What happened in February and what is happening right now?

That was fun, I lore dumped on both of them and ideas started to fly around, it was fun to see all the things they were coming up with, some of them I hadn't even thought of! That's the kind of spirit I want to bring with this module and it was nice to see it happen live. The writer already gave me a draft, turned it back with some notes to tie it more into the Mothership RPG feel.

One of the ideas that came up was to have the comic as an intro to The Iron Hive, an intro that you can continue by playing, the party in the comic will comprised of one of each class, it'll ship with character sheets for each of them and your trusted warden will be able to continue where the comic left off! I personally love the idea a lot and can't wait to have it realized. I'm not planning on writing a loooot on how to continue the story, and I want it to be open ended enough for there to be a lot of options for the wardens

We are around 70% content-wise, 50% on the graphics, it's coming along really nice and I'm liking the index card-sized format, here's a sneak peek on the image for one of them:

The content itself is not really supposed to suffer a lot of changes, some of you requested for it to have a map of the station, and I think I found a nice middle point. The initial idea was for everyone to map it as they imagined it, but it is also fair to have a starting image, but then I thought, why have only one map? I was thinking on just making a lot of sketches of how The Iron Hive might look like and include them all on the Index page, with a little note saying something about how the station doesn't have a predetermined shape and you can pick, choose and do whatever you want! 

Other than that, I asked the printer how much the price would change if we added 4 more pages for us to have a bit more room to do creative stuff like sections and have fun with layout and design, I should've had an answer by now so I might need to ask again.

March is the end of Q1, so how are we looking? Fine, I'm juggling between trying not to think too much about it and keeping it present, the pace we have feels right, I'm still needing to meet with Alex about the Ruzt Ratz catalogue and we should do that this week.

We had an error with digital content not being delivered to those who had bought it through the Pre-Order Store, that was fixed as soon as we found out it was happening, if you bought anything that included the PDF and you haven't received it yet, feel free to contact us!

Yes, I know it's March. You think I don't know it's March? I know it's March, okay?

February, while infinitely better than January, is still a crap month up here in the Highlands. Long dark days, wind blows bits off my house, stuff like that. So I thought I'd skip it altogether and come up smiling when March kicked in.

Updates:

Scriptwriting
February was really mostly about script writing. A lot more than anticipated really. Still, thanks to a couple of solid all-Saturday sessions in Inverness library the past two weekends and the help of editor DG Chapman, I feel like there's light at the end of the script tunnel. It's currently too long, but I'm in the process of another shorter draft at the moment and Mr Chapman is looking at further edits of the newer sections as we speak. I would looooove for all this to be done by next week, I've been holding things up a bit with this, but that also means more content...

Number of Pages and Layout
Last week I fired the draft script over to Norgad along with some rough proposed page headers / order. He shoved into a rough laydown, and the upshot is I think we're now looking at a 20 - 24 page zine now, as opposed to the originally mooted 16 pager, so that's pretty cool. Currently we're at 28 pages but there's a lot to be trimmed, with the goal of 24 pages of cool content that's easy to parse and game.

Norg is working on design now. My dream scenario is still to get the module off to print before the end of the month (would love to expense it all this tax year), but that feels like a big ask. So it might be into April before that happens.

Other bits
Most of the other print assets - poster, sticker, bookmark - have been briefed in, and once I get TDMTP script out of the way my next writing job is to finish the Timed Release pamphlet - just need a few more location for that and a bit of structure.

Early Bird Patches
The sample for the Hope's Serum patch arrived, and it looks really great. The drop design is slightly different from the mock up as you can't do a gradient with an embroidered patch, but it still looks lovely. A good 9cm in size too so easily big enough to cover a bullet hole in your jumpsuit. Here it is:

Hope's Serum TV ad
This has been story boarded and a collection of illustrations from Norg are now with my animator, who started on the job last weekend. Looking forward to seeing this fun lot come to life:

Let's zoom in on those creepazoid smiles for a sec:

Audio bits
I've started working on the additional voice clips to go along with the module, and might even have some to share in the next update if all goes to plan / I can work out how to share audio on a Backerkit update.

Surveys
There's still 5% of you that haven't completed your survey yet. No rush really, this will be open till the end of the month and I'll send around a reminder before they are closed off so you can lock down your order.

Think that's all for now!

Cheers
Andrew

Fellow explorers!

We're making great progress, and we have a few key updates to share: 

Thank you again for your incredible support in bringing this project to life. We’ll be back with more updates as we move closer to fulfillment! 

Until next time!

-Terry Herc

Hey folks, I hope everyone is kicking along well.
I bring news, and unfortunately not the good kind.

 

When the books arrived the other day, the final main piece in the project puzzle, I quickly chucked everything together for a cute photo and sent out an update. I was excited. Things seemed ready to go for shipping and closing this bad boy off.

Sadly, that’s not the case just yet.

Later that day, as I started to plan out packaging things, I took a closer look at the books and disappointment started to build. There were a few minor issues on a couple of books. Bent corners and scuffed covers. Nothing crazy for an order of 700 books. But then I noticed the spines.

On nearly every book, at the top of the spine, there is a scuff mark. Its minor and probably exacerbated by the fact that it’s a black cover revealing a white scuff. But its on nearly every book. I initially ummmed and ahhhhed over how to handle this. Am I overthinking it? Is it only obvious with all the books together? Is it only obvious to me as I deal with books constantly? Will anyone care? Will the printer care?

Eventually I decided it wasn’t good enough. Folks that back crowdfunding projects honestly deserve the best quality product over nearly anyone else. You put your money out there with a chance of getting nothing in return. You don’t deserve scuffed edges. Even minor ones.

So, I reached out to the printer, and after some back and forth, they offered to take the books back and give me a credit for a reprint. A credit in particular, as I’ve decided I no longer want (or really trust) the stable-bound version that I first received and will be swapping to perfect bound print. The printers in general have been really helpful with the whole thing.

The scuffs in image form.

The books are still coming! What I did see, in terms of layout and art etc, looked really good. And all things considered this is a fairly good outcome. You’ll get the best products possible, just a few weeks later than planned.

In general, I’m hoping I’ll have the reprint and shipping underway before the end of March. The next update will be when the first lot of packages are out the door.

Thanks again for being here folks.
 Cheers,
 - Dan.

 

I've got a pretty big update for you this month, split between art and game design! Let's dig in!

First up, both Carly A-F and Lur Noise have turned in their art finals for the zine! Tim is making progress too, and I do have some more sketches to share. Note that the layout is a Work In Progress!

As I shared last month, Lur Noise blew the art brief outta the park. In addition to the NPC profiles, I also commissioned two other pieces. The first is a sort of chapter header at the split where the zine becomes tables tables tables.

The second piece is for the new cover, which I chose to change for two reasons: (1) I made the original cover when I wasn’t even confident this project hit its second stretch goal, and (2) working with Lur Noise has been amazing. I feel her art shows the zine’s heart, not to mention bringing a more unified art direction to tie the work together.

Not Enough Scoundrels was a much more modest project before launch, and the campaign success has given me the possibility to develop the zine for more longevity for which, again, I heartily thank you all, :) 

As I mentioned last month, Josh Domanski gave the most crucial feedback on the Campaign Framework and Spacecrawl. Cracking the issues he raised has been a lot more work than I expected, a process which took a ton of binned writing to finally figure out.

First, the Spacecrawl now has a new step: The Job Turn. As Josh rightly pointed out, the most crucial part of tramp freight work is finding the cargo, not drifting on the long road. The Job Turn provides guidance for Wardens on how to build out NPC-PC relations, how that works with the Faction dynamics, and getting those freight contracts. No one’s gonna give a bunch of nobodies their precious cargo, gotta do some Favors or maybe a little Job, yeah?

All of that keys into the new campaign framework. I binned the original framework centered around the Megafreighter, and now instead, invite your ship crew to the Sandcastle Sector:

The Sandcastle Sector is a sandbox of star systems, Ports and hyperlanes. This sandbox provides a Port’s Faction dynamics, hyperlane connections, and freight specialties to give your campaign the footing you need for all your space trucking and underhanded dealings.

The Ports on the Sandcastle Sector map are specifically only Trade Ports. There are other Ports within and hyperlanes out of the Sandcastle Sector. The campaign framework provides a dynamic gap to plug in other Mothership modules while being full enough of Scoundrels, Contraband, and Faction interplay to keep players engaged with the local social problems.

I’m very confident that this addition has made the zine a much better tool for space trucker and smuggling games, and most importantly, more immediately playable.

Last time I said I'd have the manuscript to Josh by the end of the week. That was before the Sandcastle Sector existed. It took a lot longer to figure out than I'd anticipated (while also, life was happening, hah). This time, I've already turned in the manuscript over to Josh for that second round of development. With the bulk of the changes made, I think the future revisions ought to be much smoother and quicker. 

To improve workflow on the digital assets, here's an update to the Project Timeline from the campaign page:

The next update for Not Enough Scoundrels is coming your way on March 24th. By then, I'm hoping that I’ll be working through copyediting. With most of the art complete, the visual updates will be focused on layout  progress and digital asset development. See ya after the equinox!

Chris Airiau

Hello everyone, we hope your week is going well! We just wanted to drop a few images of the test copy we received from our printers. This thing is sure to dazzle folks when you deal them a random PC at your next Mothership game. We're going to be doing some minor revisions and tweaks over the next couple of weeks and aiming to order the final product by the middle or end of March. Cheers and thanks for backing!