Completion Status Update, Relics Digital Release, Gifts for All, and Gen Con
Greetings from literally The Forge, if the color of the sky the past day is any indication. It's gross outside (we're in the Northeast on the border of the smoke zone), but at least we get a cool fiery-red sunset? I tried to take a photo with my phone but it didn't do it justice. If you're in the nastier areas of the air quality zone, stay safe!
Let me update you on where things are at!
Completion Progress
I'm going to list a bit of a comprehensive components manifest and where they are at, completion-wise. We're closing in on print-ready, but we still need a bit more time to wrap things up.
ODD Base (v2.0)
Small cards (Encounter, XP Level, Stairs, etc) - 100%
Large cards (Hero, Turn Reference) - 100%
Unified Rulebook - 90% (will be in all three core games)
Box - 90%
ODD Forest (v2.0)
Small cards - 100%
Large cards -100%
Box - 90%
ODD Relics (v2.0, the only version!)
Small cards - 100%
Large cards - 95%
Box - 50%
Trove / Promo Box
Escape Mode - 85%
Dungeon Variant Cards - 60%
Promo Hero Cards - 95%
Abyssal Depths Cards - 100%
Aftifact Quest Physical Cards - 50%
3-6 Player Handbook Sheet - 50%
Vault Box
Box Art - 100%
Box Layout (text/etc) - 50%
To be clear, the things that are not done yet are layout/graphic design tasks, not playtesting work. As per our last update, work on the core sets is basically done, just a bit more rulebook work that I need to iron out, and some box updates to reflect additional legal information for both EU/US requirements that've changed recently.
Most of the rest of the layout work is the bonus materials Trove. We're pushing through, although the world has been consistent in its goals to throw rocks in our path outside the realm of work that inevitably sucks time away from our ability to get stuff done. This last month has been unkind to the folks around us, to say the least.
We should be able to tackle what's left over the next few weeks (Gen Con is eating up a big chunk of time in the middle), at which point we will push the print button we have wanted to mash for the better part of this year. I apologize that I haven't been able to get things done as fast as I wanted to get things done, and that it's resulted in all of you getting games later than you would like. As always, if this timeline is not good enough, you are welcome to request a full refund at any time. We're excited about the product we'll be delivering, and we thank each and every one of you for waiting so long for it.
Thank You / We're Sorry Gift
We've worked with our digital partners, Handelabra Games, to give every single backer at every level that's purchased at least one item a Steam key for the base One Deck Dungeon Digital. I know a bunch of you already have it - feel free to pass the key along to a friend! We're also going to give a direct download of the new soundtrack for the Relics expansion.
Both of these will go through the BackerKit system as soon as we can (we are waiting for Steam to generate the 4000 keys to give you). It should be in the next day or so. I haven't used the digital reward system on BackerKit before, but I expect it to go smooth. Fingers crossed!
You should get a separate email from BackerKit with instructions on how to download / get the key. You will also see a free $0 game & soundtrack item in your pledge manager if you check your order. It won't affect anything for shipping.
Relics of the Forge - Digital Release
Handelabra has been working on Relics of the Forge over the past year, as we've been working on the physical version of the game. Relics of the Forge will be releasing on Steam, iOS, and Android tomorrow, July 17. Typically we get the physical version out first, but circumstances conspired to put it in the other order this time.
One slight benefit of this, is if we see any serious balance issues over the next couple weeks while we're at Gen Con, we still have time to make a quick change to the print files before they go to press.
Next Update
My goal is to put a final version of the rulebook along with the PnP up for folks to review before I leave for Gen Con. I'll post a short update with those ideally next Friday, or during next weekend depending on how things go. I'll also have some Promo Hero news to share.
If you're attending Gen Con, we'll be at booth #2555, and are always happy to see folks! If not, we hope you have a good middle of the summer.
Hey all, we've been working on getting all the files prepped, and I wanted to share a bunch of that work with you.
Relics, and the Vault, will represent the release of One Deck Dungeon 2.0. We're not making any massive mechanical upheavals or other disruptions to the core of the game, but we are making small revisions for QOL and some long-pending art fixes.
Edit: To be clear, this is purely a visual/QOL update (the last printing was v1.9). There are no balance or content changes that make earlier copies of the game incompatible.
Icons Upgrade
As part of the new visuals, we've vectorized all of the basic icons so that they print more consistently and cleanly. Over the past decade we'd accumulated a lot of little variations, and this cleans that all up. In print, they will be slightly less fuzzy in some places.
Layout / Templates Cleanup
With the updated icons, we've made some changes to the card template. All of the elements are about 10% larger, including fonts. This should give dice a tiny bit more breathing room, and gave us some space to expand the scroll where skills/potions go at the bottom.
This has also allowed us to address a presentation issue that's been around since v1.0 - the way skills and items line up under a Hero card. Below on the left is the old, to the right the new:
As part of the rearranging process, we've been able to make the items and skills line up much more accurately with the hero card template. You can see as well that the stone backgrounds for the four stats is a little more colorful!
Pardon the text fuzziness, the PNG exports are going through photoshop and then BackerKit's image compression - the real cards will have good crisp text!
Compatibility
If you are plaing with a mix of old and new cards, the scrolls and item icons won't line up perfectly, but the game is otherwise fully playable, you shouldn't have any issues.
Rulebook
A big part of this is integrating the new rules for Relics of the Forge into the core rulebook. The rulebook, which will be included in every print copy of One Deck Dungeon and its stand-alone expansions, Forest of Shadows and Relics of the Forge, will include all the rules for those three core sets. Mini-expansions, such as Abyssal Depths and the extra game modes provided in the Trove, will have their own small rules documents. All of these will also be available as PDFs available for download from OneDeckDungeon.com.
These rules are presented within the rulebook with color-coded boxes indicating the expansion they refer to:
We've also got a separate spread each for Forest and Relics to summarize all their core rules together:
If you'd like to see the whole PDF of the current draft (95% complete, but missing all diagram updates with the newer cards and some other graphics polish) - you can download it at https://onedeckdungeon.com/RuleBook_2_0_DRAFT.pdf
We're wrapping up work on all of the stuff in this update in the next week or so. We have a few other tasks to complete for layouts, but aim to be done and ready to print soon. Release should be this Fall, pending factory/freight/The World.
My work right now has been laying out the unified One Deck Dungeon v2.0 rulebook. Relics, Forest, and Base One Deck Dungeon will all come with the same rulebook, which will contain all of the rules for the major expansions. Expansion rules will have iconography noting which expansion they refer to - the v1.5 and above rulebook does this for base and Forest already.
In addition, while I'm not changing the way the game is played, we are taking this opportunity to clean up a lot of parts of the rules that've been confusing, some terminology clashes, and trying to make the game as easy to learn as possible from the rulebook, whichever version someone starts with.
I had hoped to have the whole book laid out by Friday, I didn't quite make it. I'm working on it today and we'll post an update with the rulebook as soon as it's ready to show. There aren't any rules crises, just some things that have been tougher to organize clearly/coherently than I thought. Thanks all for your patience, and sorry again for the quiet period. We're trying to get all the things done!
Right now, the game is expected to be submitted to the factory for production this Spring. We don't have a precise delivery/release date, that is in the hands of the factory + freight world. Summer/Fall is our goal.
Today we have everyone's favorite sort of update, one with pretty pictures! Up until now, all of the images we've shown of relics and the forge itself are my own very professional photoshop chop jobs. But perhaps you'd like to see a couple Relics laid out by professional artists:
The Ancient Tome (1P)
Bloodstone (1P)
We're still tweaking a few things, but this is close to the final presentation. As you can see, this is an entirely new template - we've added a little icon to visually distinguish each relic, and different backgrounds for the Relic abilities. No more scrolls, but with the colors matching skills and feats. Each relic has 3 abilities, always in the same order. The top one can be used during an encounter like a skill, the second before an encounter like a feat, and the third is the flare effect that happens when the forge is full.
The Relic card is designed to sit atop the Forge, which is also much shinier than before:
The two artworks are connected to show the flow of fiery lava fuel from the Relic to the Forge. The nine slots for fuel are now along the bottom edge of the card, much like the Fiends from Abyssal Depths. The text layout on the Forge card is still going through some revisions, we'll be tailoring the embers and sparks in the background so that they don't interfere with the words once that part is finalized.
What's up next? The rulebook! We'll be working on that over the next couple weeks now that things are finalized, rules-wise. We've been using the alpha implementation of Relics in the digital version of One Deck Dungeon to do lots of bonus rapid playtesting and that's allowed us to make some of the gameplay and balance tweaks with more confidence. That's our last major piece of layout work to be done before being ready to hit the factory.
Overall progress in March was slower than hoped, I was sick for most of the month but we managed to get as much as we could done, and fingers crossed that's the end of the illness for the season. Let the spring and warmth begin!
Greetings from literally The Forge, if the color of the sky the past day is any indication. It's gross outside (we're in the Northeast on the border of the smoke zone), but at least we get a cool fiery-red sunset? I tried to take a photo with my phone but it didn't do it justice. If you're in the nastier areas of the air quality zone, stay safe!
Let me update you on where things are at!
Completion Progress
I'm going to list a bit of a comprehensive components manifest and where they are at, completion-wise. We're closing in on print-ready, but we still need a bit more time to wrap things up.
ODD Base (v2.0)
Small cards (Encounter, XP Level, Stairs, etc) - 100%
Large cards (Hero, Turn Reference) - 100%
Unified Rulebook - 90% (will be in all three core games)
Box - 90%
ODD Forest (v2.0)
Small cards - 100%
Large cards -100%
Box - 90%
ODD Relics (v2.0, the only version!)
Small cards - 100%
Large cards - 95%
Box - 50%
Trove / Promo Box
Escape Mode - 85%
Dungeon Variant Cards - 60%
Promo Hero Cards - 95%
Abyssal Depths Cards - 100%
Aftifact Quest Physical Cards - 50%
3-6 Player Handbook Sheet - 50%
Vault Box
Box Art - 100%
Box Layout (text/etc) - 50%
To be clear, the things that are not done yet are layout/graphic design tasks, not playtesting work. As per our last update, work on the core sets is basically done, just a bit more rulebook work that I need to iron out, and some box updates to reflect additional legal information for both EU/US requirements that've changed recently.
Most of the rest of the layout work is the bonus materials Trove. We're pushing through, although the world has been consistent in its goals to throw rocks in our path outside the realm of work that inevitably sucks time away from our ability to get stuff done. This last month has been unkind to the folks around us, to say the least.
We should be able to tackle what's left over the next few weeks (Gen Con is eating up a big chunk of time in the middle), at which point we will push the print button we have wanted to mash for the better part of this year. I apologize that I haven't been able to get things done as fast as I wanted to get things done, and that it's resulted in all of you getting games later than you would like. As always, if this timeline is not good enough, you are welcome to request a full refund at any time. We're excited about the product we'll be delivering, and we thank each and every one of you for waiting so long for it.
Thank You / We're Sorry Gift
We've worked with our digital partners, Handelabra Games, to give every single backer at every level that's purchased at least one item a Steam key for the base One Deck Dungeon Digital. I know a bunch of you already have it - feel free to pass the key along to a friend! We're also going to give a direct download of the new soundtrack for the Relics expansion.
Both of these will go through the BackerKit system as soon as we can (we are waiting for Steam to generate the 4000 keys to give you). It should be in the next day or so. I haven't used the digital reward system on BackerKit before, but I expect it to go smooth. Fingers crossed!
You should get a separate email from BackerKit with instructions on how to download / get the key. You will also see a free $0 game & soundtrack item in your pledge manager if you check your order. It won't affect anything for shipping.
Relics of the Forge - Digital Release
Handelabra has been working on Relics of the Forge over the past year, as we've been working on the physical version of the game. Relics of the Forge will be releasing on Steam, iOS, and Android tomorrow, July 17. Typically we get the physical version out first, but circumstances conspired to put it in the other order this time.
One slight benefit of this, is if we see any serious balance issues over the next couple weeks while we're at Gen Con, we still have time to make a quick change to the print files before they go to press.
Next Update
My goal is to put a final version of the rulebook along with the PnP up for folks to review before I leave for Gen Con. I'll post a short update with those ideally next Friday, or during next weekend depending on how things go. I'll also have some Promo Hero news to share.
If you're attending Gen Con, we'll be at booth #2555, and are always happy to see folks! If not, we hope you have a good middle of the summer.
I have a question regarded the plastic cards - I have chosen the plastic version, but I am not sure now that it would be better than cardstock +sleeves since I've since heard that it would have dull colors
Would you be able to post a comparisson or some guide regarding that and based on that to choose if we stay plastic or cardstock?
Hey all, we've been working on getting all the files prepped, and I wanted to share a bunch of that work with you.
Relics, and the Vault, will represent the release of One Deck Dungeon 2.0. We're not making any massive mechanical upheavals or other disruptions to the core of the game, but we are making small revisions for QOL and some long-pending art fixes.
Edit: To be clear, this is purely a visual/QOL update (the last printing was v1.9). There are no balance or content changes that make earlier copies of the game incompatible.
Icons Upgrade
As part of the new visuals, we've vectorized all of the basic icons so that they print more consistently and cleanly. Over the past decade we'd accumulated a lot of little variations, and this cleans that all up. In print, they will be slightly less fuzzy in some places.
Layout / Templates Cleanup
With the updated icons, we've made some changes to the card template. All of the elements are about 10% larger, including fonts. This should give dice a tiny bit more breathing room, and gave us some space to expand the scroll where skills/potions go at the bottom.
This has also allowed us to address a presentation issue that's been around since v1.0 - the way skills and items line up under a Hero card. Below on the left is the old, to the right the new:
As part of the rearranging process, we've been able to make the items and skills line up much more accurately with the hero card template. You can see as well that the stone backgrounds for the four stats is a little more colorful!
Pardon the text fuzziness, the PNG exports are going through photoshop and then BackerKit's image compression - the real cards will have good crisp text!
Compatibility
If you are plaing with a mix of old and new cards, the scrolls and item icons won't line up perfectly, but the game is otherwise fully playable, you shouldn't have any issues.
Rulebook
A big part of this is integrating the new rules for Relics of the Forge into the core rulebook. The rulebook, which will be included in every print copy of One Deck Dungeon and its stand-alone expansions, Forest of Shadows and Relics of the Forge, will include all the rules for those three core sets. Mini-expansions, such as Abyssal Depths and the extra game modes provided in the Trove, will have their own small rules documents. All of these will also be available as PDFs available for download from OneDeckDungeon.com.
These rules are presented within the rulebook with color-coded boxes indicating the expansion they refer to:
We've also got a separate spread each for Forest and Relics to summarize all their core rules together:
If you'd like to see the whole PDF of the current draft (95% complete, but missing all diagram updates with the newer cards and some other graphics polish) - you can download it at https://onedeckdungeon.com/RuleBook_2_0_DRAFT.pdf
We're wrapping up work on all of the stuff in this update in the next week or so. We have a few other tasks to complete for layouts, but aim to be done and ready to print soon. Release should be this Fall, pending factory/freight/The World.
