Well, That Was Certainly A Week!
3 months ago – Wed, Feb 07, 2024 at 12:51:31 PM

Morning people, Felix here!

Normally I start these things by giving you an update on what's been happening, but there's a good chance you already know given the view count of the new Quinns Quest video. If you haven't seen it, you'll find it...

Right there!

Now, if you're already here on the kickstarter page reading this then hopefully you had some inkling that the Wildsea was pretty cool, especially given that you're here for a second book! But it's always good to get some external validation from time to time, keeps the old spirits high. And it's also good in terms of selling books, as it turns out!

But I won't bang on endlessly about what we've done so far, you get enough of that from the other updates. Instead, I'll touch on a few things that are coming in the future, and I'll let Ray give an update about the more business-oriented side of things, both of what has passed and of what's to come. 

THE WILDSEA: TIGERS ON THE WIRE

A smaller Wildsea adventure to nestle into the in-between space left by One-Armed Scissor's new crew focus and Red Right Hand's old dogs flair. It's based on pirate radio, but I'm not going to spill too many other details this early. Partly because I've spent some time working on...

PICO

What's that? Something that's not wildsea, even in the slightest? 

Well, yes - I do have to diversify eventually. PICO is a smaller project with a very different focus, vibe, and art style, but it is still a Wild Words game, powered by the same core engine as the Wildsea. I've mentioned it before, in passing, but just in case you didn't catch it (or glean enough from the image above), it's a game about tiny bugs having adventures and making friends. And fighting. And cooking. And building colonies out of trash. And rewilding areas. And investigating the mysteriocalypse. 

... And riding cats.

 It's not serious, but it is fun - open playtesting will be starting pretty soon. And that's lucky, because while I get feedback on the state of PICO I can work on...

THE WILDSEA STARTER BOX

I'm going to let Ray jump in early here, as this is his beloved child he's been pushing me to work on for a while. In fact, I might as well hand the rest of this one over to him - the only other Wildsea thing THAT I'M ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT for the immediate future is Tooth & Nail, the third and final expansion for the core book. 

So before I go I'll say thank you, all of you, for helping the Wildsea continue to grow, and for giving such positive responses out in public - especially with increased attention recently, I've seen a lot of sailors who joined us in 2020 and 2021 coming out of the woodwork to say how much fun they've had with the core book and first adventure. So, thanks!

Over to you, Ray...

GREETINGS WILDSAILORS 

I do want to talk about THE WILDSEA STARTER BOX but there's actually a lot of other pressing news on my end to get out of the way first, so I'll hop into it...

REPRINTS

We're suffering from success a little bit. Quinn's Quest is wiping out our remaining inventory of The Wildsea: Core Rules - we have 500 copies sold in the webstore alone over the last 6 days - which means that we need to go to reprint much sooner than we anticipated! 

That said, we are fortunate in that the factories are on Chinese New Year holiday, which means we can get our ducks in order and combine the reprint run with Storm & Root. Saves us a bit of logistics - but those of you who bought the Core Rules on the Kickstarter, expect a nice and shiny 2nd Edition print of the game.

CORE RULES - COLLECTOR'S EDITION V2

The silver lining of needing to reprint the Core Rules is that we can also reprint the Collector's Edition as well! Except, we're not really reprinting the Collector's Edition (as those were very special and limited); instead, what we're doing is printing a new colorway of the Collector's for those that missed out on grabbing that for the first time.

More details to come on this soon, but it will be available in BackerKit once we finalize the design. Collector's, rejoice! 

WOODEN DICE UPDATE

Also, we have a new Wooden Dice Manufacturer! Wooded Meadows is a purveyor of bespoke tabletop roleplaying accessories including dice, candles, coasters, and other - mostly wooden and wax- goods! Check em out on Etsy here.

But Ray, what happened to our old manufacturer? Well, they went out of business a couple of months ago! Something to do with nasty rains wiping out their inventory of precious woods and not being able to recover from that. :( 

We've been working behind the scenes for a couple of months to try and find a new manufacturer and chose not to announce anything until we did! That said, we're putting the Wooden Dice back into stock in the BackerKit Preorder store! Huzzah! 

INDIAN EBONY, PURPLE HEART, & WENGE DICE

There is one caveat, however. Our new manufacturer is unable to source Indian Ebony (Black) Wood, which is increasingly rare and prohibitively expensive. Unfortunately, that means we won't be able to offer that style of dice any longer. 

However, Wooded Meadows has provided us with two high end alternatives: Purple Heart and Wenge! These will be available at the same price point as the previous high-end Indian Ebony ($65 for a set of six). 

Backers who ordered Indian Ebony - I'll be sending a survey shortly with three options: switch your set  to Purple Heart or Wenge. If you'd like to receive a refund instead or one of the other available dice types, you can do so in BackerKit by removing or changing your order.

Thanks for your patience in this as we sort it all out.

THE WILDSEA STARTER BOX

Okay, so I can finally talk about this. I've been thinking for a while now that having a starter box ala the White Box or the red D&D Basic box would be an excellent thing to have for the Wildsea - an all inclusive introduction to the game with everything that you need to play.

I've been lobbying behind the scenes for a starter box for years at this point, and Felix has finally seen the light! 

So, we're working on one. It's going to include a couple of different pamphlets that separate the rules into sections, as well as a couple of new reaches, a remix of the core-core posts  (so new aspects for posts like the Slinger and Dredger), a new set of dice, as well as maps, and the rules for how to use them! 

Yep, maps. They're coming to the Wildsea! Or, are we calling them charts? In any case, more details on this soon. Also, along with this Starter Box comes an expansion of the Wildsea team, as we're trying to minimize the amount of stuff Felix has on his plate. So, that being said, we're expanding the Wildsea Team - more details on this soon as well.

All super tentative and fresh right now, so again, more details as we have them. We still have to fulfill this dang kickstarter first, after all! 

And with that said, we'll bid you adieu for now! Exciting times aheads. 

Talk soon! 

Ray (& Felix, Earlier) 

Storm & Root: Full Digital Release, + Add-Ons!
4 months ago – Thu, Jan 18, 2024 at 01:00:18 PM

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

Updated Timeline
5 months ago – Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 11:18:36 AM

Hey Everyone, Ray here, wishing you all a Happy Holiday season!  

Unfortunately, I have a bit of bad news today, so I'll just get straight into it: we're delaying the print of Storm & Root until after the Lunar New Year. Our new estimated timeline for delivery is April 2024. 

The Why  

Over the last week+ we've been hard at work editing and polishing Storm & Root, much of which you can see done live on the Wildsea Discord. Most of the working document is extremely polished - we've only found a handful of typos combing over the text - our editors, Ellan and Colin, have done a fantastic job.  There were a couple of rough patches, however. The first chapter of the book, The Wild Blue (Airships), was definitely a bit more choppy than the other content. After discussing with Felix, we decided to rework the chapter with a rewrite, simplifying some of the mechanics as well as the order of information given.

While that was happening, we also realized that there were a couple of quality of life things missing, like a a rules summary and index in the back of the book. It's funny how that sort of stuff kind of sneaks up on you right at the very end; it's not really possible to create an index while the words are still shifting, and similarly it's hard to summarize the rules while they're still changing!  Last week was intense, to put it lightly. We knew we were facing the gun of the holiday season, with a looming factory shutdown because of the Lunar New Year, so everyone on the team was hands-on in crunch to try and get the final print files according to the timelines provided by our manufacturers.  

As time ticked down, we made the difficult decision to roll over production after the Lunar New Year. Doing so allows us to do a couple of things: 

•  We now have an extra month to polish everything we have 
• That allows for a more careful read through from our editorial team, including Ryan, our Sensitivity Consultant
• We can include those quality of life items: rules summaries and an index 
• We don't have to crunch through Christmas and New Year 

Updated Timeline 

Here's what we're working with now: 

• Deliver Final Print Ready Files to Factory (January 2024) 
• Lunar New Year Shutdown (February 2024) 
• Printing & Manufacturer (February-March 2024) 
• Ocean Freight (March-April 2024) 
• Fulfillment (April 2024) 

----- 

As Miyamoto put it: a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad. And while no delay is wanted, this one is probably for the best. We felt an intense rush these last few days, and honestly if we had one round of turnaround from our manufacturer (colors, white prototypes, etc.), that would've blown up the timeline anyway, and all the crunch to get there would've been for naught. With all that in mind, it seemed wise to delay the game for what amounts to about two months, so that we could enjoy the holidays with our loved ones and finish out strong once the new year rolls around. 

Thanks for understanding, wildsailors. See you next year :)  

Ray

 

Storm & Root Digital Release: Roughcut
5 months ago – Sun, Dec 10, 2023 at 02:06:47 PM

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

The Completionist
6 months ago – Tue, Nov 14, 2023 at 01:02:58 PM

Morning wildsailors, Felix here! 

Having hopped countries once again, this time back to good old England, I haven't quite adapted to the current timezone yet - the spirit of jetlag lives on strong within these walls. But with a week of unexpectedly late nights and being vaguely in the right timezone for some solid contact, I have updates to share! The first of which is...

Red Right Hand is Fully Written!

The final outstanding add-on for the campaign, Red Right Hand (a tale of murder, politics, and alchemy), is complete and awaiting external editing. Fair warning for those interested in it, it's a dark and complex one. Definitely fare for the more experienced wildsailor, a good counterpoint to One-Armed Scissor's beginner focus. I won't spoil too many surprises here, but if you want an early look you can join the Felix Isaacs Patreon - I did a full set of ten development diaries as I worked on it over the last few weeks, letting people see what kind of stuff happens behind the scenes from a scenario's inception to its completion. It's also a good place to get extra wildsea content, weird fiction, and updates on upcoming non-wildsea stuff, like PICO and Drift. 

What I will share here is some of Omercan's art - he, Mon, and Shmeckerel have all done a great job. In fact, that's the last bit I'm waiting for in terms of Red Right Hand, a couple of colour pieces to round off the entire thing. 

And with Red Right Hand complete in terms of text, that means...

All Storm & Root Writing is Now Finished! 

This was a bigger campaign than I expected. Another whole book (sitting pretty at almost 300 pages), two entirely new add-ons in the form of Ship-Gardens and Red Right Hand, and the expanded version of One-Armed Scissor. That, along with the work I did over the past few months on the Wild Words SRD, means that I've actually ended up writing a lot more this time than I did for the first campaign. 

Luckily, I still enjoyed it. Immensely, actually. 

So thank you to all of you backers, who have let me run my life by words, the way I always dreamed of. You're good sorts. 

So what's happening now? Well, Ell the editor has about three chapters left to work through, but I'm not going to make you all wait too long to see what we've been cooking. Over the next few weeks I'll be applying edits and polishing presentation, getting ready to release a full roughcut PDF of Storm & Root to all backers. This is the best time to point out errors and weird things that I might have missed, because a few weeks after that we'll be sending the entire thing off to the printers. It's a scary moment, once it's out of your hands, but after that comes... You know, an actual book. 

But I'm not resting on my laurels! I'm already working on a new scenario, tentatively titled Tigers on the Wire, to act as a good mid-point between One-Armed Scissor and Red Right Hand. How will I release it,? No idea, but there's a Wildsea-shaped hole in my immediate schedule while I wait for the edits to come in, so I have to fill it with something. 

But, on that same note, I'm going to let you in to...

A Tentative Timeline of Future Projects

There's going to be a little mystery here, but I'm sure you can live with it...

+ Wild Words SRD (a tune-up and official release, so others can make their own Wild Words games with official Felix-and-Mythworks blessings!)

+ Tigers on the Wire (a Wildsea scenario)

+ PICO (a smaller Wild Words game about tiny bugs, mentioned here before)

+ The Wildsea: Tooth & Nail (the final expansion for The Wildsea, concerning mounts, settlement building, and facilitating longer campaign play)

+ Drift (a Wild Words game about exploring a parasitic city by train, an urban take on the Wildsea's core forest-and-ship focus)

+ Project Ichor (it's a secret!)

+ Project Honeion (it's also a secret!)

Do I have specific times for these? Definitely not yet. The order might change, the titles might change, everything might change... but that's the current plan. 

But on the subject of timelines and specifics, I'm going to pass you over to publisher Ray for a bit of production-based info. 

Books draw closer, sailors. Books draw ever closer. 

- Felix

Ray's Bit

Right! Timelines. So, we're wrapping up right at  the end of the year which we mostly anticipated, and hopefully the steady stream of content shows everyone we've been hard at work! That said, our goal now with the production of the book is to pay for things by the end of the year (for tax purposes) and have them shipped out to us just before the start of the Lunar New Year, which is February 10th. 

That brings us to around a mid March, early April fulfillment. That's about the best we can call it this far out. Kind of a simple scenario thank goodness :P I really don't see us missing that Lunar New Year deadline, but nor do I at this point see us going faster than that. 

Right! So expect the full digital versions by the end of the year and your books in the early spring! 

As for what I've been working on ... well, I've been talking to Felix a lot behind the scenes about Red Right Hand and the Wild Words SRD! For the latter, we're moving onto the next draft now and hopefully getting an online presence of it up and running soon. 

I've also been talking to suppliers, old and new. New printers! New white prototypes! Stuff like that, getting ready for when we can hit the go button on things. 

Also, I know a lot of cool games from cool friends running cool crowdfunding campaigns!! Check them out! 

Bullet and a Blank

Bullet and a Blank is a Descended from the Queen game that is a card-based, western story building tabletop roleplaying game that you and four other players can begin playing in minutes. It's designed by my good buddy Moe Poplar and is a great pallet cleanser in between sessions. Check it out here! 

Vergence

Vergence by Small Cool Games is a Forged in the Dark game of interdimensional conflict and family drama. You have almost infinite power and can play something akin to a Planewalker with touchstones like Chronicles of Amber and Kill  6 Billion Demons. Check it out here!  

Orbital Blues: Afterburner

Orbital Blues is a game about sad space cowbys and Afterburn is its expansion! Explore love, excitement, adrenaline, interstellar outlaws, and more! New supplements! New boxes! New Scenarios!  All this and more, so you can go orbital, too!

---------

Right, so next month? Hopefully digital releases and perhaps the full version of Wild Words! 

Ray