Mining town done
over 3 years ago – Sun, Jan 31, 2021 at 09:26:46 PM

Changed the layout completely to be more faithful to the original but maximize possible reconfigurability within that constraint. I’m really happy with the result, it’s a very nice little town that can be shuffled into many sensible layouts. This marks the completion of the maps art for this project, and I will now move on to making the carts, both the art and the die, and the squad minis die. I expect all that to be done by the end of next week.

Small map progress update
over 3 years ago – Fri, Jan 22, 2021 at 04:19:24 PM

Hello wonderful people, Philip here. I have been neglecting to take proper care of myself in order to blast through the art for your Hardbound Support packs. Normally I have almost no awareness that I should communicate with anyone about anything, but Josh has reminded me, so let me share with you some pictures I took with my phone camera like a caveman:

Major Art Update, all remaining customs sketched, baby Zelda was born.
over 3 years ago – Wed, Dec 09, 2020 at 08:04:58 AM

Lots to update! I'll try to keep things quick.

Another Baby was Born!

In our last update, we mentioned that Philip had just had a baby girl. Now Josh has had his baby girl too! Zelda Joanne Wardrop was born November 30th, so Josh has been working from home for a bit and changing a lot of diapers. Good times.

All HBS1 Customs should now have sketches

Here's a major art dump for new pieces and sketches, some of them have been colored/refined, and there ARE adjustments to some of these after the sketch was shown, but we're dropping what we have.

(These are not to scale)

We believe with these sketches, every custom piece has now been sketched and shown to it's commissioner. Of course, mistakes happen, so if you haven't seen yours (or especially if it isn't even shown here) let us know! There are some corrections and feedback, so changes to some of these will still occur.

Maps Update for OOTB

All map pages for OOTB are finished, minus a few adjustments to the boat pages. This campaign had 16 "pages" of maps, double sided. Normally that would mean 32 map tiles.

For OOTB however, we've done something for the first time. These pages are printed, laminated, and trimmed down to 11x17 just like before. But in this project, a few of these pages are then cut down again - creating some "map cards" of smaller sizes. Some of the pages are cut in half on their short edge (Teavern, Cottage). Some of the pages are cut in half on their long edge (airship, boat). And the final page is actually cut into 4ths creating 4x (double sided, so 8x) tiles that are 5x8".

These tiles work for small dungeon alcoves, inside the burial mound, the 3x floors of the Eternal Ediface, a ruined farmhouse, and the inside of a magical wagon (where the inside is larger than the outside, similar to a medieval Tardis).

I can't wait to see how the audience likes these 'map cards', and they open a lot of doors for future ideas, such as decks of smaller map tiles.

Here's a quick sampler of map pages from OOTB:

Most of these maps are already printed and waiting for final assembly. We'll have the last of the maps finished and printed this week, and then we'll move onto the Object sheets to finish up this project.

HBS1 Maps

The maps for HBS1 will be faster to complete than these were. The HBS1' map layouts are already done, and now even more textures are finished. It had been a considerable amount of time since Phil had done any major mapwork. After making the Tundra, Swamp, Hayfields, and large town buildings from scratch, he's back at the top of his game and crushing out maps faster than ever.

Digital Releases

We'll be creating immediate listings on DriveThrurpg.com for OOTB VTT Minis, HBS1 VTT Minis, OOTB Maps, and HBS1 Maps.

All 4 of these packs will be "released" ASAP, so we can send them out to you guys via email (all backers will recieve all 4x packs), even though they aren't all complete. So whether they're 50% or 80% or 100% ready, you'll get voucher codes and be able to download the assets that ARE ready right away.

Then, as the packs are completed and update, you'll get occasional updates to re-download if you wish.

OOTB Art - Free Download for all Backers - Maps being printed
over 3 years ago – Sat, Nov 14, 2020 at 02:48:46 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Production Update - Hardbound Support and OOTBE
over 3 years ago – Fri, Oct 02, 2020 at 05:28:53 PM

 Okay, it's been a while and I'm sorry about that. We have a bit to go over. I said in a comment that theres "not much to update" but as I went over the smaller things that should be mentioned theres actually quite a lot.

I'll try to be as direct and clear as I can about all the remaining steps and whats causing the delays.

The TL/DR version is that OOTBE should be able to ship in a month, and HBS1 within 2-3. Delays of course are always unfortunate, and in this case we're just going to be as clear and forthcoming as we can be, because most of these issues are out of our hands.

Ultimately, things are waiting on finalized artwork from Damien, and once the artwork is ready, everything else should be ready to go. Manufacturing issues have been quite good lately. Other micro-projects will be launching that are not art-related because they're ready to launch, and don't affect this delivery cycle.

Intended Timeline

First, I want to explain what was supposed to happen: As a kickstater-based company, we just keep making new things, and launching them as projects. We've got many more projects coming down the pipeline, and 2020 was gonna be a great year for us.

So, the "plan" - clear out the legacy items from old projects that are "stuck", launch a new project (HBS1) that does NOT promise any new tangent items or unlock versions that are likely to get "stuck", and therefore have a clean production schedule. Taking on OOTBE will work fine, since it's essentially just 'more' of exactly what we're already making in HBS1. We can fold the development together, and we can do these 2 projects back to back, with a microproject in between somewhere.

So, HBS1 should have been shipping in July or so. And OOTBE can ship after that say September-October or so.

COVID Timeline

With COVID, we have delays, and I'll explain more of the details later, but whats happening in this case, is that the Nerdarchy Out of the Box Encounters book is done. The books delivered to our warehouse, and we shipped domestic copies in record time. It's a little unfortunate, but we have an obligation to get the OOTBE Arcknight kits out the door along with the books as soon as possible, but in order for that to happen, it's going to leapfrog HBS1, and push it back even further.

Now, normally I would strongly resist this happening, but there are some other factors to consider, like "is anything else delaying either of these projects ANYWAY.

In evaluating them against each other, HBS1 does need more art, has more customs (so the art takes longer per-piece), and is STILL having issues with the custom cases from Ultimate Guard (more on all these details later).

So, the bottom line is that OOTBE can reasonably ship right away, where HBS1 will have some delays regardless, and we can clear our obligation with Nerdarchy as quickly as possible. With this weighing on us, we've decided to push for OOTBE to be finished first, then finish HBS1.

It's also important to understand that different people are responsible for different elements in each project.

They cant be compared 1:1 as a whole, because while a project is waiting on final artwork, our sculptor may literally have nothing to do. So - of course they begin development of a new project. I mentioned earlier our intention to have a "micro-project" land this year, and we have essentially 3 micro projects that are "ready go to" despite the art delays in OOTBE and HBS1. We're likely to be launching one of them, since it will have no impact on these delivery times.

What needs to be done for OOTBE?

Minis

Sketched Artwork - 164/168 complete

Finalized Artwork - 131/168 complete

Finalize and Print - 3 Minis Pages - 1/3 Complete

Maps

22 Full-Page Maps - 14 done / 8 designed.

16 Half-Page Maps - 8 done / 8 designed.

8 Quarter-Page Maps - 8/8 Done.

Doodad Pages

Layout and Design - 90% Finished. (Full Details Later)

New Objects Die - Designed, Not Created Yet (very complex)

Other Stuff

Book - Ready in our warehouse.

Bases - Already cut and waiting. 

Packaging - Already purchased and waiting.

What needs to be done for HBS1 (LMOP)?

Minis

Main Pack - 84/84 Sketched, 57/84 Finalized

PCXP Starter PC Expansion Pack - 56/64 Sketched, 35/64 Finalized.

Warbands - 70/70 Sketched, 50/70 Finalized (Some duplicates)

Maps

34/36 Sketched, 11/36 Finalized

Other Stuff

New Dies - Ambush Cart (very easy), Warbands (moderately easy). Designed, Not Created Yet

Regular Bases + Horse Bases - Already cut and waiting.

Colored Bases (4 Colors) - Already cut and waiting. 

Packaging - Already purchased and waiting.

Bonus Item - Colored Mounts of many shapes and sizes - Already cut and waiting.

Custom Ultimate Guard Flexxfolios - Major Delays. Will Discuss below.

Nutshell

Philip is spending his days on the OOTBE Object Sheets. The die, and the layouts, and pretty insane. The project requires 2 pages, that we've created to die-cut in the same die, and it's nearly done.

Once he's done with this, as long as he can finalize the maps before Damien could finalize all the artwork, there was no delays on his end. This has been our assumption all along.

So the "Nutshell" take away, is that everything is waiting for Damien's finalized artwork. I'll talk more below about the details, but we can expect about 1 piece per workday going forward (5 pieces per week).

• OOTBE needs about 30 pieces of art, so our estimate is end of October.
• HBS1 needs about 70 pieces of art, so our estimate is end of December*

*A second main artist could reduce this time dramatically, and we're looking*

The Bad Stuff #1 Artwork, Delays, Compromises, and new Artists

Arcknight is nearing 30x packs of Flat Plastic Miniatures. In that time, we've worked with 2 lead artists, and about 8 other artists have taken on limited work. The question of "should we look for a another artist?" is a complicated one. (To avoid confusion, NOT to replace Damien, but to have 2x Damiens) Looking back over several years at once, there have been a few times we needed to hurry up, or compromise, or get another artist to fill in. In the long run, I basically have always regretted it. Even some of the best art thats come from other artists, I think "if we had been patient, and Damien did it ... wouldn't this be EVEN BETTER?"

Do I want to compromise? No. I haven't yet, and I don't want to start.

That being said, Damien has not been able to put out as much art as we need to keep a consistent cycle.

He's a busy artist, he juggles many clients, he's had his own COVID-related delays, and he had to move recently.

I did have a very frank discussion about what we can expect, and a retrospective on his pace over the last 6 months.

One small issue, is that since this is a kickstarter, and we've been very flexible, when he's facing "deadlines" from other clients they get priority. I believe, generally speaking, these "deadlines" are fake. I don't complain at Damien and demand deadlines, we've worked together for many years and I want nothing more than continuous happy production from him. So he has complete free rein and autonomy to produce work at his own pace. So when other clients are complaining, or need things rushed out, and we aren't complaining - well, the squeaky wheel gets the grease so to speak, and our stuff gets pushed back on his schedule.

Until the OOTBE and HBS1 are done and off our plates, Damien has committed to aiming at an average of 1 piece per day (excluding weekends) so, 5 pieces per week. He cannot do more than that with his current workload, but in time I believe he's planning on phasing out his smaller clients, so he can take on more work from his larger clients (like us). It's possible Damien could do more per week in the future, but that's not realistic right now.

Of course, we don't want to wait any longer than we have to, to begin shipping HBS1. So if we had 2 Damiens, we could get 10x pieces per week! I told him, regardless we're going to want him to keep doing this commitment of 5/week, and we'll also resume looking for another artist of his caliber, to increase our rate. I would love to speed up, but I'm not compromising the art quality just to shave another 30 days off the timeline.

The Fun Stuff #1 - Object Sheets

Okay, so Philip has spent a lot of his time lately on the "Object Sheets" for OOTBE. Spoiler alert *this will be an upcoming KS project sooner than later*. So we approached this knowing damn well we wanted to make a universal die that could handle a smattering of shapes and sizes, and what better stress test than to try and conform it to OOTBE's needs.

Also, remember that these dies are double-sided, so theres front art + back art. Plus it's 2 pages.

So with this one die, we're making four sheets of object doodads. Here's our current spread;

This thing has statues, pits, altars, gelatinous cubes, spider swarms, webs, obelisks, fountains, doors, rocks, mushrooms, carts, trees, 

These object sheets aren't done, and the final will NOT have the colored box around them. That's just to show you a visual cue of where the die-cutting will occur, and the sheets will break into dozens of rounded squares and rectangles, and all be transparent doodads.

But, you get the idea.

The Fun Stuff #2 - MOAR Maps for everyone in HBS1

Philip and I went back over the Maps for HBS1. We originally did not reach the unlock for additional city maps, but after the delays and considering the total costs, we've decided to go ahead and upgrade these kits to include the City map tiles. We're going to be changing the numbers a tiny bit, and making 8 City Map tiles (which everyone will get, as part of the regular kit), and reworking the maps slightly so that they include every named building in the LMOP city map in the module.

Additionally, we're going to go ahead and make a full 2-page scene for the initial "Ambush on the Road" encounter. Having a classic road map is so classic and useful, we might as well fill it out to two pages instead of cramming it into a single long tile.

It's gonna be pretty straight forward - a 2-page map that has a road going through the middle, and some sort of grass / path / forest around it, with room for the goblins, and a clearing where you can stage your Ambush Cart. You'll be able to drop down your broken cart doodad, place the goblins, and get right into the action.

This upgrades the total number of Maps from HBS1 from 32 (16 pages, double sided) to 36 (18 pages, double sided). The extra pages will fit easily in the 2 plastic envelopes already slated for this kit.

So, to recap, here's the map totals now;

• 2p Roadside Ambush
• 4p Goblin Cave (including an entrance tile with Goblin Blind)
• 8p of random City Tiles, that can be rearranged any way you'd like, but can be laid out to essentially "build the city" with all the named buildings in the book appearing on the map tiles.
• 4p Bandit Hideout
• 4p Ruined Castle
• 6p Overgrown Ruins of Thunder...place
• 8p WaveCave

36 total tiles.

Most of these maps can be seen from the KS front page, and you'll see them in much more detail when we're ready to print. I'd like to do a full update just showing off the map tiles. BUT I want to say - im so proud of our WaveCave. It essentially becomes a 1:1 map of the WHOLE cave, over 8 tiles. I don't think its reasonable for most groups to play it this way - you're much more likely to put down 2-page segments and move onto other 2-page segments. But you CAN place the whole damn thing down. You could also slide the map, and connect the new tile as you move off the map ala Zelda 1.

Everything has been "fudged" meaning, some rooms shrink and some rooms grow, and some rooms are a little more or a little less than the shape originally presented. But at the same time, it just came together perfectly where every time you're in any major area - and you go North or East, you connect properly to that new area. AND of course, the original map designer and the module writer were not in communication, so some of the places you need to have an encounter are tiny, while other areas are huge and expensive, but unused. Our map is more balanced, focusing a bit more on where you actually need your encounters to occur.

It's just a really practical, humongous, cave/dungeon map. I think people will be using this cave network for decades for all sorts of things.

The Fun Stuff #3 - Colored Mount Bases

I teased this once before. Remember how we're making horse-shaped acrylic bases for everyone? But then we were thinking - hey, why not make the horses colored plastic? Like White and Tan and Black horses? What about Pegasus' and Unicorn bases? WHAT ABOUT RIDING SPIDER BASES?! Or giant Toad bases that are green, or or or or.

Well. It seemed like a good idea. It's also something that could someday become it's own microproject. It's also something we could do while were bored in our office waiting for other things to finish. So I tasked one of our employee's (his name is James btw) to "make some stuff" out of colored plastic.

He went a little nuts. I'm not saying I agree with all of his choices... nor does it matter, since it's just something we're fiddling with, and we're planning to give all of you a "handful" of random pieces from this pile. But here's a teaser of some of the stuff he made:

Hawks, Pigs, Dragons, Toads, Dragons of all colors, cats, elephants, wargs, boats, flying carpets, spiders, more flying carpets, lizards, a BROOMSTICK!?, more flying carpets, displacers, bears, seriously - this guy apparently loves flying carpets, a pumpkin.

I dunno, its wacky but its rad as hell. We might have to go back and do another plate of each color of "horse" just to balance it back out because now that theres so much mayhem there's not enough horses, but EITHER WAY ITS AWESOME.

Again. We've no real methodical way to give you guys a set selection of these. It's just something we dreamed up and made - and so we're gonna get a baggie and scoop some of these in randomly, and everyone gets some. There's no telling what style you'll end up with.

The Bad Stuff #2 The Custom Mini-American Flexxfolios

Okay - so. Ultimate Guard. Hrmm.

Lets say this. In an alternate universe, I could have sent them an email, and they respond right away and assign my custom request a ticket and get back to me, and the customs get made and it's gravy.

But in our universe, that email got misplaced. And then the second email had a ticket issue. And then the third email was somehow sent to the wrong agent because of some glitch with the first ticket having the wrong email, and then another person officially took over the custom project - but he didn't notice that he didn't respond for 80 days and then noticed the email was stuck unread in his trash folder .... or something.

Long story short, I don't dislike Ultimate Guard and I think on Round 2 - things might go really well. I'm in open communication with an agent (finally) and he's really sorry for never getting this going anywhere despite dozens of queries from us about getting our samples sent out, or even getting pricing.

But as it stands RIGHT NOW - absolutely nothing has come of these custom cases, and we might as well have not sent them 9 months of emails. We're going to have to get samples created, they're going to take 60+ days, then they have to begin a production cycle....

There's no way in hell we're waiting on these cases. We're switching over to black cases, that are immediately available, and this is no longer going to be a concern.

It SUCKS - because I really really want custom cases. The "plan" is now, maybe when we're doing HBS2, with King Storm Thundergiant, maybe we'll order 1k custom cases for HBS2 and HBS1 at the same time, and we'll make legacy HBS1 cases available as cheaply as we can ... but this is a future "maybe".

Also - if you recall - the Mini American Flexxfolio is the PERFFFFECT storage case for Arcknight Flat Plastic Miniatures. And Mini American Flexxfolios are widely available, because of the popularity of an existing FFG Star Wars X-Wing miniatures skirmish game. But - in the last 1.5 years, the popularity of that game has plummeted and the Mini American card size has basically gone the way of the hat. That is to say, retail stores are no longer buying them in bulk.

This is ironic, that right when we need to BUY a bunch of Mini American black Flexxfolios - and we want them NOW, some major retailers are trying to clearance the crap out of their old standing stock.

Win-Win for us. I've been putting in massive purchase orders and clearing people out, because we're gonna want these cases forever.

So - the bad news, the Custom Cases aren't happening as we'd have liked, but the sort of "good news" / silver lining - I've got the exact same perfect mini-american flexxfolios in black, and IN HAND, so this will no longer be stalling the HBS1 campaign.

The Fun Stuff #4 - Manufacturing Minis Themselves

So, for OOTBE, we're waiting on art for 3 pages of minis. You might think to yourself - hey, why don't you do a smart thing, and move all the missing art to page 3. Then you could print page 1 RIGHT NOW. And maybe then you could print Page 2 soon too. Get them printed, die-cut, ready and waiting in a box, right?

So smart.

Well, this is of course what I did, and as you may know from being fans of ours for some time - manufacturing is always full of strife and violence and dumpster fires.

But - and I knock on wood as I say this - we produced over 1000 copies of page 1 of the Nerdarchy OOTBE pack, in 3 hours. I shouldn't be too excited, because maybe next time everything will explode, but at the same time we DESERVE to be a little proud.

We've been cleaning, maintaining, troubleshooting, etc our new printer in Fort Worth. We know its a beautiful machine and has very few impressions. Slowly, we have replaced damaged parts, found glitches, overriden some things, patched some leaks. None of this is unique - it's just manufacturing. But we've been telling ourselves "it's gonna be soooo nice once it's running smoothly and we're keeping it maintained."

This latest print run was one of those "soooo nice" nights, and we're hoping for many more of them. Everything just ... worked!

Fun Stuff #5 - New Artwork (in no particular order)

First, some sketches that are enjoying some rough colors (these aren't final)

Next, here's a bunch of finalized pieces, though some of them haven't been color corrected for print, and they're certainly not to scale.

Teaser - Dungeons and Damsels

Arcknight meets Disney, in this Dungeons and Dragons + Princess Mashup.

My wife and I are doing a side project that combines her love of Disney, and my love of all things Tabletop Roleplaying. This campaign will be short and sweet, and create a pack of Flat Plastic Miniaature Princessess characters - each in multiple forms including royal attire and as DnD character classes.

Whenever I play DnD with my wife and Daughter one of them (or both!) wants to play some form of typical Disney character, as if she had lived in our world setting. But sadly, miniature support for this is severely lacking. So, who better to rectify this situation with a full pack of Princesses, Disney x DnD Style.