This is a big update, Vaulters: the Vault is in pre-production at the factory! Details below. No action required, unl...
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Mike Hayes
2 months ago
30 - October Progress Report & First Look at our functional prototype
This update shares ongoing Vault of Miny Things development, including testing a functional mockup of a content-complete Vault in actua...
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Mike Hayes
3 months ago
29 - Progress Report and New Delivery ETA
This update shows some of the significant challenges and progress with the Vault, and announces a further revision of the estimated delivery date: Spring 2025. It explains th...
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Tinkerhouse Games
5 months ago
28 - Let's look at some print proofs
Hello everyone, this is Tinker Chris here to talk a bit about printing and manufacturing. There is no action needed in this update.
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I've been busy getting everything finaliz...
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Tinkerhouse Games
5 months ago
27b - Locking Orders
The plan was to start the lock process last Friday, but that did not happen. We figure everyone received a little extra time for any last minute changes. That said we plan to pu...
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Tinkerhouse Games
6 months ago
27 - Time to start thinking about locking orders.
We are preparing to lock orders on BackerKit. Action may be required. Please read.
In this update we plan to explain what this means, what actions are required of you, and when...
This is a big update, Vaulters: the Vault is in pre-production at the factory! Details below. No action required, unless you have not yet completed your backer survey. This is a crucial step; please check your email and complete the form.
Production update:
With a product of our size we had to do a ton of back and forth with the manufacturer to get an accurate quote. Not just in terms of pricing, but also for engineering. Some of the components aren’t simple or standard pieces, so we had to get sign off from their engineers that the factory could actually manufacture what we needed them to make, and at the standards we require. AS an example: for ease of use and efficiency of cost, we intend for all walls in the Vault to be connectable via a single type of plastic wall connector. In this case the challenge we faced was that the Vault contains three different wall types that need to be manufactured in three different ways and maintain the exact same thickness–thereby ensuring every wall will sturdily fit into that universal connector.
After considerable back and forth on this and other topics we have finally received a quote that we are confident in, it has been officially signed, money has been wired, and we’ve entered the pre-production phase. Pre-production means that the factory will build all of the components in blank stock (without printing) to make absolutely sure that things function as intended. We’ve already started to receive some of these white samples already as you can see below:
White sample pieces (with black hand-inked barwork because these samples don't come with printing).
We’ve also received 3D printed versions of all of the plastic components from the factory as well–and they work great!
3D printed samples of wall connectors and standee bases.
Graveyard gate
Graveyard walls
Graveyard walls
Some Vaulters have reached out to us about final contents of the Vault of Mini Things, and now that we are moving into pre-production we can present to you the finalized component list: https://bit.ly/Vault-Contents. The final totals of standees and props in the final version of the Vault of Mini Things is 965, and they’re listed in that Google sheet. You may notice some small changes from the sheet we published earlier as we’ve had to make some decisions on components along the way, either due to factory capabilities or observations from user testing. When these decisions were made we did our best to improve on the original offering instead of making cuts. For example map tiles have different quantities because playtesting revealed that different biomes have different tile size needs. Dungeon map tiles include more of the smaller sized tiles for use as hallways or cramped dungeon rooms, while wilderness tiles come in larger sizes to reflect the great outdoors.
In the campaign we showed you walls panels featuring open door spaces, and solid wall panels featuring closed-door art. It seemed like a lot of redundancy just for the single function of “wall with door” so we decided to go with a single “door” wall panel featuring an open door void. If your game requires that panel to display a closed door, we solve that via a card featuring door art (in various styles) that can be inserted into that panel–thereby filling the door opening. The door cards insert from the top or the bottom of the walls and can be quickly and easily removed during play. How fun is that! Here are some renderings of those doors and door cards to show how it works:
Insertable door cards.
"Door wall panels" or "Wall panels with doors" -- you decide!
Finally, in the spirit of Thanksgiving everyone who backed, late-pledged, or pre-ordered the Vault of Mini Things before the end of this month will receive the 235 additional standees, props, and map tiles stretch goals as crowdfund extras. So let anyone you know that may be on the fence that they still have a couple of days left for these bonus items. This means that those who late-pledge after December 1st will not get the crowdfund extras (but will get the discounted-below-MSRP pre-order price).
As always: thank you for all the support Vaulters. Pre-production is a major milestone. Huzzah!
This update shares ongoing Vault of Miny Things development, including testing a functional mockup of a content-complete Vault in actual-play environments. No action is required.
Progress Report
No action is required… other than reading a bunch of text, if you’re so inclined. Vaulter, so much has happened since the last update. We’re delighted to be able to announce that the Vault itself is finally content art-complete. What this means is that all of the printed pieces that come in the Vault of Mini Things have front and back art. Marshall Short has been burning the midnight oil to get to the end of this massive art journey and he’s earned a well-deserved rest… which he’ll get to take AFTER he completes the last few remaining pieces of art for the add-ons.
He’s just completed some gorgeous art for the Graveyard set and is working on finishing up the ruins map tiles now. It’s worth repeating: while we are still working on the final few pieces for the Graveyard and Ruins terrain add-ons, all of the artwork for the contents of the Vault of Mini Things (and the other Add-ons) are in the hands of the manufacturer. Now that they’ve got all of our files we’re able to proceed to hashing out the particular details necessary for manufacturing, and examine factory proofs with final art. In other words: we’re getting very close to being able to hit “go” on the print run.
Graveyard Gander
It just so happens that one of the final pieces of art & engineering work coincides with the Halloween season. Let’s take a look at some of that work: the Graveyard Gate. Marshall’s art featured that classic Victorian ironwork we all associate with spooky cemeteries–probably due to Disney’s The Haunted Mansion attraction. We wanted the fine details of the ironwork to pop out–it seemed a shame to just print a black field in the void space between the bars, because it’d change something visually delicate and elegant into something clunky and plain. However, die-cutting such thin elements would be structurally unsound. So how to preserve the look without compromising quality?
Our solution is to invent a new process that sandwiches a thin printed acrylic sheet between two half-as-thick-as-usual punchboard pieces. This process shows off the ironwork while still giving the durability and heft of the rest of the terrain pieces in the Vault product line. We think the result is fantastic. Take a look:
Original art on left, sturdy-yet-still-beautiful art on right
The Graveyard add-on also got its own wall clip style that replaces the column artwork with a physical column wall clip. How cool is that!?
Look at these Graveyard wall clips!!
We expect these final bits of terrain to be complete in the next few days, and then we move on to packaging design. That work is greatly aided by the production and assembly of a:
Functional Prototype
Through the magic of 3d modeling and 3d printing we’ve been able to produce a functional prototype of the Vault’s external box and internal organizational components. This allowed us to load up the Vault with all of the components, thereby creating a dimensionally-accurate, content-complete, fully armed and operational Vault of Mini Things for live-fire testing a real game of Dungeons & Dragons. This step is crucial because we wanted to ensure that we can physically fit all of the content into the box, but also test that the content is easy and pleasurable to actually use in a real game.
We needed a working, usable prototype in order to be able to actively use the Vault in real D&D sessions. Doing so lets us test and ultimately improve the user experience. Are creatures and props easy to find, easy to deploy, and easy to put away? What about the terrain pieces? Map tiles? What are the pain points? How can we remove or mitigate them?
The 3D printed version of the box with our physical prototype contents within! We use this for playtesting at our team campaign D&D nights.
The upper box section removed from the outer box. Note the helpful notches in the large box shells for ease of getting to the interior boxes.
The upper box components spread out. Dice tray, bases and base art inserts, standee organization boxes.
Note that this functional prototype is the most recent in a long line of, shall we say, less functional prototypes. Previous iterations showcased some flaws in our original plans, or highlighted opportunities to make things better. For example, we discovered that our concept of swappable trays for terrain was just not going to work the way we originally intended. They created failure points and expensive complexity that just weren't justified for the convenience we were trying to provide. Our solution was to instead create vacuum formed trays for terrain specific types, and nest them internally. This gives the functionality we wanted to provide (the ability to customize a Vault's "loadout" for travel) while eliminating points of cost and structural failure.
The outer box components spread out. All terrain, wall clips, large standee pieces.
Real-world Playtest
We’ve been playtesting the Vault, with Tinker Lane as Dungeon Master starting a run into the Dungeon of the Mad Mage. We figured this was the perfect adventure to test the Vault because it’s a classic dungeon environment with a myriad variety of monsters and dungeon features. It's about as perfect as an ideal test scenario for what an actual customer would experience at home with their own Vault, and we figured it'd be a good stress test for our purpose.
Boy, were we right. Tinker Lane had prepped the first three encounters, as outlined in the book, but of course the game immediately went off the rails when our party succeeded on an improbable search check to find a secret spyhole, and then used a combination of a tiny Bat familiar and Mage Hand to open a one-way secret door from the inside. Off the party went in a completely unexpected direction, and Tinker Lane had to scramble to find and deploy map tiles and creatures on the fly. The good news is, the Vault’s Creature Catalog organization system let him quickly find those unexpected creatures and deploy them to the dungeon. Honestly, it was as perfect of a “real world” use case as we could have hoped for and we were all gratified to see the Vault come to the DM’s rescue.
Here are some as-it-happened-at-the-table snapshots of the first combat encounter. Note this wasn't a photoshoot of a well-lit, well-staged engineering session; the purpose of the playtest was to do it "live" and use the Vault in real-time just as any Dungeon Master would in their home game.
There were some useful takeaways at the end of the session from both the Tinker team and our volunteer testers. We’re changing up the card sleeve material so they’re less “slippery.” We’re taking another look at the divisions within creature types so they’re more useful. We’re creating a master index of every creature (name and Tab info) and deciding how to include that in the box as a second and complementary way to find the storage location of the exact creature you need. We’re examining the user experience of post-session cleanup, and experimenting with mechanisms for keeping track of where deployed creatures came from and “saving” the game state for instant and easy deployment of all entities at the start of the next session. The test game also revealed issues witherrors in our assumptions about quantities of bases, and how those will be stored inside the Vault. But we were very please with our casino chip-inspired storage system for bases and terrain pucks.
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We’ll wrap up this update with wishes for a wonderfully witchy Halloween, as welcomed by these wicked wretches:
Hello, just checking. I just moved and need to update my mailing and billing info. Address seemed straight forward in Backerkit. But for payment method, I went to update the cc and set it as default, but it still says 1 charge pending on the old card. Just want to be sure The Vault of Minis is set up to not have any issues.
Thanks,
Josh
This update shows some of the significant challenges and progress with the Vault, and announces a further revision of the estimated delivery date: Spring 2025. It explains the reasons for the revision and shares production progress. No action is required.
Delivery ETA
Four months ago in Update 25 we announced that our initial estimate of Late Summer/ Early Fall 2024 was too aggressive, and revised delivery to Fall/Winter. Despite our best efforts there’s no realistic way we’ll be able to deliver this Fall. Therefore we’re announcing a new ETA of Spring 2025.
Before getting into the specifics of the reasons for this delay I’d like to acknowledge DessieD and Crabby, who correctly anticipated this second delay in the comments of Update 25. Y’all’s experience with crowdfunding shows!
What went wrong
There are three primary factors contributing to the delay:
1. Art Production
By now every Vaulter is familiar with the amount and variety of minis included in the Vault of Mini Things and all the extras. It’s the most visceral, exciting, and noticeable amount of original art: 807 unique minis. And since the Vault’s minis feature front and back art, the art lift is actually double that. But the huge amount of art front and back creature art is not all that’s in the Vault.
What we did not correctly estimate is the amount of time required for production of object and terrain art. Torch stands. Bookcases. Pit traps. Sconces. Walls. Doors. Rubble. Terrain tiles, in particular, are taking much longer than anticipated. We could have simply repeated a basic texture in the myriad sizes of tiles we’re shipping with, but that’s not going to give the hand-drawn, bespoke look we’re going for. All that original art takes time–lots of time, and more than we thought. On the plus side, the terrain art is gorgeous:
2. Packaging & Manufacturing Complexity Thinking of the Vault as a product, it’s a product with 1,855 individual pieces. All of those pieces have to go in a single box, and because a core value proposition of the vault is saving you time through thoughtful organization, each of those pieces has to have a specific spot in the box. We don’t want to ship a box of loose stuff for you to sort through. This engineering has taken considerable time due to back-and-forth with our manufacturer in China*.
3. Wall Engineering Update 25 spent a lot of words on our struggles with engineering for wall connections, and our proud presentation of finally settling on a solution. After months of prototype iteration and playtesting we were all pretty excited about what we came up with. Unfortunately, that solution failed when we received fabricated samples from the factory. We were testing on 3-d printed prototypes we printed here, in-house, and while the interaction between the material in those prototypes and the wall material works well, the interaction of the factory’s production material and the wall material does not work as well as we want. In short: the factory material is not as tacky/grippy as our printed prototypes. So it was back to the drawing board for wall connections.
What went right
The good news is that we’ve got a tremendous amount of work done. We’ll show some of that work below, but the upshot is: each time we finalize an aspect of this project the total amount of unknowns decreases, and the more confident we can all be in the ETA. It’s like the reverse of entropy. The Vault of Mini Things: defying the second law of thermodynamics!
1. Wall engineering
Didn’t we just see this in “What went wrong?” Yes, the factory sample interaction was a blow but we bounced back with a furious period of rapid prototyping. Tinker Lane applied his 3D modeling prowess and decades of wargaming experience, and Tinker Chris brought his design eye and materials engineering experience to bear. The final design is a wall-join piece that is good-looking, simple-to-use, and functional. Take a gander:
Pillars of the Vault
2. Mini sheet engineering & mini organization
Tinkers Mike, Lane, and Chris gathered to do a manual QA pass of freshly laser-cut prototype figures (lasered along the die-lines we’ve specified for the factory) and sort them into sleeves. The whole process of sorting the minis into categories, then sorting the categories into alphabetical order (made easier by the tab numbering system previewed in Update 26), and then sleeving the minis into our custom top-load landscape-orientation card sleeves took the three of us about 45 minutes–and that included pauses for Scotch.
Everyone always looks their best in candid shots, don't they?
In the above photo Tinker Chris is pointing out the pleasingly snug fit of the prototype terrain-sorting tray that Tinker Lane has designed. Notice the Grip Notches (tm) at one end, to facilitate swapping terrain trays in and out of your Vault according to your session's needs. The lasercut minis themselves have been temporarily sorted into Ziplocks--something Backers will never have to deal with, thanks to the Vault's organization system.
A convivial way to spend an evening with friends, to be sure, but more importantly we confirmed that the dielines were spot-on and that the tabs and categories make it easy to find and sort the vast array of creatures in the Vault. And, Tinker Chris even came up with a clever brand name for our card catalog-inspired organization system as a whole: he’s dubbed it the “Dungeon Decimal System.”
Prototype of Dungeon Decimal system
3. PAX West
PAX started in the Seattle area (ask me how I know!), so it’s very little effort to stand up a booth in the tabletop area. Boxes of the Vault aren’t available for sale, of course, but we bring a collection of minis and terrain for display in order to generate interest. And wow, was the response ever positive!
How it started
How it went
As we’d just done a pass of our finalized mini sheets, for this show we brought a much larger contingent of minis than we’d ever brought before. It was a genuine delight to spread them across the table and then see folks’ necks turn as they walked by and clocked the sheer number of gorgeous creatures spread across our table. It really proved our selling point that Marshall’s art not only looks great on a screen, but looks great at table-play distance.
Nice spread!
Many PAX-goers stopped by to chat about the Vault over the course of the show, and it was a huge morale boost to hear things like:
“I’ve been looking for something like this for a long time.”
“Oh wow, look! They’re front-and-back!”
“So, since they pack flat, I can have, like, a dozen skeletons?”
“It comes with terrain too? Take my money!”
“This is gonna be way easier to take to my friend’s house.”
Dungeons & Dragons (and heroes and animals and Village and Wilderness and Ruins and giants and a goddamn T-rex and...)
At one point a group walked up to check out the minis. I asked them if they played D&D. One person in the group said “Oh yeah. Lifelong DM.” Another person in the same group said they were just starting out. I said “Then the Vault is for you. Both of you. It’s for someone just starting out who doesn’t have a lot of stuff, because it has everything you need in one box. And it’s for a long-time player who has accumulated a lot of mis-matched stuff over the years, because you can leave all that stuff behind and just take this one box.”
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While things are continuing to move in the right direction and the number of open project tasks continues to whittle down, we folks here at TinkerHouse understand that it’s disappointing to hear of delays in ETA. If Spring 2025 doesn’t work for you, we invite you to get in touch and we’ll issue a full refund of your pledge. And if you can wait just that bit longer for your Vault: thank you very much for your ongoing support!
Sincerely,
Mike, Lane, Chris, and Marshall
* We wish we could work with a USA-based manufacturer, because that would vastly speed up production back-and-forth and shipping. We’ve looked at every manufacturer in the space. No one yet can handle the precision of die-cut tool making that we require.
