Quick check-in: the beta will be ready early!
over 2 years ago – Sun, Oct 03, 2021 at 02:23:14 PM

Hey everyone!

I've been on the cusp of being able to unveil a big update for the past couple of weeks, but it looks like the final touches will take another 1-2 weeks, and I didn't want to go too long with checking in.

So here's a flyby update to share some excellent news: we're ahead of schedule and we'll be opening the beta of the main deck early, most likely in the next 1-2 weeks!

The print-and-play templates are loaded up and I'll be doing the final export of the beta of the main deck this week upcoming. The guidebook still needs formatting, so I'll be spending some of next week designing the most essential parts of it so you'll be able to get a look at the core of the guidebook in a closer-to-final format.

Expediting the beta release has meant that I didn't get to make progress on new demo videos or the registration form for schools, libraries, and community groups requesting the allocation of a free deck. I will have the form prepared for the next update, which should also include the beta itself and instructions on how to access it. The current plan is to distribute the beta PDF via BackerKit without requiring payment or finalized surveys to access files.

Stay tuned for an update within the next 2 weeks featuring the beta!

In the meantime, if you have any questions, let me know in the comments and I'll cover those in the next update!

Digital download info + some regional shipping/tax costs reduced + Asian shipping hub + pre-order store open
over 2 years ago – Sun, Aug 15, 2021 at 01:20:01 PM

Hi backers!

I didn't expect to be updating you again so soon, but there have been a big handful of small positive developments to share as I open the preorder store on BackerKit, and I wanted to keep you up to be speed! 

I also wanted to be transparent about the fact that I've just opened to preorders, although under generally increased prices and with fewer bonus perks than the Kickstarter. You'll find more information about the phases of product preorder I have planned in the Kickstarter FAQ.

Here are the headlines!

• Digital Download tutorial now available
• Some regional shipping costs for specific reward tiers have decreased (Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, and the general "rest of world" category not covered by our regional shipping hubs)
• We will be opening a limited Asian shipping hub in China
• We have removed taxes on pledges to Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein and are switching to the DDU shipping method for these destinations (this is the only not-positive update)
• The preorder store is now open
• The Story Engine Anthology PDF has been distributed to backers

Digital Download tutorial now available

As a number of backers pointed out, the BackerKit documentation about how to access Digital Downloads is a little sparse and doesn't include many options for troubleshooting.

I created a little visual guide here to make it easier to access and to offer troubleshooting options: https://imgur.com/a/dtecJQt

Keep in mind that only the only PDFs distributed so far are for the OLD PDFs: the original Story Engine Deck, the 3 original expansions, and the 6 original boosters (as a set—individual booster PDFs are not available except via request for file management reasons).

I haven't distributed any Deck of Worlds PDFs yet. Those are officially due in April 2022, but I plan to deliver ahead of schedule in January. The beta should be available in November of this year and I'll definitely be posting about it!

Some regional shipping costs have decreased

Specifically, we've reduced shipping on particular pledge tiers in Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, and "rest of world" (anywhere not covered by a specific regional hub; the decrease does NOT affect Canada, the US, the UK, and the EU, which remain as they were).

While reviewing shipping options for the preorder store, I found I found a few spots where my shipping estimates from the Kickstarter were more conservative on specific tiers. I've also decided to go forward with plans to open a China shipping hub (details below).

As promised, any time I find a viable option for reduced shipping costs, I will be updating the pledge manager to reflect this and pass the savings on to backers. Here are the tiers and regions that were reduced, usually by $1-10.

• Australia: DEVOUR OLD + NEW / Just New Story Engine Deck
• New Zealand: DEVOUR OLD + NEW / DEVOUR NEW / All Old + New Decks / Just New Story Engine Deck
• China and Hong Kong: All costs reduced.
• Rest of World: DEVOUR OLD + NEW / DEVOUR NEW / Just New Story Engine Deck

You do not need to do anything to activate these decreases. They have already been applied to your BackerKit survey/cart. I will continue to keep my eyes out for opportunities to bring down shipping costs in other regions.

We will be opening a limited Asian shipping hub

We are planning to open a shipping hub in China for campaign fulfillment (even though we did not reach the stretch goal).

As a result, costs of shipping to China and Hong Kong have been reduced across the board. 

Our Asian hub will also be shipping to Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, and Viet Nam. Estimates for the tracked shipping available from our hub to these countries are generally the same as (and sometimes higher than) the semi-tracked "rest of world" rates from our other hubs, so your shipping charges will stay the same. We will absorb any increased costs because we believe it's worth the shipping benefits of better tracking, faster/more reliable delivery, and less chance of duty being applied to your packages on arrival. Any Asian countries not covered in the list above list will be fulfilled via international mail from the US as originally planned.

We have removed taxes on pledges to Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein

It looks like we will be sending parcels DDU (delivery duty unpaid), which means that rather than collecting and remitting tax in the pledge manager, taxes will be assessed and charged directly to you by the carrier when your rewards arrive in country.

We have removed the tax owing on your BackerKit pledge. The tax assessed on your parcel when it arrives next year should be roughly the same total that BackerKit was showing, although there may be processing fees charged by your local carrier.

If this change in handling causes you any issues or you would like to adjust your pledge as a result, just DM me here on Kickstarter and I'm happy to help!

The pre-order store is now open

If you visit the new preorder store, you'll see just about all bundle prices for customers joining the campaign now have increased compared to costs you paid during the campaign. 

Shipping costs on preorders should also be universally higher for preorders compared to what you are paying for shipping on Kickstarter pledges. (The only exception might be Kickstarter pledges that include a lot of add-ons, where the campaign's mixed shipping table occasionally produces slightly higher-than-average results. For these, there are usually savings available if you switch to a higher base tier that includes those add-ons. See the pledge manager update for details.)

In summary: any Kickstarter reward tier you recreate via the preorder store should cost more in the preorder store. Preorders also include fewer perks and less customization compared to the Kickstarter. If you find any exceptions where you can recreate your Kickstarter pledge for less money, please get in touch with me via Kickstarter DM so I can look into it.

The Story Engine Anthology PDF has been distributed to backers

This add-on was not advertised during the campaign, but was added to the pledge manager on request because some folks missed out on it during my previous Kickstarter. 

Some of you saw the anthology in the pledge manager for the first time and had questions about it, so I thought I'd explain it. 

The Story Engine Anthology contains 101 postcard-sized short stories I wrote while developing the original Story Engine Deck.

Here's a PDF sampler of the first 12 stories.

It also includes guest-narrated stories from Cecil Baldwin (Welcome to Night Vale), Lydia Nicholas (The Rusty Quill Gaming Podcast/The Magnus Archives), and Jonathan Sims (The Magnus Archives), as well as guest stories by Sonya Ballantyne, L. X. Beckett, S. M. Beiko, Benoit Chartier, Sebastian A. Jones, Kat Kruger, Cintain M. Quintana, Kari Maaren, Shiv MacFarlane, James Miller, Chinelo Onwualu, Jordan Shiveley, Jonathan Sims, James J. Stevenson, Jason Taniguchi, and O. Westin.

Here's a story from the sampler, and here's where you can hear it narrated. You can still modify your pledges to add-on the digital version or physical version (which comes with instant access to a digital copy) if you want.

Once again, here's how to access your Digital Downloads if you just received the story (or want to add-on retroactively): https://imgur.com/a/dtecJQt

To go back and add it on to your pledge, just re-open your original survey link and click "Edit Your Order" in the top-right.

That's all for now!

This was a very technical/logistics-focused update, so I plan to do a more creative development-focused update next!

PDFs of the original Story Engine Deck have been distributed + new artwork + progress update
over 2 years ago – Mon, Aug 09, 2021 at 10:32:38 PM

Hi everyone!

Thank you so much for being so timely in responding to the reward surveys and for being so considerate reading the FAQs and getting in touch for clarifications! This project has been my biggest in scope by far, and it involved some big and challenging changes to how tax and shipping are assessed in the pledge manager. I was expecting the pledge manager to lead to a lot of complications and customer support cases, but so far this has been the smoothest survey process of all the Kickstarter/BackerKit projects I've managed. I put that down to how considerate backers have been in keeping up with updates, communicating their needs clearly when they reach out for assistance, and being flexible with solutions and workarounds. So let me say a big thank you to all of you—it really makes a huge difference on my end!

Also, for those waiting on additional information before filling out the reward survey: take your time, there's no rush. We're at about 83% completion right now, which is enough for me to make informed decisions about production. It's always nice to have finished surveys in hand, but we won't be locking pledges or charging cards in BackerKit until January 2022, so whether you do the survey now and change your mind later, or you wait until January to decide, it's okay. We'll likely distribute the beta through BackerKit this autumn, so that may tip the scales toward filling out the survey sooner, but again, there's no rush.

With that said, I'm excited to share some updates with you! Here are the headlines, with full details below

• PDFs of the original Story Engine Deck have been distributed
• New artwork for the Lore Fragments Expansion cover and sample micro-settings
• Progress update on getting the beta ready

PDFs of the original Story Engine Deck have been distributed

If you backed for any reward tier that includes access to PDFs of the original The Story Engine Deck, or the original 3 expansions or 6 boosters, you now can access those PDFs via BackerKit! These are the reward tiers that include access to this content:

• CA$ 80: Deck of Worlds + Original Story Engine
• CA$ 80: PDF All Old + New Decks
• CA$ 390: All Old + New Decks
• CA$ 480: /|\(°,,,°)/|\ DEVOUR ALL THINGS OLD+NEW
• Also, anyone who added on the original Story Engine Deck and/or the original expansions/boosters

And here's how you can locate your digital download rewards in BackerKit: https://help.backerkit.com/article/642-digital-downloads

I want to say a big thank you to Zach Schuster (@zmschuster in the Kickstarter comments), who came on board to help with communications when the project took off faster than expected in the first week. He has since taken on a bigger project management role coordinating art production, backing me up on graphic design, and helping set up the pledge manager. Over the past couple of weeks, he's been instrumental in getting set up for PDF distribution. The high-quality PDF print-and-play of The Story Engine Deck has been around since April of 2020, but the original "eco-efficient" version of the print-and-play I designed was still very ink-intensive. Zach helped me re-export the full original run of Story Engine cards in a MUCH more printer-friendly format.

Here's what the high-quality print-and-play looks like:

And here's what the new eco-efficient version looks like:

The Agent/Anchor cards are still in full-color (but with simpler text), and the Engine/Conflict/Aspect cards are primarily simple text on white. I think this will especially make a big difference for home-printing decks and teachers on tight printing budgets. And because the icons and card styling stand out more, these cards are easier to read for colorblind users and when using black-and-white printing.

I decided to distribute these files without any restriction on payment being taken or pledges being locked in BackerKit. In other words, if they are part of your rewards, you can access these original Story Engine PDFs any time after finishing your survey, even if you have an amount owing in BackerKit. I overrode the setting that normally forces backers to have paid first so I can distribute some rewards early while leaving surveys open and unlocked until January.

This is my first export of the new eco-efficient print-and-play. I checked all the PDFs for errors, but if any mistakes slipped through during our batch-export process, please feel free to DM me and I'll collect changes for a future update.

New artwork

You may recall from the note on the campaign page that the cover artwork I was showing for the Lore Fragments Expansion was a placeholder while the art team behind the EMBERWIND tabletop RPG cooked up a custom cover for us. I'm thrilled to unveil the updated cover artwork, which I'm absolutely in love with. (Also, EMBERWIND just opened the beta of their Hero Creator tool this weekend, which and you can sign up for it here.)

Here's the finalized cover:

I also wanted to show some of the finished artwork from the team of writers and artists creating micro-setting postcards.

This is Frances P's rendering of the First Road leading out from the town of Hraika—a complex micro-setting created by CL Clark using an alpha copy of the deck. You'll get to read the lore writeup and their flash story "In the Gutter of Divinity" set in this area later this year.

And this is Kuutti Terävä's depiction of Jordan Shiveley's original micro-setting the Hiphathenaeum, a library of funguses hidden away in a canyon honeycombed with niches and tunnels, also created using the alpha deck. Flash fiction to come!

More exciting artwork and writing have been delivered by the setting creation team, but I want to tease it out over the coming updates!

Progress update

I've finished the deck overhaul I described in the previous update, rebalancing all of the Namesake Cards with the 3-after-the-name cues and 1 before-the-name cue, and rebalancing the cues of the Origin, Attribute, and Advent Cards for a better spread of ideas covering different categories of narrow/broad prompts and prompts covering different aspects of worldbuilding. I've done this for the main deck and all 6 expansions that use the same card types: about 600 cards in all.

I've continued flowing in the cues created by the project writers. The utility, creativity, and range of the deck keep getting better and better.

Once all project writers' cues have been delivered and integrated, I plan to do one more pass of the Origin, Attribute, and Advent card arrangements with an eye for "master"/"meta" level cues—these are cues that could be promoted from local characteristics and events to global ones that affect your entire world. I'll be adding a section to the guidebook dedicated to exploring this concept, and making sure that most Origin, Attribute, and Advent cards have at least one cue that could conceivably work on a global level. My Q&A with World Anvil put this idea on my radar, and while I plan to treat the ideas involved a little differently through the lens of prompts, I do recommend checking out this great blog on the different aspects that can go into establishing a world meta.

Once that pass is done, we'll start prepping the deck for a print-and-play of the beta so we can open things up to all of you!

That's all for now!

I'll leave you with another sample prompt: The Holy Savannah, known for its waterfall bird colony, which has started acting strangely of late! Could it be something in the water? Could it be the legacy of war that has seen the area trade hands numerous times over the years? I'll leave it up to you!

Thanks so much!

Reward surveys have been sent!
almost 3 years ago – Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 11:50:34 PM

Hi backers!

Just a very quick update that the remaining BackerKit reward surveys have been sent! Keep an eye on your inboxes (and spam folders) for those, and if you haven't received one it, try entering your email on this page to re-send it.

I will be around to answer questions and resolve issues related to the specifics of this project, as will the BackerKit team.

A lot of your questions may already be answered by:

• The previous update, which covers some finer points of the pledge manager
• The Deck of Worlds pledge manager FAQ, which covers project-specific questions
• BackerKit's general FAQ, which covers common questions about their platform

But BackerKit also has a contact page for troubleshooting issues, and I am just a DM away. Never hesitate to get in touch with me about your questions throughout this project.

Heads up: I am getting dose 2 of the vaccine today, so my response time might be a little slower than usual if I end up with heavy side effects—I'm told this one is a doozy! That said, I promise to get back to everyone within a couple of days at most.

Thanks for your patience!

Peter

BackerKit test invitations have gone out + Canadian tax update
almost 3 years ago – Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 05:12:36 AM

The pledge manager is ready and has been reviewed and approved by the BackerKit team!

I have just sent out the "smoke test"—a test launch of the reward survey going to 5% of backers. This lets us triple-check for errors, inconsistencies, issues, and points of confusion in the survey before sending out mass invitations.

Assuming all goes well with the smoke test, I will be sending out the remaining 95% of reward survey invitations on Monday or Tuesday. Until then, you can check your email to confirm if you're one of the lucky 5%!

Important notes about the pledge manager 

1) We refined shipping estimates further and the shipping costs provided in the pledge manager are now close to final. If any regional shipping costs go significantly down in the coming months, we will decrease charges accordingly, but otherwise, assume the figures in BackerKit are final. 

2) We will not be charging credit cards for any shipping/taxes/upgrades in BackerKit until early 2022 (when final PDFs are delivered) or locking your address until mid-2022. Until then, you can freely upgrade your pledge (see below), add-on items, or update your address. I will remind everyone via Kickstarter update before I lock orders or charge credit cards. 

3) You can upgrade from any reward tier to any reward tier. I decided not to set restrictions or surcharges on pledge upgrades. Instructions on how to upgrade your reward in BackerKit are here: https://help.backerkit.com/article/596-how-to-switch-into-another-pledge-level

4) Upgrading pledges saves you on shipping costs relative to adding-on the same items. I had to restructure the shipping table to make sure I could guarantee the rates displayed in the Kickstarter, even if shipping charges go up for preorder customers who join after the campaign. Shipping is now calculated as pledge tier fee + weight-based add-on fee.I have run exhaustive price checks, and upgrading pledges should always save money or match compared to adding on the same items to a lower reward tier. Please DM me if you find otherwise!

5) You *can* add-on PDF rewards to physical rewards. Originally I said you likely would not be able to. You still can't add on physical rewards to non-physical reward tiers.

6) There is a new reward tier you can upgrade to that includes ONLY the new material for The Story Engine Deck. A few fans of the last Kickstarter asked for this!

7) If for any reason the shipping + tax you're charged exceeds the estimates at the bottom of the update (also on the Kickstarter page) after currency conversion, please DM me. I balanced the shipping table to fit the estimates based on currency exchange rates from May 18, but this is by far the most complex table I've worked on, so please feel welcome to check my work and let me know if you find a discrepancy. The bottom line is I do not want to ask anyone to pay more than was advertised during the campaign. If there is an error, I will make it right.

8) You can contribute to the stockpile of donated decks for schools, libraries, and community programs. This was requested by multiple people. There is a tip jar in the Extras section of the Add-Ons page that lets you choose an amount to donate to the stockpile, up to $CA 42 for a full deck added to the stockpile that educators and program leaders can apply for. I'll keep the Tip Jar open and update you periodically on how many communal decks we're at.

And as a reminder, here are the shipping estimates provided during the campaign

BackerKit will charge you in Canadian dollars, and you can find the May 18 exchange rates I used to generate this table at these links: USD, GBP, euros, and AUD.

A sales tax update for Canadians backing physical reward tiers

My apologies, but I had to restructure shipping fees to accommodate Canadian sales tax. 

My original plan was to treat all Kickstarter prices as tax-inclusive and manually calculate/remit taxes by province. Unfortunately, BackerKit has certain tax settings that are universal, and after conferring extensively with a BackerKit team member about my tax needs for both the Kickstarter and the future BackerKit-hosted preorder store, I've determined the simplest option is this:

I will charge tax on Canadian physical pledges, but offset the increase with reduced shipping and manually applied discounts/credits. 

For Canadians living in 5% GST-only provinces and territories like Alberta, your shipping + tax will NOT exceed the max shipping estimates provided during the campaign. You won't need a discount.credit.

For Canadians in PST/HST provinces, we will apply a discount or credit to your BackerKit profile to reduce the total tax and shipping on your base reward tier to match the estimate provided during the campaign. Because we need your completed survey to determine your provincial tax rate, we will apply the credit shortly before we charge cards in 2022. Don't worry: you don't need to do anything on your end and you'll be reminded via Kickstarter update to double-check the totals before we run credit cards.

For Canadians backing non-physical reward tiers, there will be no change.

Okay, that's everything you need to know!

If you're in the 5% batch of surveys, feel free to DM me with questions and concerns as you fill out your surveys this weekend! Otherwise, keep an eye out for your reward survey coming Monday or Tuesday.