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Frosthaven Preorders (Q1 2023)

Created by Isaac Childres

Euro-inspired dungeon crawling sequel to the 2017 smash-hit Gloomhaven

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Backer and retailer pledge manager update
about 3 years ago – Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 12:12:45 AM

Hello! Thank you so much for all your feedback last time on the scenario book! We've made many changes, such as making the loot table bigger and adding icons to the different terrain types for color blind identification. Lots of good stuff there. I don't have a new sample for you or anything, but I just wanted to let you know your feedback was helpful!

Today I wanted to spend some time talking about the schedule for the pledge manager, and then also show you the Frosthaven Sleeve Set (!), so lets get to talking pledge manager.

The pledge manager will close to non-retailer backers on March 1, and we will lock orders and charge all cards on file for any outstanding balances at that time. As you know, we wanted to keep the pledge manager open as long as we could, given the pandemic. Obviously that is still ongoing, but we are going to need to move forward with manufacturing, so we really do need to lock in final numbers.

If you haven't completed your pledge manager for wave 2, please go ahead and do so as soon as you can. And if you have any questions about your pledge or the pledge manager, reach out to [email protected], and we will do our best to take care of you.

Next, I have message to our retailer backers from Price, so feel free to skip down if that does not apply to you.

Retailer Pledge Message

Retailers,

We will be extending the Retail Backer Pledge Manager until April 1st, at which time we intend to lock orders and charge cards on file with Backerkit.

Please be sure to double check your order and payment method by this time, and reach out in the meantime if you have any final questions before locking your order in.

If you haven't yet received access to the Retailer Pledge Manager we may still be awaiting your verification or business documents. If so, please submit your verification surveyHERE and/or submit your business documents to [email protected] - we'd still love to work with you and your store!

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So what does the closing of the pledge manager mean for the overall timeline? Unfortunately, I still don't have any solid updates on that. As already discussed, we are definitely looking at some delay past the previously estimated delivery of July, and I'll let you know as soon as we can pinpoint a new schedule. Things are getting done, and we'll be starting manufacturing on some elements after Chinese New Year, but some things like the scenario book are still pretty big question marks we still need to nail down.

One thing we are zeroing in on are the ability cards, and I'm excited to get to show that to you in the next update, but for now, we'll just have to be satisfied looking at the FrosthavenSleeve Set:

In this bad boy we have:

  • 1,500ct Small Sleeves (Mini Euro Size)
  • 1,100ct. Large Sleeves (Standard Card Size)
  • Premium 100 micron thickness
  • Non-PVC and acid-free polypropylene plastic
  • Over 4.5lbs of sleeves!
  • 9.5"x8"x3"
  • Remember you can still add this to your pledge for $40

So there you have it, that's all the news for this week. Remember to come back in two weeks for a look at awesome new ability cards. In the mean time, stay safe and be excellent to each other!

Scenario book preview
about 3 years ago – Sat, Jan 09, 2021 at 02:52:07 AM

Hello! After I sent out last week's update, some of you encouraged me to just keep to the original schedule and wait two weeks before sending out another one, but oh boy! Last week felt like it was at least two weeks long, so here we are with a real live update. Let's get to it!

Three weeks ago, I broke down where we were with the scenario book, so I wanted to let you know I've made serious progress with that. I only have 10 scenarios left to design, so those "layout" and "special rules text" columns are solidly up above 90%.

I should be able to get the rest of the scenarios created in the next few days, and then I can move on to story text and shoring up a lot of the over-arching campaign infrastructure, which includes treasure chest and scenario rewards along with scenario loot tables. These are all important for starting play testing on the overall campaign structure, to make sure that the town progression and threat events are fully balanced.

I gotta say that I am pretty excited to be almost done with creating scenarios. 137 is a lot.

The main thing I wanted to show you today, though, is the scenario book layout that Josh has been diligently working on. I want to share some images below and discuss some key elements about them, but before I do that, let me just say a couple things:

  • If you don't want to see any spoilers for the first two scenarios, avert your eyes. Nothing else will be covered in this update, so you can just stop reading now (bye...).
  • Not all of the artwork is final, so you will see some placeholder art from Gloomhaven (like the dark fog tiles).
  • We haven't done final editing passes on any of the text, so there may be some typos. No need to point them out.
  • We are interested in your feedback, though. The design is pretty well set at this point, but we are always open to hearing suggestions.

With that said, here are the first two pages:

So Josh really wanted to clean up the visual style of the book and make things easier to parse. You've still got your introduction text as normal, but everything else that you will need to keep in mind as you are playing the scenario is broken up into their own easy-to-reference boxes. There's a clear scenario goal that tells you where to go when you achieve it and when. There are the special rules, and also what sections you may need to reference as you play.

The larger map on the first page of a scenario will only show you the room you start in and what you need to set up right now, but there is also a map layout reference that shows you how all the map tiles of the scenario will be configured, so you can set those up and make sure you have the proper table space without having to move things around later. Each map tile is also labeled so you can find them easily.

And then we also have the loot table so you know how to set up the loot deck, and a scenario key that tells you every monster and overlay tile you will need to play the scenario (even if they are not in the first room) so that you can have them ready to set up when you need them without having to go back into the box.

But what are these section numbers? The introduction for each scenario will be one page in the scenario book, but all other supplemental information that you will need as you actually explore and complete the scenario is broken up into different sections in a separate book. Here is a mock-up of that:

One thing to keep in mind here is that the actual section book will have the sections of all 137 scenarios mixed in together, instead of just alternating sections from scenarios 1 and 2. The main point is that a scenario won't have multiple sections on the same page, so you can never accidentally look ahead and see what's coming.

Also we'll try not to have sections spill over onto the next page, but that final page above is a good demonstration of a smaller section that doesn't span the full width of the page.

There is a delicate balance we are trying to strike here with the pages feeling more open and not jam-packed full of text, but also not having the section book be 200+ pages long. I think we are on our way to achieving both those things.

One other important thing to note here is that as you are flipping through the section book from section to section, no information from the previous section will be pertinent to your current section, so you'll never have to flip back and forth. All the over-arching information on the scenario can be found on the introduction page of the scenario, which is of course in a separate book.

And, I think that's all I wanted to point out. I hope it was illuminating, and I'll see you in two weeks with more cool stuff! Stay safe!

Happy New Year!
about 3 years ago – Sat, Jan 02, 2021 at 01:15:03 AM

Hello! I know we're scheduled for an update today, but it is New Year's Day, and I think the update can wait another week, so that's what we're going to do. Expect a real update next week!

In the mean time, I wish all of you the best 2021 possible, full of Frosthaven and other great games to play with loved ones, without fear of pandemics or all that other 2020 badness. It's still gonna take some work to get there, but I know we are up to it. It's time to buckle down and do everything we can to make the future better for everyone!

Are we there yet?
over 3 years ago – Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 04:03:27 PM

Hello! Today I want to talk about the scenario book, so let's get right to it. The main point of this update I want to express is that back when we were reevaluating the schedule to update the timeline to what it is currently (delivering Frosthaven in July), I budgeted about a month for me to get done all the work that I needed to do with the scenario book, and that has turned out to not be very accurate.

At this point, I don't know how much time I've invested in this scenario book - it feels like an eternity - and it is still maybe only half the amount of work that I need to get done on it, which has become pretty frustrating for me.

So let's talk a little bit about what has been done, where we are, what happens next, and where we go from there.

There are 138 total scenarios, which I have split into main campaign scenarios (0-64...yes, there is a scenario 0) and side scenarios (65-137). This split is helpful just in keeping me sane, but also because the vast majority of the side scenarios are guest designs. Overall, the side scenarios are also more complicated, and so I've tried to focus on them first for play testing purposes.

At this point, I have nailed down the special rules and map details of each of these side scenarios so that they can be play tested, but I have neglected all the flavor text. Most scenarios have some amount of flavor text written by the guest designer, but at the minimum, this will still need to be edited and cleaned up.

For the main campaign scenarios, things are a little less clear-cut. I have very bare-bones layouts for about half of them, and the other half have been fully laid out, with some subsection of that having the special rules text done so they can be play tested. The good news is that the story text for all of these scenarios has been written and is currently in the editing process.

So with all the scenarios taken as a whole, layouts are about 80% done, special rules text is about 66% done, flavor text is about 70% done, and play testing is, well, really just starting in earnest. I hope setting this all out in the open is an interesting read. At the very least, it is helpful for me talking all this through.

So what happens next? Play testers are play testing, which is good. I will be tackling the layouts and special rules of the main campaign scenarios next to get those numbers to 100%, and then I'll work on getting the story text of the side scenarios to a point where they can be edited.

But even all that is only part of the story. Because once all the content is complete, it still needs to be laid out in two separate 140+ page scenarios books, which will be a monumental task in itself. Josh has been working on a new scenario book design and putting a template together so that while I am working on layouts, I can at least make his job easier on the back end, but we are coming to terms with the fact that his job of laying all this out will not be easy at all.

You see, as you may already know, we are continuing with the Forgotten Circles format (though much updated and improved for usability) of having a front page for each scenario with the setup and initial information, and the rest of the information on future rooms and events broken up into sections in a separate section book. So each scenario needs a front page layout, and then a number of separate individual sections that will have some amount of text and map information, which will then need to be assembled like a jigsaw puzzle with all the other sections from other scenarios (and other various sources) into the section book. This took a long time to do with Forgotten Circles' 20 or so scenarios, so, you know, 138 will probably take more time.

It's just the sheer volume of content here is so intimidating, but all we can do is just keep working and power through it.

So without going on and on here, let's end by talking about what this means for the timeline. Obviously I've gone over my time budget on this monster of a scenario book, and also Josh is going to need more time than we budgeted to him, so, yeah... the answer is, I am not sure.

What I know is that we did set up a buffer in case I got my time estimations wrong. We wanted to get everything delivered next month before Chinese New Year, but it's not the end of the world if we get the books delivered after Chinese New Year at the end of February. Can we do that? Again, I'm not sure at this point. What we're going to do is keep working, and hopefully in a month or so, we'll have a much better idea of how long it will take to fully put this beast to bed.

Sound good? Okay, wish me luck, and I'll see you in the new year!

It's an update!
over 3 years ago – Sat, Dec 05, 2020 at 12:02:46 AM

Hello! I've been trying for a while to come up with something to talk to you about in this update, but I'm having some trouble, so we're just going to jump out of the plane and see what happens!

I know I keep saying something along the lines of "There are loads of interesting stuff I still want to tell you about, but I'm not quite ready yet," and unfortunately that is still the case, so I'll say it again.

  • We're working on more interesting perks, but that still needs play testing.
  • Character card redesigns (both visual and mechanical) are coming but still in development.
  • We've got an almost final component count, and so we're figuring out exactly how big this box is going to be.
  • There's a rule book that will get shared at some point after it gets cleaned up, and a scenario book layout redesign that's also in the works.
  • And I want to show you the punch-out scenario flow chart once we figure out what that will look like.
  • Plus there's all the cool stuff I'm not going to tell you about, so there.

But at this point, we're just in the middle of making progress. The web store launch and Thanksgiving slowed things down a little bit last week, but everything is still moving forward.

So, well, yeah, not sure what else there is to say at the moment. No news is good news, right? We're all still alive, and so, having communicated that, I'm gonna go back behind this curtain here and keep on working.

I'll see you in two weeks, where I hope to have one of those exciting this I mentioned ready to share. Until then, have some cool summon art!