Guest design process has begun!
almost 4 years ago
– Sat, Jun 06, 2020 at 11:32:43 PM
Hey all! Pretty small update this week. I think pretty much all pertinent info on the pledge manager that we have was included in last week's update. Remember that wave 1 will close in two weeks, so expect some more talking about it in the next couple updates as well.
Regarding Forgotten Circles, just to clarify, we're still on schedule to get Forgotten Circles out in August, which is expected to be after when everything else from wave 1 will be shipped out. Wave 1 will ship out on time, and Forgotten Circles will either ship out separately or with wave 1.5, depending on the timing.
Regarding the Forgotten Circles changes in the new printing, in addition to providing a log of all changes on BGG, we will also provide digital files for everything that was changed. We won't be offering any physical "upgrade packs". That is not something we want to focus on with everything else that is going on that needs to get done.
-
The big news this week is that I have finally gotten all the assets together for the guest design process (and, really, the rest of my design process) to begin. This was a big undertaking, getting all information on monsters, characters, mechanics, the campaign, and the lore together in one central organized place.
Now that it is done, I think it will help smooth and expedite the rest of the process in bringing this massive game to life! Next I will be refocusing on doing more work on the characters. I still need to create ability cards for the 17th character, but, really, all the characters need my attention in one way or another, so I'll be spending some time to refine all of that.
-
And finally, I just want to state clearly that black lives matter. Cephalofair Games is opposed to all police brutality and racism (systemic or otherwise).
To that end, I also want to highlight that my friend Danny has organized donations to Black Lives Matter through the sale of Board Game Brothas' Rap Godz. Various sources are donating a total of $100 for each copy of the game sold through their website until Sunday. That's a pretty good bang for your buck if you are looking for ways to help!
Backerkit FAQ, Forgotten Circles delays, and a charity change
almost 4 years ago
– Tue, Jun 02, 2020 at 12:26:42 AM
Hello! I hope you are having a wonderful day! I am just dropping in with your regularly scheduled update to let you know what has been going on over the last week.
First, let's talk about pledge manager stuff! Chris has been super-wonderful with helping all of you out with your questions and concerns, and I wanted to ease his job a bit by making a little FAQ here to cover the most prominent questions he gets about the pledge manager.
-
When is the pledge manager closing? The wave 1 pledge manage is closing on June 19, and you will be charged at that time if you have confirmed your pledge.
-
Do I have to pay now if I only want wave 2 items? No. If you do not want to pay for their shipping now and are only getting wave 2 items, then you can leave your survey unanswered and just wait for wave 2. I am sorry if this causes you to get frequent reminders from Backerkit to complete your survey that you have to ignore. That is just the way their system works.
-
When will Steam keys for the digital game be released? The Steam keys will be sent out shortly after we close the pledge manager on June 19th. We have the key bank ready, but we have to wait until the charges go through.
Also, if you have another question or issue that needs resolving, by far the best way to reach out is to send an email to [email protected]. You could also contact us through Kickstarter or Backerkit, but direct email is the best way to go, and please don't send a separate message through all three channels. One email is sufficient! We will get back to you.
-
One disappointing bit of news I need to share with you sooner rather than later is that we are running a bit behind on the production of Forgotten Circles for wave 1 and 1.5. It's looking like we won't be able to get it to fulfillment centers until early August at the earliest. We don't want this to hold up the fulfillment of other wave 1 products, so it shouldn't delay anything else, but I just wanted to let you know Forgotten Circles might be a bit late.
The main reason for this was because I wanted to fix some typos and make some other changes to the game before we reprinted it, which necessitated a full proofing process. A full list of changes for the second printing will be posted on Board Game Geek in the coming months, but the basic run-down is:
- Fixed typos and printing errors in the Diviner ability cards, events, revised teleport cards, and scenario book.
- A number of balancing changes to the Diviner ability cards.
- Split the scenario book into two books to minimize flipping back and forth between sections.
-
Something else I'd like to mention is that I am changing the charity the profits from the challenge coins will be going to. My goal with these donations was to help the world as a whole get through this crisis, and, after long consideration, I have decided donating the money to UNICEF would be a better way to do that. I have no desire to turn this into a political discussion, so please respect that in the comments, but I just feel UNICEF has a better track record and fewer black clouds hanging over their reputation.
So with that said, the sales so far on the challenge coins will be sending well over $50,000 to UNICEF, which is a great thing.
-
And finally, just a quick update on what I've been doing this last week. I am still working on getting all the assets together for the guest designers. This includes all monster stat and ability cards, full information on the story of the game, the world, and the structure of the scenarios, and layouts and counts for all map tiles and overlay tiles in the game. It has taken a little longer to finalize all these things than I wanted, but I should be finishing that over the weekend, and then we can get started on scenario creation!
I'll try not to mention the 17th character every week, because I can only talk in generalities, and I fear that may be boring, but I am really excited about it! I settled on a character class that would fit the best into the game and the overarching story that I wanted to tell, and I think it will end up working perfectly. Regretfully, I know a lot of people suggested that its mechanics have something to do with the accumulation of money in some way, and while that was a consideration, it just didn't quite work into the vision that I had.
And I also released the 6th scenario of the community-driven campaign yesterday. I just wanted to remind people that it is still going on and going strong! I think the story could be moving in a pretty interesting direction, but, of course, where it ends up is in the hands of the players. Please check it out and participate in the votes!
Many hurdles ahead
almost 4 years ago
– Mon, May 25, 2020 at 01:44:10 AM
Hello! I believe I have a (relatively) short update for you today.
Releasing the pledge manager on Monday was a little choppy, but we got through it in the end. It took most of the day to get the surveys sent out, which was the pace Backerkit recommended. It also took most of the day to sell out of wave 1 Gloomhaven items, so I hope those of you who really wanted to get something wave 1 were able to do so.
That said, now that we have a better idea of the quantities of wave 1.5 items we need, we are looking into expediting some things and getting everything wave 1 and wave 1.5 shipped at the same time. We're still working out the details, so I'll have more information in future weeks, but I just wanted to let you know we are still trying to do the best we can for all of you.
The other big news from the pledge manager launch: as of now, we've raised over $45,000 to send to the World Health Organization through challenge coin sales, which is fabulous! That is in addition to the $50,000 that was already donated, so I am super-proud of you all for that.
And finally in pledge manager news, I know there have been some complaints about the shipping prices and how two small items shipped together costs more than shipping them separately. Basically, we are using weight-based shipping, and the weight tiers we broke the costs into were perhaps not granular enough, so bumping up into the next weight class can end up with too high a cost.
It's unfortunately too late to retool those shipping tables, but what I have done instead is gone through and lowered the weighting value of a lot of the small items as much as I could, so if you are ordering multiple small items, there's a much higher chance you will fall into a lower weight class now. Keep in mind that no cards have been charged at this point, and the calculation is automatic, so no action on your part is required to apply these new shipping costs. Also, just to reiterate, this is only going to affect people that were ordering multiple smaller items (e.g. metal coins, envelope X, Forgotten Circles, wooden organizer, card sleeves, and pins) in addition to their pledge tier.
-
So now that the launch of the pledge manager is behind us, what is next on the horizon? We've cleared that hurdle, but there are, of course, many more ahead. I have been working this week getting all the content in the game organized and presentable for the guest designers to start working with, and so we can have a clearer picture internally on what is left to be finished before we can move into production.
I've also spent a lot of time thinking about that 17th class, and I am pretty excited about what I've developed. It is super-cool and fits well into the overall lore of the game, and I wish I could tell you more, but you'll just have to discover it for yourself. Now that I've got the theme down, though, there's still a lot of work ahead for actually creating the character.
Sculptors are working on awesome minis for the locked classes, Alexandr is working on the art for all the summons in the game - hopefully I'll be able to share some non-spoiler sketches with you next week - and Andy just let me know he's finishing up the edits on the scenario text for the second half of the campaign.
So, yeah, stuff is definitely chugging along here. There's still a lot let to do, but I'm excited to see it through!
Pledge Manager Launch
almost 4 years ago
– Tue, May 19, 2020 at 03:23:02 AM
All right, so I know I created scarcity with the limited quantity of Gloomhaven products, causing a lot of you to hotly anticipate the launch of the Backerkit survey. And now it is an hour past when I said I would launch it, and I am just really sorry for this whole situation I created that is now causing some annoyance to you.
The best I can do is just explain what's going on. In the end, it may not make you less annoyed, but it is all I can do.
So we are dealing with two issues here:
The first issue is just some technical difficulties that aren't worth going into. We were actually geared up to launch an hour early, at 9am EDT. We figured that would give us a nice buffer, but apparently it wasn't enough. We've just now got them resolved, so the first surveys are going out right now.
However, that leads to the second issue. This is that 80,000+ surveys is a lot of surveys to send out. It isn't going to happen all at once. We have to send them out in batches of 5,000 so as not to overload the system, which means that once we start sending them out, it will take several hours to send all of them out. This is why we wanted to start early, but the universe had other plans.
The order these get sent out is more-or-less random, so, yeah. If you really want a copy of Gloomhaven delivered in July and you are madly refreshing your inbox for the survey, I really don't have a solution for you, and I am sorry about that.
Please just be patient, and, once again, I am sorry.
And just to clarify, in case it as at all unclear, the limited products are Gloomhaven, Forgotten Circles, the Gloomhaven Solo Scenarios, and the removable stickers for Gloomhaven and Forgotten Circles. That is all. No wave 2 product is limited.
Solving the limited quantity problem
almost 4 years ago
– Sun, May 17, 2020 at 03:48:20 AM
Hey there! Sorry for sending you another update (the first update, with lots of other important information, is here), but the limited quantity of wave 1 products got a pretty strong negative reaction, and rightly so, so I felt the need to get it addressed immediately.
So, first of all, because I am a bone-head, I didn't anticipate this would affect enough people to create such a large problem, and I am sorry about that. I figured 2,000 extra copies would be enough to fulfill most, if not all, the demand, and looking back on it now, I realize that was dumb. My perspective of the situation is much different from yours, and that clouded my judgement. I could keep going about how I arrived at the poor decisions that were made, but I'm not sure that would be productive, so let's just get to the point.
We will still have limited copies of product to deliver in July - there's no way to change that now - but we will also be offering a "wave 1.5" shipping of wave 1 products later in the year that won't be limited. The basic idea is that there will be "wave 1" products in the pledge manager that will be limited and will be shipped out in July, and "wave 1.5" copies of the same products that aren't limited that will ship out 2-3 months later. We're acting on this right now, so I don't have specific shipping timelines at this point, but we'll get those for you later this month.
So if you miss out on the limited "wave 1" products, you can still get the same product at the same price, as soon as we can get more printed. And even if you end up with wave 1 and wave 1.5 products that get shipped out at different times, we'll only charge you shipping as if they were shipped together.
That said, if the timing of the delivery was important to you, and you would still rather have your money refunded, we can do that too. We are happy to refund any amount of your pledge. Just email [email protected].
Making sure all of you are happy and get what you paid for is very important to me and everyone else working on this project. I am sorry for not handling this issue better, and I hope with this new wave of shipping, we can get this resolved to everyone's satisfaction.
