This is why I need to work faster...
over 2 years ago
– Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 05:02:26 PM
In fact there would be no way for me to have avoided this, since it impacts export dates starting Feb 1, but looks like printing prices are going up at my printer of choice by 10-25%.
Granted, that works out to only a few dollars a book, but still...life is still complex due to shipping and transport issues, and it's not just "international is hard because taxes."
In other news, I spent the last day and a half shivering and in a fever sweat thanks to a dual booster-and-flu shot reaction, but that seems to have subsided. I did get some work done yesterday, though not as much as I'd have liked.
My goal for this week is really to get all of the critters into my spreadsheet, with the rank and file being complete in the next day or so, and then trying to tackle one apex monster (dragons, kraken, lich, a few of the demon masters) per day thereafter.
Once all of the traits, skills, stats, etc are in the spreadsheet, I spool out the laid-out version. Then I go page-by-page and tweak out each bit to ensure it fits. This is a lot of sliding text boxes around, editing prose, etc. I also mostly have art in place, but that's the least fiddly: Put it where it needs to be, make it as large as the graphics and layout allow, slap a silhouette on there for scale, and then next. I've got a bunch of these done already, but my desire is to be able to get them in a place to have folks looking at them and making suggestions for tweaks so I can start careening towards PDF finalization. Once I do that, I will spool out cards/quick-reference documents, tokens and VTT assets, and of course printing.
I'm aiming to get files to the printer by Feb 15, and printing usually take a month or so. That's why the "oh well, sadness" tone of the first paragraph: getting files to the printer by Jan 1 was never going to happen.
But...progress continues.
Survey Status Update
over 2 years ago
– Wed, Jan 05, 2022 at 02:25:19 PM
As I continue to drive away at getting the book ready for preliminary release, I wanted to take a moment to talk surveys. Some of the following groups probably overlap.
- There are 629 out of 689 people who have completed their surveys, paid anything needed, and their address is ready to lock down. That leaves 60 surveys unanswered total (and one of those is always "Test Backer," who stubbornly refuses to answer surveys no matter how strenuous the urging). Not bad.
- There are 19 people who pledged in the $1 tier to follow the campaign, pledge a la carte in Backerkit, or whatever. One of those 19 has a substantial international physical order.
- There are 27 people with physical stuff in their cart who have not filled out their survey. This is the most important group to "git 'r done" because without an address, I can't send your stuff. These are the folks that if the survey isn't done by the time the print order(s) are placed, I have to cancel and refund, or downgrade their pledges to digital rewards. I've emailed this group privately, but I repeat it here. Please: fill out your surveys.
- There are 33 people with PDF-only orders who have not completed their survey. 32 of them have no pending balance. When it comes time to send out PDF files, I will mark these 32 "complete" and your files go out then. If you complete your survey before then, if you have any back-catalog files, you'll get them as soon as you do.
By my estimation, there are 28 folks who really need to check their surveys and make sure they're complete. Another 14 could benefit from finalizing their survey to claim any back-catalog files they've paid for but not received yet. The remaining folks are in "follow the campaign" pledge tiers, and that tier tends to have a high opt-out rate by the true end of the survey phase.
So that's where we stand.
Working working working OWLS!
over 2 years ago
– Tue, Jan 04, 2022 at 10:55:02 PM
I definitely still need to go through this with a fine-tooth comb for edits and formatting, but this is a fun spread that came out as I was doing the animals. Some of the creatures are large enough that "here's a person" doesn't quite give the right scale, so I found a silhouette of a longship that should be about 55-60' long.
Also: owls are really, really impressive. I just got finished reading up on their auditory sensory suite, and the processing that goes on to give them an insane spatial picture, all based on hearing.
Regular, Giant, Swarm monsters...Backers get to vote!
over 2 years ago
– Thu, Dec 30, 2021 at 03:11:04 AM
Some creatures, like rats, centipedes, bats, and others come in several varieties as challenges.
Usually there's one or more of:
-
Regular creature. Usually small and fairly innocuous. Might be useful as food, but isn't a challenge to anyone unless it's unusual, like a brown recluse (necrotic poison) or a funnel web spider (can cause death).
-
Creature swarms. These get large-area injury and are not something you can deal with using the medieval equivalent of a tennis racquet or size 14 boot.
-
Giant creature. A twelve-inch centipede is creepy, and a bite causes extreme pain. Even so, step away and you're safe. A twelve foot centipede might be another story. These can be a threat as an individual monster, though Sir Cuisinart and Magus the Burninator usually make short work of them.
My question to y'all is this:
Should I lead with the swarm, the giant, or the mundane?
I'm thinking that I'll lead with the giant version. Those stats are more interesting, and swarms get a unique, very condensed stat-line. The boring/mundane/small version can probably be dealt with as something like "the regular centipede is SM -5, ST 1, and its venom effects are halved (and halved again with High Pain Threshold)."
In any case, the title would be Centipede, Giant so you don't have to look up all the various creatures under Giant X.
Example of Centipede (Giant, Mundane, Swarm)
over 2 years ago
– Thu, Dec 30, 2021 at 01:14:47 AM
(Note: No, it does NOT have 27 hit points. I know what happened there; it was a formula error in my import sheet. It will have HP 12-15 and FP 12.)
(Also, the cringing human silhouette was harder to find than it should have been!)
