The Schedule Coalesces
over 4 years ago – Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 03:04:45 AM

Short update, all meat! Delicious, living, screaming meat.

• The book is finalized with the printer, proofed and approved.
• We're sending out the truly-final (matching the print product) version of the PDF to qualifying folks via the BackerKit today. Only a few minor/cosmetic text fixes have happened between the "release candidate" we sent out earlier this month and this version.
• The printer (Taylor Specialty Books) says it will ship from them to our shippers (Alliance Games Distributors) around November 19th.
• That means we'll likely want to lock in addresses and charge credit cards for any add-ons in BackerKit around mid-November, so we can get the shipping data over to Alliance ahead of the books, for efficiency's sake.
• This supports us getting the book shipment effort happening during the early parts of December. Assuming that all goes to plan the books will hopefully arrive with backers before the holidays fully hit.
• With backers getting books in December, that lets us set an early January release date for the release of the book into general distribution & gamestore retail sale.

Just wanted to keep you in the loop. Thanks as always for your support! 

Now, go infect the world. The clock as ever has its demands, my faithful ones. Our hour is soon at hand.

We tried to look at the final form of the Fate of Cthulhu PDF...
over 4 years ago – Tue, Oct 08, 2019 at 11:40:11 PM

... but that didn't go too well for us.

Maybe you can help?

Please? Anyone. Is anyone hearing this? This is gamma squad leader. Gamma squad is down. Repeat, gamma squad is down. I'm the last one and I'm far gone. The whispers have started. This is the last you'll hear from me. End transmission.

(The Fate of Cthulhu art-complete PDF is heading out from Backerkit shortly to backers who pledged at $20 and up. We're sending the files off to the printer this week and will let you know a timeline once we're able to have it.) 

(If you spot any last-minute problems please let us know here in the comments ASAP!)

(And thank you as always for your support. Your delicious, tormented, writhing support.)

September Update!
over 4 years ago – Thu, Sep 26, 2019 at 03:13:54 AM

We've launched the Agon kickstarter today! Whenever we launch a new project, we like to make sure we're checking in with our other Kickstarters that aren't fully finished yet. And so, an ancient jaundiced eye settles upon you all.

The big news here is that Fate of Cthulhu is nearing art completion! We're not at 100% yet, but we're likely to get there in the next week or two, which will let us charge forward with getting the book off to the printers for manufacture. Behold! A preview of forbidden delights, below. Far, far below, where life cannot reach...

Fred, Richard, and Sophie meanwhile have been working on revising "Fate Condensed" for eventual release. Progress is being made there, but other project priorities take precedence, so it's been in fits and starts, as time allows. Work on the various Darkest Timelines proceeds as well, though we do have a number of designers to schedule and navigate on those and in the grand scheme it's early yet. Once those exit the writing, editing, and revision processes we'll be able to dig into those more. Patience, my delicious ones. All in due time.

On that note, here's a look at some of the artwork Kurt Komoda has been dreaming up to haunt you all. Enjoy. Enjoy, as if it is the last sight you will behold.

And thanks as always for your support!

Some Quick Errata for Fate of Cthulhu's Preview PDF
over 4 years ago – Fri, Aug 02, 2019 at 02:48:02 AM

Hello, again, so soon!

While many people are off unwittingly sacrificing a portion of their life-force I mean galavanting at the Ritual of the Secret Masters I mean GenCon, I'm at home working on applying the feedback y'all have submitted (using the form linked in the 'cover letter' on the 2nd page of the PDF) for the preview draft of Fate of Cthulhu. Mostly there've been a few bits of clarification here and there, along with the occasional typo to squash. 

But, there have been a few more significant issues raised that I wanted to address here, since the stars aren't right just yet to release an updated PDF. 

Stress

Something from the future reached out into our present day to try to ensure that the heroes are a little weaker than they're supposed to be. During the editing process, we lost track of the notion that at Good(+3) or Great(+4) Physique or Will, the associated stress track gains two additional stress boxes on top of the one additional gained for having Average(+1) or better. So someone with Good or Great Physique should have a total of six physical stress boxes (not five, which the character creation text implied), and similarly, Good or Great Will should grant six mental stress boxes.

So, to sum that up:

• Mediocre Physique/Will: [1][1][1]
• Average or Fair Physique/Will: [1][1][1][1]
• Good or Great Physique/Will: [1][1][1][1][1][1] (this is the change)
• Superb+ Physique/Will: [1][1][1][1][1][1] + additional typed Mild consequence slot

Many of our stat-blocks were consistent with the six-box implementation, which means, yep, the opposition ended up a little tougher than the PCs with identical Physique/Will. 

So, we fixed the errant paragraph in character creation, and also went through and vetted all the NPC statblocks to make sure they were as consistent as possible, except in those special cases where it was clear we had foundation for doing something unusual with the NPCs stress track. 

"Event" and "The Rise of the Great Old One" Aren't Exactly Synonymous

It looks like we confused a few readers by saying that "all events start at -2" in our timelines, only to then  show the Rise of the Great Old One final event of each timeline to start at -4. This wasn't intended to be an inconsistency; the events that start at -2 are all the ones prior to the final Rise. The Rise itself, correctly, starts at -4: it's an apocalypse and you need to fix it. Things will be as bad as they can get unless you manage to brighten the future. 

This was complicated further by our example of a ripple showing a [-] adjustment to an otherwise-untouched Rise event as resulting in the Rise being [-][-][-][0] ... which doesn't make any sense if it started at [-][-][-][-]. So, we fixed the example as well, to make it the application of a [+] ripple instead. 

Apologies!

We Condensed Too Hard on Compels

It looks like we condensed Fate Core a little too hard on the explanation of compels—there were several points in the text where we referred to the option to buy out of a compel for a Fate Point, only to discover that we never actually said that was an option  in the text. Just needed two sentences added back in, in the compels explainer, and it should be addressed now. I think a bunch of folks didn't notice this simply because they'd already played Fate before — thank you to the folks who pointed it out!

The Red Magdalena

The Red Magdalena ended up being confusing to a few readers. Her aspects mentioned things that weren't really covered in the associated text and so forth. So we reworked her statblock to reflect that she has a secret true form, and a cover identity, and reworked her stunts to better tie into the idea of that reveal. (Prior to the update, you can still run her with her earlier version, so long as you get the notion that her true appearance is concealed so she can run around doing normal-human things in this perfectly normal human timeline, nothing to see here.)

That should cover it for the significant bits! Nothing terribly game-breaking, but I wanted to make sure to get the text where it needed to be before starting work on extracting the "Condensed Core" text out of it. :)

If you're at GenCon, enjoy! If you're not—I heartily agree with your decision to be anywhere but Indy when the dark ritual reaches its frenzied peak. 

See you again soon, delicious ones. 

Artwork Progress Update & Fate Accessibility Prototype Release
over 4 years ago – Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 01:20:52 AM

Hello delicious mortals! 

We're continuing to work on getting Fate of Cthulhu ready for production. Artwork acquisition is the main part of it. 

Kurt Komoda is in the middle of his mountain of madness, so we'll share his dark doodlings in a future post—too early to share. You aren't prepared for what you might see. Patience, patience. Shhhhh. It's best if the frog doesn't know he's being boiled, no? There you go. 

But Sarah Dahlinger was able to fit her portion into her schedule earlier, so we've got a few images to share with you from her. You'll find them at the bottom of this message. (This isn't all of them — you'll see the rest when we roll out the final PDF in a few months.) 

• Check out Sarah Dahlinger's website here

Overall, everything remains on-schedule with the book, but we'll know for sure once we're art-complete and can establish a certain timeline with the printer.

The Darkest Timelines from the stretches are still working through the preliminary steps. We'll share more about these as they get further along, tho we expect most of the news about them to come in 2020, as we are able to fully shift focus away from the book itself. 

Meanwhile, if you were intrigued by the excerpt of the Fate Accessibility Toolkit we released to you, you can grab the full book in prototype (sans artwork) digital form now over on DriveThruRPG.com and Itch.io. Purchases will go towards funding the artwork budget for that book; if we fund it as hoped (we're a little under halfway there as of this writing) we'll upgrade any prior purchases of the FAcT to the final form once available.

• Fate Accessibility Toolkit Prototype Edition on DriveThruRPG
• Fate Accessibility Toolkit Prototype Edition on Itch.io

That's it for this update. Thank you as always for your support! 

And now, our devoted subjects, feast, Feast, FEAST!