guide and Secrets of Kalm and Kaos and the Stretch Goal projects.
That said, there are many rewards that are available now, as they were mostly add-ons for existing products. And now we can work on getting those out to you over the next few days.
The following Add On Rewards WillBe Distributed This Weekend:
The World Below corebook PDF
At the Gates Draft Manuscript
Mosnter Kingdoms Draft Manuscript
Curesborne corebook PDF
Storypath Ultra Core Manual PDF
They Came From the RPG Anthology! PDF
It's basically this section from our Add On menu during the campaign.
The redemption codes will come over the next few days. You'll receive an e-mail if you have any of these rewards on your rewards list, sending you to the Digital Rewards page on your Pledge Manager. The Digital Rewards page will have redemption links to add the PDF files to your DriveThru cart at $0 cost.
You may need to click the links two or three times to get them to add to the cart properly. In my experience, the first click ends up getting me to login to my DTRPG cart and I have to click the redemption link a second time while my cart is open to properly add it (in a new tab, usually). Just keep trying, you'll get there!
REWARD DISTRIBUTION
Your link to claim these digital rewards will be sent out by our BackerKit pledge manager over the next day, as noted above. Since we are using our partners at DriveThruRPG as the hosts for these, you will need to set up a DriveThru account if you don't have one already. If you encounter any problems with downloading your rewards, please contact DTRPG's customer service to resolve the matter, they've always been top-rated for customer service. http://www.drivethrurpg.com/contact_us.ph
DRAFT MANUSCRIPTS
In addition to redemption links for these digital rewards, all backers have received a link to the compiled draft manuscripts. These links can be found in your BackerKit digital rewards page, and you likely received an e-mail linking to that with the Backer Survey invitations. Again, these aren't new manuscripts, it's the same as the one I shared at the bottom of our previous update. From this point forward, your Digital Rewards page in your Pledge Manager will be the place to access the manuscripts.
MONTHLY UPDATES
With the Pledge Manager up and running, in May I'll have our first "regular" update for our project. I'll send these updates out every month to let you know where we sit. We're still in the earliest stages of this post-campaign, where projects make incremental movements along the progress path. A lot of months will be pretty similar, just a quick note to let you know that the Onyx Path team is still working on it. Any time we have a new reward or something of interest to share, I'll include that as well.
At the end of each month, I'll include a summary of our rewards and their current status (they'll either be delivered or marked as still pending, possibly with additional details if I know more). I'll also list any relevant Update posts, in case you want to go back and check into something.
Each month, I'll list our "Pending" rewards and our "Delivered" rewards. We'll track the project status of our pending rewards by filling in the stage dots, and I'll note which update (and include a link) with each delivered reward, in case you want to go back and re-read the relevant update for more information. If any of these rewards were on your pledge list, you can access download codes in your BackerKit Digital Rewards page. And once they've been added to your DriveThruRPG library, you can access them through your DTRPG digital library at any time.
That's for the end of next month, though. For now, enjoy your Add On rewards!
To Contact James
Via E-Mail: Onyx.Kickstarter [at] gmail.com
Via BackerKit: Click "Need Help?" from your page, and then fill in the Contact Us form. BackerKit will pass your message along to me.
LAUNCHING TODAY
The lightning-fast crowdfunder for physical versions of the Curseborne Jumpstart starts tomorrow! It’s bigger than our usual jumpstarts, giving you everything you need to play a slice of Curseborne with The Wolf You Feed, an introductory adventure which follows an investigation into the disappearance of Rosa Rivers (which can also be used for Curseborne if you have the full rulebook). Also, if you loved the five iconic characters from the Curseborne Ashcan, the jumpstart will have updated and expanded versions of those characters in beautiful spreads with all the information players need.
We finished up the Crowdfunding portion of our campaign just about four weeks ago with a successful run, adding many backers and a few fun stretch goals. Now it's time to start the next phase of the project - the Post-Campaign, where we track the progress of the various projects we helped fund and send out rewards as they become available.
To help with all of that we use BackerKit's Pledge Manager.
Today's Topics
BackerKit Pledge Manager SurveysComing Soon
CompiledDraft Manuscript (available in BackerKit Digital Rewards)
ComingNext
BACKER SURVEYS
Over the next handfulof days (April 14 - April 17), you’ll receive an email from Onyx Path (via [email protected]) with a special link to your Pledge Manager survey. It’s important to respond to your survey as quickly as you can since we need this information to fulfill your rewards.
You don’t need to create a BackerKit account to fill out your survey (although you probably already have one from pledging to this campaign). When you receive the email with the survey, click the survey invitation link to respond. Answer the questions about your reward preferences and purchase add-on items if you like. You don’t have access to this survey link yet, but it will be available laterthis week via email!
The e-mail will have a button that looks something like this:
After you respond to your survey, you can go back later and change your responses at any time before we close the surveys and get our final counts, and that won't happen until the books are being prepped for backer distribution.
If you need to review your information or pledge status, you can return to your survey by clicking the link in your survey email or requesting your survey link under "Lost your survey?" on our BackerKit project page at https://buried-treasures.backerkit.com/
If you have any other questions or concerns, you can post them to the comments for this update, the comment section, or message me via one of these methods:
TO CONTACT JAMES
Via E-Mail: Onyx.Kickstarter [at] gmail.com
Via BackerKit: Click "Need Help?" from your page, and then fill in the Contact Us form. BackerKit will pass your message along to me.
If there are any issues you find with the Pledge Manager, please contact me as soon as possible to let me know. It rolls out in waves so that I can correct issues on the fly and make it work as best possible as people come on board.
I've been mostly in a zombie state over the pst few weeks, and the chances of a few errors in the Pledge Manager set up are ... greater than zero ... so let me know if you see something off and I'll fix it as quickly as possible.
Within the BackerKit Survey and Pledge Manager, you can:
Review your Pledge Tier Selection and Rewards
Upgrade your Reward Tier pledge selection
Confirm Add On selections
Set up payment information for any failed payments from the Crowdfunding campaign or to pay for any new Add On options selected.
Whenyou click on your BackerKit invitation link,you should see something like this...
From the Pledge Manager welcome page you can choose to
Review Your Pledge Level and Rewards by clicking your Pledge Level title
Start Your Survey, confirming pledge rewards, confirming or selecting new Add On options, and confirming any shipping and payment info that may be needed
Switch Your Pledge Level
If you click on your Pledge Level, you will see a list of all items included in your Pledge Rewards (including Stretch Goals and the Draft Manuscript), and also have the option to switch your Pledge Level, in case you've decided to get the double book pledge instead of a single title PDF-only pledge tier for example.
Once you've confirmed that your Pledge Level is correct and where you want it to be, you can GETSTARTED with your BackerKit Pledge Manager Survey.
Once we've got a fair response to our survey and collected a reasonable amount of info, I'll be working on fulfilling rewards that are available now - like the PDFs of the titles included in our Add On section (for example, The World Below corebook PDF, the Storypath Ultra Core Manual PDF, the Curseborne corebook PDF, and They Came From the RPG Anthology PDF, as well as the draft manuscripts for the still-in-progress At The Gates and Monster Kingdoms). Those will likely be coming to you by the start of next week, and I'll send another update with more info when that time comes.
So, in summary:
Look for an e-mail invitation to BackerKit's Pledge Manager sometime over the next 1-3 days
Get Started on your survey
Confirm your Pledge Level (or SWITCH your Pledge Level if you want to change it)
Confirm and Select Any Add On options
Confirm Your Payment Information (if needed)
I will post an update at next week as I begin outlining the delivery of our first Add On rewards (the existing title PDFs, as noted above) and beginning distribution of those PDF rewards.
DRAFT MANUSCRIPT
Now that the crowdfunding campaign is finished, I've taken all of the Draft Manuscript previews for each book and smashed them together into one compiled version (per book). In your BackerKit digital rewards page, you will have access to the compiled draft manuscript. It won't be different from the info shared during the campaign, just transformed into a more convenient form. The Draft Manuscript link may not be active when you first login to your BackerKit survey, but I'll throw the switch and it'll send you a notice next week after all of the invitations have gone out.
For now, there's a link for those compiled versions at the bottom of this update post (when viewed on the BackerKit site), but the plan is to have the download links sit alongside your other rewards on the Pledge Manager's Digital Reward Page.
I will talk about how to access your BackerKit digital rewards links in an update coming next week, when I send out the first wave of available rewards.
COMING NEXT
On Monday or Tuesday, I'll send an update with details about the distribution for that first wave of existing digital rewards. I'll also get the compiled draft manuscript up and ready for you to download from your Pledge Manager page (though you can download it now from this page, as noted above).
At the end of May we'll begin our regular monthly check-ins, tracking the progress of this project as it moves through this phase. It'll take some time, but we'll have regular updates all through the process. I'll also have notes on how to check the weekly and monthly All Project Progress updates on Onyx Path's website.
TO CONTACT JAMES
Via E-Mail: Onyx.Kickstarter [at] gmail.com
Via BackerKit: Click "Need Help?" from your page, and then fill in the Contact Us form. BackerKit will pass your message along to me.
As the Kaos Storm subsides and we prepare for our next Kalm Season, it's time to take stock of our recent endeavor and see what we've found.
That is to say... thanks to the support of nearly 300 World Below backers, Onyx Path will be able to develop the PDF and Print-on-Demand hardcover versions of The World Below: Delver's Guide and The World Below: Secrets of Kalm and Kaos!
There's more to celebrate! Not only did we fund the project on the first day, we unlocked FIVE Stretch Goals over the campaign. That's right - we unlocked our final stretch goal target today, in the final hours of this campaign!
.
At $10,000 in Funding - THE ADVENT OF THE SILT
THE ADVENT OF THE SILT - The team will create a West Marches-style adventure for The World Below, focused on exploration and cave delving. A PDF version of The Advent of Silt will be added as a bonus reward to all backers receiving either the Delver's Guide PDF or the Secrets of Kalm and Kaos PDF as part of their pledge rewards.
At $13,000 in Funding - WORLD BELOW SHIRT ON REDBUBBLE
WORLD BELOW SHIRT DESIGN - A new World Below shirt design will be made available on Onyx Path's Redbubble sore for a limited time only. Backers will be notified when this design becomes available.
At $14,000 in Funding - WORLD BELOW DIGITAL WALLPAPER
WORLD BELOW DIGITAL WALLPAPER - All backers supporting this project will receive a digital wallpaper for their computer desktop featuring artwork from the Delver's Guide or Secrets of Kalm and Kaos books.
At $15,000 in Funding - THE ADVENT OFTHE SILT EXPANDED
THE ADVENT OF THE SILT - The adventure scenario will be expanded to include opportunities for base building and resource hunting. A PDF version of The Advent of Silt will be added as a bonus reward to all backers receiving either the Delver's Guide PDF or the Secrets of Kalm and Kaos PDF as part of their pledge rewards.
At $16,000 in Funding - STREAMING OVERLAY
WORLD BELOW STREAMING OVERLAY - A set of overlays for your online game will be created, for your use when streaming your World Below session. This reward will be added to the rewards list for all backers.
So a huge congratulations to Matthew and the team on this project, and to all of the backers who've joined in to make this possible. I'm happy about the goals we hit and rewards we introduced, but I'm also always excited and delighted about having nearly 300 backers join in to support this quirky, odd, and amazing game. The World Below has such a personality, such a vibe, and I really dig it, if you'll parden the pun.
COMMUNICATION
So, as noted in today's earlier update, starting in April I'll be sending out updates once a month and whenever we've got a new goal, survey, or other item to cover. If you have any questions or need clarification on something related to the campaign, feel free to get in touch. I may take a bit to answer as I recover from these past four weeks and take some time to unwind and clean up my desk!
I'll also see if I can sneak a compiled draft manuscripts out to you maybe by the first weekend in April. Nothing changed, just smashed together in order.
TO CONTACT ME
Via E-Mail: Onyx.Kickstarter [at] gmail.com
Via BackerKit: Click "Need Help?" from your forthcoming survey page, and then fill in the Contact Us form. BackerKit will pass your message along to me.
ONYX PATH DISCUSSION CHANNELS
If you've got questions about the rules or setting, or just want to discuss this game with other fans (as well as the Onyx Path writers and developers!), you can check out these Onyx Path discussion zones:
