While I'm at it: Status of all Work
over 4 years ago – Mon, Aug 12, 2019 at 12:04:25 AM

Today was a long day, but a good one. Obviously I pushed out the PDF of the counter art, but the last y'all heard from me, I'd just received Vampire Hunter Belladonna.

There's been significant progress since then. 

All Books

One note: I do need to go through all the books and put in active hyperlinks. These are not required to get the book to print, so I tend to do this last, even AFTER the files are sent to the printer. For most of the books, this isn't a big deal. For Vampire Hunter Belladonna, this will be rather more challenging, as I suspect that there will be well over 500 hyperlinks.

Castle Ironskull

As far as I can tell, this one's done and ready to export as both the cover and the interior pages. SJG has received a PDF file with what I call a u-code, which is a title followed by u20190811 or something like that, which is the date of the last revision. It means it's retail ready.

Crown of Eternity

There are two tweaks to the maps that have been suggested but not yet implemented. One (marking a secret door that got dropped from one of the maps) is required. The other is optional but I'll probably do it anyway. Even so: this one's got all art and is ready to go as well, pending final read-through and checks.

Citadel of Ice

All errata, art, and changes in place. Ready for retail.

Curse of the Pirate King

This got the errata and some final checks as well, and other than VHB was the one with the most yet to do. But over the last few days, it got done, and this too is ready to go pending hyperlinks and a final formatting check.

Vampire Hunter Belladonna

I sent the preliminary file, with Glynn's maps, and one piece of interior art by new-to-me artist Teresa Guido, to 50 people for testing and comments. This is even beyond the 10 or so folks at the Master and Commander/League and Legion levels that saw it first of all. Some feedback has come in already, and I expect more over the next few days.

The artists are starting to contact me for reviewing final drawings, and the WIP I've seen thus far is a whole lot of fun.

Beyond that, we got a very full weekend of fixes and tweaks done, and the file seems pretty close to ready. Well, other than 500 or so hyperlinks and the pending internal art. That's supposed to come in by Aug 15, in time for spooling the printer-worthy files in time to send them to Latvia on Sunday night, August 18.

Die-Cut Counters and PDF File of Same

As noted in the previous update, these are ready to print, with file art uploaded. The PDF is out in your hands, if you ordered it. 

Decks of Destiny PDF and Cards

This was very deliberately left for last. There are 210 individual counters from the five adventures, and from those I will pick 63 hopefully-unique samples and fill out Wizard- or Creature-style cards for all: 3.5x5", and using the layout from DoD which was provided by SJG. They're cool that way.

I have no-background greyscale art ready for import into the cards, and I purchased the required stock art so that I can properly make use of the layout. Now I just need to pick my victims and get crackin' from a stats transfer perspective.

This is a boring sample (and the art is old art, and the color tag is wrong) of the DoD styel cards, complete with the GB logo making up the final hit on the hit point tracker.

Spooling the PDF and prepping the cards is basically the same task, so these two will also finish together. It is, however, the major item not done, and I'll be turning my effort to completing this one this week.

Parting Shot

Right now, and I really should not say this out loud, the momentum to having everything in hand August 15 is very strong. The VHB art is the only true thing that isn't done for the books, and I informed my printer of the intent to order 1,000 each of the print copies of five adventures today via email. That's about double what I need . . . but I have a good feeling about these.

So I see me sending printable files to Livonia on Aug 18. Figure a month to get 'em printed, a week or two to ship to the UK and get the international copies distributed, a month to get to the fulfillment center, a week to get stuff straight, and then another 2 weeks for mailing them out. So 13-14 weeks until it's all in hand...that's mid October.

And THAT means we're currently steaming to an on-time delivery, with a week or two of slack time in there for good measure.

Counter pack PDF published
over 4 years ago – Mon, Aug 12, 2019 at 12:01:30 AM

I just hit "go" on the PDF containing all of the counters that will appear on the die-cut counter sheets. They're basically the world's tiniest PDF: each page is 1.25" square. There are behind-the-scenes reasons for this, as that format made compiling the document much easier, and allows me to do other things with it. Including automatic counter numbering, as the page number serves as the counter identifier.

Even so: that part of the package is out and done. I have uploaded the die-cut counter files to the chosen vendor, and have only to hit "go" to get those into production. Those happen pretty fast. I'll be shipping 50 sets to the UK for international distribution, and 200 sets to the US for domestic consumption.

Note that I'm not making extras here beyond a few that might be needed to deal with shrinkage and damage. While sheets may be available for future projects and releases, there's no guarantee these won't be a one-time item. (I mean, they were VERY well received, so there's that. But any sort of "ship not-books around the world" gets challenging fast.)

In any case: enjoy your stuff!

Is there a Vampire Hunter in the house?
over 4 years ago – Thu, Aug 01, 2019 at 01:32:36 AM

Why yes. Yes there is.

David sent me the working draft for Vampire Hunter Belladonna last night. I stayed up until 1:30am getting it into a basic layout. Most of that time was wrestling with the basic look of the actual numbered paragraphs. Now that I've GREP'd my way into a better spacing, the real work begins. There's one large table right at the beginning that I have to format, seven quarter-page map spaces to insert, and a lead-in half-page piece of art that gets placed.

The table should take much less than an hour; inserting the map and lead-in art spaces is the work of ten or fifteen minutes.

Then I need to print and read the thing, and see if there's much editing to be done. In truth, most of the 193 paragraphs look short enough that there's likely to be little editing. I mean, "You've been eaten by a grue" doesn't require a lot of editing, unless you want to get persnickity about passive voice: "A grue eats you."

Even so, once the initial edit is done, there will hopefully be enough space to accommodate several new art holes. I'll figure out how many page-equivalents these can be, and then see where I need to put things in terms of natural (this paragraph is split in half, and shoudn't be) and forced (this page is a wall of text and putting a nifty image here will ease its impact on the eyes) art spaces can be fit in.

Once the art spaces are settled, I'll commission the final interior artwork. The counter art finals are going to be uploaded tonight: that means the cover is done, as is the counter art. Only the maps and VHB interior art remains.

Even so, The League and The Legion and Master and Commander backers will get a preview first on this one, and hopefully be able to playtest the adventure pathways multiple times, using the preliminary maps David is generating as we speak. Once that feedback is in,  I should be able to integrate the art and maps (looking to have all that done Aug 9) and give folks a bit of time for quick feedback here. 

At that point, the task will turn to completing all the edits and fixes on the first four adventures, some map tweaks, and finalizing the art, stock art, and stats on the cards, turning them into images and PDF files.

That gives me about 7-9 days between sending out a full-art version of VHB to get all the stuff ready to get to the printer on my schedule. That doesn't seem horrid at this time.

So while things can certainly go wrong (and getting the die-cut counters and cards, which will be printed in China, CE-marked for shipment into the UK for international delivery will be a new experience for me), getting to the "I'm ready to print the books" stage in just over two weeks seems . . . doable.

And so begins August
over 4 years ago – Mon, Jul 29, 2019 at 03:17:51 PM

Quick update.

First: A reminder that if you provide feedback (and thanks to those who have already done so), please do so by email: [email protected].  

Second: All four basic 16-page GM'd adventures have been distributed for review in PDF format. I've received feedback on all of them so far, so none are being left out. Some of that feedback will be acted on; some will not. I'm compiling a master list of all the items, and checking them off one by one.

Third: All the covers are done. All the counter art is commissioned, and will all be done (including for Belladonna) by the end of the week.

Fourth: In the next day or two, the text for Vampire Hunter Belladonna should be finished. I'm going to try and do layout and art spaces THAT DAY; I'll see how that works for the allowed and required spacing (six or seven quarter-page maps also have to fit in the 30 allotted pages) before I make "edit for length" decisions.  The overall length and style (each paragraph having a number, for example) will be similar to how it's presented in Crown of Eternity. That can eat up space; sometimes that's OK, sometimes it's not. But I anticipate that I'll be looking at five to eight pieces of interior art to balance things out and fill openings. I'm going to work my hardest to turn things around quickly there.

Fifth: My cartographer is taking a well-earned vacation, but will be back on the case for Belladonna maps, plus a few other things that got noticed and need changing, by August 9. 

Sixth: That gives a reasonable cushion between that point and when I want to submit files to the printer on Aug 16-18 . . . so still on schedule.

Seventh: Once I have the final counter art, I need to pick the 12-13 NPC/Monster examples for the card deck, and start in on those. Honestly, those should be straight-forward - TFT information is not a GURPS character sheet or monster writeup, and the layout is provided by SJG - and then I'll start the process of ordering the card decks and counter sheets for international and domestic distribution. There will be very few extras printed and delivered. These sheets, for now, are campaign-only rewards. I'm looking into more sophisticated supply chains for future projects, but for now, if you don't get them with the campaign, you will have to wait for the NEXT campaign to get them. Eventually, though, I may wind up doing something interesting with these. The artists love drawing them, they're not bad to make, and I have a few ideas on how to make these kinda nifty for an actual "here's a bunch of sheets in a box" type product.

I think that cover it for this week. With luck, by next update (Aug 5) I will be very firm about what I have in hand and what's pending.

Citadel of Ice distributed this morning
almost 5 years ago – Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 11:45:37 PM

As promised, the preliminary file of Citadel of Ice was pushed through Backerkit this morning.

Thus far, you should have received:

• Castle Ironskull: complete in all respects, I believe
• Crown of Eternity: missing the counters on the last page; those are being drawn right now
• Citadel of Ice: complete in all respects

Here's an example of a salt-wraith from Crown of Eternity:

I've noted this in prior updates, this is the most art-intensive project I've attempted, approaching 250 images (42 per book for the counters, the cover for each, and 5-10 pieces of interior art per book). So I apologize they're not all ready to go for the preview stage, but at this point, I'm pretty confident I won't see a delay for final PDF delivery - which coincides with getting my books to print - on or about Aug 16-18. So about a month.

Speaking of dates: I expect to have a few days of lull in getting Curse of the Pirate King out. I received the counter art today (love it), but I'd like to get the interior art from the artist before I distribute the files. The good news is that once I do get the interior art, that book is 100% complete as well.

So that's where we stand. I should also, today or tomorrow, be receiving the draft for Belladonna. I've already commissioned the counter art for that, or at least a solid kick down the road - and as soon as I have a good idea of a layout, I'll get art direction going. I spoke to Glynn Seal about maps, and he'll be able to attack them the week of Aug 5-9. That puts me 10 days before "final completion" to have all art assets for all books in hand if I can also get the interiors for Vampire Hunter Belladonna by then as well. My art team is more than capable of delivering that, I believe. 

So: we're on schedule I'd say.