We've scoured our spacetime portals for available stocks of goodies to make your UVG experience more comfortable.
w(+_+)w
More soon.
±Exalted Wizard Funeral Marching Band
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
It's a wrap, it's a tease, it's a Saint Nicholas gift bound and boxed and hurled through atomic skies by the Rainbow Deer. Or, perhaps, it's just the last couple of digital deliveries and very believable season's greetings.
First, let's just say we'll find out within about 27 hours whether the physical books are landing at Exalted Funeral's hi-tech shipping vault today. We're all on tenter hooks. Still, no matter what, there's going to be a bunch of packing and preparations to do, so ... February. Seriously.
Second, we've got two things for your digital UVG game.
We're going to get a second version hosted on Exalted Funeral Press soon, and ... yeah ... we'll get around to making proper product pages too, eventually. But for now, this link will see you well. You can also download the page and use it off-line. Should work fine.
It's got essentially all the tables in the UVG book (though for simplicity's sake some of the funky exploding die mechanics are skipped in places). And it's free. So share ye well.
Additionally, we've reformatted the ref screen as a booklet, so ... you can actually use it on an iPad, or print it out in pages and stick behind your existing ref screen. So helpful, right, right?
This one is also and is going to stay free for everyone. So share and care alike.
And now for something completely different:
Merry Christmas and happy reindeer races, everyone!
—The Executive Improvisation Team at WTF Studio and EF Press
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And for those keeping track of the update titles:
Hello, glorious backers.
Hello, kind people.
I'm gonna break the 4th wall, step out of character a bit. Luka here. Not WizardThiefFighter Studio. Not Exalted Funeral.
I'm gonna do that for one dang good reason.
This Tuesday, the 10th of December, at 08:57 UTC, I finished the last thing I had to do for the Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City.
My tasks for the UVG:
Yep. As of a couple of days ago ... All done. First, a smidgeon of self-doubt ...
Then I'll push that to the back of my mind and gloat using the plural first person pronoun:
Because, you see, this picture is actually a lie. While I've done my part, I think I can also look forward to listening to Matt's tears now. Because he's up to the plate now. The books are due to arrive at his warehouse (cough cough garage cough cough) within a couple of weeks and at the overseas distributors soon thereafter, and what follows is ... packing over two thousand orders of books and dice and screens and maps and t-shirts and postcards.
Here are his words, paraphrased almost without permission: "if you're going to announce delivery dates, please say early February, or I won't hear the end of it when some hiccup happens again."
So there you have it, I've conveyed a delivery date and condemned Matt to slaving away, packing books with loving care, just like a proper Winterdeity Elf!
Which brings us to the title song of this update (pace Peter Steele, pace) (just imagine Matt singing as he packs the books):
Ok, ok, I confess. There are a couple more things for me to do, but not today. Not today.
First, we're going to make a home-site just for the UVG, where we're also going to host Saker Tarsos' cool digital GM screen. Yep, yep. We've got it made and ready. But we've just been focusing on getting all the physical things done first, so ... y'know ... we can be all classy and put up a website after that's over and done with.
Second, we promised a yoga video. And you'll get it. I think I ... uhh ... walked into that one a bit, because it's high winter here in Korea, with temperatures hitting -7C. That's about 30F, I guess. I only 'know' five temperatures in Fahrenheit: absolute zero (0F), freezing (30F), hot (100F), boiling (200F), and oven roasting (350F).
Anyway, I'll get my metal t-shirt, some tights, and try to borrow a bullet belt and studded leather jacket, then go climb a granite outcrop and do some yoga. With running (out-of-breath) commentary. And other such nonsense.
See?! I didn't forget!
Peace and Sunrises,
—Luka (occasionally known as WizardThiefFighter Studio)
P. S. - still here? I shared the postcards! Just 200dpi, but still. Check 'em out!
Couldn't leave well enough alone with the art, you see ...
And since Luka had some fine time while Matt was in crisis mode over Black Funeral ... er ... Friday ... we decided it'd be fine and proper to do the last of the last art with a bang.
You've already seen the referee screen, but that was just the cat-facing side. What about the side where the mice can play? That needs some pictures, too.
Luka politely suggested just ransacking the British Library's royalty-free archive on Flickr for bits of stuff to stick together, claiming he was tired or something (https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/), complaining that he needed a holiday.
Our generous consensus was that we would have none of that, and that he should use his time and weekend to make a stupidly oversized detailed ink drawing on four A2 sheets, then stitch them together digitally, then color the lot of them in all the colors of the rainbow.
Luka complained very loudly, but acquiesced. That happens when you hold the threat of ka-denaturation over somebody, thanks to the automated destiny loom you've unearthed in the Deep Factories of Topotenebros.
After the pictures were professionally digitized (cough cough, wheeze, exaggeration), the stitched together piece was already looking pretty sharp.
Then followed hours of painstaking detailed work, hunched over an iPad, stylus-pencil-reed-thing in hand. Luka's thumb still hurts from all the pen-grippery. Anyway, yes. Hours. Days. Sweat. Tears. Blood (metaphorical).
It should work as a screen for your hand-held helper-unit, or phone. If the picture got compressed, here's another link to it*: http://bit.ly/sweep-of-the-uvg
We hope the picture will find you in good cheer and readiness as Saint Nicholas' Day approaches like a steamsheep from the wool-gathering colonies.
January.
Yes.
We haven't forgotten. The digital ref screen is done, we just need to give it a website home and upload it. The postcards are in layout and will go to print together with the ref screen. It's all really very nearly very close to completely and finally done.
Uh ... no, but pretty sure. We'll cut up the screen into a 4-page reference .pdf and share that for free on the website home as well.
And before we wrap up, we'll start promoting the periwinkles out of future projects. And explaining how we're adjusting our work process to get more creative and interesting games and adventures out into the world. But, really ... we're pretty sure we've covered most of our bases.
Thank you, o Headline voice.
Now, for those who suffered through the interrogation by Headline Voice, let us all thank you again most honestly and excruciatingly. Your patience and your support has made it possible for us to make a bigger, badder, heavier, and harder book than we had expected.
Thank you.
Thank you from the bottom of our cinderblock hearts, and may your mettle never flag.
—Wizard Exalted
*and if you want an even higher resolution version, Luka has that on his patreon, along with a bunch of others floating in there somewhere.