Week 2 Update - Food Art
over 1 year ago – Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 05:30:00 PM

Hey folks,

Just a short one this week. As is common with Kickstarters, we're in the mid-month lull so we're not hitting stretch goals as fast as on launch. That being said, we have some cool stuff to show you on the magical food!

Magical Meals

Heliana's Guide introduced Harvesting and Crafting. One part of Crafting is Cooking. In Cooking, you take edible monster components (like an aberration's eye and a dragon's bone), some monster essence, and make a Constitution check using Cook's Utensils. If you succeed on the check, you make a magical meal! (and if you fail, you still make the meal, it just has unintended side effects!)

A single magical meal has enough food for up to 5 Medium creatures (or more, if your GM is generous) and the effects last for 8 hours. Making a tofeye apple using the aberration eye and dragon bone gives all creatures that eat it two boons:

• They are under the effects of the detect magic spell (from the aberration eye)
• They have advantage on saving throws against the frightened condition (from the dragon bone).

Where applicable, these effects scale with rarity. For example, the radius of the detect magic is a paltry 10 feet if an uncommon frail essence is used, or a whopping 120 feet if a legendary mythic essence is used.

Stretch Goal #5. As a stretch goal, y'all unlocked 5 magical meals to accompany Motes of the Divine. These 5 unique food components can be harvested from those bosses and 5 magical meals which have a unique magical effect! We're working on those effects, but we can show you two of the meals: the Rosey Knightscream (crafted from the Oozey remains of the Rose Knight) and the Bloody Hairy (crafted from the Bloodhound).

Mmmm, appetising.

Week 2 Recap

Last week saw the Swarmslinger (previously Swarmkeeper) tamer go through editing and get a first pass arrangement. We changed the name to avoid confusion with the swarmkeeper ranger. We also realised: we need more swarms! There are barely any in the SRD. We'll be statting out a load from Motes of the Divine and potentially more, if we hit the stretch goals!

To see the alpha version of the tamer, click here!

We're churning through the cards, have received first drafts of all the magical meals and familiars, and 

Maru is making progress on the extra familiars. My (Max's) work for the next week will be to finish the subclasses and make progress on the crafting workshop.

Here's how the progress is looking right now:

That's all for this week!  Catch you next week (or before) when we might have unlocked a new subclass!

Max (and Mo and the team)

Week 1 Update - Voting Summary & 2 Stretch Goals Unlocked!
over 1 year ago – Tue, Apr 04, 2023 at 06:57:45 PM

Hey folks,

We're here with the campaign's week one update. We'll first go over the vote for Stretch Goal #7 and then talk about the newly-unlocked stretch goals since the last update! We'll finish off with the week 1 progress update.

Before we go any further, though. Here's bonafide footage of L'Arsène watching the Kickstarter Pagebacker number increase.

The Vote Is In!

An amazing 1090 of you responded! Here's the results:

• The Low: 288 
• Advanced Adventuring Arsenal: 377 
• Seasonal Armoury: 425 

The new theme will be Seasonal Armoury! That's 12 new pieces of art in the book, and 31 new cards (including rarity variants). Here's some images of the new items!

Stretch Goals 8 & 9 - Unlocked

Since our last update we've unlocked 2 new stretch goals:

$400k - Motes of the Divine Posters

Seven posters will be added to each deluxe box, one for each of the five hunts, the MotD cover, and the L'Arsene's Deluxe Cover. These posters will also be available as addons :)

$500k - Mobs Tokens

All the mobs in MotD will come with tokens! This is the final token stretch goal we have, and anyone who gets either the MotD or L'Arsene's PDF will now get the familiars, the boss monsters, and their croonies as beautiful, digital top-down tokens. 

New Stretch Goals

$600k - New Subclass. If we hit $600k we'll unlock a new subclass: the college of mixology bard! What do you think this subclass should do?

$700k - Bard Songs. What does this even mean!?! Unlock the previous stretch goal to find out.

Week 1 Recap

After exactly 1 week, 4,004 of you had pledged $496,909! With another 74 of you since 9am this morning, we managed to unlock NINE stretch goals in the first week. You're getting:

• Three more familiars
• Motes of the Divine upgraded to hardcover
• Tokens for every familiar in the two books
• Rollable Loot Tables in L'Arsene's
• Five Magical Meals in MotD
• Tokens for every boss monster
• A new item theme in L'Arsene's (and 31 new cards in the bumper box!)
• Seven posters
• Tokens for every mob in MotD

Here's the progress update! Sally has been churning through the item cards, Maru has submitted the first of the three new familiars, and Mo and I have been commissioning art, ideating magical meals, and preparing Backerkit (and maybe also thinking of new stretch goals...)

Project We Think Is Cool - Dungeon Pops

This baby JUST LAUNCHED and has already funded. It's literally pop-up dungeons. Zero set-up time (well... as long as it takes you to turn a page) and VOILA - a 3D battle map with a 1-inch grid, perfect for your minis! We'll let them tell it in their own words:

That's all for this week, we'll be back with more updates as we hit stretch goals or the week ticks over!

Thanks,

Max (and Mo and the team!)

Stretch #7 Down - Vote Time!
over 1 year ago – Wed, Mar 29, 2023 at 06:49:27 PM

Hey folks,

This update covers the latest stretch goal situation and asks about a possible new tier or addon.

Stretch Goal #7 Unlocked - New Item Theme

L'Arsene has a message for you:

"They tell me you want more! Well... I'm not surprised. But I am quite sleepy. I'll leave it to you bookworms to decide what other magical trinkets I should add to the ledger. We've got a selection from The Low—a damn damp place, terrible for fur. There are also some seasonal treasures that a fiery fey dropped off. And lastly, some gizmos I crafted when I was in a pickle. The choice is yours, I'm off for a nap."

To translate: there will be a new item theme in the book! That also means more item cards in the bumper box; approximately ~30, depending on the theme. These are already written, so add minimally to the workload.

The three choices are:

1. The Low; items from a place under the ground where it's dark.
2. Seasonal Armoury; items inspired by fey and the seasons.
3. Advanced Adventuring Arsenal; useful items that someone like MacGyver might use or make in a pinch.

Check out our Instagram to see the beta test versions of these items.

Voting. To vote, head to this Google form. Voting is open until 4pm MST on Friday 31st March (2 days). If we don't get at least 100 votes, we'll keep it open for longer.

Next Stretch Goal - # 8 - Posters

At $400k we'll make posters for each of the five hunts in MotD, one the cover of MotD, one and the Deluxe cover of L'Arsene's Ledger—seven total. They'll be made of super-thick paper and will be of a size to fit flat into the deluxe box, so approx ~A4. Any bigger and they need to get folded, which won't look nice! Here're some of the designs!

These will be included in the Deluxe tier and above, and also available to purchase as an add-on!

Digital Deluxe Tier?

We've had some requests for a bundle containing both the VTT packages and the PDF. This could be either a tier or an add-on. Please leave a comment on this update if that's something you're interested in so we can assess our options!

A Very Cool Project - The Rise of Itza

Our friends at Draco Studios have been building their world for several years now, with several successful campaigns. Their latest offering is a graphic novel written and illustrated by people with some serious credentials, from Star Wars to Doctor Who and beyond. There's also a FREE ISSUE on their KS page - check it out.

There's only a week left so if graphic novels are your thing, deffo have a look. And if you're not sure, head to their campaign page and check out the freebie!

Okay that's all for now. Thank you for pledging and for spreading the word so we can hit more stretch goals!

Thanks,

Max and Mo and the team

Two More Stretch Goals Down! Here's What's Next!
over 1 year ago – Tue, Mar 28, 2023 at 04:42:04 PM

"We're how far off beating Heliana's day-one record? One more of these  free stretch goal things? Excellent... Maybe Humperdink was onto something after all... Houdinky, call off the rakitten!"

---------------------------

Hey folks,

It's coming to the end of a long day and we've smashed through FIVE stretch goals. I hadn't even finished writing the update about #1 and #2 and you were onto the third one. This time I waited!

Unlocked Stretch Goals

Stretch Goal #3 - $100k

Familiar Tokens. Venatus Maps is going to be making all the familiars in this campaign into adorable top-down tokens. Use them on a VTT, print them out for your tabletop, or make them into emojis on your favourite Discord server. Venatus is a talented artist who makes tokens and maps on his patreon each month - check them out!

This stretch goal is given to all who get the PDF.

Stretch Goal #4 - $150k

Rollable Loot Tables. Leave the thinking to fate as we put each of our magic items in rollable loot tables. The tables will be analogous to those in the core 5e books, separating the items based on their power. You'll be able to add our tables as results beyond the d100 options in the core book. Just roll a d4 with the d100; on a 1-2 you can use the tables in the core 5e books, on a 3-4 you can use ours instead!

This stretch goal is included in the PDF and book.

Stretch Goal #5 - $200k

Magical Meals. In Heliana's Guide we introduced Cooking. This is a way to prepare magical meals from harvested monster components. Meals can feed multiple people and have low-powered effects that last for 8 hours, like having advantage on saves against the charmed condition if the recipe calls for a Fey's eye, or dealing bonus psychic damage if you use Aberration fat.

The meals introduced in this stretch goal are boss monster meals. In addition to the normal effects of components, these meals have a bonus effect, specific to the boss monster you harvested the components from.

This stretch goal is included in the PDF and book.

Next Stretch Goals

The newly revealed stretch goals are as follows:

Stretch Goal #6 - $250k - Boss Monster Tokens

Venatus will be back to tokenize the 7 boss monsters in Motes of the Divine. Check out his version of the Ooze Knight from the hunt, Bones N' Roses.

Stretch Goal #7 - $300k - A New Item Theme?

What could this be? Rumour has it there will be a vote involved!

That's all for now! We'll be taking a rest before returning tomorrow morning to answer Qs and catch up with any stretch goals we may have unlocked. Thank you for such a good first day!

Max and Mo and the team!

Funded, First TWO Stretch Goals, and a Mistake!
over 1 year ago – Tue, Mar 28, 2023 at 10:03:21 AM

A message from the greatest inventerer who ever lived, probably; L’Arsene:

" Well tickle my toes and call me a posskin, we funded! And hit two stretch goals!!... What are stretch goals, Houdinky? We give them more stuff? What… for free? Whose idea was that!? Humperdink!!! "

Funding & Stretch Goals

Well, you’ve rather blown us all away with this first couple of hours. Funded, two stretch goals, and well on our way to a third. Wow!

Reached Stretch Goals

At $50k we unlocked Three More Familiars! They are craftable from other monsters, have full statblocks (for use with the find familiar spell), and have bespoke improvement tech trees so you can train them as a monster tamer. Here’s a little giftmas flagon bearer. What do you think it should be called? 

Note, the first 6 familiars come with Motes of the Divine (they are made from the harvested boss parts). Any unlocked familiars (like these) will be in L’Arsene’s Ledger.

At $75k we upgraded the Motes of the Divine softback into a hardback! It’ll last longer and, in my opinion, feel much better in my hands!

Next Stretch Goal

Oh my, in the time it’s taken me to write this and find the film of L’Arsene on his birthday we’ve almost hit $100k. At this stretch goal we’ll get Venatus Maps to make familiar tokens for each of the 6+3 = 9 familiars! Here’s some of the stuff he’s done before.

A Mistake

The Core Box comes with the Astral Expanse dice set (not the mimic one). We had this in all the graphics on the page but had linked the wrong one in the tier itself on Kickstarter. You can hit ‘manage your pledge’ and move to the ‘Core Box (Fixed)’ tier. We can’t delete the old tier until does that, so please move! If not, we’ll move you when we move into Backerkit.

That’s all for now! Thank you for all the good and insightful comments on the Kickstarter page. You can also join the Discord community here.

Thanks,

Max and Mo and the team!