Poll Results

OK so maybe I should wait until we get the readership up a bit. But you do seem to like lizardmen and lizardwomen. It just so happens one of my favourite images by Richard is his lizardman!

Enjoy! We'll be making some friends for him soon.

Come Play Dungeon World at CanGames

Our plan is the coordinate the launch of our kickstarter campaign with CanGames in May. We will be running two games of Dungeon World using a scenario that is built to demonstrate our encounter, traps, and useful items decks. This scenario is called Down at the Crossroads and you can sign up for on of two sessions now: Saturday 8PM or Sunday 2PM.

Here's the starter:

Just over this hill is the crossroad, but it is usually not this noisy? Sounds like a battle is going on! What are you going to do? 

If you are new to Dungeon World, no worries. I'll have a character sheet and moves sheet for everyone - basically everything you need to play. Dice will be on the table, but if you want to bring your own feel free. You will need two 6-sided dice at least. damage dice vary by character, but come from the standard polyhedral set: d4, d6, d8, d10, d12. I'll cover the basics of the game and we'll dive right in. Because the scenario uses the cards (in various ways) no two runnings will be the same. I'm pretty excited to be doing this. I've run a fair number of games at CanGames in the past, but the last couple years I've not been able to make it out due to a schedule conflict.

Monster Surveys

One of the cool things about working with Richard is that he ends up sending me a bunch of images beyond the ones I've asked for. Like a couple of way cool rakshasas. Rakshasas are not part of the basic DW monsters, so looks like we need to create cards for them. Because I have a lot of art (as well as lots of new monsters ready to art) I'm excited that we will be able to create expansions for our encounter card deck. Each expansion will have DW stats and its own fiction including custom moves. Each expansion card will be colour coded for setting and have the same backing and size as all our other cards.

We are also adding a funding level that gives you the opportunity to work with our team to develop your very own monster/encounter card. This card will be part of the first planned expansion deck, but even if we don't make the funding target for that card we'll still have your cards printed and sent out to every backer as limited edition cards.

Speaking of great art. There are a couple of local artists we think would be great for our project. One of which we are going to commission to create a fantastic card back for all of our cards. I'm pretty excited about this too. Once we've gotten a yes from this artist I'll link some of her art here so you can see how amazing it is. In our targets we have stretch goals that will allow us to colour all the art (cause coloured art is so much better!) and commission art from these local artists ensuring we get the cards out to you as fast as possible without sacrificing quality. (I'll preview the initial stretch goals in a future post.)

Oh, and the monster surveys. I thought it would be great to get your input on what monsters we should focus on when we put together expansions. I'm stoked that Lizard men/women are immediately popular - Richard draws a wicked good lizard man! Keep voting and we'll keep posting.

Speaking of posting - I'm going to set Friday's as our regular update day for this blog, starting with this post.

Sneak Peak at cards

This is one of the animations Richard put together for in our kickstarter promo video. We have a very cool script put together, doing things like this is fun but very time consuming. These are prototype cards from the base deck we've been using in our tabletop games. 

Update

Planning is coming along for our project. We decided to push the start date for our campaign to coincide with CanGames where I'm planning to run several Dungeon World sessions and show off our prototype cards. Also we have full decks in the hands of several play testers, just waiting to get the feedback. What I've heard verbally is very good.

We have developed two additional decks that I want to mention. The first is a trap deck and the second is a useful items deck. In the trap deck each card has a trap on top (with a bit of fiction or mechanic) and on the bottom a detail that would go nicely with the trap from on top. For example the PIT TRAP has WITH SPIKES on the bottom. On the bottom is also some fiction or mechanic. But you aren't limited to the trap on the card, draw two cards and use the top from one and the bottom from the other - bingo you have a new random trap to intrigue your players! The useful items cards work the same, but there is always fiction on the top or bottom. We have decks of these out for play testing too - and we plan on taking the best 25 cards for each deck (for starters).

I've included another art piece. Richard is hard at work drawing some great images for our cards. This is his derro from the basic card set. Doesn't it look great! We have a second artist lined up should we get the funding. I'll keep putting teasers up here as we go along, including some of the work he has coloured.

We've almost completed building our Kickstarter campaign. The intro film is the last big piece. We have a script now, just need to shoot and edit it. We've researched and secured a manufacturer and found out about shipping and customs. A big chunk of our costs will be shipping - especially fulfillment shipping to Canada? It is a bit frustrating that I will be able to ship this to Australia cheaper than I can to Vancouver? I am hoping to track some other shipping options down. There are a few design items I want to tweak - the colour coding is too close on two sets so I want to make the gap wider so that they are not confused.

I've also been reading as much as I can about successful kickstarter campaigns. This is the most recent article I've come across, very helpful.

I'll keep you all posted.

Frank