Hello everyone,

Wanted to let you know we are continuing to make good progress on the book.  We will hold our monthly update at the end of the month to let you know our progress.  However, some urgent issues have recently arisen, and I wanted to let you know what we're doing about it. In addition, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.  Bottom line: None of these issues shouldn't slow down our book's development, but I wanted to let you know what we've been dealing with, in case it comes up in the future.

Yesterday, core members of our incredible art team spotted some discrepancies with an outside artist we had recently brought to Io Publishing to help with spot illustrations. As we were developing some prop pieces, our art team grew suspicious that this artist may have been using AI Generation as part of their process, and then painted over the result. While the artist claims AI Generation was not used, they did mention their process involved painting over already pre-rendered images they had a license to. Essentially, the artist was combining a bunch of assets and then painting over them, and when we looked closely, we discovered discrepancies that may have suggested AI usage. Because there were art pieces that were put into question with evidence suggesting these pieces were not credible, we ultimately decided to strip all the art this artist made from the book and start from scratch.  Fortunately, it doesn't set us too far back (our art progress after this is now at 59% as of today, down from 61% from our previous update) - it's still a setback.

Fortunately, this artist has not had their work published in an Io Publishing product.

How was this allowed to happen?
At Io Publishing, we thoroughly vet our artists when bringing them in. We ensure they have an established portfolio and some online presence that can be verified, and we have our artists sign a contract explicitly stating that the work they make is of their creation, with No AI-generated art allowed in any way - and that all work is original. The artist in question was a well-established traditional artist with a following, which we verified. The art given initially for the first couple of pieces didn't raise any red flags, but as development continued, their art style changed. Unfortunately, because trust had already been established, we were not on high alert to verify the integrity of their project. Our core art team, who had more of a trained eye, noticed the discrepancies and then began going through all their work to outline where the deceptions were being taken. Personally, my belief that AI is a detriment to the survival of artists led me to believe that a traditional artist would not use AI or any deceptive practice to ensure their credibility. I was incorrect. Sadly, some traditional artists have started to embrace AI Generation as a time saver because their knowledge of the craft allows them to paint over AI discrepancies easily. Fortunately, there are still artists who can see when these methods are being deployed. We've entered a new age of technology, with AI getting better all the time - making it hard to be vigilant when creating a product created by human artists, not AI generation.

What are you doing to prevent this from happening again?
We're putting more checks into place and placing our new artists on a probation period to allow us to inspect any pieces created thoroughly. Our core art team will also keep an eye on new pieces as they are developed, allowing us to become familiar with the artist's style and inquire further when styles have suddenly changed. This will always be a work in progress, but we will stand by our commitment to not allow AI-generated work in our products.

As the world embraces AI, our goal will always be celebrating human achievement, and we want to work with people who believe in that. AI will always take away from human creativity, and we will not knowingly work with artists who have embraced deceptive tactics that take away from that.

First, I want to express my gratitude to our wholesale dice partner, Fanroll, for all that they have done for us with WSD: Fishing and the designs for Fiendish Forge. This is not meant to be a sleight of hand toward them but to inform you about what is happening and why we're redesigning our dice set.

As mentioned, Fiendish Forge is working alongside Fanroll to provide incredible dice sets for you all, since I know Dice Sets are a pretty important part of the TTRPG Culture and to you, the audience.

As you can see below, we were delighted with their design for the Wyvern Blood Liquid Core.

However, in February 2025, I learned that Fanroll had recently gotten a partnership with Wizards of the Coast to make a Dungeons and Dragons Liquid Core Dice set to celebrate D&D 2024's release. When I noticed the dice set they had released, I was very alarmed that the set they are now selling was the same style as the Wyvern Blood Dice Set we advertised for our campaign.  The only exception is that the max dice logo has been replaced with the D&D Ampersand.

Needless to say, I was incredibly distraught discovering this while we were still developing for Fiendish Forge. I contacted Fanroll to inquire further, and they informed me that it was a coincidence and that they were only using D&D's brand colors. They apologized for not catching it on their end.

Because of this, I have asked Fanroll to provide a new design for our Wyvern Blood Dice.  I want our dice sets to reward a unique so that you feel like you're getting something new - and not anywhere else. Finding our dice set was now being sold as something different by another company (the behemoth of all TTRPG companies), but it was not something I wanted our customers to experience.  So, with that, I'd like to introduce our new Wyvern Blood Dice Set!

We are still making some adjustments. I like this style more, including getting the color right on the dice font.  The dice itself has more of a red tint, which I was initially going for to give it a "blood" feel.

I would love to get your thoughts, especially if you are back to set our dice!  Would you want us to stay with what we originally designed, even though another company is now branding it as their own dice set, or do you like the new direction and look we are going for with the Wyvern Blood Dice Set? Does it matter either way to you?  Please be sure to comment below!

Emergency updates in crowdfunding typically spell uncertainty in a project but rest assured; we are still making terrific progress. As we've always stated - the book is done when it's done, and we do not promise release dates or windows if we encounter some bumps. I also believe that we haven't hit any delays.  We were almost wrapped up with our spot arts for quests, but now we have to go back and redo some. Fortunately, the artists developing this were not involved with our prop art development - which was our current focus. We were hoping to move one of our core artists to props, but now they have to work on an additional core illustration for a monster, which will probably take another month - before we move them to props. Ultimately, we're still making significant progress, and I believe we're developing our book after than most crowdfunded books.

At the end of the day, we're still on track to making a fantastic book about Boss Battles, Gathering Materials, and Crafting Monstrous Items for your 5e games (whether you play 2014 or 2024).

It's very easy to be an open book when you're proud of what you're accomplishing. If you have any questions, statements, or concerns, please post them below, and I will answer when able!

Thank you again for your support.

Brett

Hi everyone!  Brett here with your monthly update on Fiendish Forge!
We're making some progress - but my illness slowed down a lot of it throughout the development team (myself included).  I'm hoping next month will progress better.  Even with that - though - we still got a lot done this month!

Here is where we are at:

Writing: 73%
Design: 54%
Art: 61%
Total: 63%

We are currently working on designing the book with magic items and materials. I hope to work on more stat blocks soon, but the design is being worked on alongside the art. As for creature art - we only have 2 more pieces to work on before we can consider it wrapped up!  All of the creature entries have been written!

All in all, we're making some good progress. We're also working on our first IOverse Adventure Module—Keld Fallen! We have a different team working on this, with a different set of skills. Keld Fallen is a 5e compatible adventure module that brings a lot more to the table then our 1st party counterparts.  All NPCs will be fully illustrated, plenty of maps (not just for dungeons and battles, but also for roleplay scenarios) - all told in an open-ended adventure where the party chooses how to fulfill their goal - and plenty of repeat value!  Keld Fallen will also have Phase Combat, so I hope you're looking forward to our next book. We will also be including a Foundry VTT module with everything you need to run the adventure online. We're not ready to announce when our Kickstarter will start up - but you can get notifications right now for when we do! Stay tuned for future announcements.

You can get notified here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iopublishing/keld-fallen

Thanks for your support! Feel free to comment if you have any questions, otherwise - see you all next month!
Brett

Hello everyone!

We'll be releasing an update over the next few days with where we're at with Fiendish Forge.  As of right now, we're making some progress, but due to a lot of illness throughout the team, progress has been slow this month - but progress was still made!

Today's post is more an inquiry about what you - the consumer - is interested from with Io Publishing!  Your feedback will help determine the projects and crowdfunding we do in the future.  If you could take some time to fill out this survey - it would be greatly appreciated!

You can find the survey here!

Thank you!
Brett

Hello everyone!

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season.  With the holidays wrapped up, the team is hard at work continuing Fiendish Forge!  A lot of work still needs to be done, but we're hoping to start picking up the pace now that we've got our foundation and direction in place.

Let's break down the numbers:

There will be a total of 48 entries in Fiendish Forge. This does not include the Night Despot, our early adopter reward for our backers.  As you know, each entry will contain a description with regional effects, a stat block (sometimes multiple), a quest, a list of materials that can be gathered from the creature, and 2 pages of magic items.  Each entry, on average, has at least 6 items, meaning we will have 288+ Craftable Magic Items in this book.
We now have the confirmed list of creature entries! The creatures' entries are Aboleth Prime, Ancient Treant, Animated Armory, Voltaic Ankheg, Astral Tarrasque (Originally Winged Tarrasque), Axe Beak Executioner, Blast Beetle, Bloodmantle, Cerberus, Chimeric Cockatrice, Clockwork Spider, Condemned Hag, Couatl Hydra, Crab Legion, Cruel Hyena. Envy Dragon, Wrath Dragon, Red Dragon Turtle, Dretch Duke, Hurricane Elemental, Magma Elemental, Ettin Council, Face Stealer, Fallen Hero, Forlorn Knight, Gibbering Congregation, Berlugh Goblin, Hecaton Arthropod, Kaasma Spawn, Madam Hush, Mariyaga, Morass Lurker, Morelmind, Ogre Gladiator, Rat King, Revelation, Thunderhead Roc, Sarratos, Shadow Giant, Spinal Overlord, Sprite Mother, Stirge Broodmother, Titan Colossus, Troll Grafter, Troll Terror, Vampire Lord, Wyrmech, Wyvern Queen.

What creature entry are you most curious about?  Comment below, and perhaps we'll release updates about them!

We're making excellent progress with everything we can put in the layout to show how many pages we're looking at. The book will be at least 320 pages, but perhaps more, so it will be massive.

Writing Report: We currently have 48/49 creatures written for - including descriptions, region effects, and quest rough drafts.  We have all material names and descriptions written out and currently have a list of pitched items for every creature entry.

Design Report: Originally, the book would be a standard creature compendium - with legendary and lair actions and following the standard 5e formula.  Before Fiendish Forge had its Backerkit, I ultimately decided that this was an opportunity to go beyond standard 5e combat - and bring our Phase Combat mechanics into the fold - something we've been running in our streamed Io games.  With that, creatures have become more complicated to design - needing more time. This also included re-writing all the stat blocks I had written to follow this format.  Crafting also received a significant phase life from when the project began - as we tried to streamline the system to be powerful and comprehensive.  This involved reworking items to fit recipe formulas for crafting - which has added more time to the creation process. Materials are essentially done since they follow a specific formula and format and are created as needed when we work on magic items for a specific entry. Right now, what is needed most is writing our Magic Items out - and fortunately, with our writing team having pretty much wrapped up writing their descriptions, region effects, and quests - some of them are moving over to help with magic item creation.  We're also actively looking and bringing on new writers to help with this - so I'm hoping we'll have made more progress next month.

Art Report: Our art Progress is coming along!  The creature entry art themselves is mainly done (82% complete!) with spot art right behind (67%).  Much like with the writing, once all the creature art entries are complete, we'll be moving over artists to work on Material and Magic Item Art, which we currently need more of.  We're also on the look out for more artists with experience in prop art - so if that is something you think you'd want to be a part of - send you portfolio over to [email protected]

I feel confident we'll be compatible with both 2014 and 2024 versions of 5e. We received notification in May that SRD 5.2 will include the updated ruleset for 5e - allowing us to work on this commercially - but we also understand that a lot can change with that. We should get this new SRD in February 2025 and better understand what we're working with.  Contingency plans are in place in case another OGL Debacle occurs with the newer SRD - so rest assured this book will still be completed - it may just take extra time.

Currently, we do not have an ETA, but we hope to have the book completed by this year. The changes from a standard creature compendium - to an in-depth book about boss fights in 5e with comprehensive crafting toolsets have added more work and time to the book - but ultimately, I feel it will elevate the quality quite a bit.  Once the book reaches review state - we'll be charging for all preorders - but you will be notified when that occurs.

The playtest information we received has been phenomenal, but we're slowing down on playtests for now as we flesh out the book. We'll continue them in the future with higher CR creatures - which will require more work as 5e tends to get a bit unstable at higher levels above 10. So stay tuned!

Be sure to leave them in the comments below! And thank you for your support!!

-Brett