Manufacturing Delay
almost 1 year ago – Tue, May 02, 2023 at 04:51:01 PM

Most of this last month (and the month before) was a frustrating game of email tag with our manufacturers. We had to confirm and fix another round of digital proofs, because they somehow got a bunch of pages out of order in the Starter Kit. This took them a few tries to get right, and it started to feel like they were stalling. That might have been true, because in the end they confirmed that we got bumped back on the manufacturing queue: they'll be printing our products in 50-60 days. Until then, we're hanging tight.

Delays like this are pretty routine, even if they are frustrating. Usually, it’s a game of bigger companies getting priority or supply chains making a component randomly unsourceable for a while, but I ensured that we were at least locked into the manufacturing queue. At this stage of the game, we just have to wait as patiently as we can.

I'm sorry for the delay on updates again. It’s very hard to fruitfully communicate information as mundane as “they’re taking weeks to fix these proofs” without starting a panic. I'll keep you posted as we get more news, but expect at least six weeks before any new info.

March Kickstarter Update
about 1 year ago – Thu, Mar 02, 2023 at 06:47:35 PM

This is a bit more in depth update and a confession that I dropped the ball a little bit. Plus, an announcement about a book of extinct animals.

Manufacturing Progress

There was a bit of a rush to get our products on the manufacturing queue before Chinese new year, which is January 22nd. Even though our manufacturers only officially close for a couple of days during that time, each year the actual factory closes for 14 days. Before this closure, I was working hard on Witchy Cakes, and I failed to notice an email sitting in my inbox: there was a small adjustment to the miniatures' dimensions and I needed to give it approval before manufacturing could proceed. Unfortunately, this flew under my radar until after CNY began and I only got everything re-confirmed in the last week.

We're back on track, but I'm waiting to know how long the manufacturing queue is at this time.

On a personal note, I've been stressing a lot about writing this update because I absolutely dropped the ball on getting the project out in time. I'm sorry about that. It's worth mentioning that Mage Hand Press is ultimately just two people. I do all the writing, graphic design, and project management myself, so things sometimes get overwhelming. However, I promise to stay on top of project fulfillment to prevent any additional delays going forward.

New Projects and Schedules

I want to tell you about our next D&D project, the Book of Extinction, but first I want to quickly address a common concern: why are we launching something else before fulfillment on the previous campaign is over?

The short answer is that we're on a schedule. I planned out the rough timeline for Valda's and Extinction (our next big book) years ago, and even the best planning can't anticipate delays around miniatures. Once the date for our next project was locked in stone and we began to arrange sponsorships and marketing, we simply couldn't move it.

That being said, I'm extremely proud of the Book of Extinction. It's an ambitious, heart-wrenching book about extinct animals in Dungeons and Dragons. If you're at all interested in that, read on ahead.

The Book of Extinction

Our next D&D supplement, the Book of Extinction, is coming to Kickstarter March 21st. This bestiary tells the real stories of extinct animals such as the dodo, saber-toothed tiger, and thylacine, and lets you play alongside them in D&D 5th edition. These stories are captivating and educational, resurrecting lost creatures of the past through the magic of roleplaying games.

Additionally, the Book of Extinction reimagines each extinct animal as a magical creature inspired by the legacy it left behind. It postulates what these animals would be like in a fantasy setting, with all the powers and implications that entails.

It also includes thrilling player options, such as “endling” races, in which you play the very last of a dying species, and subclasses that let you harness the power of nature! This project continues in the Mage Hand Press legacy of top-tier player options, so expect some choice subclasses to go alongside Valda's -- and even a new mousefolk subrace!

To learn more and get a sample of two of our endling races, click here!

January Kickstarter Update
over 1 year ago – Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 09:39:50 AM

Little updates and big announcements!

Witchy Cakes

First and foremost, we JUST launched a new card game called Witchy Cakes! In it, you play witches competing to build the tallest, most enchanted cake possible, while throwing cakes at each other and vying for coved recipes. It’s adorable, easy-to-learn, and raucously fun. If this seems AT ALL like something you would like, it’s the perfect 20-minute game to crack out before your weekly D&D session.

Go check it out!

The OGL

You’ve probably already heard a lot of the fracas about the Open Gaming License over the last few weeks, but I’d like to let you know where Mage Hand Press stands. We wrote an open letter to Wizards of the Coast at opendnd.games making our opinion clear: their proposed license was nothing short of catastrophic for the industry at large. It would seem that after more than 60,000 signups, the letter and our other efforts paid off: WotC has backed off their most serious demands.

We believe that open gaming is the way forward for the industry, and we’ll continue to fight for that future.

Valda’s is Moving Along!

I don’t have a hard and fast schedule at this instant, but the book is in the hands of the printers. As we speak, the big, slow manufacturing and distribution engines are working to get your book to your door!

December Update!
over 1 year ago – Sun, Jan 01, 2023 at 04:31:26 AM

Happy Holidays!

Valda’s is cruising along. For the last month or so, we’ve been kicking files back and forth to the manufacturers to get everything just right. Before locking everything down, we did one final top-to-bottom readthrough of every single page of every single book. Thank god we did! We expected to find a few small errors here and there (and we certainly did) but we also uncovered some larger errors, like that art on the GM screen that was blurry, egregious grammatical errors in the playbooks, and even a weapon table that somehow got corrupted and didn’t print! The review was more arduous than I anticipated, but I’m proud of the results.

As a result, there's a Valda's 1.4 PDF on BackerKit -- this should be the final, final version.

Oh, and we have prototype images for everything!

VTT Progress

The Foundry module is coming along swimmingly and should be ready in the next couple of months. Our conversion guy took far longer to finish the Craftsman class than anticipated (plus, the holidays slowed everyone down), but we’re through it and trucking along.

If you’ve followed the news coming out of Wizards of the Coast, however, you might know that things are going to be complicated with regard to the Open Gaming License going forward. Never fear, however: we’ve spoken with WotC directly and we’ve got a plan. I’ll keep you posted if any of the OGL changes will directly affect our VTT conversions.

Have a happy new year! 

October Update
over 1 year ago – Tue, Oct 25, 2022 at 05:30:09 AM

Sorry for the long delay between updates!

Everything is progressing smoothly, but we’re into the most boring phase of things. I’ll go over everything in detail, but here’s the tl;dr:

• We’ve been going back and forth with the manufacturers to get everything right for production.
• I’ve been tinkering with the core Valda’s book, and have cool changes to announce! Version 1.31 is available via BackerKit.
• It looks like shipping won’t be until early next year.

Manufacturing Tag

For a while now, I’ve been hesitant to guess how long the pre-manufacturing stage would take because the miniatures we’re doing for this Kickstarter are completely new to us. They’ve presented a real black box for delays and complications that has made everything murkier than I’d like. For example, certain elements of the minis were too small to come out of the molds correctly, so the manufacturers needed to modify them and I needed to approve the changes, taking over a week altogether. Later, we needed to decide on the exact Pantone color of the minis’ plastic -- again, a few days of delay. Nothing major, nothing showstopping, and nothing worth reporting on its own, but it’s worth explaining how and why getting these right is taking longer than I anticipated.

Over the last month, I’ve redesigned the files for the enamel pins, minis, and hardcover so that everything will print correctly. This is normal and this process is usually pretty snappy, but as I’ve mentioned, minis and pins are making things a bit slower.

Because minis and pins also need a long time to prepare for manufacturing (40 days, give or take), the manufacturers have prioritized getting those samples to us for approval first. And they look pretty awesome!

Necromancer, Martyr, and Other Updates

While doing little manufacturing things, I haven’t sat idly by. In fact, there’s a new version of Valda’s Spire of Secrets (1.31) available via BackerKit!

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been playtesting and improving the Martyr and Necromancer, the newest and least iterated of the classes in the book. We identified a few problems that we sought to improve upon:

1. The Necromancer is really hurting for spells known.

This is a problem inherited from the sorcerer and was sort of intended, as your spellcasting is only part of your primary focus. For certain subclasses, like the Death Knight, the lack of spells doesn’t feel like a problem, as you’re filling your turns with melee attacks and minion management. However, for others, the inability to make space for utility spells is a real hassle.

So we improved this by changing two or three things about the subclasses. Firstly, more necromancer subclasses give out bonus spells. This squashed some less important features, such as the Pale Master’s Undeath Empathy, but overall expanded the class’s versatility by leaps and bounds. Secondly, we improved how necromancer subclasses give out bonus spells. Instead of linking the bonus spells to necromancer level, we gave them out for certain spell levels. This means that necromancer subclasses give out 10 spells like every other subclass, which is a real boon.

2. Martyrs feel terrible when casting utility spells

The HP-casting mechanic of martyrs is thrilling and fun in combat, but grinds to a halt when you want to cast something like zone of truth but don’t want to eat a ton of HP damage.

The solution to this was surprisingly simple: when a subclass gives out Sacrosanct Spell -- the 6th-level subclass feature that makes martyr spellcasting essentially free for healing spells -- they should also get to cast spells granted by their subclass for free as well. Most of these spells are utility-focused in the first place, and it fits with the overall logic of the subclass structure.

3. Little Changes Everywhere!

It’s impossible not to notice when things are just a little off as you get ready to print, so the newest update fixes a thousand little errors, like certain sections not having the bold 4th-header style applied, missing paragraph indents, witch familiars not getting the right damage or condition immunities for their type, and so on.

Manufacturing Schedule

I’m prepared to make a loose calendar for how manufacturing and shipping will progress going forward:

11/7/2022: Final approval on all files

This has been extremely swingy for nearly two months, so it might take a few weeks longer still to make sure everything is right for print. Manufacturers are good at finding problems just before they rev up the factory line, so this is still hard to say.

11/21/2022: Physical prototypes come in!

It might take them a few weeks to get physical copies of the books to us for review. With any luck, this will go smoothly and we won’t find any books with the wrong covers.

12/15/2022: Miniatures molds are made

For those of you who don’t know, making physical plastic things means first creating an elaborate metal mold with all the necessary details. This is a long and expensive process, and the manufacturers estimate it’ll take 40 days to get them ready.

1/15/2022: Manufacturing is done!

This is another place where timelines are perfectly opaque. Getting through the factory line in a couple of days or a solid month depends on the schedule of other companies who are using it at the time. Last time, this phase was surprisingly fast, but it’s a complete die roll.

3/15/2022: Shipping Starts!

Shipping to the US takes somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 days, and we might find random other delays along the way. Then, we need to fright ship it across the country to our warehouse, from which we can finally send things out! This estimate is a very pessimistic one, but I’m counting on some random delays here.

Other Kickstarter Shoutouts!

You might be one of those people who uses Kickstarter updates to find new, cool projects, so I should do some shoutouts!

Into the Wilds Battlemaps

Cartographers are the unsung heroes of roleplaying games, and Tom Cartos is a titan among these map-makers. If you have even a passing interest in playing D&D in person with other people at a table, you owe it to yourself to grab one or two of these map books.

Only 11 days to go!

Riftborne: Champions of the Multiverse

Stop what you're doing right now and scroll through this Kickstarter. Yes, the art and minis are top tier, but I need you to find the Giga-Mimic mini. Seriously, LOOK AT THAT THING. In awe of the size of this lad.

Only 3 days left on this Kickstarter! Go back it and for the love of god buy that awesome mimic mini.