We've scoured our spacetime portals for available stocks of goodies to make your UVG experience more comfortable.
Your Cover to the Funeral Edition*
Hard to even put into words how much we need to thank you all for everything. The outpouring of support has been humbling and from everyone involved:
THANK YOU
more to come
*as always subject to change with Luka's mood**. ;)
**hey, not true! I don't change my mind that much! ;L
We ... we did it folks. By last night we were suspecting we'd blow out all the stretch goals, but now.
Luka has been mentally preparing to deliver a metal yoga video once the kickstarter is complete and the books delivered, but late last night, while trying (and failing) to fall asleep from the shock and excitement, he realized that something was missing.
Matt and the whole Exalted Funeral team will be experiencing the stress of packing and shipping about 2,000 orders, while he stretches in the woods. Something needed to be done. Something trendy and healthy and mindful. Something better than the Ultimate Stretch Goal. Something potentially utterly ridiculous. Thus:
After all the packing and shipping is complete, we're going to force march Matt up a remote Idaho mountain to become one with himself, experience wellness, breathe in love and breathe out heavy metal.
For every $1,000 over $99,999 Matt is going to spend a minute in silent, mindful meditation, while listening to heavy metal on top of a mountain.
If we reach $111,111 we are going to add a special extra six minutes and sixty-six seconds of meditation on top of the rest. And then, we'll add another six minutes and sixty-six seconds at $122,222, at $133,333, and so on. Ok, ok, won't be totally infinite. We're capping the maximum mindfulness meditation at 129 minutes—the length of the 1982 classic, Conan the Barbarian. The film crew has to have something to do while Matt sits and meditates, after all.
We're only going to release a Six minute and sixty-six second video though, trimming the full meditation session down, because otherwise it'd be kind of boring to watch. But we'll keep the video and the clocks running.
*Definition of infinity subject to change.
19 hours to go ... and again, thank you!
—WizardThiefFighter Studio (Luka), Exalted Funeral (Matt and Cristin), MoonRat Conspiracy (Jarrett and Fiona), Saker Tarsos (Saker Tarsos).
Here we are.
Now it really is the last 48 hours. Time zones and months of updates confused Luka yesterday and he became convinced that the UVG kickstarter was ending on Friday 13th.
Eventually somebody explained to him that no, not this year. Also, that's a different movie.
So, to continue the final countdown.
First, a heartfelt thank you to the over 400 of you who participated in the dice poll! Yes, our arthouse semi-roman weird eyeburning polyhedral artifacts from another era are getting multiple colors and options.
So, extrapolating loosely from the numbers, the black-pink dice are set and locked in. The purple-white high-viz combo is also pretty much set. The purple-pink option is popular with a minority, but still a bit on the low end—we'll put it in the backer kit as an option, but there's a caveat: if we don't get enough orders for it, we might have to pass. O_O
Here's a visual breakdown:
So, to summarize: purple-white and black-pink are happening for sure. Purple-pink (or alternate eyeburner) depends a bit on what happens with the add-ons. We'd love to do the purple-pink, but can't promise it right now.
This is something we're only going to do in the backer kit as an add-on for our glorious backers: UVG kickstarter t-shirts. All designed with an eye to detail and being something you could wear to a metal concert ... or a theatre performance of the Black Cat. That works too.
We've got three designs (and three gorgeous models):
If you'll want to add any, they'll be available later.
Right ... what other news.
Final limited edition cover and bookplates getting announced later today, once Luka finishes fussing over them. Map, we've shown. DM cover design still pending. Huh. What else.
Oh, right.
There's still a few hours to reach the utterly unrelated and infinitely expansible stretch goal: the metal yoga video featuring the artist with trees and rocks and leather jacket.
We have carefully designed this completely ridiculous and rather silly stretch goal to not interfere in any way with the delivery of the Ultraviolet Grasslands kickstarter. Luka will harvest willing subjects to participate in this woodland nonsense, hopefully creating something ultimately worthy of the glory that is Call of the Wintermoon (original). They will only begin making the metal yoga video once all the creative and layout and design production work on the kickstarter has completed.
We've even already got some singers of metal growls ready to lend their throats to the instruction (warning: loud).
So, to help achieve this stretch goal and bring some downward-facing vome into your lives, do share this kickstarter in its final hours, tell your friends about it, and remind them that #ttrpgs can be cool, with rainbows, and metal, and yoga.
Heck, if it goes well enough, we'll even tell Luka to write up some yoga resolution mechanics for social conflicts in during in-game trade blockades affecting the delicate balance between mercantile guilds and independent aboslutist techno-monarchies.
Oh, wait, that's another story.
Fine.
Again, thank you for your support! You're all the best.
-Exalted Wizard Thief Fighter Funeral-
Time is fast running out on the tense and exciting part of the UVG Kickstarters, so the time to share updates, pictures, blog posts, and the like is now.
Soon enough, you'll just get to share layout samples and updates as the book comes together. But for now, finally, the map.
In case you didn't read it, the final version probably going to get a pretty significant change: a 90 degree rotation to make it easier to read in the book without turning it left and right.
The book and accordion versions are going to be a little different (though a .pdf version of the accordion map will be appended to the .pdf of the book, so ... you'll be able to print extra copies.
Since the book is A4 sized, while the accordion is about A5, there is simply more space. Instead of just making everything bigger, the book map is going to be aimed at the referee, with brief descriptions of different locations, trade good sites, and other random goodies mapped in.
Meanwhile, the accordion map is going to stay more decorative and minimal, suitable for players to write on (or, alternatively, on the printed versions of it).
Suffice to say, it's also going to look a little bit more polished overall. Luka's proficiency with Affinity Designer vector maps has improved a bit since making the original UVG map back in early 2018.
Finally, what is there to say about the book? It moves along. There'll be more news on this front next week as things settle down into a post-kickstarter routine.
Folks often say running a kickstarter is overwhelming. It's not, precisely, it's better to say it's all-consuming and all-numbing. In the rush of days, as the project takes solid form, it becomes its own thing, working away, following the instructions inscribed in the piece of paper in its great ceramic head, while we, the folks nominally at the reins, get carried along for the ride.
It'll be a relief to buckle down and nail the layout in the next few weeks.
Meanwhile, since you asked nicely, why yes: we do have some newly colored art.
Your humble and deeply honored creators, out for now!
With a week to go, now seems as good a time as any to have a quick diceball poll!
First, a lot of backers are keen on dices, so many in fact, that different colors become an option. Please take the dice color / options poll to help us fine tune the dice!
Now, the dices. The revised designs of all the dice are ready and with Q-workshop, getting the final adjustment and set up for ... engraving? Does one engrave dice? Well, they are jewels, so engraving seems suitable.
Here are the faces, adjusted:
Q-workshop is going to check them a bit, to make sure they work with their machines ... but this time it should be pretty simple. And, because they're really cool, they've also made a couple more renders in different colors for us:
We haven't committed to the final colors (aside from Black Pink), which is why the poll is up now (the link, again!).
We've mentioned that we'll prepping a set of 10 bonus postcards, using art from the UVG. The postcards are going to be a free bonus for the Last of the Voidwalkers, and an optional add on for everybody else.
And now, a mockup of the postcards.
Well, it's the weekend now, but the last-missing-long-promised chapter of the UVG, the Heart of the Near Moon, finally got written and laid out last week, so now the biggest bit of #NeedsMore is done and we'll keep plugging away next week. This chapter is getting its editing pass, because it's brand new, while the rest of the book - in its edited and tuned form, is coming together.
And if you kept up this far? Here's a work in progress .pdf of the UVG book to tease your palates and thank you for reading this far. Warning: if you don't want to see how the sausage gets made, don't look at the .pdf. It's a messy process, the table of contents is a placeholder, the art isn't all in there yet, the layout will still change, and so on.
Ok, phew!
Have a great weekend, everyone, and as the cats of the Violet City say, "Soyez tranquil et serviatenos."