WIP Wednesday Update for December 6, 2023
6 months ago – Wed, Dec 06, 2023 at 10:37:19 AM

Hello Backers!

First off, sorry for the long delay between updates. November was an incredibly busy month for the podcast, between our first live convention event at AcadeCon in Ohio, wrapping up our production schedule for the rest of the year, and getting ready for the holidays with our families! But we wanted to touch base on progress, timelines, BackerKit surveys, etc to keep you in the loop on where we are and provide some sneak peeks at what is to come next year!

Progress and Timelines

This is probably of the most interest to all of you since you backed the project! We are wrapping up the core writing on the book right now, with the aim of having it all done by early January. From there, the process that we follow is a collaborative one. All three of us are going to read everything written by the others, leave feedback and suggestions, and do whatever rewrites are necessary. After that, we hand it off for editing, and as individual documents get “Glenned Up”, Josh will start doing the layout. Once the PDF is complete, we will send it off to the printers for proof copies, make last minute adjustments, and order our print run and begin distributing. All that to say, based on our original project estimates, we are about a month ahead of where we thought we would be right now (which is awesome).

BackerKit Surveys

We have already built out the Backerkit survey and storefront for after pledge orders, so that is going to be coming to you pretty soon. Part of the reason is that one of our Add-Ons was for you to work with us on an NPC for the book, so we need to know who those NPCs are going to be! These will be additional NPCs on top of the one or two that each faction was already going to get. If you have never gone through this part of the process before, what happens is that we request a "smoke test", which will email the surveys to a handful of you. That will give us a final chance to work out any of the kinks in the process before sending out the remaining surveys about a week later. So watch your inboxes!

Pre-order Store

If you are wondering why we are opening up an aftermarket store for this project, when we haven’t before, there are a few big reasons. For one, now that we are doing physical books, we want to make sure that anyone who wants a hard cover, stickers, pin, etc can get it in this initial run. That just makes it easier for everyone involved. For two, we are actively working to bring the book to other retailers, and this gives them a place to get their orders in also. Lastly, and this is sort of a mea culpa from Josh, because we are still learning how this all works, we inadvertently locked PDF backers out of getting any of the physical Add-Ons. Whoops. Don’t worry, though, most of the Add-ons will stay exclusive for you folks who backed during the campaign.

So, what’s next?

Well, as the writing wraps up on this project, there are a couple of smaller projects that we will be launching in the first quarter of next year. The first is a “Make 100” campaign on Kickstarter, “A Catalogue of Relics of Power”, which is a pseudo in-game book containing one hundred magic items written by renowned traveler and scholar Arthur Thel-am-Rajai (he has appeared in other books before…). And we are putting together another small project for ZineQuest in February. More details on both of those to come!

Thank you all for your support, as this project shapes up, it is really taking on a special character. These factions are so much fun to write, we hope you enjoy them as much as we do. Please feel free to send us any questions you have either by commenting here, or you can email us at [email protected].

We will update you again after the holidays, and wish you and your families a safe, happy, healthy end of year.

Josh, Glen, and Lewanika

Update for October 26, 2023
7 months ago – Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 07:56:00 AM

Hey friends, apologies in advance for missing the normal Wednesday Work in Progress update. The tragedy in Lewiston, ME last touched a lot of us pretty personally, so we were fully allocated there.

But obviously, we have some exciting things to talk about because the campaign successfully funded!

We owe you all a tremendous thank you for backing this project, we are really excited to be bringing these Factions to you. We didn't hit many of our stretch goals, so while we aren't going to change our estimated timeline just yet, since the majority of the rough draft writing is complete already, we should have some exciting news for you all sooner than we thought. And a really special thank you to our Retail Backers who went above and beyond to bring this campaign to life. We are pumped, and will be talking about ways to come visit and work with you all when the books come in to plan something awesome, so stay tuned!

So, what's next?

Well, Kickstarter will start charging the cards they have on file and reconciling all of that. Once that is complete, they will start the process of transferring the funds to us. That process takes a couple of weeks. After that, backers who picked up the "Make me an NPC" Add-on should expect a word so that we know what those NPCs should look like. We'll get writing those and hand those off to the artists for portraits.

We'll be using Backerkit again for distribution of the rewards, but we'll be sure to keep you in the loop here as well when those surveys go out so that we can collect physical addresses. There will be another occasion to add those Add-ons too. It looks like we accidentally locked PDF Backers out from getting any of the physical items (t-shirts, mugs, pins, stickers, etc). Totally unintentional, and we will make sure to configure the Backer Kit options to let you get those items if you would like.

On the book printing front, we "budgeted" three months for turn around there. I did a quick mock up with our printer based on the estimated page count of the book and the number of books that we are going to need, and they estimated about two weeks for delivery once we submit the order. The goal will be to get all physical items sent at roughly the same time, even if they are coming from different providers, so that you get everything at the same time, but all things are looking good on that front so far.

We don't want to burden you with updates, so I would expect to hear from us every two weeks, on Work in Progress Wednesdays, or whenever we have a major milestone to talk about or need input on. If you ever have any questions along the way, please do not hesitate to reach out. You can find all of our social media at https://linktr.ee/ttjourneys or you can message us directly here through Kickstarter.

Thank you again so very sincerely, and we'll be in touch!

Josh, Glen, and Lewanika

Wednesday Update, October 18th 2023
7 months ago – Wed, Oct 18, 2023 at 06:42:12 PM

Hello Backers! Hope that you have had an awesome week. After the bustle of making sure that we got over the finish line for this campaign, we took a couple of days to relax, but that is not going to last long! We're already talking about how to round out this particular campaign, and we'll have some more insights on that next week after the campaign officially draws to a close. In the mean time, here are a couple of headlines

Live shows

There are going to be two opportunities to catch the three of us live next week, and we hope that you stop by to let us thank you! Plus they would both be great forums to ask questions about this project, other projects, and what's coming next. 

On Monday, October 23rd at 8pm EST, you will be able to catch us with Fool's Moon for their monthly Geek and Greet.  You can find them on twitch here:  https://twitch.tv/foolsmoonei

And then on Tuesday, October 24th at 8:30pm EST, we will be live on our YouTube channel just celebrating the end of our second successful Kickstarter!  Subscribe here to get notified when we go live:  https://www.youtube.com/@ttjourneys

Projects that caught our eye

There are two campaigns that really stood out to us this week. The first is one that we heard about from friend of the show Josh Heath, from whom we would buy pretty much anything that he worked on. The campaign for Gun Belt starts tomorrow, and looks freaking AMAZING. Aliens? Cowboys? Dinosaurs? Yes, please.  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/reelfunstudios/the-gun-belt-the-roleplaying-game

The other one comes from Mériate Games, and dives (ha) into a game filled with Pirates and Sea Monsters. It's a small campaign, but seems the artwork in particular looks great. Can't wait to see this one come to life too!  Check it out here! 

So what's next?

Well, now that we have funded, we are hoping to knock down some of these stretch goals. We have a big art tier, and we would love to get to the Backgrounds and Feats tier too, because we think they would round the book out really nicely.  So if you have the chance to share, talk up the campaign with your friends, or otherwise help us get the word out about this great book, you can help us get there!

Alright friends, that is all for now, we will talk to you again next Wednesday when we do the campaign wrap up and talk about what's next.

Thanks again for supporting us and this project!

Josh, Glen, and Lewanika

One more quick update
7 months ago – Sun, Oct 15, 2023 at 04:06:05 PM

Hey all, just a quick message, and hopefully the message you have all wanted to hear as much as we have wanted to say it...

We successfully funded about a half hour ago!

That's all. More to come later!

A quick Friday update...
7 months ago – Fri, Oct 13, 2023 at 05:51:42 AM

The Faction Sigil Pin Poll (phew) has closed, and we have declared a winner...

Want to get your limited Edition Pin of the sigil for The Ivory Compass? They are available as an Add-On, or if you choose to donate a hard cover book to your favorite library or school TTRPG club, we'll throw in one for free!

One more piece of business from earlier in the week...

You know, I got so excited about the weekly Wednesday update that I neglected to mention one of the awesome Kickstarter projects that I have been following. We are big fans of loud music, so we could not back "Stairway to Heaven" by Greedy Gorgon Press fast enough. The art looks PHENOMINAL, the story lines are engaging and it's already funded so you know it's coming out! Check it out today, you will not regret it!