Heckna! Check it Out Today!
over 3 years ago – Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 11:10:47 PM

Our friends over at Hit Point Press, the folks who made Humblewood and the stunning animated Deck of Many spell cards, have a brand new 5e campaign setting out. Get this: it’s a horror carnival setting named Hecna!

I’ve been seeing sneak peeks of it for months and you want to back this. As always, their incredible art direction makes the rest of us look like amateurs, but this book has some terrifying twists that I genuinely don’t want to spoil. Suffice it to say, clown nose parasites are on the queue.

They have a free playtest, so there’s no reason not to check it out. Make Hecna! your next campaign setting! (And nobody said you couldn’t mash it up with Dark Matter and make a space carnival of horrors; just sayin’.)

Go back this thing!

Big Detailed Status Update
over 3 years ago – Wed, Sep 09, 2020 at 12:37:59 AM

All the digital rewards which are finished will be going live with BackerKit on the 15th. Until then, we have time to take stock and prepare.

Tl;dr: Conspiracy in the Stars and Dark Matter are completely ready to go. Everything involving tokens or monster art is still in progress. Grax’s Club 1 is finished; all other adventures are in progress.

Detailed Breakdown

I believe in total transparency, and part of that is the occasional lengthy, element-by-element breakdown of which pieces of machinery are moving and how fast. Most people probably don't care about this, but it might be interesting to see how the sausage gets made. 

Dark Matter

• Status: Updated PDF finished

Dark Matter Starter Kit

•  Conspiracy in the Stars! — PDF finished
   
•  Basic Rules — Finished
   
•  Standalone Battle Maps — 1/2 finished. The remaining map is going to be a dense general-use sci fi urban area. It will be fairly complex, and should be finished by October 1st.
   
•  Tokens — 32/37 finished. The final 5 tokens should be finished by the end of the week. The tokens will be packaged as individual PNGs in a zip file
   
•  Pregenerated Characters — 5/6 finished. The final unfinished pregen is for a cleric, and should be done by the 15th, when the files become downloadable via BackerKit.
   
•  Character Sheet — 3/4 pages finished. The general character sheet is missing a ship page, which will take until early October.
   
•  Dark Matter Introduction and Cheat Sheet — Finished
   
•  DM Screen — Finished. Will be delivered as a two-page PDF.

Dark Matter Reference Cards

• Status: Finished. 
• Ahead of manufacturing, these will be delivered as a PDF for general use.

Grax’s Club

• Status: 1/4 finished. The remaining three adventures are in the draft phase
• Grax’s Club will be released as four adventures, playable as goofy standalone oneshots, or as part of a campaign. We plan to release an adventure every two months, but chances are, we’ll run ahead of that schedule. Right now, the first adventure “The Even Most Dangerous-er Game” is written, edited, and formatted for print-and-play. The other three are being drafted. We’re still eyeballing the print-and-play format we’re using, and figuring out how much black and white art we want to make for each adventure, so we may update the first adventure down the line.

One Hundred to Oni

• Status: In planning
• This adventure will also be released in four parts, but many of the core writers are finishing up Grax’s Guys adventures, so these adventures will probably roll out after Grax’s Club.

Space Battle Bundle

• Status: Maps finished, tokens in progress
• Tokens should be finished by October 1st.

Alien World’s Bundle

• Status: Maps finished, tokens in progress
• This bundle needs the most original art for its tokens out of the set, and may be entirely finished as late as early November. Depending on the rate at which tokens get finished, we may delay this bundle for the second wave of deliveries, along with the monster cards.

Dark Matter Monster Cards

• Status: In progress
• This reward requires the most large art components. I'm still working on the final list of monsters which will be included, both to maximize art assets and utility for the user. We still need minimalist backgrounds for most existing Dark Matter pieces, a final card graphic design which can fit dense monster statblocks, and 15-20 pieces of art. We’re prioritizing tokens, as the pieces made for tokens may, with minimal elaboration, be large and detailed enough to make monster card art, killing two birds with one stone. However, we’ve got one artist trained on this full time. 
• The physical monster cards will likely be delayed until a second wave, after the other deliveries.

Conspiracy Roll20

• We’ve only just started on the Roll20 conversion. Most of the module will simply require a lot of person-hours, but integrating the Dark Matter character sheet may present a hurdle. No concrete estimate, as we’re still very fuzzy on the number of hours a project like this requires.

Level Up Dice & Wyrmwood Dice Vaults

• Physical prototypes done for both of these. Waiting on final counts to get manufacturing timeline.

Rook and Raven Captain’s Log

• Cover done. Graphic design on the internals isn’t finished as of writing. We’ll need to see proof and get final counts before we have a manufacturing timeline.

Feel free to shoot any questions my way in the comments!

It’s Over!
over 3 years ago – Tue, Sep 08, 2020 at 12:56:13 AM

The Kickstarter campaign is officially over! We finished stronger than I could have possibly hoped, with a total of 2893 backers and $264,628 pledged.

I’m humbled and amazed. From the bottom of my heart, I would like to thank you. This Kickstarter exceeded even our wildest estimations of success.

BackerKit on the 15th

What’s next?

On Tuesday, September 15th, you’ll get a survey from BackerKit asking for you to confirm where we’re shipping your physical products, which add-ons you would like, and letting you tinker with some other details. It’s critical you respond to the BackerKit survey to get your rewards!

In a Kickstarter update tomorrow, I’ll be giving you an in-depth breakdown of every product on the queue, how close they are to digital and physical distribution, what we’re waiting on, and how we’re tackling delays. I believe in total transparency, and if you’re interested in the minutia of what goes into each product, it might even be interesting. For everyone else, I’ll have a tl;dr of the important takeaways.

200K!!!
over 3 years ago – Thu, Sep 03, 2020 at 03:04:42 AM

With just four days left on the clock, we've unlocked our Roll20 stretch goal! You can now add the Conspiracy in the Stars Roll20 module to your pledge as an add-on for $25! If you need to know how add-ons work, check the FAQs.

We have our bestest code monkey working on the module right now. The biggest hurdle is figuring out how to get the custom character sheets working, but I have confidence we’ll get it done at a reasonable speed. I can’t promise we’ll have it out at a certain date or time yet, but I’ll keep you all posted as we get the module finished.

New Pledge Tiers

Last, but not least, we wanted to cap everything off with new pledge tiers. At $95, there’s a new Roll20 Starter Bundle which includes the Dark Matter Starter Kit, the Dark Matter core book, and the Conspiracy in the Stars! Roll20 module. It’s a fantastic pledge level for all of us who are gaming from the comfort of our own homes, but like physical stuff too.

If, however, you want everything, there’s the Shut Up and Take My Money Bundle. It’s got every add-on, the new Roll20 module -- all of it.

Near the End!
over 3 years ago – Mon, Aug 31, 2020 at 10:55:17 PM

As luck would have it, we seem to have hit all the milestones all at once. As of right now, we:

• Have less than 7 DAYS LEFT
• Passed 2,000 backers 
• Exceeded 190K (just 10K away from Roll20!) 
• Unlocked our last social stretch goal, the Space Kobolds 

If you've been on the fence about buying in, you only have seven days left to back Dark Matter. Don't miss out!

Space Kobolds

We've hit the last social stretch goal: space kobolds! It's no secret that we love kobolds. They're equal parts cute, cunning, and dragon-y, and so have carved out a niche in D&D as a dungeon's most natural inhabitants. But while normal kobolds dwell in warrens near dragon's dens, the space kobolds live in asteroids and use electrified harpoon guns to bring down ships. 

Remember that you can download the Encyclopedia Multiplanaria, where these kobolds and many other monsters are described, for FREE. And keep posting with the #DarkMatter5e hashtag! We don't have any other rewards on the queue, but we'll count up all the point at the end for fun.