Some preliminary shipments went out this morning
over 4 years ago – Sat, Jan 11, 2020 at 12:47:09 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Nordlond Map PDF Updated
over 4 years ago – Wed, Jan 08, 2020 at 12:55:58 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Moving Forward on Other Items
over 4 years ago – Tue, Jan 07, 2020 at 10:50:42 PM

I'm looking at progress, and I'm looking at timing. I lost a lot of time over break, though I did push Forest's End really close to the prelim PDF being in your hands, due to the inevitable factors beyond anyone's control.

Regardless, here's what I'm doing:

• I have placed, just today, the preliminary order for the 16x20" cardstock maps
• I am working up a printable PDF file for the paper maps for those that ordered them. I'm looking to add a bit of content to the map because the "real" map is in a 4x5 ratio, which means that on a 12x18 piece of paper, there's three inches of paper unused. I've got a few ideas.
• Once the printable PDF is done, those that ordered the Nordlond map in PDF will get it right away
• I am moving to ship all of the product that is NOT the Nordlond Sagas main material immediately. I have, on-hand at home, all the required books needed to meet the US shipping needs, and more than enough in the UK to handle the dozen folks who placed orders for add-ons for various product. That ONE PERSON who ordered Dragon Heresy/Lost Hall of Tyr (2nd Edition) from Europe? Not a problem.

I still intend to get you Forest's End to review and hopefully enjoy in PDF format by the end of the week. But I also feel there's dubious utility, and frankly very little savings, in not getting folks the add-ons they ordered right now.

I'll start putting together packages a few at a time and hopefully get a lot into the US mail on Monday Jan 13. It will take about the same time to get a pack list over to Kixto for my "Rest of World" friends.

Maps

Just to remind you what the map shows:

The 14-point glossy cardstock maps will be shipped in 17x21" rigid mailers; I placed that order today as well. They'll be packed in with two 16x20", 1/8" thick corrugated cardboard sheets for protection because rigid mailers aren't. This should be a photo-quality print, as the original art is at 350 dpi at full size. 

I'm working on the paper prints now, but I expect to have that ready to go shortly as well, and I'll get those going by this weekend as well.

Summary

I'm going to do my level best to get as much of the stuff from this Kickstarter - physical and PDF - into your hands before the primary books go to print. You've waited long enough already. This isn't a Kickstarter with 2,500 people in it. I can deal with the roughly 250-300 who ordered physical stuff piecemeal, and doing it myself means the additional cost to do so is less than one would think (the "custom boxes" I get charged for, plus the per-piece handling fee, add up fast).

As I send out partial shipments, I will keep you informed.

Forest's End: Prelim file this week
over 4 years ago – Mon, Jan 06, 2020 at 03:28:11 PM

That progress bar is about to take a big shift to the right.

I have received permission to send the Forest's End preliminary PDF out for final "all-hands" proofing and once-over. What you will find in the file:

• A 96-page adventure with all of the text complete
• Most of the art in place. I am lacking perhaps ten to a dozen pieces (which tells you how much art is in it when I say that is a minority of the art), but I expect most of those this week. 
• The index is not finished yet, but I'll get that underway while I wait for art. I'm going to try and leave a bit of space there so folks can make suggestions for "include this."

I've had a reasonably-sized advance team go over the file, and have made several rounds of corrections and updates already. Hopefully, we're looking at things like:

• Formatting. All game-specific terms, like skill names, and traits, need to be bolded. Some things are not that way, though, since if I bold every instance of "DX" or "IQ" it'll look like the manuscript has chicken pox.
• Typoes. Yeah. Did that deliberately. But while I did do a front-to-back spell-check, there are some things that spell-check and many eyes won't catch, such as they're/their/there, or writing "discord" instead of "disco," since both are spelled correctly.
• Clarity. While I believe I've quashed most of the organisation and flow issues, I can accept minor rewrites that do not change the layout of the document. 
• Monster stats. You really just can't check these enough. So many fiddly bits.

So what you'll get this week is a playable file. Not fully complete, as some pieces of art are coming in, and there's still some polishing to do . . . but it's coming, and it's coming this week.

Next up: Dragons of Rosgarth. Then to the printers!

Happy New Year and last update of 2019
over 4 years ago – Tue, Dec 31, 2019 at 03:51:52 PM

Well, here we are . . . the last day of 2019.

I'm going to keep this quick and let you know where I am progress wise and also focus.

Background Detail

Things are going more slowly than I'd like, a direct outcome of scheduling and some background issues revolving around the sale of our old house that are quite simply draining the heck out of me. For those of you who have sold homes before: our buyers' loan officer biffed the package and the details. Twice. So closing fell through. Twice. Three times if you count the extension we gave them. So we have no choice but to punt on this guy ever getting his stuff together and get our old house BACK on the market, having had TWO purchase agreements fall through. Months of stress, time gone, and now we have to prep the house before the mid-January market heats up.

I've also not had the chunks of time I wanted due to family gatherings and some nasty weather that put the kibosh on "send the kids to play with friends" which is where I get a lot of my time from.

Anyway, things are moving, just not as much as I'd have liked. When it's just me as the primary manager, disruptions like the above mean things have to slow down due to "number of hours in the day." I apologize for that . . . and yet the team is making good progress.

Forest's End Manuscript Progress

I've got a front-to-back manuscript, with a bunch of art, for Forest's End. More art is coming in day-by-day, but I'm not the only one who's been busy over the XMas to New Year's productivity disaster, so things are probably running a week or two behind (total manuscript completion by maybe Jan 11 to 18 rather than Jan 4).

Even so, I've got some great feedback in order to get to Rev 6d of the preliminary work, and I'm currently sitting on several very comprehensive emails of extra help by a subset of backers. Some of whom are current or former copy editors, so the feedback is very detailed. This is a good thing.

I do have a list of things to do that are actual manuscript alterations:

• Two monsters, quite important ones, have "lorem ipsum" text in them instead of proper descriptions. Different reasons. One was a lack of clarity on what was going on with powers with one, the other needed more text: A major critter had a one-line description because so very much was written in the front of the book. The Bestiary needs more info than that, so . . . 
• One monster type was written one way, but I really didn't like it. I tried to work around that unsuccessfully and confusingly, only to find there's a much, much better way to get that done that makes total sense and is really easy. That will be a fairly tedious fix, but the book will be much better for it.
• A bunch of tweaks and edits as a result of detailed feedback by my proofing team.
• Art holes need filling; truthfully this can wait until the book goes to print.

 I want to get the prior three bullets done, then I'll do an indexing pass and update the ToC, and get a prelim copy to SJG for review. Once they say "OK" then a broad prelim copy will go out to ALL backers and I'll go all-out on Dragons of Rosgarth.

Dragons of Rosgarth

I had a computer glitch that seemed to lose all of the work that I'd done in mid December, and that was entirely depressing. Good news though: I had downloaded these to the main drive of my work computer rather than working from the USB stick that got screwed up, so I can recover that work quickly.

I will be bouncing back and forth between Forest's End work and Dragons editing for the rest of the week. I expect to make rapid progress, and there are far fewer chapters (though each one is longer) in Dragons than Forest's End. I do have some writing to do on DoR - as the guy who wrote the lore, I'm the right person to expand the town, called Jarngarðr ("The Iron Garden") which is the initial staging point for the campaign. So that should be fun work, and the contents are well established by other publications. So there's no doubt on what I need.

I hope to shift focus to nearly all work on DoR shortly; hopefully the latest round of FE edits and tweaks are finished Real Soon Now, which will allow proper concentration.

Timing Updates

Progress thus far has been unpredictable, so I'll say this: look for an update on Jan 5 as the "real world" reasserts itself and "vacation chaos" ends. Hopefully - and it's my intent - things will have gotten much farther along and I can bring specifics. If I can get the editing well underway and throw down preliminary layout for Dragons of Rosgarth, and get a "please check this for release permission" draft to SJG by then for Forest's End . . . I'll be pretty happy.