Locking addresses, and check out this art dump
over 5 years ago – Mon, Oct 05, 2020 at 08:55:46 PM

I warned you about surveys, bro! I told you dog!

I got some requests to keep the surveys open a little longer, so I'm holding until Monday the 19th. You can update your shipping details or change your address until then. If I lock addresses and you haven't done that, I am loading your book into a rocket and using it to knock Elon Musk's silly fucking space car into the Sun.

For now, here's some art and WIPs:

This in-universe website (about the Dreamers, by someone who doesn't know what Dreamers are) is by Mary Safro, author of the cyberpunk webcomic Drugs & Wires. It's really good and you should read it. Go ahead, I'll wait.

When you're done, here's a few more to tide you over:

September update (also: BackerKit CLOSES September 30)
over 5 years ago – Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 07:48:59 PM

Hey there! First:

BackerKit Closes September 30

The good news is that 93% of BackerKit surveys have been completed. The bad news is that still leaves 76 people who have yet to answer.

Again, I am closing the BackerKit on September 30. Fill yours out before October or I will feed your books to a Dreamer (see below). I've been sending out reminder emails, so check your inbox if you need a link. If you have a problem, PM me.

General Update

Anyway: last time I talked about our timeline, and said I'd be back this month with an update on how things are going. The short version is, so far so good.

Layout is happening! You can see a couple examples above. The back half of the book still needs some text, but I think that'll be done in time. The main problem at the moment is art—I've hired a lot of artists to get the book done, which means I'm relying on all their pieces being done on time. To be clear, if there's a problem it's my fault—I tried to hire some extra artists as we went along, but I didn't ramp that up as fast as I should have.

I have no reason to believe delays will happen right now, mind you. I'm sitting on a lot of art and sketches right now, and things seem to be coming along nicely.

That's all for now. If I have to push the game back a bit, I'll make that decision next update. To finish, I'd like to show you one more thing: a Blender model of Grand Cross I commissioned for art reference purposes. This is what the future could look like, folks:

August general update
over 5 years ago – Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 01:48:31 PM

Hey! Here's an August update to tide you over.

So, we're heading into the back half of 2020. The rough plan from here looks like this:

• Text-complete in September.
• PDF in the second half of October.
• At the printers in November.
• Shipped in December.

2020 has been a wild ride so far and I'm behind on a few things, but this plan remains in place. Here's the breakdown:

Setting Text

I'm still working on this. My main issue is that a lot of my writing time in the early months of 2020 was consumed by other things; I've had a lot of time recently, so I'm working on closing the gap. By September I should be on the end sections, so my main task will be getting them sorted while the rest goes through layout. The good news is that the main setting chapter—the biggest by far at ~25,000 words—is long done, so the hard part is out of the way.

I've also hired an editor. Shadocchi (http://www.insistonplot.com/) has a ton of experience with editing and has done a fantastic job so far!

Freelance

A few freelancers have yet to turn in their work, and I'll be chasing those up over the next month. Most have been added to the text already, though. 

Since we're near the end, here's a fun story:

I had trouble deciding between all the applicants, and I ended up hiring around 50 people to do a lot of really small entries. (Most of them were short locations, which will go into a special gazetteer in the Locations chapter, or NPCs.) Before that though, I had to figure out how many I could hire. In the end I decided to do it by word count: I took the money we set aside for writing, figured out how many words I could get at 15c/word, and commissioned text until that was filled.

Unfortunately, that 15c/word was in USD, and I forgot to convert the campaign's AUD total to USD first, so I ended up commissioning more words than the budget covered. Fucking oops!

The good news is that BackerKit already covered it and more, and I could have covered it if it hadn't, so I haven't been fussed about it. The other good news is that this means you get even more good freelance content, so I see this as a win!

Mechanics (with preview)

As before, Freyja is on track to be done on time. Not much to report here.

That said, I've added one more preview to the itch.io page, for the Community rules. Communities are rules-light and story-based to cut down on bookkeeping, so it's a short preview.

Art

So far things are fine on the art front. I've been talking about recruiting extra artists, and guess what: I did! The two pieces in this update Dreamers: the top one is Overthree from the demo scenario, and this second one shows the Parabots, little drones that accompany larger Dreamers when the GM wants to toughen them up a bit.

I've hired other artists for the remaining pieces, which I'll post once more of their pieces are done. Some of the artists I already hired have finished their sections and moved on to new ones as well. I'm going to hire another artist or two just in case someone gets blasted by Covid again, so if you know any really good ones let me know.

That's all for now! In a month from now I'll have a better idea of how things are going, so I'll be back then with news.

Surveys incoming, shipping costs included, and pre-order store open
over 5 years ago – Fri, Jul 10, 2020 at 08:15:59 AM

Hey there! Announcement time.

BackerKit

First, BackerKit surveys are coming soon. If you haven't used it before, BackerKit is a service that makes it easier for us to collect and organize backer information (mostly shipping addresses) and distribute digital rewards. You can find out more here.

Soon, you'll get an email (to the address you gave to Kickstarter) with a personalized link to your survey. Click the invite to go straight to the survey, no email required. We're asking what name you want to be credited under in the book, and where we're shipping your book if you ordered a print copy. While you're there, you can change your pledge level, add a tip, or pick up PDFs of my previous games as a bonus if you like.

Please allow some time for the survey to appear. We're doing a smoke test first, which means BackerKit sends the survey to 5% of backers to make sure it all works correctly. (This way, if there's a problem I get about 50 emails about it instead of 1,000.) Assuming nothing actually catches fire, the rest of the surveys will go out afterward.

We'll lock it down eventually, so please fill everything out ASAP! You can change your answers later. Finally, be aware that as mentioned in the campaign, we are charging shipping costs through BackerKit.

Shipping

When we lock down the survey later this year, we'll collect shipping charges from print tier backers. Here are our shipping costs, which were calculated based on quotes from our fulfillment service. Costs are in Australian dollars (AUD).

• EU: AU$18 
• UK: AU$11.50 
• US: AU$13 
• Everywhere else: AU$21 

If you back for a print copy, BackerKit will add shipping costs. You may switch to a PDF tier if that is better for you at this time.

Pre-Order Store

Finally: the pre-order store is open! If you have any friends who've been wanting to grab Hard Wired Island, now's your chance. If your friends haven't heard about it yet, now is a good time to tell them.

You can pre-order the PDF or the print copy, add a tip, or pick up PDFs of my previous games (look, they're good games, okay?). The store does not include the soundtrack, which neon shudder will sell directly via his Bandcamp once it's available, or the behind-the-scenes PDF, which I'm giving to backers first.

That's all for now. As usual, let me know if you have any questions. See you soon!

A June general update
over 5 years ago – Mon, Jul 06, 2020 at 05:11:33 PM

Hey there! Hope you had a good Pride Month. (The above art is a location from the preview scenario, which is going in the full book's scenario/plot hook chapter.)

It's been a while since we had a general update, so here's a fresh one for you.

BackerKit

We're finally locking in a plan for shipping, so we'll finish setting up BackerKit soon. I actually held this update off for a few days in case I could include this, but I need a little more time, so look out for that later this month.

Art

Art's doing fine. We've even got a new artist: Donald Kirby, who's drawing art for the "example of play" sections of the book. The examples have a stylized palette and comic-style panels to set them apart from the other pages:

So far, we've used about 3/4 of the art budget. The rest is going into smaller interior pieces, the remaining backer sample characters, and the cover. Since we've had some delays (caused by what I'm going to call 2020 In General), I'm going to try recruiting another artist too. If it all goes well and the pre-order store works out I might add a little to the art budget, but that's really down to how much time we have.

Writing

The big setting chapter is going into editing this week. This has been delayed too (ideally I'd be posting the edited chapter as a preview by now), but this chapter is the big one. The rest are simpler, so I'm hoping to finish in the next couple months and allow plenty of time for layout.

The rules (Freyja's part) are further along—we basically just need some extra character creation options and encounters, and they're done. She will be finished before I am (unless I save the Dreamers for last and then ask for stats, in which case I win!).

As for the freelance parts: most of that is done, and at this rate the rest should be in on time. Commissioning a lot of smaller pieces instead of a few big ones was tricky, but I think you'll like the result!

Other

Music's still in progress, so there's not much to say here! We're aiming to release the OST around the same time as the book, but really it can release whenever it's ready.

As for backers: Iconic-tier backers are starting to get their character art, and I'll talk to them about their character sheets once the rules are finished. The main backer thing I need to do besides that is put Name an NPC-tier characters in the game's random tables, and I'm saving those for last, so we'll talk later.

So, that's basically where we're at. If you have any questions, let me know and I'll answer as best I can. The next update will hopefully be BackerKit-related, but if it's not, I'll start throwing up more text previews. See you soon!