In which the fruits of our labours fully ripen, final PDFs are released, and we collaborate violently on paper. Make yourselves comfortable, Hunters; build up the fire. This is a long read.
BACKER PDFS
The Wretched Domains feedback period is now complete. All revisions have been implemented, and files finalised.
This means that your final PDF versions for:
The core book
Wretched Domains
The Sins of Grisham Priory (the Hollows quickstart)
Are coming today. We're not locking and charging orders yet; at this point you've earned your books.
By the time you read this, you may have an email from Backerkit containing direct links to the final downloads. If you haven’t seen one by tomorrow:
Click your profile icon in the top right corner of the homepage
Go to Your Pledges and Surveys
Find Hollows and click on it
Then go to View Order, under Surveys on the right hand side of the page
Click on Get Your Digital Downloads, near the top of the order page
Download your files
PRINTING
Which is, in fact, a deep dive into paper specifications.
We are particular about papers. I knew this, but I didn’t really know it until we started looking at Hollows materials samples. Every book needs different paper: for Hollows, we need something that:
Can tolerate really high ink saturation (we have a lot of art, and it has intense colours)
Is fully opaque, even when it’s got dark-coloured art on one side and text on the other
Has a high enough brightness that images are sharp and vivid
Doesn’t make the book so enormous it’s unwieldy, at its 360 page finished length
Feels right for the words that are in the book.
The last point requires explanation.
Hollows is set in a Victorian-esque era. Every design and production choice we’ve made reflects that: we’ve kept plastic out of the component kit to the greatest extent possible, and we want our boxes and slipcases to evoke the kind of objects Hunters themselves might own (you’ve seen the covers for the Wretched Domains).
The paper we use for the books is one of the most crucial elements (if not the most) of expressing that choice. If it’s too glossy, for example, it feels too modern. If it’s not bulky enough it’ll feel flimsy, and not in the fun, onion skin paper way (if you’ve got a very old Bible or other religious text printed on really thin paper, you probably know what I mean; same if you had - like I did - tiny versions of Shakespeare plays printed in two inch high mini-books).
And there are practical choices too: if the paper’s too thick, or not bulky enough, it’s heavy, and that means the book is impractically large and weighty, and becomes harder to use.
I say all this to explain what comes next.
We are still selecting the right paper for Hollows. We’ve received numerous samples, and are waiting for another batch. We’re not going to print until we’ve got one that both Maz and I are happy with, because otherwise we’ll end up disappointed in the final product. We think you will be too, even if you’re not a paper sicko; our job is to work out why it wouldn’t delight you the way we want it to, and keep pushing the specification until it does.
You’ve guessed the conclusion to this story, right?
Hollows is further delayed.
UPDATED TIMELINE
We now expect to start printing in January. This will, unfortunately, lead to a knock-on delay as our printer will fully close for Lunar New Year in February.
This means, in very condensed form:
Printing begins in January
Transport begins in April
Fulfilment happens in June, or even July
This allows for some additional delays in the process, just in case. Tooling for production will be starting imminently, and the elements that we can go ahead with immediately are going ahead. Pre-press is almost complete, and after several lengthy discussions with our manufacturers, we’re hoping that the new paper winging its way to us this weekend will be The One. Fulfilment is set up and ready to go as soon as everything lands in warehouses, and we’ll be transporting everything from our producers straight to local warehouses for delivery, skipping our normal consolidation step.
If you’ve read any updates on our other projects recently, you’ve probably seen my mini-manifesto about us needing to leave time to do things properly, and getting better about building processes that account for that from the outset.
There’s more to say on that as it concerns Hollows, but this month’s update is already long, so I shall save it for next time.
IN CONCLUSION
This has been a mixed update with some good and bad news, so I will end as I began: the final PDFs are ready, which means you can continue to play Hollows while you wait for the books. Know that we are, and always will be, conscious of the need to balance how much delays add to the finished product against actually needing to send you the books, and that if we didn’t think the paper choice was fundamental to your experience of Hollows, we wouldn’t be doing this.
Meanwhile, and somewhat unexpectedly for us, there’s now a thriving West Marches Hollows Discord full of people running Wretched Domains as well as testing their own creations. Next time, I hope to be able to update you on our plans to make Hollows easy and rewarding to create for, as well as our plans for line support once the core game is in your hands.
