Fulfillment Update: Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm PDFs Fulfilled
about 6 years ago – Sun, Feb 23, 2020 at 11:28:43 PM

Just a quick update that at long last, I've synched up the BackerKit survey to my Excel fulfillment tracker, and have triggered PDF fulfillment for those who are entitled to the published volumes and versions of Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm as part of their Monsters of Aquilae pledge.

Just 6,600+ pages of creature crunch content.  No big deal.  :)

In production news, I'm on-target in terms of my estimations for finishing up Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm, and have even streamlined the layout of things to the point where laying out Monsters of Aquilae will be even more rapid than I had anticipated.  So, good news!

For those who haven't yet completed their BackerKit survey, no worries; you can do so at any time.

Onward!

BackerKit Surveys Sent!
about 6 years ago – Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 09:25:05 PM

Huzzah, the surveys are away.  Let me know if you have any questions or issues; thank you!

Onward!

Production Update, BackerKit, and More
about 6 years ago – Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 10:22:28 PM

Happy new year!  Hope everyone had a great winter holiday season.

BackerKit Survey Coming Soon!

I've completed setting up the BackerKit survey.  This campaign's rewards and options were pretty straightforward, so this will mainly be to capture your email address, shipping info and hardcopy system preferences if applicable, and so on.  But I cannot fulfill stuff you're entitled to without it, so when you see the survey, please do go ahead and fill it out.  We've got plenty of time, but it always helps my record-keeping if we can get it done sooner rather than later... say, by March 1st, if that's okay.

A number of you have expressed interest in upgrading your pledge level--a choice that the holiday season may not have made possible at the time of the campaign closing!  Rest assured, this will be an option in the BackerKit survey.

Production Update

I've finished and published Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm, Volume 1 for 5E and Pathfinder Second Edition.  That's an enormous accomplishment, and an important milestone on the path to Monsters of Aquilae.  

The good news for you good MOA folks is that I've improved and automated my approach, so laying these books out is quicker than ever before.  That will help me keep on-pace to finish over the next few months as I had planned.

I'm basically ready to lay MOA out, and will do so immediately following completion of the Bestiary books.  As of now, that's still on-target for June 2020.

Onward!

Funded! Huzzah!
over 6 years ago – Thu, Dec 19, 2019 at 06:13:54 PM

Thank You!

Thank you all so very much for your interest, support, and enthusiasm.  I'm thrilled that the campaign was so successful!

What's Next?

Kickstarter typically takes 2 full weeks to process pledges and finalize things, at which point I will be free to trigger the BackerKit survey.  This will allow you to change your pledge level if you want, do Add-Ons, and provide information such as shipping address and hardcopy edition preference, if applicable.

I'll post an update as soon as we get closer to all of that happening, but for now, I'm targeting to release the BackerKit survey on December 16th.

I will aim to trigger PDF fulfillment of all already-published content (i.e., the Pathfinder 1E PDFs) by the Christmas holiday for all who have completed the BackerKit survey by that time.

Onward!

Content Conversion Guide KS, 5E & P2E Edition Progress
over 6 years ago – Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 06:13:45 PM

Hi folks!  Happy encroaching holidays!  Two quick updates today:

Content Conversion Guide Kickstarter

Due to a lot of backer requests, we've launched a small KS project to gauge and fuel interest in a Content Conversion Guide, which documents and elaborates on what we've done to convert 1,600 monsters from Pathfinder First Edition into 5E and P2E edition rules.

Check it out here.

BackerKit Soon

Now that we've passed the two-week window Kickstarter and BackerKit recommend, I will be launching BackerKit soon, probably later this week.  I'll make an update explicitly about this when it launches.

5E & P2E Edition Progress

The 5E edition of the Bestiary fully underway in layout now.  It's my entire daily focus.  I've developed a desktop app tool to facilitate the layout--not fully automated since I've determined that's impossible with InDesign, but it accelerates things for sure.  It's taken me from a 20-minute-per-monster cycle time a month ago down to about 5 minutes or so per monster.  That's where it needs to be in order to meet my expectations.

I'm super thrilled with the output, and have reviewed it with some 5E friends, who have recommended some tweaks here and there.  The layout is crisp, organized, and consistent, and it's loads more easy on the eyes than the Skelettin example from oh-so-long-ago.

Here's an example just to get a sense of the visual effect:

Progress / Status / Timing

I had been planning, and tracking, to complete the 5E and P2E editions of ABRE Volume 1 by Christmas.  I'm behind that target, which I'm sure comes as little surprise to many, but I wanted to be transparent.  The big impact has been my Day Job, which has been demanding leading up the end of the year.  The other time hit has been the streamlining of my layout tool, which I'm sure nobody cares about, but the good news is that nearly all of that time has been an investment in things have gotten much easier and quicker now.

So Volume 1 will take more time, unfortunately, but the remaining volumes will be quicker as a result.  Note that I do not anticipate this impacting the timeline for Monsters of Aquilae itself, given this planned acceleration once Volume 1 is done in the new year.

Onward!