Crown of Eternity preliminary PDF
almost 5 years ago
– Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 06:29:12 PM
Crown of Eternity
This morning I "blasted" notification emails for Crown of Eternity. These notes should be in your in-box; if not, check Spam. If not, email me or send me a message through Kickstarter.
Unlike Castle Ironskull, Crown's counter art is not yet complete. But here's what's coming
- 14 salt-wraiths
- 7 wights
- 6 royal wights
- 4 gargoyles
- 3 cactus things
- 3 human henchmen
- 3 tooth snakes
- 2 important NPCs
I've seen the preliminary art for the salt wraiths and the royal wights this morning; they're lovely.
As always, please send any observed mistakes to my email: [email protected] with [Crown of Eternity] in the subject header.
Other Progress
We really are coming to the end. The next big steps are to prepare the actual printed counter sheets, which means choosing a design for the back of each sheet (something y'all helped me with in prior updates), and then moving the color version of each one to the vendor site.
It also means preparing the PDF of the color sheets for those that get it. These two steps are really the same.
It also means putting some labels down on each counter so that you can distinguish them by more than looks. Again: that's going to happen at the same time as the other two steps.
Since the color counter art is in hand for most of these, the job is tedious but can be done at any time; because physical printing of the books is slower than printing the counters, I can even start this after the final book print files go to Latvia . . . but I probably will try and get a jump on them earlier.
The card decks are the other bit of tedium. These will require some coordination with SJG, but again, a lot of work is done - largely thanks to SJG giving me the files for Decks of Destiny. If someone says (and I saw this on Reddit) "SJG is hard to work with," let's just say my experience has been radically different, and better (and I said this on Reddit). It continues to be a true pleasure.
So really, once the final art comes in, it's a whole bunch of "grunt work" but that's that. The rest is proofing, tweaking, and getting the very-simple NPC stats transferred over.
Card Decks
Just to be clear: we passed the 250-deck stretch goal for increasing the number of cards in the deck to 63. That means 12 or 13 cards per adventure. The next goal would be at 500 decks, which seems unlikely at this time. Pre-orders in sufficient quantity - which means nice comments need to spread beyond this forum! - would fix that, but it needs to be soon!
In any case, for (say) Crown of Eternity, you would get both important NPCs, one each of the rest (minimum), and duplicated of the salt wraiths and wights. Where I have to choose, items that already appear somewhere else (another deck) or are fairly mundane - like the gargoyle above - will be dropped to ensure a unique monster, especially one that appears in large numbers, has more than one such card.
About those Pre-Orders
This has been a very successful project for me, and is on track to remain so (but it's not over until I pay for shipping, so . . . ). Pre-order volume, however, has been very light.
You can help me with that. Saying nice things on Social Media, and including the pre-order link, really does make a difference. Now that the adventures are in hand, quick capsule reviews of the good (which can generate sales) and the improvable (which helps me and the authors refine the game for next time) are huge boosters. Coming from not-Gaming-Ballistic they have more weight than me or my authors promoting our own product.
And after all, there were 3,300 backers or so for the original Legacy Edition. That leaves roughly 2,700 people who are right smack in the target market here! Let's get busy. (Kidding. Sort of. Well, not really.)
All Book Covers
Just to leave you with some pictures, and most of you have seen these before. But . . . here are the final covers for all five adventures.
First Preliminary PDF Distribution underway
almost 5 years ago
– Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 12:56:26 AM
The first GM'd setting/adventure, David Pulver's Ironskull Castle, has been distributed by Backerkit.
I've decided to do one per day, so that the downloads don't get nuts, and individual issues with each file can get addresses specifically.
This also gives me a tetch more time to pull them into shape for prelim look-see.
So, this is, much like SJG does, some time to read, test, and point out errors.
In the context of where we are in the file, an "error" is something like:
- Spelling and grammar mistakes
- Layout errors (orphans, too much or not enough space in punctuation, or weird layout/justification artifacts; text that disappears behind images)
- Formatting mistakes (some of these, like not bolding attributes or carrying through certain formatting that evolved on other books, are known and will be fixed by the time the books go to print)
- Blatant rules errors ("the wizard can't cast that spell because the IQ isn't high enough")
Things that are not errors
- "I'd have done this differently"
- This NPC has more points than a PC can have or other authorial wiggle room needed to make the adventure and its inhabitants challenging
- Visual style or presentation
- Stylistic choices in language that are unusual but not wrong ("never begin a sentence with AND" is a common thing that draws folks' ire, but is a style choice, not an error).
The key bit at this stage for suggestions or fixes:
- If it breaks layout, it's probably not going to happen
- If you see an error, please suggest a fix!
- If you suggest a fix, it needs to fit the existing document flow. A three-word mistake should be replaced by a 2-3 word fix. There are exceptions, but rarely.
- Please provide enough text or guidance (on p. 5, starting with "The Evil Minions...") so I can easily see what you're trying to tell me. "There's bold missing" doesn't help me unless I know where.
Finally: the best way to get these to me is by EMAIL. Send a note to gamingballisticllc at gmail dot com with [IRONSKULL] in the subject line.
I'm very eager to get the rest of the files to you: this is going to be a good week.
PDFs in Six Days? Well, most of 'em.
almost 5 years ago
– Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 11:12:05 PM
So, status update time. Let's go with the most-ready to the least-ready.
Citadel of Ice
As far as I can tell, this is done, with only tweaking to go, if that. I've got the cover done and even a printable PDF ready to go. All the interior art and even the black and white counter art is complete. Maps are done. It's VERY pretty. I need to get Rick Troula's art URL/portfolio link in there. The playtesters are already credited on the title page.
The color counter art needs to be turned into PNG files so I can upload them to the manufacturer's website. I believe I've got the basic format of the token backs settled design-wise, now just need to execute it to my satisfaction.
The thing that remains to be finished is the cards. This requires two things: one is a decision from SJG whether the art can be color or not (not would be my assumption; this will make the cards nearly indistinguishable from the Decks of Destiny 3.5x5" size). Also, each of the five adventures will be getting 12 or 13 cards; I have to pick out which ones will be created, and then move the relevant information to the cards. This is tedious but not difficult; no invention is required.
So Citadel of Ice is in solid shape.
Ironskull Castle
Layout is complete, art holes are defined, and I'm told by the artist that the cover and interior art are done. We'll be meeting tonight to get final approval. Once that's done, and I get two or three tweaks to the counter art (which I have in photoshop format already), again: tedious but no invention required.
There are a few author-required tweaks to layout and maps to correct mistakes.
I need to assign an ISBN to the book and update the title page with the appropriate credits, including the artist's portfolio and the list of playtesters.
So again, this one is very close to being done, and may in fact be "print-ready" in 24-36 hours.
Curse of the Pirate King
For the cover, I need to assign the ISBN. The art sketches were complete a while ago, as were the interior sketches. I'm hoping to get finals from the artist Real Soon Now, and honestly, if the finals are even close to the sketches, the counters have some real fun inside them - Ksenia, the artist, put in some great humor into the images.
I've found a macro/process that lets me convert easily from color to greyscale, so what was once a "sit down for hours and suffer" level of tedium has been significantly shortened thanks to already built-in tools to InDesign and Photoshop that were always there but - like many large complicated software suites - one has to be aware of in order to use.
Crown of Eternity
The cover is finished. I need to assign an ISBN.
Interior art is proceeding, with a few images already in hand from Ben Jan, and Sandrine Malus working a few others. The counter art needs to be assigned and executed, so this is farther behind than I'd like, which is on me. I didn't want to overtax my artists with workload that would overwhelm them. Now that Rick and Juan and Ben are all clear of their assignments, I can parallel process the counter art with the three of them. They're all quite fast. Also, this particular adventure is not chock full of a million different types of creatures, so "I need a squad of monster type X" is something the team is getting used to doing. Doubly so with creatures that are deliberately similar to each other.
Maps are done; I think some megahex/hex-grid work needs to be inserted into them rather than empty corridors (the hexes also serve the very useful function of defining scale).
So this one is the least known to date, but it's also something where rapid catch-up is possible.
Vampire Hunter Belladonna
The latest added - mid-campaign, as you know - and thus the least far along. David is executing to a known outline, moving closer to an editable draft each day.
The cover has been commissioned and I just yesterday (or maybe the day before) approved the sketch and moved to final execution phase. This one is a traditionally penciled/inked/painted work that will be touched up digitally at the end. I can't wait to see how it turns out!
Once I have the draft, I can do layout and editing, define art holes, and again, parallel process the results. One thing I can pretty much guarantee is that I won't be sending out a playtestable version of this on July 22, which is a date I still hope to hit with the other four.
I have fantastic scene and character notes from David, which means that I can probably get rockin' with the counter art as early as today or tomorrow, which I will certainly need to do.
Overall
The real "go to print" schedule is based not on the "playtest copies available" dates, but other things. So the real drop-dead date for "late or not?" is a month from yesterday: mid-August to get files to the printer. Things aren't behind where I thought they'd be, but they're not comfortably ahead of schedule, either.
So I'll keep you guys in the loop; next Monday's update really should be "and here are four PDFs," and those PDFs don't require interior art or counters to play and test and read and get feedback. The "final" PDF will be distributed along with the files going to the printer (again in Latvia; I was super-happy with the job Livonia did with my last Kickstarter).
So that's that . . . I may even send out previews for adventures as they come together, to maximize time to read, comment, and play, though we'll have to set ground rules for input, as these are going to be looking for real errors, typos, and true mistakes, rather than "wouldn't it be better if . . ." rewrites. If you've error-checked SJG-produced products in the past, you'll recognize the difference between "I don't like this," "it follows the rules, but I think these rules are broken," and "not how I'd like to have seen this done" and "you spelled 'the' as 'teh' on page 13," or "the wizard character has too few spells for her IQ," both of which are easily correctable as well as simple errors of fact and execution.
I'm sure discussions will be lively: you guys have been very good about telling me what you think to date, and I see no sign of that changing any time soon!
Until then: onward!
