Okay, last week being a non-week wasn't helpful for anything haha. But it was my birthday and I deserved having a bit of time to myself. So I did it! That said, it meant work from last week got shoved to this week. This week has been all about shipping charges and shipping spreadsheets.
The good news is that tomorrow I'll be shipping out Tales From the Alley; next week, I'll be shipping out the Pride Pins. And as of next week as well, shipping for the Oracle Dice Campaigns (both) will be starting with the fulfillment folks, and as of this week, shipping is beginning for all 3 Tarot campaigns (Misery Tarot, Hot Housewives Tarot + booster pack project)!
That is 7 campaigns sliding off my plate.
Now, I'm not dumb-- there will be issues with the dice and tarot campaigns as they ship out and the shipping itself will take time-- we're unlikely to see items in people's hands entirely until end of August. But!! My hand in most of these things will be fairly minimal, aside from sending spreadsheets back and forth between Backerkit and my fulfillment folks.
So as we head into August from here, I will only have two past campaigns hanging out with me: Confluence and HISTORIC. I've done a really good job focusing my new projects ahead of time so the Goblin's Tarot and my book in October shouldn't affect day to day stuff much (and be ready to manufacture as soon as they fund), which means I should be able to put in more work a week on HISTORIC (and Confluence.)
Okay, back to The Trophy Collector
So last time, I put in work on getting their cards together. But I didn't finish their deck by any means. Today I've been trying to do that. Something I am really cognizant of since ZOETROPE is legibility. The text on those cards was so small that anyone without perfect eyesight struggled to read it in clear lighting, or in dim lighting (like we had in some con rooms where I ran the game for strangers) they couldn't read the card text beyond the title at all.
I printed a card out (in black and white) on printer paper. I'm realizing that 7 pt font is the smallest I want game rules text in this clear dark font on an almost-white background, with most text at 7.5 pt, with the flavor text italics able to go as small as 6pt. That was in well-lit and dim-room settings, but we both (my roommate and I) have pretty good vision (or he had on his glasses at least). This makes me wonder if I need to punch it up more, or accept that folks with worse vision will need their reading glasses to read the cards.
But as I do these cards, I wonder where exactly I'm going to fit stickers. If you recall, a piece of the game is that as you play it more, stickers get added to cards over time from different events-- mostly from dying or finishing your game sessions. Right now, the stickers are a bit up in the air. Things like +1 Physical Damage that you could tag onto a weapon or attack action to make those do more damage. Or "+Gain 1 Armor" on the Trophy Collector's cards, as stickers will be grouped based on whose cards they can be added to, with some situations letting you add stickers from whichever grouping to any kind of card to make weird or super strong things.
On Relics, I have plans for what their stickers specifically will do, and so the Relics have spaces on their cards for stickers to go specifically. Will I need to keep text short and to the point on all cards to 1) make the text larger, and 2) to make intentional spaces for stickers?
Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. I need to finish the decks for these two classes already! So I'm focused on that tonight until I'm done with work. Specifically, I have wrapped Preparations, Search the Bags, Take a Trophy, Dominating Bulwark cards for the Trophy Collector for testing. Now, I'm heading into writing in the general use effects of Spread Wings, Chain Entrapment, Shoulder the Burden, Arm the Hopeless, Lumbering Behemoth, and Unshaking Foundation cards, which all have partial writeups for what they can do in combat. Then I need to take a look at the three trinkets, two relics, and three tools found in their deck to write the proper rules, rather than the temporary text I put on them.
I can get a decent chunk of that done yet before I hang up my hat for today, if not all of it. Then next week, it's back to the Maker of Hands to finalize text on those cards and update the text I've previously written for those cards. And since I'm supposed to do the Caged Wraith this month as well, I think I'll just sit in and get all three of those classes ready for testing. Testing just two classes will feel weird, since the game really is more meant for 3-4 players plus the GM.
I was a little nervous about how I would do prototypes without paying much, but seeing my printer pop out a beautiful copy of a card to check font size in black and white, I think I will stick to the good ol printing on printer paper, cutting the cards out, and putting then in sleeves with cards behind them.
Okay, see you next week where, you hold me to this, I will have the full Trophy Collector deck completed and the Maker of Hands deck nearly there (or done!!) for testing.
