Veil of the Eternal Night

Soundtrack & Book Preview!
2 days ago – Thu, Sep 05, 2024 at 08:49:08 AM

We're getting so close to spooky season! And it's looking like there is a VERY good chance you'll have the beta release of Veil of the Eternal Night JUST in time for Halloween! We're on track to release the first round of designed PDFs in October.

With that said, we have some other small updates!

Timelines

We feel good about our digital release schedule and anticipate fully releasing the PDFs this year! We will keep you in the loop and updated as it progresses, and I am going to try to commit to more frequent, smaller updates instead of just the monthly wrap-ups.

For the physical release, we're doing our best to plot and plan, but there are a lot of moving pieces, logistics, and quality control we want to do. We are no longer going to be targeting a specific date for shipping, but rather move to a model where we're keeping you updated more regularly. 

We're learning a lot about ourselves as an independent publisher this year, and looking at the next five years. We're in the process of really deciding who we want to be, and what our promises to you, our incredible supporters, backers, and fans, are going to be. One of our biggest takeaways is that we value transparency, communication, community involvement, and the quality of our publications more than we value being the "fastest" or best with deadlines. 

Playtesting

All content is in playtesting! If you're interested in getting a peek at it before the first round of PDFs comes out, join the Discord! Patrons and Backers both get access! 

• Harker's Guide to Vampire Hunting has had a recent sweep of updates, errata, balance tweaks, and clarifications issued as a result of our playtesting and editing efforts! 
• Both Soliloquy of Annihilation and Daughter of the Shadows campaigns are available in full for playtesting! 

The Books

...are REALLY coming together. I am so excited to show you these preview spreads. Jake Neece, our creative director, has been hard at work, meticulously laying these out, and it's no small job! We're talking what equates to six books between the MythCraft and D&D versions!

Check the previews out!

Soundtrack

Lastly, The Veil of the Eternal Night original soundtrack has been completed and awaits the Digital Release! Here is a preview of another track: Hero's Resurgence by the incredible Geoffrey Day!

Thank you all so much for reading, and happy hunting! 

August Update: Progress, Final Playtest, & Surveys Locking Soon!
17 days ago – Thu, Aug 22, 2024 at 07:37:41 AM

Update

Things are progressing nicely, and our editing processes are well underway! Jake and our amazing art team are currently working hard on finishing the book's layout and design so that we can deliver the beta PDFs in October. 

If you missed the last update, we are delaying physical production a bit, so this October's delivery will be BETA PDFs, and not the final edits. This gives us a bit more time to playtest, proofread, and edit. 

There are hundreds of new pieces of art you haven't seen that I am EXTREMELY excited about (Nathan & Jake are apparently way better at keeping secrets than me, and it's been primarily in their court the last bit 😂) - you are in for a treat!

Here are a few of my favorites! 

Physical Products

Production is churning along on the loot! I have received samples of just about everything now except the Tarot & Bloody Night dice (The latter are in the mail on their way!)

 Ratu the Bat got a wire upgrade in his wings; they stand better on their own now.

The Blessed Wind and Bone dice are complete! I'm over the moon with bone, wait til you FEEL the bone dice. The texture is just perfect.

Garlic Dice - You may have seen these at Gen Con if you stopped by the MythCraft booth. The prototyping is done, and they are in production! We did something unique and left the garlic mini out of the d4, which let us make a bigger mini. I think it was the right call! They never look right in the d4, anyway, and now they look even better in the other sizes

 Tray, Bag, and Morgana dice! I'm a LITTLE MAD at how cool the Morgana dice came out. They're way too cool to be a freebie, and they go SO WELL with the Death Dice Tray!

Final Playtest

The second campaign, Daughter of the Shadows, is now entirely drafted and ready for playtesting! Grab your garlic and crucifixes and get ready to embark on a high-level campaign. Intended for levels 11-20 in D&D, and 16-30 in MythCraft, the stakes have never been higher as Dracula's successors vie for power. 

Join The Discord for links to the final playtest material!

Survey Lock is Coming!

To finalize our orders and ensure everyone gets their rewards on time, we’ll be locking down surveys on August 30th as well. If you haven’t filled out your survey yet, this is your gentle nudge to get it done! Locking the surveys allows us to see exactly what we need to produce and helps us plan for any extra stock we may have available later.

If you haven’t completed your survey yet, please take a moment to do so before August 30th. 

Last Call for Preorders!

We’re thrilled with the response to our pre-order store, but all good things must come to an end—for now! We will be temporarily shutting down the pre-order store on August 30th as we prepare to lock in quantities for production. If you’ve been eyeing something or want to add a little extra to your pledge, now is your last chance to do so before the store closes.

Thanks all! Happy hunting. 
-Grant

Daughter of the Shadows - Part 1!
about 1 month ago – Fri, Jul 26, 2024 at 07:00:26 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

MythCraft Digital Delivery & Fulfillment Timeline Update
about 1 month ago – Fri, Jul 26, 2024 at 07:08:37 AM

Hello, Night Creatures. I hope you had a wonderful summer!

MythCraft Core Set Fulfillment

First, we are sending the MythCraft Core Rulebook, Creature Compendium, and MythCrafter's Guide TODAY. Watch your inboxes! For those of you who already have a Core Rulebook, this is a new revision and version, so please download a new copy! 

Update on our Timeline

I will cut right to the chase. The short version: We are delaying the fulfillment of Veil of the Eternal Night physical products by 3 months to April 2024.

I promised you all that we would do our best to keep our promised timelines, but that in the instance of sacrificing quality for timeliness, we would choose quality... and I am looking ahead at the next months and making the executive decision to delay the physical fulfillment of Veil of the Eternal Night. 

Maybe it doesn't take that long, or maybe I am wrong, but I am above 50% sure at this point, and I'd rather be transparent with you than wait until I am 100% sure. 

New Timeline

• Today - Revised MythCraft TTRPG Core Rulebook Release & MythCraft digital fulfillment.
• August 2024 - Alpha delivery: Writing Complete, Playtest fully live for all content
• October 2024 - Beta Delivery: PDF Releases
• December 2024 - Full Digital Release
• April 2024 - Shipping Begins

Why

Several reasons play into this decision, but the main one is that proofreading/copyediting has taken more time than we were allocating to it. If you remember, I said we were throwing down for another round of proofreading for the Core Rulebook. Well... it wasn't the last one. We hired a team of professional copy editors to go through the MythCraft Core Rulebook in April of this year. We realized in June, that work was still incomplete and did -yet another- entire proofreading run.

This is meticulous, slow work, zooming out to go over every mechanic and how it plays in the context of the game, and then zooming in to go over every letter, jot, and tittle. Editing and finalizing a body of work of this magnitude is a big job. 

I have learned so so much these last few months, and one of those things I am learning the hard way is that I need to give more respect to the editing and proofreading phase, and I need to pour more love and attention into finding the right talent to support our goal of putting out a quality product.

The other minor items that play into this are 
(1) I did not account for the fact that my team would need days off. It sounds silly to say out loud, but we at the QuasiReal Publishing team have been working well over full-time hours nonstop since we funded last year. It's been a lot of weekends, nights, and looooong weeks. I need to give my team a few days off and start acting like a real company that will be around for a long time, instead of 4 best friends hustling non-stop to make their dreams come true. We are still that, but now with vacations.
(2) Bumping this a little bit runs into Chinese New Year, which can add 15-30 days to the timeline
(3) Re-arranging the order of operations here lets me get digital goods in your hands faster.

Fixing the Problem

I am not going to delay a project without making sure I take a good hard look at what went less than ideal and be able to honestly tell you that I have grown and learned from the situation. I don't care that most Kickstarter delivery late, I take our deadlines seriously. So here's what's changing:

Adding a new phase: Beta PDFs

Rather than jumping from PDF to print delivery, we're adding a new phase between playtesting and digital delivery. We will send out completed and ready-to-use PDFs of all 3 books in October 2024. They will not change significantly from October to December's full digital release. We're taking extra time to make Style Guide changes, phrasing and consistency changes, grammar and punctuation, clarity fixes, errata, and other such changes. 

New Processes

We're piloting a test program where we are hiring some of our most involved playtesters to help proofread. We found that many of the issues with previous proofreading were a lack of an intimate understanding of the game and a lack of a full understanding of the context of the mechanics being read. Grammar and punctuation are easy. That's not the problem we're up against. 

Style Guide Development

We created and are tweaking a living document called a "Style Guide." --- These are the rules of writing for MythCraft. It contains things like definitions for when to use the word "Ability" vs "Feature," if we write "Once a day" or "Once per day," gain 3 additional HP vs gain +3 HP, and so on, and so forth. Then, of course, there are many more specific things - is the first talent in a grouping Armor Specialization or Armor Specialization I? If a pre-requisite has two variations, do we list them both or just the parent talent? I will admit that this is not my strong point - I never even noticed many of these things as being inconsistent.

With the Style Guide we find and make determinations on these things once, keep updating our style guide, and life gets easier and easier the longer we go. 

Ripple Effects

Does this affect Bria's Mythical Menagerie or MythCraft Digital Edition in any way?
No. 

It does not affect it in any way, and neither project affected Veil of the Eternal Night. We have kept our promise not to let concurrent projects interfere with each other. 

We are growing very quickly, and I am beyond excited for MythCraft's 2025. Waiting for one project to be done before working on another is a wild misuse of our resources, passion, and growth. It would be primarily dead, unused time since different people work on other things at various times. There's no benefit to the team twiddling their thumbs during the 3-4 months of production and waiting for boats. 

Thank you all so much, and we'll talk again very soon.

-Grant

Soliloquy of Annihilation COMPLETED!
about 2 months ago – Tue, Jul 23, 2024 at 10:35:43 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.