Frosthaven Preorders (Q1 2023)

Final Ability Cards and Mats
almost 3 years ago – Sat, Jun 12, 2021 at 02:12:53 AM

Hello! Wow, it has been a flurry of activity over here trying to get stuff finalized, and I am tired! Gotta keep trucking, though, because that finish line is getting close.

Because of how inter-connected everything is in the game, and how many different elements there are, sometimes it feels like you're doing so much, but you don't have a lot to show for it, because you're working on those connections and making sure everything is in place. It's like we're setting up an intricate domino line, so that when we're ready, we can just knock that first one over and complete everything, one after the other.

Other times, though, you do get to knock over some of those dominoes, and it feels great, because you finally have something to show for all your work! Today, thankfully, is a day like that, because I get to show you the final versions (barring minor tweaks I'll talk about in a minute) of the character ability cards and player mats!

And I really cannot properly communicate to you how much work goes into this stuff. For instance, I started formulating cards for the Blinkblade about four years ago, taking the idea of a little Quatryl assassin with the power over time and turning it into mechanics. In September of 2017, I gathered together some people together for the first play test sessions of Frosthaven, and my friend Kaili played the Blinkblade through to retirement.

I remember he really enjoyed it and did some cool, surprising things with the class. I also remember him racing far ahead to complete a battle goal and nearly getting us all killed. The class seemed to be in a good place, but there was a lot more testing to be done. From those experiences, I developed higher level cards and tweaked others. It eventually got put to the side for a long time while I worked on other aspects of the game.

In 2019, though, we had to get the Blinkblade ready for the big announcement at PAXU. Alexandr made some fantastic art, and we made some cards and a mat based on the Gloomhaven format. We showed it to lots of people, and they all had opinions. We iterated based on that feedback, and kept doing that for a while until we started organizing official Frosthaven play testing on a larger scale (i.e. not just me at my kitchen table).

This is really where all the neat ideas of the class were forged into a hardened steel of awesomeness. Every card, every ability was scrutinized. Was it fun, was it balanced, was it thematic? It took a lot of work, but we got the Blinkblade to a place of greatness (while also doing the same thing with 16 other classes).

But there was still the graphic design! Having now experienced that process with all the classes, I can easily say that the Blinkblade was the most challenging to get right. Putting together all the information of an action - the base ability, plus the fast and slow bonuses - together in a format that was easy to read and parse and looked good was admittedly not an easy task I set up for Josh, but he definitely rose to the challenge and pulled it off!

Sorry, I have a tendency to ramble when I could be showing you cool pictures, but I'm just really proud of all the hard work that went into this stuff - not just mine, but also Josh's and Alexandr's and all the truly amazing play testers'. So anyway, let's start with the mat:

This is the introduction to your character and lets you know how to interact with it and the cards. Once you are armed with this info, then we can start looking at some cards:

See? I told you it was a challenge. But with each action essentially being two actions, we found this was the best way to convey all the important information in a readable way. If you're going fast, you simply read the center abilities with all the highlighted text on the left side of the card. And if you're going slow, do the same with the right side.

In the case of small adjustments to abilities, these fast/slow effects will go in-line with those abilities, like you can see with all of the move abilities on these cards. Yes, in the case of Blurry Jab bottom fast, reading left to right means you see the bonus before the ability text, but that's hard to avoid in this format, and it is still easy enough to parse. In the case of larger adjustments to abilities that don't fit in-line, like the top of Blurry Jab, they are brought down below the ability.

When fast/slow bonuses provide their own abilities, if there is one on each side, they share the horizontal space equally, like the top or bottom of Experimental Adjustment. If it is just a fast or slow ability on its own, then the width can be a little more variable - usually either 50% of the space if it is small, like the fast move on the top of Twin Strike, or 75% of the space if it is bigger, like the slow damage on the bottom of Blurry Jab.

Also note that everything in these fast/slow boxes is mandatory (as it explains on your character mat), so there's no need to put an extra mandatory box around element infusions and whatnot.

But wait! What's this?

Yes, certain classes can still go invisible at-will (give or take some damage). How is that not over-powered? Well, we did make a small change from the Gloomhaven rules so that the condition is more manageable and intuitive. Figures can now move through (but not stop on) invisible enemies, so they no longer act like obstacles. No more going invisible in a doorway to negate monster turns!

So at this point, I could continue talking about other classes and cards, but I think it is best to just let you explore on your own if you want.

Here are all the ability cards and mats for the starting six classes. This includes higher level cards in the back half of the documents, so be warned if you're concerned about spoilers. You've seen previous versions of a lot of these, but here they are together in all their glory, after numerous tweaks and a lot of editing since those previous versions. And you've also seen earlier versions of the mats, but these are (almost) final.

Yeah, let's talk about that "almost" for a second. As you can see, we do have rules references on the fronts of these mats, and a section reference on the back for retirement. More dominoes to get in place. We're solidifying the rule book and section book, so those numbers will be in there soon enough.

So, yeah, lots of stuff all coming together, which is good, as we need to get all this stuff to the printer. Next time, I'm sure I'll have more finalized, exciting things to show you. But for now, explore all those cards if you want, and I'll catch you later! Stay safe and be kind to each other!

Where we are with the project and a focus on perks
almost 3 years ago – Sat, May 29, 2021 at 12:18:27 AM

Hello! It is Friday, and I am coming at you with the same enthusiasm as always, excited to tell you about everything going on over here. So look, I'm not going to pretend like last update didn't create a bit of a stir, but there is a lot to talk about, so I'm not going to dwell on it too heavily. It seems there were some misconceptions about what the cultural consulting process entails, and, as that is not what this update is about, I would simply direct you again to these in-depth explanations if you have any questions, and a lot of the arguments and counter arguments are also explored in an interview I did with Shelf Stories since the update.

One thing that does deserve dwelling on, however, is the ending of the previous update. In it, I made it sound like anyone who canceled their Frosthaven pledge did so because they were a racist. That was 100% not my intention at all. The whole point of hiring a cultural consultant is to eliminate casual ideas and phrases that can hurt people. Instead of being welcoming in my language, I pushed people away, and for that, I sincerely apologize.

I just want everyone to know that my main goal going forward is to do things that will make this hobby better and more inclusive for anyone who enjoys playing board games. I am also committing to having future updates with sensitive topics reviewed to make sure my intent is better communicated.

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So with that said, let's move on to the other stuff! We are fast approaching the end of May, when I said the files would begin to be sent to the printer. So before we do anything else, let's get into where the project stands as a whole.

So what is going on with the production timeline? If you want the short version, things still appear to be on schedule with each of our manufacturing partners, and we we should be able to begin shipping games out in August as anticipated in this previous update. However, there is a matter of some very real unknowns right now surrounding freight logistics, which I'll address a little later in this post.

First, let's dive into some detail with the question: Are files being delivered at the end of the month?

The answer: Yes, some of them.

We will start handing in some of our larger files that will require both the most proofing time on our part, but also the most time to print and/or dry (such as punchboards, player mats, map board, miniatures, etc), with the plan to continue to deliver files throughout the month of June. You see, there are a lot of files, and a lot of components, which all need to be manufactured on a massive scale. This will give us additional time to finish the editing and layout efforts that I'll discuss a little later.

And I just want to note what a huge undertaking getting the punchboards finished was. There are 27 of these massive things, and, for example, one of them looks like this:

So, yeah, imagine all the art and layout and die line drawing needed for 26 more of those suckers, front and back.

But there are, of course, lots of other non-cardboard elements to the game. We've got more than 900 standard cards, 1500 small cards, miniatures, boxes, sticker sheets, multiple huge books, and, well, the list goes on and on. And so to avoid just turning this all into a boring spreadsheet, let's give you some broader strokes.

First, the design and development is rounding the final corner. We're doing some final play testing on select scenarios and some of the campaign elements, I want to make one final pass on the monsters, and the dungeon randomizer decks need attention, but that's it.

Likewise, the artwork is almost all done as well. Alexandr will be finishing up the item art over the next week, and we need to make a handful of backgrounds for the character ability cards, but all other art efforts are finished.

Editing, a process that is most confidently started once the content is finalized from a design perspective, is now in full-swing. We of course want to give editing the proper time it deserves so that no mistakes make it through, but we don't expect this will take too long to complete, with multiple editors looking over the multiple different efforts simultaneously.

And then there is the graphic design and layout. This is probably what will need the most time over the next month. A lot of great work has already been finished, like the punch boards, but there are a lot of things left to be done. Many of them are small, like various card layouts, but there are a few big outstanding projects, as well, like the scenario and section books. We've brought on many new talented graphic and layout artists to help with these larger efforts, and we are already seeing great progress, so it looks like we'll still be able to pull everything together by the end of next month.

What this all means is that we'll be finalizing and sending files to the printer throughout June, largely for cards initially (and the alchemy and scenario charts, which will also require time for the glue to dry), and then we'll finish things off with the books, which will require the most time to finish, but the least time to produce. If we get everything by the end of June, this won't affect the printer's ability to get things out along the projected timeline.

But this is where I now circle back around to freight shipping. Freight shipping around the world, no matter the industry, is in crisis right now. If you back other games or projects on Kickstarter, this might not be news to you, but we are witnessing historically low availability of containers and congestion at ports and rail that are causing massive delays. This is admittedly making us a bit nervous, because, at the end of the day, we'll need a minimum 150 containers to fulfill this project (this is A LOT of containers). If things keep moving at the current pace, it could significantly drag out our freight shipping timeline by an amount of time that we can't even estimate. Of course, we have some time before that process begins, so we're hoping that things improve, while at the same time exploring as many different freight options that we can to secure container space and have the best options moving forward if these problems persist. At this point, though, it would be irresponsible of me not to tell you that there is a chance that this global shipping crisis could delay fulfillment significantly.

This is obviously not the greatest news to end on, but it's where we're at. Like I said at the start, if everything goes well, we can stick to the previously communicated timeline, but there are factors that could cause delay.

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So with all that said, let's move on to some cool content updates. Drew "Gripeaway" Penn and Dennis "Themris" Vögele are two of the very dedicated mods for the Gloomhaven subreddit and have been very helpful during the playtesting process. Drew also helped develop the Voidwarden for Jaws of the Lion, and Dennis created one of my favorite Frosthaven guest scenarios, The Dancing Iceberg. More recently, I've brought them on to do some dedicated development work for a number of different efforts on Frosthaven, and one of the key things they've spearheaded is an overhaul of the perk system.

From here, I'm going to let them take over the explanation:

Perks in Gloomhavenprovided a meaningful sense of progression for your character. The attack modifier card system was popular with Gloomhavenplayers and was something we were excited to get to work on for Frosthaven. Years of Gloomhavenplay and class analysis have revealed some aspects of the system which could be improved upon. Namely: the discrepancy in power level between individual perks within a class yielding reduced player choice, some perks being generally undesirable, and perks almost exclusively relating to attacking.

We set out to achieve four distinct goals in Frosthaven:

1. More Choice! Players should have difficult and meaningful decisions when selecting perks.
2. Stronger Perks! The average individual perk should be stronger without increasing average attack modifier deck strength compared to Gloomhaven.
3. No Undesirable Perks! Every perk you unlock should feel rewarding.
4. New Ground! Even experienced players should find something new and exciting.

Our steps for achieving the first three goals were as follows:

• Less Removal Perks. Discrepancy between the power level of individual perks naturally reduces player choice. The problem was that for most classes in Gloomhaven the baseline first perk was “Remove two -1’s”. That perk immediately began an impossible arms race in which other perks just couldn’t compete. We could significantly increase the power level of non-removal perks to compensate but that would get us to a dangerous place. So the first step is using removal perks more sparingly. On the starting six classes, you’ll only see a total of two pure removal perks and one instance of “Remove two -1’s” (on the Deathwalker, as hitting for consistent values is kind of her thing).
• Better Pure Additive Perks. While we admit that it is dangerous to significantly improve perks which only add modifiers, that’s not to say there isn’t some room for them to grow. You won’t see any more “Add two +1’s” here - instead, you could expect something like the Geminate’s “Add two +1 Push 3’s”. Making the average perk which only adds modifiers a bit better makes them more competitive choices at an earlier stage in a character’s progression.
• Many More Replacement Perks. Finally, the sweet spot: replacement perks. Strictly removing modifiers is often too good and strictly adding modifiers is frequently underwhelming, but the marriage of the two sits perfectly in the middle. Tying the two together allows us to reduce the pace at which modifier decks lose their undesirable cards while also creating opportunities to encourage players to add modifiers they might not have otherwise considered.
• Changes to Advantage and Rolling Modifiers. It is worth noting that the rules for how rolling modifiers interact with Advantage and Disadvantage have changed: “If your first draw with Advantage or Disadvantage is a rolling modifier, continue drawing until a non-rolling modifier is drawn. Then, draw one more card, ignoring any rolling icon on this card. The last two cards drawn (the first non-rolling card and the one after it) are then compared. If the attack has Advantage, apply the effects of all initial rolling modifiers and the better of the last two cards. If the attack has Disadvantage, ignore all initial rolling modifiers and apply whichever of the last two cards is worse. If your first draw with Advantage or Disadvantage is not a rolling modifier but your second draw is, still ignore the rolling icon on that card.”

As for exploring new perk design space, let’s talk about that using the example of the Drifter:

• Unique Attack Modifier Cards. Most Frosthaven classes have access to unique attack modifier cards which play into their class themes. These can interact with their ability cards or special mechanics and help make each class feel distinct. The Drifter has modifier cards which let them move the character token on one of their persistent abilities back one space. This flexible effect highlights the jack-of-all trades playstyle of the class as it can help them deal more damage, tank more hits, etc., depending on which cards you play.
• Non-AMD Perks. Frosthaven introducesperks which do not relate to improving your attack modifier deck (AMD); some of them give passive bonuses, others give once per scenario effects. We call these “non-AMD perks.” Non-AMD perks are designed to give a class access to unique effects which interact well with their playstyle or emphasize their theme. The Drifter has access to an additional hand item slot to highlight their weapons arsenal and the ability to filter loot cards to emphasize their survival skills. Non-AMD perks also give us an opportunity to give compelling options to characters who spend less time attacking and therefore aren’t as interested in improving their modifier deck.
• 18 Perk Boxes. By now, you may have noticed that something else is different: there are now 18 boxes in the perk section of a character sheet (up from 15). These “perk boxes” are now filled with “perk marks”. The rules for gaining perk marks remain the same as in Gloomhaven, so while it is certainly possible to reach 18 perk marks on a character, the goal is simply to have more options.
• Multi-mark Perks. Some Frosthavenperks require two or even three perk marks to unlock. The multi-mark perks, represented by two or three vertically-linked boxes, allow for effects that would be too powerful for a single mark and open up new perk possibilities. The Drifter’s resting perk costs two perk marks, as it can add significant value over the course of a scenario.

Non-AMD perks add new effects to track during the scenario so each non-AMD perk comes with a card to place in your active area. Here’s an example of a static effect:

As some non-AMD perks provide once-per-scenario effects, they have lost icons to remind the player of their one-time use. Here’s an example from the Banner Spear:

We hope you enjoy playing with the many unique perks in Frosthaven as much as we enjoyed thinking them up!

(Isaac typing again) And if you'd like to see more of the class perks (and masteries, for that matter, which were discussed in this update), you can find the character sheets for the first six classes here.

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So that's that. This might be the longest update I've ever written, but Drew and Dennis share some responsibility here. And that's how we're doing it as we get closer and closer to the finish line - bringing in super-talented people to help out and get this thing done!

I'll catch you next time with more cool stuff. In the meantime, have a great weekend and stay safe!

Getting the narrative right
almost 3 years ago – Sat, May 15, 2021 at 05:18:20 AM

Hello! Today we're going to get right into a discussion of some news I'm really excited about. I didn't want to spend too much time talking about other stuff, but rest assured that progress is still being made on all fronts of finishing up this project, and I'll have more updates on all of that next time.

For now, I want to talk about some developments that are really going to improve the overall narrative of the game. It's a bit of a long discussion, so if you find yourself not reading all the way through, at the very least, make sure that you read the last section (starting with “And finally”) before you comment.

Alright, so last month, we brought James Mendez Hodes onto the Frosthaven team to do cultural consultant work, which I could not be more pleased about. If you have the time, I'd highly recommend watching this Shelf Stories video or listening to this episode of Ludologyhe was in, where he explains the importance of cultural consultants.

In a nutshell, he is looking through all the narrative of Frosthaven and at all of the different cultures depicted within, and he is making sure everything is internally consistent and that it isn't co-opting any real-world terms or ideas that may be harmful to players or any real-world cultures. It's not just about pointing out problems, but also collaboratively coming up with solutions that expand and strengthen the narrative. It has been an enjoyable process that not only makes the game more ethical and welcoming to a wider audience, but also simply just makes it better.

But I may be getting ahead of myself. First of all, you may be thinking, "What does real-world cultural sensitivity have to do with a made-up fantasy world?" Well, back when I first sat down to create the world of Gloomhaven, my naïve self was right there with you. My general thought process was, “I am creating my own fantasy world completely divorced from reality, and so I can do whatever I want with the peoples in this world. There's no risk of harming anyone, because it's not real.”

This is a big problem, however, because nothing is created in a vacuum. Everything we do is stamped with our own biases and influences. And while the intent may be to not harm, our biases have a tendency to cause harm anyway.

If this is all sounding a little abstract, let's talk about some specific ways in which I fell down on Gloomhaven. I think one of the most obvious ones is my use of the word “race”. “Race” has, of course, been used extensively throughout the fantasy genre as a way to group different peoples, to the point where it is just second nature. But when you stop and think about it, it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

“Race” is generally not even a useful delineation of peoples in our reality. It is much more precise to classify someone's culture or ethnicity. And even if we wanted to use the term in a fantasy reality in the same context that people in our reality mistakenly do, that doesn't work either. The Savvas are sentient rocks given life by some mysterious divine force. They aren't a different race from humans. I'm not even sure the words species or genus would do the trick.

And, yeah, sure, you can just go back to the mentality that it's your fantasy world and you can do whatever you want. Maybe the word “race” has a different meaning in my fantasy reality, but the catch is that people in our reality are the ones playing and experiencing the game, and by using the term “race”, I am not only reinforcing this outdated way of delineating people, but I'm also reinforcing the idea that these delineations are so extreme – that the difference between a black person and a white person is as great as the difference between a squishy human and a pile of rocks.

And so, once I set up this idea of “races” in Gloomhaven, I took it one step further into a bad place by assigning personality and mental traits to these “races” in a blanket way, reinforcing the concept of broad racial stereotypes: “All Inox are proud and stubborn.” “All Quatryls are hard-working and helpful.” Yes, certain cultures or societies may see varying traits as virtues and foster them in their populations, but no culture is monolithic, and not all Valraths come from the same culture anyway. Not only does implying that reinforce harmful stereotypes in the real world, it's also just bad world-building.

And I think this gets at the larger point. I could go on and on about all the things I did wrong. We didn't even touch upon how the descriptions of some peoples in Gloomhaven, like the Inox and Quatryls, hew dangerously close to very harmful stereotypes of real-world cultures, because of, again, my own unconscious biases. But the point is that I need to fix them. Not only to stop real-world harm for players who may react negatively to such depictions, but also to just make the world-building stronger and more carefully thought-out for all players to enjoy.

Back when I was creating Gloomhaven, I was just blundering along, doing all the narrative myself. With Frosthaven, I have so many more resources and people willing to collaborate with me to improve the game in every conceivable way, so it was an obvious step to improve in this way as well. And like many other aspects of board game development, the process has turned out to be so much easier once I brought in a professional, I realized I really should have been doing this from the beginning. 

And it's important to note that this isn't a compromise of anything. We don't have to trade the quality of the story to make it less harmful. We can improve all things at the same time, so that this whole experience is just a win-win. There's nothing to even change mechanically – it's all narrative.  And we can do it in parallel to all the other efforts we are also working on to finish up the game, so that improving the narrative won't even delay production. All upside, no downside.

One other thing you may be asking is whether these changes to the story are going to cause Frosthaven to lose its edge. Whether it is going to soften the story in an attempt to please everyone, and that is not the case. You are still a group of hardened mercenaries trying to survive in a hostile environment. Hard choices will still have to be made, but I think “choice” is a key word here.

I've received plenty of negative feedback over the years about the ending of scenario 3 in Gloomhaven (rightfully so), and the problem there wasn't necessarily that players were inflicting trauma on children (though that too wasn't great either), but the main issue was that there wasn't a real choice. The setup for the scenario did not do a good enough job of telegraphing what was to come so that players could opt out and go down the other path if they wanted.

If you look at the history of FrosthavenI wrote during the Kickstarter, you may notice the religiously fueled colonialism vibes running rampant through it. This itself isn't an issue. This is how the main human nation behaves in this fantasy reality. But I've since become uncomfortable with how the story written in that update forces the player to opt in and become complicit in this behavior without choice. Some people may not be comfortable with that.

So we've shifted the story around so that Frosthaven is a separate entity that doesn't want to, by default, take over by force a territory inhabited by other peoples. The story is still just as rich or richer than before, and certain individuals will still come in, recruiting you to advance the colonialist agendas of the capital, but now the player has agency in how the story plays out, which is always a good thing.

And since I'm kind of laying it all out on the table here, publicly recognizing that Gloomhaven did a lot of things wrong, I would also just like to take a moment to apologize to anyone who was harmed by my ignorance in crafting that story, and I want to thank all the people who have helped me realize my mistakes in the intervening years. We all make mistakes, and the important thing is to learn from them and do our best to reverse any harm that those mistakes cause. There's more work to do in that regard, but I think making sure Frosthaven doesn't repeat those mistakes, and talking about the process openly are good first steps.

And finally, I recognize there may be some small percentage of you that will be upset by these developments. You are more than welcome to your own opinions, but voicing those opinions in the comments in a combative, disruptive, or derogatory way is not okay. I would encourage you to simply reach out to [email protected] and request a full refund if you feel strongly enough about it. We've already done that for a couple people who didn't think black lives matter, and we'd be happy to do it again for people who don't think board games should be a safe space for everyone.

If you do feel the need to comment, I ask you with all sincerity to be respectful. It is a simple thing, but it is super-important to us, and we will use all the tools we have to make sure this space does remain safe and respectful.

So have a great weekend, and I will catch you in two weeks with more cool stuff to share!

Improving the enhancement dot
almost 3 years ago – Sun, May 02, 2021 at 04:00:22 AM

Hello! I hope you are doing wonderfully today! Things continue to progress over here. Everything is getting done, little by little.

It's funny, when I look back at the last two weeks to take an inventory of what's been done, it's just a thousand little things all over the place. This project is so huge, even just tackling all the small stuff can end up taking a long time. We're mostly down to the small stuff, but there is an immense amount of that small stuff.

We are still hoping to start wrapping up files for the printer at the end of May. The finish line is close!

In the mean time I've got a number of really cool things to talk to you about. This week is relatively small, but I wanted to introduce you to the new enhancement system.

This system is largely the same as it was in Gloomhaven, with some updated costs and disarm removed. But the one big change is to take the single enhancement symbol - a simple dot - and turn it into five symbols.

You see, in Gloomhaven, there was a lot of rules overhead and resulting confusion about what enhancements could go with what abilities, and so one of the Frosthaven playtesters, Justin Dowell, developed a new method that would place the restrictions of what enhancements could be used on the symbols themselves.

So first of all, we have a square symbol, which can only hold a "+1" sticker (which is also a square, to make things even more clear). If the ability is a jump, the square can also house a "Jump" sticker (which is the one special case in the whole system).

Next, we have a circle symbol, which can hold anything a square can hold, or instead hold an element (which are circular stickers).

Then we have the diamond symbol, which can hold anything a circle can hold, or instead hold a negative condition.

Or there's the similar diamond-plus, like the diamond but for positive conditions. And, of course, the condition stickers are diamonds to match.

And finally, the hex symbol, which is just for adding hexes to area of effect abilities.

The beauty of this is that the player just has to match shapes. In Gloomhaven, if there was an enhancement dot next to a range or a summon's hit point value, it may be clear to some that you could only apply a +1 sticker, but now it is even more clear.

And this delineation not only helps players keep the rules straight, but also allows us more versatility and balance in the design. Maybe an ability would be too powerful if a player was allowed to enhance it with a condition or element, but a +1 would be just fine. Previously we may just not allow enhancement, but now we can put in a square enhancement symbol, giving the player more agency.

And, yes, it does help us keep a handle on some of the more powerful enhancements to keep the balance in check. No more repeatable mass cursing. No more strengthening yourself with a bottom heal action for two turns of advantaged attacks. No more infusing your favorite element with every single move ability you own.

So, yeah, just one of the many small things to get excited about. We're really working to improve this game over Gloomhaven in every conceivable way to give you a more epic and balanced experience. For now though, it is getting late, and I've still got some things to cross off my to-do list.

So have a great weekend, and I'll catch you next time!

Frosthaven pins, plus finishing up the narrative
about 3 years ago – Sat, Apr 17, 2021 at 12:35:44 AM

Hello! I am excited this week, because I am finally through getting all the narrative text written for the side scenarios. Yay!

Back in this update, I talked about how there was a lot of work still left to do on this front (and, in fact, a lot of work to do on all aspects of the scenario book). But now I am pleased to say that I am 100% on the narrative text, rules text, and layout for the scenario book, which is a huge milestone for me.

Of course, play testing is still happening, so rules text will still be changing, all the text needs to be edited, and my layouts aren't the final layouts - professional graphic design still needs to handle that - but this is still a big thing for me! That work is no longer hanging over my head, and I can focus on all the other hundreds of things I need to get done.

Next up for me is doing some final passes on item and monster design. Josh has been churning out character cards in the new layouts, so there's a lot of that to look through as well. And I've still got a significant amount of work to do tightening up the campaign mechanics. Also, the flavor text for the non-scenario sections of the section book, which I talked about here, is mostly done, but some sections still need some attention. And we need to finalize the design of all the puzzles, but that's the last big thing on my plate.

The point is, we're making progress, and that feels good.

In other news, I wanted to share with you the Frosthaven character pins we just got back from the factory. These aren't quite final - there's still some minor color changes to make, and the final backing cards will have the updated logos and just background art (without the character) on it - but I think they are still looking pretty good!

Of course, since the pledge manager is closed, it's too late to add these, but we'll have them on the webstore, after the Kickstarter is fulfilled, and at conventions, whenever we resume those!

So, as always, I hope you have a good weekend. Stay safe, and I'll catch you again in two weeks, when I will be fully vaccinated! Woo!