On Friday, April 9, 2021 at 5pm Central time, I will be locking addresses on Backerkit.

What does this mean for you?

Completed Survey; PDF Only (275 people): Y’all are done. Thanks!

Uncompleted Survey; PDF-only (6 people): Most of y’all probably fall into the “I don’t want anything else and I don’t want to mess with Backerkit” stage. I’m going to manually click the “understood” button and process the $0 balance to allow you to collect your PDFs. For you, the campaign will be over.

Uncompleted Survey with Physical Goods (1 person): Please fill out your Backerkit survey.

Domestic, Completed Survey; Books Only (99people): I’m expecting the books on my doorstep next week. I’ll fulfill your orders the weekend after they hit my doorstep.

International, Completed Survey; Books Only (12 people): Most of you ordered the CC books only; one person ordered some prior books. I will place the order for the dozen books today, and it should arrive quickly. I certainly have a single copy each of More Perilous Journeys in the UK. That won’t be a problem either. I suspect your stuff will be on its way to you in about two weeks.

For everyone else, this means you’re getting physical goods including cards and/or counters. Or have ordered the TFT Starter Kit. I’ll also be ordering THOSE physical books today so I can pack ’em up. But that means your orders are waiting on the cards and counters to be manufacturerd.

Counters: The counters are hopefully all going to be into production in the next few days. Once we start that process I’ll also peel off samples for testing for CE Mark and other safety standards. The testing labs and manufacturing folks in China have been off until today, I’m told, for a Chinese national holiday. So hopefully re-engaging soon.

Cards: I have already placed an order for 50 decks of cards for the Five Perilous Journeys reprints. These should throw off sufficient extras to send to NJ for the same CE Mark testing the counters get. I am spending a lot of time today generating more decks. The CC decks themselves should be “easy,” while the MPJ deck(s) are harder due to formatting. I think I’ve got it, though. Still: I hope to have these ready to spool out ASAP. Maybe by tomorrow if I’m fortunate. When they’re ready and the initial run is done, I’ll process the next nine decks of cards, including packaging. Those should have a relatively fast turn-around as well.

Boxes: I received word that my boxes (well…YOUR boxes) shall arrive at  my home this weekend.  So that settles that too.

That’s where we are. My goal is to have roughly 70% of everybody completely fulfilled by the end of April, and will be working diligently to follow up with the “stuff” packages and dozen or so international/stuff packages as soon as possible.

FnordCon 3

Steve Jackson Games’ FnordCon 3 virtual convention is kicking off Saturday April 10. That’s “Panel” day. “Game Day” is April 11.  I will mostly be hanging out and around on Saturday, with a GURPS and TFT panel hosted at 3:30pm, along with Steve Jackson. I will also be in my Dealer’s Room area, a dedicated channel on the Discord, so if you want to chat live, drop by!

Powered by GURPS

For those interested, I am working very hard with my author, Kevin Smyth, to bring low-point, fast character generation to the Dungeon Fantasy RPG.

Things are still in flux: Kevin and I are making important structural and presentation improvements every day. But those subscribed to my Patreon are getting updates, providing feedback, and (most importantly) testing the heck out of it. Already we’ve made good tweaks to modules and presentation, while still keeping the core, two-fold mission of the book:

• Enable lower-point play for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG, focused on the Nordlond Setting [1], from 50-200 points
• Get from concept to the table fast, especially if you’ve never played GURPS-based games before. We’re talking 3-10 minutes from idea to playing at the table here. Like “TFT fast.”

I’m hoping to kick something off in the next few weeks…but as with the Character Collections campaign…there are many calculations in the temple to be done beforehand.[2] But I expect to do a lot of prep this weekend.

The same artist who did the covers for More Perilous Journeys, Ksenia Kozhevnikova, is doing a cover for Delvers to Grow. The mockup some of you have seen is not available for use (oops; there was a labeling thing that threw me), so Kevin’s book gets a super-spiffy cover.

Here are some screenshots from the working draft.

[1] Is it Nordlond-only? Absolutely not.  But the book and examples are written for grab-and-go utility with my previously published materials. The cross-over utility for not-Vikings is really high, though, because within the Nordlond setting, it’s already been established we have totally-not-Mongolia, totally-not-England, totally-not-Kamakura-era-Japan, and totally-not-Macedonian-Greece.

[2] Gratuitous Sun Tzu reference.