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Hey Everyone,
Ray here with your just in time March update. A lot has happened, so I'm just going to get into the timeline of events before denoting important announcements at the end. Here we go:
Quinns Quest Review
The Quinns Quest Review completely blew us out of the water. Last update was a week into the review, and we thought we had seen the majority of the wave. That wasn't the case. People kept discovering the video, talking about the Wildsea, joining the Discord, and of course picking up the books!
Reprinting The Wildsea: Core
It became clear that we wouldn't have enough copies to cover the orders from this Kickstarter, so we made the decision to go to reprint! Felix and I scrambled to get things in order, and off we went! Another 4,000 copies of The Wildsea, and an additional 500 of Storm & Root, to account for the demand. All set, we thought. No problem!
Sold Out!
Well, people kept buying The Wildsea wherever they could get their hands on it. A lot of volume hit the Mythworks webstore, but equally surging were our preorders from this campaign. We officially sold out right at the end of month and switched the online store to preorders.
What we didn't account for until much later was the increase in preorders from this campaign. Around 900 new backers appeared last month, the majority of whom chose to buy the bundle with both the expansion and Storm & Root. We also started hearing from all of our distributors simultaneously asking about restocks to the tune of 150-200 copies (previously most had ordered 10-50), and the new stuff we were printing.
Printing Even More Books
Well, some quick recalculations revealed that even with the reprint of Wildsea Core and the additional 500 of SAR, that still wouldn't be enough. We had to add even more books to our order...
And so we did, late in the game. We've now added an additional 1,500 copies of SAR and 1,500 copies of Wildsea Core bringing us to 5,500 Wildsea Core and 4,000 SAR, with around 1,200 Core and 2,000 SAR presold through this Kickstarter.
Updated Timeline
Unfortunately, we did add on this last batch fairly late into the game. As of today, we're about 14 days from completing printing production. With that in mind, here's an updated timeline:
- Printing & Manufacturer (Complete Mid-April 2024)
- Ocean Freight (Expected 6 Weeks, June 2024)
- Backerkit Preorder Page Closes - May 2024
- Fulfillment (June-July 2024)
On our end, we have a deadline from the printer to submit all of our various freight shipments by the second week of April, which is when this latest reorder will be complete. So, sorry folks. We were ahead of schedule for much of the timeline, but suddenly selling out of everything and doubling the orders from this campaign will set you back a couple of months.
Reprinting the Collector's Edition
One thing that reprinting the Core Rules allowed us to do was to do a new Collector's Edition of the Core Rules! Before we release these for purchase to all backers, though, we have some housekeeping that needs to be down:
- MANIFOLD MIND tier and above backers, we've also added a survey question for you to fill out to indicate which colorway of the Wildsea Collector's Standard you would like.
- We've also sent a "FINAL ADDRESS NOTIFICATION." - This isn't really a final address notification, it's just a workaround I found for BackerKit to send notification to a group of backers who already filled in their surveys. Please excuse the notification but do let us know what colorway you'd like.
Once most of our high tier backers have filled out their surveys, we'll then add the Collector's Edition up for preorder here. We want to make sure our old backers have their pick of what cover they want before releasing whatever inventory we have left to everyone else.
Wooden Dice
We have restocks and pictures of almost all of our dice! Starting with the wooden ones from our new supplier Wooded Meadows:
- Indian Ebony Wooden Dice Backers - You should have received an email from me just now with a survey about what you would like to do with your order.
- Low Sour Wooden Dice are available again on the Mythworks Webstore.
Stone Dice
And now a look at the stone dice!
So, the above picture is from my sample set sent to me a couple of months ago. I've been , storing them in my wooden dice tray, and they shattered on the flight back from Breakout Con in Toronto to back home in Los Angeles:
They are made of precious glass obsidian, and I probably should have stored them in a much more cushioned place. That said, do be aware when you buy these dice they are made of precious materials that can chip and even break, especially the obsidian one!
Level Up has some nice packaging though. Here's a look at what the dice come in:
Important Dice Announcements
- Indian Ebony Wooden Dice Backers - You should have received an email from me with a survey about what you would like to do with your dice, given that we were unable to source more Indian Ebony Wood to make these.
- You can purchase the Wooden Dice on the Mythworks Store. They are in preorder and will be fulfilled when we get our batch shipment in Mid-April.
- You can purchase the Stone Dice on the Storm and Root Preorder Page.
Other Prototypes
The Wildsea Hex Patch is going to be inversed from the colors above. So, white on black instead of white on black.
The box for the Cthonic Dice. The actual dice molds are finished and we're choose / testing colors. Seeing what's available if we can do the swirl like we had in our prototype, otherwise it's a pantone two-tone with the pips in a different color.
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Okay, I think that's everything. Or, at least, a lot of things. There's so many things these days. All I can think of, though, for now. How's everyone enjoying the Wildsea? Get to sail lately? I got in a fun session with Felix at Breakout Con with a big table. I also hopped in and out as he ran a one on one session which he said was one of his best ever.
Speaking of the big guy, here's me passing it off ~~
Felix At Work
Afternoon wildsailors, Felix here. Things certainly have been busy recently, with conventions, travel, books, sales... There's a reason this update is a little later than usual!
But that doesn't mean I haven't been hard at work, sometimes even on the things I'm actually supposed to be working on! In fact, let me give you a list...
+ The art direction portion of the final big Wildsea book, Tooth & Nail, is underway. Starting to get new art come in, even in sketch form, is always one of the most exciting times for me as a creator - it's breathing new, transformative life into the world every time it starts to settle into one defined shape, and I love it.
+ A little bit of the writing is taking shape too, but that's on the backburner for now. Art production is what clogs the pipeline with the big books (damn us for throwing so many colourful pages at people, apparently), so I can have a bit of a wildsea writing break and focus on...
+ PICO, my game about tiny bugs riding cats and having adventures, is nearing the playtest stage. Most of the main rules have been sorted out, a lot of the art is already finished (and more comes in every month), and we even have some of the fontwork chosen now! PICO is much smaller than the Wildsea, as I think I've said before, so ideally I want it in and out of playtesting by the end of the year so I can get back to leafier endeavours.
+ But creative freedom is a hard thing to hold down - recently, Cerebric and I have veen working on something crunchy and alchemical, still with fiction first flavouring but with a very different theme and rules-set to Wild Words. You may see some of that in the future, as our first playtest for the as-yet-untitled game (featuring a chemically-preserved lich and his gigantic drill phylactery) went exceedingly well.
+ And that's not even mentioning Drift, my future trains-based project, or Ichor, the sci-fi take on the Wild Words engine that's in early development. It's almost like I'm really bad at not working on things!
So there you have it - a little glimpse into what I've been doing with my time recently, though I've also been spending time reading other RPGs (something all designers should do on a regular basis). I picked up Under The Autumn Strangely by Graham Gentz recently and, though I missed out on getting to play it, thoroughly enjoyed the book. I also started making my way through Gubat Banwa, something I've been meaning to read for a while now. Read books, people - it's good for you. :P
Anyway, I should get back to something more creative now, as I've got the rest of the day free for work. We'll be updating you again soon, but in the meantime, thank you all!
... And sail safe. :)