Okay, so big update, let's split it into five parts:

The books came in earlier this month, followed by the cards, and now the final items are printed copies of the Crowns 2e dungeon The Abbey Lost to the Trees and the two monster hunts Cave of the Blue Behir and Fear the Land Shark (one on either side of the paper). These two pages of adventure add-ons will be added to every order of Seeker of Legend tier and above. I even rewrote a little bit of the dungeon after some playtesting, so it should be better than before (although I always thought it was fairly solid). I'll be updating the PDF version on itch.io very soon.

Here's a few images of all the boxes and books:

We're just waiting on those little adventure add-ons as the final delivery which should arrive tomorrow! So, we will start shipping as soon as they arrive and we have time, which I anticipate to be around April 1st.

I received some test copies from Lulu for the print-on-demand copies and I'd say they're really solid. They're much slimmer than the deluxe hardcovers due to the difference in paper weight, and there's a little page bleed, but it's really negligible, and for the price I'd say it's worth it. So much so that for a lot of my friends this is the version of the book they'll be receiving from me and I'm proud to hand it off to them. Solid book.

Here's some images:

The print-on-demand books are awaiting the final edit of the adventure Mud, Blood, and Stone to be completed so they can ship together. However, if you only ordered the print-on-demand book then it start shipping out to you around April 1st as well.

The original test prints were expensive and not great, but I'm really glad I did them because they allowed me to make the changes I needed to for these deluxe prints to be stellar!

They came out great! Really solid books, much thicker than the print-on-demand and even test print versions. Solid binding, the bookmark ribbon is awesome!

Here's some more images so you can see the quality of the deluxe copy print:

I was also able to take some military leave and head back to see them in person (thus why I'm at home in that picture instead of an undisclosed location). Which means I was able to sign the books as well! Everyone who wanted a signed copy should be getting one:

For those of you unfamiliar with the military it is a series of gut punches one after another. Constantly busy, constantly tired, constantly at fault. But, if you're like me at least, if anyone were to ask me if I'd do it again I'd say, "Yes, it was the best time of my life." Same feeling you get with having a kid. Constant stress, crying, etc. But, for some strange reason, you gotta recommend it to others because it's better than the sum of its parts.

So, in summary, I've been really frickin' busy. REALLY busy. I've actually had a sticky note on my desk telling me to write this or any update for months and I'd add more sticky notes every time a new major event happened:

What spurred me on were people commenting for updates. So if you ever back a future one of my projects and I'm silent for too long, that seems to be the way to get me to update ya'll. Every campaign I ran while unemployed was easy. It's being employed that's hard.

Thanks so much for sticking through though guys! We're almost at the end.

First off, just want to restate that the Crowns 2e web-app is live and available to use:
https://crowns-2e-generators.netlify.app/characters

If you make an account and log in (all free) you can save your characters, add items to the inventory, and do all sorts of stuff. It's really fun to use and made by a real, paid human (not AI).

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The Forsaken Fortress dungeon is the next big Crowns 2e project, I'll be working with the previous winner of the Crowns 2e jam to turn their dungeon into a full one-page trifold dungeon just like The Abbey Lost to the Trees. Ya'll will love it, the guys really creative and it's going to come out great!
https://acreece.itch.io/the-forsaken-fortress

I'd love to make it so that in April we start a year-long Crowns 2e jam, and throughout the year have little mini jams for specific themes. Everything with cash prizes, and we turn the winning products into legit dungeons and products for people to enjoy endorsed by Ward Against Evil. I think that'd be a fun way to stay engaged with the community.

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I've got one more Monster Hunt in me that I think can create a fun boss fight for now (which is really the goal of the monster hunts in the end). I think it's going to be a Manticore, but no promises...

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I'm seriously considering a magic book, working title is The Lesser Key to Magic, with 20 spells that are slightly different versions of each of the classic 20 spells and so have a 50/50 chance of being the reverse version of each. For example: Lightning Bolt and Grounded are always reverses of each other. What if there was a chance that this grimoire had Ball Lightning and Grounded, and this other one had Lightning Bolt and Stoneskin. It's adds more diversity to the world.

On top of that, the book would include an additional 20 spells and 20 more variants. But, still up in the air, because spells have always been the hardest thing for me to write no matter the system. I'm too much of a fighter-type guy.

More to come.

Thank you guys so much for backing!
To be continued...

You can playtest the game on our Discord with me and our awesome community! We don't bite!

Reese Surles, Ward Against Evil

Expect shipping in Mid-Late February. If I can get it sooner than that, that'd be ideal, but that's my "everything keeps getting in the way" timeframe.

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We've had three quality submissions to the Autumn Winds Jam and the judges and after some testing, the winner is clear:

The Forsaken Fortress by acreecehands down wins both categories that had submissions: "Best Adventure Site" and "Best One-Pager".

I'll be reaching out tonight to pay them their winnings and see if he wants to work together with me on a revised version with additional art and formatting. We'll see how it goes!

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Considering I'm sending it to print tonight, I thought it'd be best to do one more read through. The Final Update of the text is live, and you can download it at itch.io. The Title Cards were updated to match as well, download them here.

On top of that, I wrote a massive blog post about everything that happened last year, and talked about my itch.io numbers for the year. If that kind of thing interests you, you can check that out here.

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If you have any other questions ask them in the comments below! I'm down to reply to anything, this entire post was spurred on by a comment on the last post and an email sent to me at [email protected] . I was originally going to wait until I had a completed Mud, Blood, and Stone to release, but the user brought up that it had been long enough. I agree. I hope this clarifies the situation for ya'll!

You can playtest the game on our Discord with me and our awesome community! We don't bite!

Reese Surles, Ward Against Evil