Things Continue to be Great - Art, Interviews & Updates!
about 3 years ago – Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 02:08:43 PM

Hey folks; 

I don't have anything major to announce, but wanted to send out this update with what's been going on as the campaign marches on. We've hit 125k and that's so far beyond awesome all I can say is you folks are awesome and this book will be great :D

First of all, I'm hard at work getting what's going to be in the book ready, and already have the artists working on new things... here are some of the samples of that:

...and much more to come, but just wanted to share some of the latest coming in from the artists!

In addition in the content progress, I'll be sharing an updated version of the Inventor for further testing and Tinkering from the crafting system this week! Stay tuned on the various places you can follow me (Patreon, Reddit, Twitter, Etc) if you want to see those as soon as they are out in the wild! And of course I'll be sharing more of that content around these parts in future updates for those not in such a big rush.

Interviews?

Yes! I did two interviews this last week with wonderful folks that reached out to me.

• Garmbreak1 of the YouTube Channel Midgardia! 
•  Mildra the Gaming Monk! 

If you want to hear Kibbles' talk shop about homebrew content, D&D, and what's in the book for an hour... well, there's 2 full hours of it! I'm the rambling sort, but if you need more rambling about the book, you're in luck! While you are there, check out their channels - they are awesome folks that reach out to chaps doing Kickstarters (among other cool things) to talk, which makes them awesome folks indeed in my view :D

If those somehow don't sate your need for rambling about the book (which, to be clear, they probably should!) or you want to hang out for awhile, I'll be doing a stream for the last few hours of the Kickstarter on 2/4 (around 7am to 9am or so, if you want to pencil that in) over on my Twitch channel. I don't stream too much right now, but I figured it'd be cool to hang out with all the folks that made this happen as we come to the end (of the first step!) of this wild ride.

Thanks so much folks, and always remember I'm right if you have any questions - it's been a bit overwhelming tackling everything, but the inbox is always open - if you've reached out and I've somehow missed it, feel free to ping me again!

All the best,

-Kibbles

IMPORTANT: EU/UK/CA/AU Friendly shipping will be available!
over 3 years ago – Fri, Jan 22, 2021 at 05:14:31 PM

Hi Folks-

I'm thrilled to announce that we will have shipping partners around much of the world. After a few weeks of looking into this it looks like I will be working with Nord Games and their international fulfillment partners to get this to folks in different region. A huge thanks to them for being very helpful here! They are veterans of Kickstarter fulfillment, and have already been a big help in answering my questions on the logistics side of things.

If you've been holding off on a physical copy until it could be shipped to you economically, here's your chance. I cannot give the 100% final cost on shipping with this update yet, but I can say that it will ship from a warehouse in your region and be regionally friendly in the above regions for import/VAT/etc. If you are in another region, the book will be shipped from the region that would be most cost effective for you as possible.

Thank you for your patience as I figured this out; I am really happy I can be sending out this update - this has been my #1 priority the last few weeks trying to find the right answer here, and I'm pretty sure this is it.

Let me know if you have any questions! I'm always happy to answer questions.

Thank you!

-KibblesTasty

PS: Big thank you to folks at Nord Games for being the helping hand here. I found them by the fact they are running their own Kickstarter right now, so the least I can do is give it a shout out - you can find their Kickstarter here.

100k! This is beyond Crazy Town, folks! Fantasy Grounds integration?!
over 3 years ago – Wed, Jan 20, 2021 at 10:58:05 PM

100k?!

Crazy town turned into more of a crazy speedbump as the total leaped right past it, blowing through all the stretch goals... madness. Thank you all so much, and this is going to be a 300 page+ book of new options for your 5e game.

For the time being, there are not going to be anymore stretch goals. There's over 2,000 awesome folks backing this, but there's only one of me, and I want to be 100% sure that I have the bandwidth to complete or find people to complete everything that's been promised, and I've promised a pretty big slate of cool stuff here. I'm confident this is what I can deliver, so we'll stick with this.

There may be some more celebratory style stretch goals in the final hour if I can think something that wouldn't break any of the various budgets (time, money, logistics!) but for now I'm going to focus on the delivering everything we've unlocked to highest level I can.

You folks have made an amazing opportunity here for me to make you the best book I can and I don't plan on letting that down.

The stretch goal from here on out is "more folks get the best book Kibbles' can make" :)

Fantasy Grounds Module!

I'm also pleased to announce a new add-on... we will have a Fantasy Grounds module! It's added to the list of add ons for $10, and will have have the Psion and Inventor integrated into their system, as well as the rest of the PDF content available in the platform formatted for it and what not.

As some folks have asked before how you select an add on, there's two ways to do it:

• You can increase your pledge by $10 (or the amount of the add on you want), and at the completion of the campaign in the pledge manager you'll get a credit to select the add on you wanted, or...
• After the campaign you can select additional add-ons in the Pledge Manager, and pay for them separately there.

Misc. Updates

I'm still working on international region friendly shipping updates. Nothing to confirm yet, unfortunately. I will give further updates on this one way or the other before we get to the end of the campaign so folks can make sure they are that the pledge level that works for them. Really trying to get regional shipping nailed down for at least some regions, just need to find the right the third party logistics folks for different regions.

The Kickstarter has been a wild ride, but I've been absolutely flooded with inquiries and questions; if for some reason you've asked me something and didn't hear back, feel free to reach out again. I'm trying to reply or follow up with 100% of questions - if I'm missed yours I'm happy to make sure it gets caught :)

Thank you all, and now that all expectations of where this Kickstarter are shattered... well, let's see where it can go.

Week 2! Foundry VTT Integration confirmed... will we have a chosen one?
over 3 years ago – Sat, Jan 16, 2021 at 08:31:36 PM

An incredible first week folks! Simply do not have words for it. We've already exceeded any reasonable expectation I had. First and foremost, thank you!

Some updates and where we are at...

Stretch Goals!

We've hit the goal for Foundry VTT support! If you would like to access all the content in the Compendium in Foundry, just add $10 to your pledge and select that add on, and you've got it; you'll something you can add you Foundry when the rewards go out (will probably come out after the PDF version). It will have the Psion, Inventor, and subclasses, with the drag and drop convenience to add them to your character sheet, and the ability to select upgrades, talents, etc to make character building a breeze. Still working out how much crafting support it will have, but it should at least be comparable to the PDF for crafting.

Other VTTs are not completely out of the picture, but if they aren't here, it means I reached out looking for how to make it happen, and didn't get any good answers yet. With Foundry I was able to talk to both folks with expertise and developers behind it to be confident this is going to be something we can get done (and a bit thank you to them).

Shipping

I am still working on EU Friendly shipping. I think it will happen, but cannot yet commit to it. I am planning on doing it, but not going to say it will happen until I have a system in place for it, and... that's been harder than I would expect.

Backerkit

I'll be working with Backerkit for the pledge manager, and to help with some outreach for continuing to get the word of campaign out there. You'll see a very brief survey from them in the next few days I believe, and the info there will help their efforts both on both accounts. Perhaps with their help we'll knock out getting 1 more subclass worked with the upcoming The Chosen One stretch goal! :)

Kibbles' Ramblings

All around it was an amazing week one and we started not just with great momentum, but momentum that launched right passed my goal and stretch goals. I'm already hard at work putting this book together and hammering out the details (like that EU Shipping issue... lot of companies offer shipping for Kickstarters, but they are not always clear and upfront about if it's EU Friendly... still I think we will get this worked out).

Thank you all (I've been saying that a lot, but hey, this project has left me stuck in a bit of a daze on that front) and I look forward to sharing more with you. We'll see the Wandcrafting system (Wand Whittling, as I tend to stylize it) going out for on Reddit & Social Media tomorrow (probably) and the Tinkering system going out on the Patreon in the next day or two as we work toward getting every ready and polished. It is moving along, and there's been a ton of great feedback on what is out so far - the version that'll be in the book here down the line is something I'm feeling really good about with the volume of feedback I've gotten so far and how positive is has been overall (and how well this project has done!)

Thank you all! (see I did it again...), and hope you're all doing well. It'll been a hell of a ride so far and I think it's still going places :)

-Kibbles

Important update to an Add On, and a new Add On as we sail past 70k!
over 3 years ago – Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 11:59:19 PM

Important Adjustment to Add-On:

First I need to get an important update out of the way. In the process of calculating things out for the newest unlock (Crafting Reference Cards), I realized that I'd made a mistake how I was calculating the costs for one of my other similar Add Ons: Inventor Spell and Upgrade cards. That deck would have be hundreds of cards long (which I knew) but I had failed to correctly account for the weight of that deck. Upon further review, I cannot offer that reward as a physical add on - it was always a low margin product, but the real problem comes in how that would impact shipping (in all steps of the process). After sleeping on this issue, here's what I came up with:

• We will have a physical deck that is the spell cards of the Psion and Inventor combined.
• The Talent, Upgrade, Spells and more will still be provided (all together) as a new  Digital Reward (Printable) - this would be the content of both original decks, but obviously the price is very reduced and there's no distribution issues.
• And, of course, we are adding the new Deck Option for the Crafting Reference Cards.

For Bundle of Everything backers, this is slightly more value still than before, but I 100% understand if this would impact your decision and you want to review what you're pledged at. 

I didn't want to have to make a change, but I realized that this was going to cause too many problems down the road to not try to get out in front of it now.

This update only effects you if you were at the Bundle of Everything tiers or had added +$10 for the Inventor Upgrade/Spell Cards.

Sorry folks; the only good thing here I can say in the process I redid the math on everything and didn't find any other issues.

Back to Good Times: 70k Unlock!

Fortunately, this update also has some good news: we've sailed past 70k and smashed another stretch goal! This unlocks a brand new deck (this time with correct math!) that adds a rich deck of material cards to your arsenal - Loot, Tracking and Crafting simplified! This is a physical reward for people that want to get back around a table at some point - just hand your players the material cards as they find them, and they'll hand them back to cash on their crafting! ... or their failures! :)

It's been a wild ride to get here. Thank you all that have kicked it off! This project has long sense exceeded all my  apparently naïve expectations of where it'd go and what it'd do. Thank you... all 1,467 of you!

We are heading to what I thought would be the ultimately stretch goal... Kibbles' Guide to Kibbles' Content! This will be an online resource that is simply me going into an in-depth breakdown of a build paths, character possibilities and types, important features, and general analysis of... my own content. This one is a bit silly, but it's for the folks that have been here a long time as it's something I get asked all the time, and many have really enjoyed the additional insights and detailed explanations. 

This was intended (and is) a stretch goal that's mostly a Thank You to all the folks that have followed the content and asked so many questions to improve and refine it over the years.

It's looking like we are barreling toward it and maybe going to need to consider even the rewards beyond! As the part of my last-night-mathing I double checked my math on if we did happen to get that 300+ page compendium, and I'm pleased to report there shouldn't be any issues there... should that be a thing we need to worry about, of course :)

Lastly, no update yet on EU Friendly Shipping. Still trying to nail down an economical option there. Given the complexity of what would need to happen, I cannot promise anything besides Shipping from the US until I have a solid plan for how regional shipping is going to happen. I've spent a lot of time this week trying to get this confirmed, but still up in the air as of now.

Anyway - enough rambling! I have to get back to working on making this book happen! Thank you all so much, and let's see where this can go!

-Kibbles