Project Update: 31 - The Vault is in Pre-production!
Project Update: 30 - October Progress Report & First Look at our functional prototype
We needed a working, usable prototype in order to be able to actively use the Vault in real D&D sessions. Doing so lets us test and ultimately improve the user experience. Are creatures and props easy to find, easy to deploy, and easy to put away? What about the terrain pieces? Map tiles? What are the pain points? How can we remove or mitigate them?
Note that this functional prototype is the most recent in a long line of, shall we say, less functional prototypes. Previous iterations showcased some flaws in our original plans, or highlighted opportunities to make things better. For example, we discovered that our concept of swappable trays for terrain was just not going to work the way we originally intended. They created failure points and expensive complexity that just weren't justified for the convenience we were trying to provide. Our solution was to instead create vacuum formed trays for terrain specific types, and nest them internally. This gives the functionality we wanted to provide (the ability to customize a Vault's "loadout" for travel) while eliminating points of cost and structural failure.
Boy, were we right. Tinker Lane had prepped the first three encounters, as outlined in the book, but of course the game immediately went off the rails when our party succeeded on an improbable search check to find a secret spyhole, and then used a combination of a tiny Bat familiar and Mage Hand to open a one-way secret door from the inside. Off the party went in a completely unexpected direction, and Tinker Lane had to scramble to find and deploy map tiles and creatures on the fly. The good news is, the Vault’s Creature Catalog organization system let him quickly find those unexpected creatures and deploy them to the dungeon. Honestly, it was as perfect of a “real world” use case as we could have hoped for and we were all gratified to see the Vault come to the DM’s rescue.
Here are some as-it-happened-at-the-table snapshots of the first combat encounter. Note this wasn't a photoshoot of a well-lit, well-staged engineering session; the purpose of the playtest was to do it "live" and use the Vault in real-time just as any Dungeon Master would in their home game.
This user contributed to this community!
Hello, just checking. I just moved and need to update my mailing and billing info. Address seemed straight forward in Backerkit. But for payment method, I went to update the cc and set it as default, but it still says 1 charge pending on the old card. Just want to be sure The Vault of Minis is set up to not have any issues. Thanks, Josh
Project Update: 29 - Progress Report and New Delivery ETA
Delivery ETA
What went wrong
1. Art Production
What we did not correctly estimate is the amount of time required for production of object and terrain art. Torch stands. Bookcases. Pit traps. Sconces. Walls. Doors. Rubble. Terrain tiles, in particular, are taking much longer than anticipated. We could have simply repeated a basic texture in the myriad sizes of tiles we’re shipping with, but that’s not going to give the hand-drawn, bespoke look we’re going for. All that original art takes time–lots of time, and more than we thought. On the plus side, the terrain art is gorgeous:
2. Packaging & Manufacturing Complexity
Thinking of the Vault as a product, it’s a product with 1,855 individual pieces. All of those pieces have to go in a single box, and because a core value proposition of the vault is saving you time through thoughtful organization, each of those pieces has to have a specific spot in the box. We don’t want to ship a box of loose stuff for you to sort through. This engineering has taken considerable time due to back-and-forth with our manufacturer in China*.
3. Wall Engineering
Update 25 spent a lot of words on our struggles with engineering for wall connections, and our proud presentation of finally settling on a solution. After months of prototype iteration and playtesting we were all pretty excited about what we came up with. Unfortunately, that solution failed when we received fabricated samples from the factory. We were testing on 3-d printed prototypes we printed here, in-house, and while the interaction between the material in those prototypes and the wall material works well, the interaction of the factory’s production material and the wall material does not work as well as we want. In short: the factory material is not as tacky/grippy as our printed prototypes. So it was back to the drawing board for wall connections.
What went right
1. Wall engineering
In the above photo Tinker Chris is pointing out the pleasingly snug fit of the prototype terrain-sorting tray that Tinker Lane has designed. Notice the Grip Notches (tm) at one end, to facilitate swapping terrain trays in and out of your Vault according to your session's needs. The lasercut minis themselves have been temporarily sorted into Ziplocks--something Backers will never have to deal with, thanks to the Vault's organization system.
A convivial way to spend an evening with friends, to be sure, but more importantly we confirmed that the dielines were spot-on and that the tabs and categories make it easy to find and sort the vast array of creatures in the Vault. And, Tinker Chris even came up with a clever brand name for our card catalog-inspired organization system as a whole: he’s dubbed it the “Dungeon Decimal System.”
3. PAX West
At one point a group walked up to check out the minis. I asked them if they played D&D. One person in the group said “Oh yeah. Lifelong DM.” Another person in the same group said they were just starting out. I said “Then the Vault is for you. Both of you. It’s for someone just starting out who doesn’t have a lot of stuff, because it has everything you need in one box. And it’s for a long-time player who has accumulated a lot of mis-matched stuff over the years, because you can leave all that stuff behind and just take this one box.”