Building Videos: Production Week 5
over 6 years ago – Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 01:01:12 AM

Hey there founders of Gloomhaven!

Unfortunately I still don't have a lot to share this week. I was expecting to have the proof sheets by now, but they were just sent out by the factory yesterday, so they are not quite in my hands yet.

What is in my hands, though, are the "Build a Building" reward videos! I told you I'd get them to you this week, and because this part is entirely within my control, I was able to get it done for you.

If you don't know what this is, it's explained on the main page, but, basically, you could pledge a dollar for me to shoot a video playing various games while naming a building that I built in a game whatever you wanted me to name it.

There were over 1500 names to go through, but I went through them all, and the video ended up being about 5 1/2 hours long. You can find it in four parts below. Each one has annotations in the lower left to make finding your name easier. Enjoy!

Part 1

(64 - Feldherr HQ)

Part 2

(Fender Game Emporium - The Man Cave of the Winterfeld) 

Part 3

(Manjula - qwertatsas)

Part 4

(R.A.R.E. Blacksmithing - Zymzym)

The other thing to discuss is that there continues to be questions from you about fulfillment companies, given the fulfillment issues we had with Gloomhaven. Because some of that is still ongoing, however, I don't want to say anything that could negatively affect those processes. I will just reiterate what I have already said - that my intention is to get you all your games as smoothly as possible. Since that didn't happen for Gloomhaven, you can certainly expect that changes will be made for the Founders of Gloomhaven fulfillment.

I think that's all there is to say about that. I do hope you find some value in the videos, and I'll see you in two weeks with more progress!

White Box: Production Week 3
over 6 years ago – Sat, Jan 06, 2018 at 12:20:06 AM

Hello founders of Gloomhaven!

I hope you all had some happy holidays! I mostly just stayed at home playing Pandemic Legacy with my wife, and it was great.

Progress continues on gearing up for the production, though that has yet to officially start. We received a white box sample of all the printing components to approve. There was a small issue with the size of the larger cards (because of the tie-in events, they need to be exactly the same as Gloomhaven's cards), but we're solving that.

We also caught a couple of mistakes in the pre-proofing files, but we're also fixing those, and so I am hoping that I will be able to tell you in the next update that production is officially underway.

Everything does seem to take more time than anticipated, though, and I am growing doubtful that we'll be able to get production finished before Chinese New Year, however much I wish that we could. Basically everything in China shuts down for a month around the middle of February, and so, realistically, it is looking more like an April delivery because of this.

I really thought I could get this one out more-or-less on time, so I am hugely disappointed by this. And I am sorry.

In happier news, I will begin filming the "Build a Building" reward tier next week, so this is your last chance to fill out the pledge manager and be involved in that. I'll be exporting the list of names for the video on Monday, so get your's submitted before that if you are interested. (if you don't know what I am talking about, read the "Build a Building" section of the main Kickstarter page.)

I also spent some time this week getting my newsletter updated, so if you opted into that in your BackerKit survey, you should have received a confirmation email. It may have been sent to you spam folder, but it wasn't spam. It was really me, and, yes, I know there is a typo in the first sentence.

All right then. I will see you in two weeks with more news of production and most likely an incredibly long video of me reading names!

Sorting out the FIles: Production Week 1
over 6 years ago – Sat, Dec 23, 2017 at 12:20:08 AM

Good evening, founders of Gloomhaven!

It's been two weeks, so I should probably let you know what has been going on! We got all the files uploaded over a week ago, and since then have been working with the factory on making sure everything will work the way we expect it to in the production process.

For instance, we decided on a box size of 11"x11"x3" (incidentally, the same size as the Forge War box). The 11"x11" parts has always been planned, but we needed to figure out how much depth we needed to fit all the components in. With that size, though, we determined that the player mats were a little too big to leave on a punch board inside the box, so we will pre-punch all of those and wrap them up as a stack. That, however, means we'll need some sort of basic cardboard insert to keep them from banging around inside the box during transit.

Conversations like this are what is happening at the moment.

We've also been working to make sure all the wood designs of the meeples and completion tokens will work. We had already confirmed the meeples, but we discovered one of the completion tokens, the water wheel, wasn't quite working out, and fixing the dimensions made it look weird, so we made the decision to change it to something else that looked cool. I hope no one feels too betrayed by this change, but here are the final six completion token designs (#3 is the one that was changed):

So, yeah, I think at this point all of that kind of stuff is behind us, so we'll be moving forward with tooling up the factory and getting some proofs printed off for some final confirmations, and then it is full speed ahead.

The goal is to get all this printed and sent off before Chinese New Year in February. I'm still optimistic that that can happen, and I'll let you know if that changes.

I'll be back next time with what I hope will be a report on a lot more progress, and, until then, have some happy holidays!

The End of Development: Post-Kickstarter Week 17
over 6 years ago – Sat, Dec 09, 2017 at 12:32:55 AM

Greetings founders of Gloomhaven!

So today I can finally say that we are finishing all the development work on this project and heading into proofing and production. Other than this meaning that the project is moving along to a more defined schedule, it also means we'll be moving into the boring part of the work where I can really only justify updating your every other week, so we'll be doing that from now on.

Regarding the overall schedule for the project, I still think we can get it out in February, but let's see how long the proofing process takes, and then I should have a better idea of when you can expect your game to show up. For those of you who don't know what proofing is, basically we send all the files to the printer, and then they send us physical print-outs of all the materials in the game on giant rolls of paper. This way we can check the printing on everything to make sure everything looks great before the manufacturing begins.

But anyway, for now I'd like to share with you the latest draft of the rules. Thanks for all your feedback over the last week. It has been helpful, and with that, plus the help of Paul, I think the rule book is in a great place. It is not quite perfect - just glancing through it, I can see some small things caused by the latest round of edits - so tomorrow we'll be doing one final round of edits. We still welcome any feedback you have in the comments.

Lastly, since there has been a lot of talk about the production and shipping issues going on with the Gloomhaven second printing, I feel it is best to once again address that situation here. People have expressed concern about me using some of the same shipping companies and manufacturer for this project as I used for the second printing of Gloomhaven, and I feel I must stress how vastly different the two projects are, both in timing and magnitude.

The mistakes of that project will not be repeated. Protections will be put in place to ensure the quality of the manufacturing process. And I haven't yet decided which fulfillment companies I will use, but I will always do what I feel will be best for the project. I want to deliver a quality and hassle-free game to you as much as you want to receive one.

So with that said, let us know if you see anything that needs fixing in the rule book, and I'll talk to you again in two weeks!

Rule Book: Post-Kickstarter Week 16
over 6 years ago – Sat, Dec 02, 2017 at 12:35:46 AM

Hello founders of Gloomhaven!

I know I've been saying this a lot recently, but for reals this time, we are almost ready to put this to bed. Alexandr got the variable road art to me today, which was the last thing he needed to do, and Josh's to-do list is growing very small. He says we'll be ready to get the files to the printer by the end of next week, so that's great!

Really the only thing to do in this update is finally show you the rule book. Inside, you'll see nice depictions of all the components, a lot of which you haven't had a chance to see yet in their final forms.

Before I show it to you, though, remember that Josh does still have a few things to do. The resource tracker board is still a work in progress, so we know the number of token spots on that is wrong, and we're still making adjustments to the player mats and resource cards.

But anyway, you can see it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=11f0VLrNqm3aT0uL5wyJtNJ9o9lFjTZ2W

I think it's pretty cool. If you see any mistakes, feel free to share them in the comments. That'll be easier than fielding a hundred emails that all tell me I spelled "symmetric" wrong. The rule book hasn't been looked over by a professional editor yet (read: Paul Grogan), so you all are the first line of defense. Or if you are not into editing, you can just look at it for all the pretty pictures.

Anyway, I'm super-tired. It's been a long week, and that's really all I wanted to say, so have a great weekend!