August Update
over 1 year ago – Mon, Aug 29, 2022 at 01:59:09 AM

Wow, it’s been a busy month! Some good news, some bad news, and a final Valda’s update.

Valda’s Update

The Captain’s cohorts have gotten a full revamp! This has been included in Valda's 1.3, available on BackerKit.

After working on the races, I realized that one final thing needed to be updated in Valda’s before the physical release: some of the monster details. I don’t much care for all alignments being listed as “typically” in newer books, but I do think that giving spellcasters bespoke spell attack actions in their statistics is a phenomenal change, and it solves a critical problem the Captain class was having with its cohorts. Specifically, spellcaster cohorts were pretty underpowered and a drag to play.

The new update does several things:

• Spellcasters, like the Mage and Cultist, get spell attack actions that scale with your captain level (improving at 5th, 11th, and 17th). Their spell lists have been revamped since they no longer need to be filled with damaging spells.
• Other cohorts with scaling abilities, such as Sneak Attack, have a single feature that outlines when features improve, instead of multiple features in their statistics that just mention how things scale. This opens more spots for cool features in their progression.
• Cohorts that were punching well above their weight -- looking at the Champion here -- have been tweaked down a bit. Very few nerfs across the board, however. Mostly buffs.
• Cohorts that didn’t really need spellcasting, like the Hunter, have gotten a suite of new and more interesting features instead.

So overall, the cohorts should feel stronger, be more balanced, and be more fun to play at the table!

Moving Along!

Now that the last update is finished, we’ve sent all the files and print specifications to the manufacturers. We expect at least a month of going back and forth to get things like box dimensions correct (this is always a pretty tedious process of adding 5 millimeters to a side, adjusting the art, and sending it back) before we start seeing print prototypes.

However, this means we’re trucking towards manufacturing!

Shipping Unknowns

There are a few unknowns about when we’re shipping, and I’d like to explain why. Our timeline has put us precariously close to the Christmas season, when shipping rates go through the roof. Once manufacturing is done, it could be as many as 40 days for the container ship to arrive in the US and perhaps another 20 days for all of the products to transfer to our warehouse. If this puts us anywhere in December, we’ll have to delay shipping until after the holidays. Hopefully, we’ll ship before then, but it’s anyone’s guess how many revisions we’ll need to make before manufacturing can begin.

Furthermore, I’m not sure how long it will take to make the miniatures -- this could be a fairly long delay! This is our first ever time doing injection mold printing for one of our products, and we know that a large part of that is creating detailed molds for the miniatures. Your guess is as good as mine on how long this might take.

In any case, we’re quickly transitioning out of the part where I do much of anything to push things forward. We can only wait on manufacturing, shipping, and fulfillment.

A VTT Dilemma

Unbeknownst to you, we had a soft deadline of last month for the delivery of our VTTs. When the deadline arrived, we got the unfortunate news that our VTT conversion person needed to drop out of the project. This individual has been phenomenal to work with in the past, but simply became overwhelmed with school and failed to let us know how far behind they were on the conversion. As so often happens, I think anxiety got the better of them. I should have reached out more frequently to ensure progress was being made, so I could have found a new person sooner, but as it stands, we’re a day late and a couple of VTTs short.

I’ve already tracked down (or, erm, poached from another creator) someone to help convert Valda’s to Foundry, however, I haven’t been able to find anyone with experience in converting books to Roll20. If you know anyone with experience in Roll20 conversion specifically, send an email to [email protected] with the subject line “Roll20 Conversion.”

As we lock in new people who can do the data entry for the VTTs and get reasonable time estimates, I’ll keep you posted on our new delivery windows.

July Update
almost 2 years ago – Fri, Jul 15, 2022 at 11:57:05 PM

Happy Friday!

You voted overwhelmingly for a rework of the races, and you got one! Version 1.2 is up and ready for download via BackerKit.

What’s New?

tl;dr

• More powerful, more interesting races
• 2 new pages of near-human feats
• Little changes throughout the book

Monsters of the Multiverse sets a precedent for what the next phase of D&D will look like, and one clear thing is that races will have a very different layout and design. The biggest change is that there are no more subraces! There are also fewer and more powerful traits in each race, completely changeable ability score increases, and practically no design favoring one class over another. Our new version of Valda’s implements all of these changes.

A neat caveat is that the races ended up just short enough that we got two whole free pages! (The change in race design also means we get to delete most of that preachy sidebar we included before.) With that extra space, we’ve expanded the Near-Humans section with some cool new options, including half-medusas, two-headed humans, and psionic near-humans.

You might also notice some other minimal changes throughout the book. Monsters of the Multiverse (and probably other official books) have started capitalizing monster types, using different wording for advantage on saving throws against being charmed/frightened/poisoned, and clarifying how natural armor works every time it is mentioned, so we’ve gone through the rest of the book and made changes to those things as well.

I’m going to get this updated book to the manufacturers ASAP and I’ll have an updated schedule for you soon. Enjoy the new races!

June Update
almost 2 years ago – Sun, Jun 12, 2022 at 03:02:44 AM

Sorry about the lack of recent updates!

I’ve fallen behind on a few things and wanted some more exciting news before issuing an update, but it’s clearly been too long. I’ll be more consistent about updates going forward.

So Where Are Things At?

The finished version of the Valda’s Hardcover is done and at the manufacturers, but it took me much longer than expected to get the files for the starter kit and all the softcovers together. This is entirely my fault. I underestimated how long this section of the process was going to take. In retrospect, it seems obvious that getting all the starter kit components and all the softcovers ready for print would take a while -- that’s a lot of pages and components which need to be individually reformatted, color adjusted, and quality-checked -- but until I did a full audit on the number of tasks, I didn't realize that it wasn’t a two-week process.

I’m waiting on feedback on files I’ve sent to the manufacturer (I expect they’ll take as long as two weeks to review everything and complete digital proofs.) Once that’s back to me, I’ll mock up a new timeline for manufacturing and distribution.

Poll: Update Races in Valda’s?

This project is heading to print soon, but we can still implement an important change or two. Specifically, with the release of Monsters of the Multiverse, it seems WotC is taking races in a new direction with new approaches to ability scores, creature type, proficiency-bonus-per-rest-abilities, and so on. The races in Valda’s were designed with core 5e in mind, and it seems that 5e is moving on toward a new incremental version (a 5.5 of sorts).

We could update the races in Valda’s to be more consistent with this new design, but it might mean the book is delayed by another few weeks, mostly due to editing. I’ll leave this decision up to you with a poll: Vote here!

I'll give the poll two weeks for responses, and then tell everyone how it went. 

Quick March Update
about 2 years ago – Thu, Mar 17, 2022 at 11:24:55 PM

Just checking in with some small updates:

• The bonus Christmas adventure Hollynock Hijinks is completely done. It's included with an updated Starter Kit 1.0 download. 
• I've figured out how to distribute the free Valda's Illustrious Guestbook PDF without so many weird hangups. You should be able to download it now if you couldn't before. 
• We've sent print files to the manufacturers and we're waiting on feedback. Hopefully, we'll only have a few revisions before getting prototypes. 

Kool Kickstarter: Griffon's Saddlebag

Before I go, I need to endorse two really cool D&D 5e Kickstarters. 

Griffon's Saddlebag 

Griffon is -- bar none -- the very first name in magic items. All of his content is beautifully illustrated and creatively written. If you like quality content and you haven't picked up one of his books or decks of cards before, do yourself a favor and back the Kickstarter for his second magic items compendium right now!

Oh, and here's a free sample of the book's items, and here's a sample of the book's example setting options.

Crucible Magazine 

Next up is Crucible Magazine. This project is super cool and my main artist Martin Kirby-Jackson did the cover! Ostensibly, this will be a regular D&D 5e magazine with high production quality and fantastic content -- their first issue looks awesome. 

Unfortunately, I just missed the window to pledge to this, but they should have a BackerKit or similar open soon. Keep an eye on it!

February Update
about 2 years ago – Tue, Feb 08, 2022 at 04:58:01 PM

January was a very rough month for us (shakes fist at Covid), but we’ve been hard at work regardless. We’ve finished Valda’s Illustrious Guestbook, the digital NPC supplement we promised as a Kickstarter stretch goal, and we’ve finally implemented all the changes we planned for Valda’s Spire of Secrets v1.1. Both of these are available for download within an hour or so via BackerKit.*

* Due to some weird problems with BackerKit, you'll only see the Illustrious Guestbook if you have the Starter Kit or Spire of Secrets PDF. I'm working with BackerKit to figure out how to send this to everyone else without causing headaches on your end.

Spire of Secrets Changes

This most recent editing/revision pass is smaller than the previous jump from 0.9 to 1.0, but still includes a lot of small changes, like slight balance fixes and wording changes for clarity. All of these changes come from reader feedback and playtesting, so they’ve had an outsize effect on how the classes and subclasses feel to run, which is a major positive. In the interest of not overwhelming you with info, here’s a summary of the most important changes:

• Alchemist bombs and explosive weapons have improved wording, such that their blast radius is easier to understand and non-ambiguous on the grid.
• The Apothecary subclass for the Alchemist has a reworked Painkiller Bomb.
• The Captain class has a new 20th-level capstone.
• The Mechanaut subclass for the Craftsman has been reworked, allowing for ranged weapons to be mounted on the apparatus.
• The Forgeknights subclass for the Craftsman has a reworked 7th level feature.
• Craftsman’s Swift legendary weapon property was replaced with Whirlwind.
• The Sharpshooter subclass for the Gunslinger has been reworked.
• The Witch class’s capstone has been buffed.
• Wealth Domain cleric subclass’s capstone was reworked.
• Reincarnated Hero sorcerer subclass has a new additional 3rd-level feature to improve its competence in melee.
• Spiritborn sorcerer subclass’s Spirit Animal feature is reworked to balance low-level builds.
• The Downcaster feat was improved.

I’m still going to implement changes as issues appear in the Discord or in Kickstarter comments, but I believe the book has almost entirely solidified. I’ll be working this month on getting it and everything else ready for manufacturing samples.

Forecast

Now that the core Spire of Secrets book is basically done and most of the editing is finished, we're starting to prepare everything for manufacturing. We're about 6-8 weeks behind schedule on this step but are still very much within the planned slush room. Due to the continued weirdness of international shipping and manufacturing, it's not clear if this will actually influence the date you get your hardcovers, but you should be aware that we're behind.

If you want to follow along with the process, here are the remaining steps between now and you getting your book, so you can understand when interesting things happen and when we're mostly just twiddling our thumbs:

1. Prep for Manufacturing. Seems easy, but can be weirdly time-consuming. This involves slightly reformatting every PDF, repackaging them, doing batch image manipulations on the images so they don't print too dark, and sending them off. Often, we have to redo things several times as the manufacturers tell us how they want things.

2. Proofs. In a perfect world, we would simply receive manufacturing samples (called "proofs") and return a thumbs-up to start making things, but proofs exist precisely because mistakes happen. This is a slow step that involves playing email tennis across the world and waiting on international packages to show up each time. Getting things right can sometimes add a month or more to delivery time, but at least we'll have cool physical things to show you in the meantime.

3. Manufacturing. We basically give a thumbs up and wait several weeks as the factory makes things. Very little input from us, and lots of waiting without information.

4. International Shipping. This process sucks, and it's where everything is caught in a queue right now, but we've got a better handle on it than we did with our last project. Once we send a few forms and pay for a big ship, we twiddle our thumbs and wait for a long time as everything is put into a cargo container and floated across the ocean.

5. Distribution. Things are put into a warehouse, we do some magic with a spreadsheet, and packages start shipping.

As we move through these five phases, I'll update everyone as often as I can. It can be helpful to keep these steps in mind as we move forward. Even once the books are printing, they're still months away from being in your hand!