Stretch Goals and the UA Anomaly Event Map Reveal!
about 2 years ago – Tue, Aug 09, 2022 at 06:01:13 PM

Hey everyone, we've had a really great week and things are humming along nicely!  I know I've been a bit quiet, but there's been a ton going on behind the scenes as we brainstormed our plan moving forward.

What I'm most happy about is seeing that we'll be able to print a good number of copies of both books. Fulfilling physical rewards requires proper scale and you've all shown up for it - and opened some doors for us to work out some stretch goals!  A bit more on that later, but first...

Undead Awakening Map Reveal!

First, I want to share something awesome. Victor just put the finishing touches on the (not yet fully named) Anomaly Event map for Undead Awakening...  Cass'll have something more final for it soon, but I couldn't wait to get it out in front of you guys.  Make sure to check out the much higher resolution version you can zoom in on and see alot of the finer details.

I think you can see with this map how flexible UA can be - it adapts to just about any setting. But I'm also struck, really, by the fact that I also want to run a crazy space dungeon in Wicked Ones on this thing! Stepping outside typical fantasy tropes from WO has been really awesome with these maps.

This map is included in Undead Awakening and the render below is similar to what it will look like in the Cartography Kit, though that middle fold is far less severe than it appears here.

Stretch Goals

So I like transparency with our Kickstarters and I want to let you all know our thought process on these stretch goals. It's a bit long winded, so bare with me. We were pretty hopeful our Kickstarter would do well and have been overwhelmed by the support. We had some ideas in mind on some other things we could do to make the project cooler, but these aren't really tied to money exactly - we needed backers, enough to print 500-1000 of something and not be left over with a bunch of stock. We're there now, so we're working really hard behind the scenes to line up a series of cool bonus upgrades to different pledge tiers that:

• Add value to existing tiers.
• We're really excited to see happen - this Kickstarter is a bit of a self-indulgence for us.
• Take no more dev time from us, as we're occupied with our current project, Relic.
• Don't mess up our delivery schedule at all.

These stretch goals are not tied to monetary milestones, but instead to logistical feasibility. We're not making some roadmap that at $X amount, we'll add $Y. We're going to do as many of the things below as we can, as long as they stick to the four points listed above.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the books are completely finished and we've already committed to making them at a very high-quality.  We're not adding anything else to the books themselves.

SO WHAT ARE WE DOING FOR STRETCH GOALS THEN?

You all showed up and supported us, overfunding our project, and we want to add more cool stuff (for you and us!). So our stretch goals are focusing on making the non-book pledge tiers cooler and providing QOL improvements.  

I will make a cool tracking graphic for the Kickstarter page that will help track all the additions and which pledge tiers have been affected in the next day or two as the list here is a bit unwieldy. I'll make separate posts highlighting the especially interesting parts of all of this later, but for now here's what we're going to do. If it's definitely happening, it'll be marked (✔️confirmed). If we're considering it, I'll be marked (❓investigating).  Here we go:

BONUS CONTENT

• Additional 5-7 Sandbox Maps from Guest Artists (✔️): We're bringing in guest artists that we really want to work with to do their own takes on a sandbox map. These will be distributed digitally to all backers free and included physically in the Cartography Kit. Announcements of each artist will come as they finalize their concepts so we can describe their plans. Super pumped about this.
• Undead Awakening 6d6 dice set (✔️): A set of themed dice similar to Dark Omens, but far more necrotic. Included for free in the Ultimate Evil package and as an add-on for anyone else that wants them. More dice? Yes please! Mock-up images for this coming soon!
• Heroes added to Undead Awakening (✔️): We're adding a few heroes to Undead Awakening that focus more on specifically fighting undead. The type and number are still up in the air, but we have some cool ideas. More info soon.
• Dungeon Imp Drama/Role Cards (✔️): Ken Stine, wrote up a set of 25 "Imp Drama" cards that give imps roles in the dungeon and a bit of trouble they're likely to get up to. This adds flavor to dungeon invasions and calamity. These will be distributed free to all backers as PDFs and, if the Toolkit deck is upgraded to an offset print run as mentioned below, included in it as physical cards.

DIGITAL QOL

This set of improvements focused mostly on VTT content and online play. While UA is playable within the current WO modules, it's a bit clunky and we want to improve that experience.

• Foundry VTT UA module (✔️): The Foundry VTT module will be updated by our dev there to give full support for Undead Awakening. The original module was usable, but this will be the perfect fit.
• Full Google Sheets WO/UA sheets (✔️): For those that don't use Foundry or Roll20, we'll make sure there are full Google Sheets versions ready to play with all calling information on them. We'll also investigate building some scripting into the sheets to automate processes like recovery.
• Guide for online play (❓): We'll hire someone to create an in-depth guide to online play, answering some of the most asked questions we get on the Discord, such as what tools are best to draw dungeons, how to find groups, and so on. Just need to find the right person before confirming this.
• UA-themed digital assets (❓): While we'll of course be adding all digital assets from the book itself, we're also looking into bringing on another artist to add a bit more UA-style theming to our VTTs (such as clocks). We have someone who's interested in this and we're discussing it now.
• Roll 20 sheets integration (❓): The R20 character sheet was made by someone outside our team (thanks MalicWanderer from our Discord!), but they are engaged with other projects. We're looking into updating this for full UA support. It's playable now in the WO sheets, but ideally we can find our own solution.

PHYSICAL QOL

This set of improvements is focused on making the dungeon drawing and invasion gameplay better. Some of this is covered in our reference sheets, but we're pretty sure that well-printed physical tools as part of the Cartography Kit will really bring the dungeon invasion gameplay to life at the table.

• Increased dungeon map size(✔️): The Cartography Kit dungeon maps will double in size, from 12x9" to 18x12" (2 folds), giving way more space to draw out awesome dungeons and really get creative.
• Dungeon Map Rules (✔️): The Cartography Kit will come with all of the dungeon invasion rules printed on thick paper, easy to pull out whenever an invasion occurs.
• Dungeon drawing guide (✔️): The Cartography Kit will come with the dungeon drawing guide from the book printed on thick paper, easy to pass around between players and look at for inspiration.
• Card holders and token markers (❓): We want to include a set of card holders to hold adventurer cards/printouts, tokens to track them in the dungeon, and minion trackers as well. These would come in the Cartography Kit. We also want to make a punch-out card with heart tokens and move trackers to physically track adventurer statuses. We're just deciding on our options now, with an eye on quality.
• Toolkit Deck Offset Print Run (❓): At around 200 add-on pledges, we'll instead offset print run the Toolkit deck, increasing its quality, and explore adding minor flair improvements like textures or foil. We'll also include the Imp Drama cards mentioned above.
• WO: War for the Overworld Print Run (❓): If we hit a breaking point price-wise, around 150 orders, we'll instead offset print the WFTO setting supplement. The cheaper we print this, the more money goes to Child's Play charity as well!

At eventide of the first day, look to the east... the undead will be awakening and doom is at hand.
about 2 years ago – Tue, Aug 02, 2022 at 03:02:12 PM

Hey everyone, Ben here. What a crazy first day that was!   We hit our goal in exactly one hour and then just blew straight past it.  Huge thanks to everyone who's gotten involved. So far, it's been a hell of a ride and I know it's only going to get better. 

Okay, here's some info:

Late Pledges / Pledge Manager

This will be in the FAQ later, but I wanted to make it very clear - there will be a pledge manager, but it will be open for a very short window.  The print order will be made ASAP after the campaign, so I imagine there'll only be around a week or so to do this. I strongly recommend finalizing your pledges prior to the end of the campaign.  

Payment Issues

Some credit cards or payment methods may have money processing Japanese Yen. If you have any issues at all, reach out to me and we can come up with a solution. Any solutions we find will then be put into the FAQ. As a last resort, there is always Paypal and we can process orders that way (though it's always easiest to keep things within the Kickstarter->Backerkit flow).

What I'm going to be doing

•  Updating the FAQ: I spent the day communicating with a lot of people and taking questions. I'll be sure to cover all of the main points in the FAQ over the next day or two. If you have any questions, reach out! Others probably have the same question. Sorry it wasn't up sooner, but this gave me a chance to figure out all the info people needed.
•  Getting everything lined up for the print run: We're putting the finishing touches on stuff and we want to make the print order immediately as soon as the Kickstarter funds come through. No reason to wait, so will just be busy doing that. This thing is taking off, so our order is changing a bit - we need to adjust the overall number of copies as we go along and the further this Kickstarter goes, the more copies we can produce to keep WO/UA offset versions out there for sale for a long time.
•  Thinking very, very hard about stretch goals: I mention this on the page, but the games are done. We're already adding all the content to them we want.  But we do have some...ideas... about other stuff we could do. It just requires big scale to make it worth doing. I'll keep thinking on that. No announcements yet.
•  Interviews and outreach: I'll be out there talking to people. I have a bunch of interviews lined up to discuss the game, which I'll post up whenever I update about other stuff and on our Discord. I love talking about the game, so I'm really looking forward to these. If you run a podcast or Youtube channel or know someone who does, maybe recommend having me on!  I'll make time in my schedule. 

These next few update items will not be sent to you via e-mail! I don't want to spam your mailboxes or anything, but I do like the idea of using this update space to talk more about the game and design. If you want to check it out, check back in from time to time (or I might mention stuff I wrote in more important updates):

•  Dev retrospective: I'll be writing a series of updates that are kind of like blog posts.  If you want to check them out, stop by and see if something new is up. I might mention them at the bottom of any important conversation, though. There's not much development-wise to even write as updates because we're basically done making things, but I do want to use this time and space to think back on the last few years of working on the game. I have some stories to tell, from our own playtesting, reasons why some mechanics became they way they did, interactions with the community, thoughts on the art, and more.  I saved all of our old concept art and will be posting that up as well, so some cool stuff to see there! 
•  A look at Forged in the Dark games: At some point, I want to write up one (or two or three?) posts highlighting some other FitD games that I love. With my next game, Relic (currently in-dev, late backing here!) we are taking the changes we made to FitD and moving even further past them, leaving the label behind and making our own system. This will be our in-house system that we'll adapt to whatever game we're making at that time. It shares a lot of similarities with WO (which is already quite different from base Blades). Development wise, we're moving on from FitD - but I want to take a second to think back on all the other cool stuff I saw along the way and highlight some games and designers I think you should check out.
•  A look around Zinequest: So in case you don't know, there's a deluge of zines coming this month. Lots of cool ideas floating around in them so I'm sure we'll all be backing stuff. I want to talk a bit about it and highlight the stuff I like the most (and maybe help it get some focus, to hit stretch goals, to make the stuff I want better - selfish, I know. :D) and you guys can use that space to make recommendations, too. I'm a big believer in a rising tide lifting all boats - and an even bigger believer in picking up a lot of different games and mining them for ideas in my own campaigns. 👿

Really, these are all just kind of self-indulgent posts that I want to make, a fun project that I can have on this Kickstarter permanently to look back on and think about the entire experience. Wicked Ones has been a very big, life-changing part of my life and if I can share a bit of that experience with you all, I'd be very happy to do so.

Lo! Thy Dread Empire (Zinequest)

Speaking of Zinequest spotlights, I wanted to draw your attention to this project by Tanya Floaker launching right as I'm sending this update. 

I'm going to steal their description. 

•  Lo! Thy Dread Empireis a narrative wargame and tactical role-play game where you fight The Skeleton War against The Death Cult of Capitalism!  
• It's perfect if you would like to try a game which elevates the storytelling and tactical aspects of violent conflict, if you need a sub-system to run battles within tabletop RPGs/Storygames, or if you want to see the grimdark style powered by an undying anti-capitalist heart!​​

Tanya is a longtime fan of WO, has always proactively spread the word about our game, and hangs around Reddit and Twitter participating actively in TTRPG dev circles there. I gave some advice on page clarity for the KSer pre-launch and got pretty into the concept of the game itself (bare bones edition of the rules are already up).  I'm backing it and I think you should consider it, too - pledges funds have a clear path laid out to making the zine better as well.

It's also such a different take on a somewhat similar subject matter that we've approached with our games that it might scratch that tactical wargame-y itch a bit better. Anyway, I'm excited to see their take on it and if it can be used in some circumstances alongside WO+UA. 

Helping Out

Want to help us keep up our momentum?   Here's a few ideas that I originally posted on the Discord, but will mirror here: 

•  Comment on the Kickstarter!  If you already have some experience with the game or opinions about the book, drop a comment. Tell us what you're excited to try out or post up a picture of a dungeon you and your group made!  I know when I back a project, I like to go check out the comments to get the vibe. We have a pretty active Discord, so a lot of stuff gets discussed there and then the KSer comment gets filled with questions and worries instead of the hype and excitement that makes its way  over to the Discord. Show people wandering by how pumped you are about this project! 
•  Use that Twitter share button! it puts an "I just backed Wicked Ones" onto your timeline. There's no better way to rep the project, seriously.
•  Comment out in the wild, but don't spam! If you happen to see people talking about the game, drop a nice comment in there. It goes a long way! That said, our outreach has been pretty thorough so try to keep any mention of our project on topic and stuff. Recommending it to friends or naturally injecting it into the flow of a conversation is very cool, but yeah...  no wanton spamming.
•  Tell a gaming store about our retailer tier! If you happen to know someone that runs a gaming store, let them know we want to put copies on their shelves.  If you run one, well go back or reach out directly and we can talk!

Wrapping Up

Okay, that's it for now.  I can't tell you how happy I am with how today went - I've always been pumped about the game we made and very pleased we could offer the Free Edition to grow the community and get the game out there. And now this, getting to see all of our hard work get the full high-quality treatment it really deserves. It's pretty goddamn satisfying. 

I'm really looking forward to seeing the dungeons you all make!

- Ben