Jeff and I have just finished the work on getting the Nightmare Fuel Foundry VTT module ready. As part of that, issues came up with compatibility with the original Nordlond Bestiary module and a few other fixes...so do make sure that you have the most recent versions of all the bits: Foundry VTT, the GURPS Game Aid engine, and of course the modules themselves.

As part of this final distribution for content in this project, you will receive a license key distribution, plus a copy of the Read Me installation instructions, which are duplicated below in the backer-only section of the update body.

That really should put the final bow on this campaign!

I'm pleased to report that the hiccups for the UK-hub mailings seem to have been resolved. Of the orders, 22 have gone out ("despatched"), another 6 have been "presented to carrier," which ... I'm not entirely sure what that means, and the final 2 have been "picked" and will presumably move into presentation and despatch Real Soon Now. 

For the AUS/NZ contingent, Wayne sent out all of the orders in the post three days ago. 

So...that's pretty much all of it.

The last two packages from my home - one to the US and one to Canada, both awaiting DF Companion 3 - are going into the mail today.

The stock was FINALLY booked in at GamesQuest UK; I anticipate them going out soon, hopefully sometime this week. I've been haranguing my contact to get this in promptly for a bit, but now all the stock is in their system to execute.

I think the AUS/NZ books are still on their way to staging...but they ARE on their way.

As of this morning, all packages but two have been sent from their origin out of the house. Those last two are waiting on copies of Dungeon Fantasy Companion 3 to be delivered to me so I can take care of them.

All Domestic packages (save for the one above) hit the mail last night, which means tracking numbers should start reflecting "moving to destination."

All international packages have labels. Most have left my house, and a few rogue packages to Canada are picked, packed, labeled, and will hit USPS before noon today.

The UK-Hub stuff is on the way or in place at GamesQuest. The books had a copy shortage for Garden of Evil, but MixamUK instantly said "my bad" and printed out the excess, to be delivered to GQ as soon as they're done. GQ also arranged a DHL pickup for the items (mostly card decks) that had to come from here. I expect those to move quickly; airmail is like that.

The Australia/New Zealand books should be on their way to my contact in Australia; they arrived at the forwarder and I have paid the freight, so off they go.

So there are maybe 40 packages total that are pending, and all but two of those are moving to completion one way or another.

The original schedule said Print Fulfillment Begins in Feb-March; looks to me like it's going to END in Feb-March, with all books on their way by Feb, and because international routes can take an arbitrary amount of time it seems, ending in Feb-March with them delivered. We hope.

Thanks for sticking with me through the process, and I hope you enjoy your stuff.

Oh, the original note forgot to mention the VTT Pack. Nick and Nose and Neck have all the data and are working on it. When it's ready, it'll go out, but I have not pushed them for schedule updates or "faster faster please" as they're doing this on their own time and whatever I might pay them isn't enough to buy priority. So that one will be ready when it's ready, and then poof, it'll go out.

An excellent question. I'm currently working on my 2023 plans, which already included editing a book on powerful magical items (artifact-class stuff) for Nordlond.

I have a bunch of Powered by GURPS stuff on my docket, the most important (and least complete, alas) is the full-on RPG Mission X: [subtitle TBD].  Driven by a modified Action engine, it's conceived as a mix of Stargate SG1, XCOM2, and a bit of Scalzi's Old Man's War as inspirations. While it may well wind up being a core of "just another bug hunt" plus "kill the foes and take their stuff...in spaaaaace!" it will hopefully also lay the ground for more. Expect "Delvers to Grow" style Character generation, and since this is a Powered by GURPS GAME, not an expansion, I can play around with some things - and fully intend to - to make the on-ramp and play experience smoother. I hope.

More later...for now, back to work for me!

Things are starting to wind down, with a whole bunch of packages winding their way to recipients in the US and Canada. Also the first step of the journey to AUS/NZ, which went to Wayne's freight forwarder and is probably in hand now.

What is missing was that some of the orders ran into a problem in that I sold out of two different books. One, Dungeon Fantasy Companion 3, was because I got a few pre-orders after I'd ordered the first batch of supplies from SJGames. New books have been ordered and I should receive them in a few weeks. This impacts precisely one order.

The other was I ran out of Shields Up, which was 100% my fault. However, I received notice today that the books' label has been printed, which usually means I'll have it in a week or less. There are about 30-35 orders pending this arrival, but with a bit of good fortune we'll see them on the way by the end of the weekend.

Mostly good news here. The UK-printed copies of the four newer books is in ShipQuest's hands...but for some reason instead of giving me 35 copies of Garden of Evil (on top of 31 orders) I got 30. I've sent a polite version of "WTF?" to Mixam and I expect to hear back from them shortly.

That takes care of something like half of the orders; I am arranging for a DHL pickup of the box with a few one-off copies of my books, plus the 16 card decks. I've found that having GQ import the books rather than me ship them to the vendor gets things off to the right foot.

I've asked GQ to start sending out the orders that they can fill from existing stock - maybe 14 of the 30 - but they seem to have a particularly regimented methodology at times, so I'm not sure they'll begin shipment until all the pieces are there. UK and EU orders will go tracked and (to the e

So we're getting closer to the end here, but it may still be a few weeks before the majority of what can be shipped off has been, plus the "must first get to Australia before the seven AUS/NZ books are reshipped."

I was contacted by a backer today, and then actually received a phone call from Mixam as I was submitting a problem report.

The call? From the production floor: "Um...we found 16 pages of your Serpents of Legend book on our floor."

Short version: every single copy of Serpents is defective. 

They're reprinting it correctly, free of charge, as we speak. They'll get it to me ASAP, and I told them that for most of my backers, if it takes two weeks to arrive (which is normal) it won't actually delay things, as I'm waiting on a 4x5" card-cutting die to be re-ordered by Artiforge.

About that: my files were accepted and I'm reviewing proofs now. I expect they'll be fine and then the cards will print and be ready. That looks like maybe three weeks and final fulfillment can begin worldwide.

Every one of the 60-or-so backers whose books are on the way will get a new copy of Serpents free of charge.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

So, bunch of small updates, all related to fulfillment. 

Thus far, between digital and physical fulfillment, Gaming Ballistic has completed 227 orders, with 174 remaining, and a single solitary lonesome survey uncompleted.

Of the 174 unfulfilled, 31 are out of the United Kingdom hub with physical rewards, another 7 are AUS/NZ with physical. 

The rest of the domestic fulfillment is basically "everyone who ordered the quick reference cards."

Back to those in a moment.

As of this morning, I placed the order at Mixam UK for 35 copies each of the primary three books, and another 28 or 30 or so for Shields Up. I am expecting those to arrive at GamesQuestUK in 9-10 days. 

Half of the 30 UK-Hub orders do not include cards. They will go out as soon as GQ-UK gets them tracked in, validates that they're not damaged (this has happened twice before), and processes the orders. 100% of the time, this takes longer than it should, but does get done.

There is a single order that also contains Hand of Asgard, Nordlondr Folk, and Delvers to Grow...printing a single book doesn't make sense, so I'll send those over along with the 18 decks of Quick-Reference cards.

I was holding off posting about this until I had more information. There was a staff kerfuffle at my card printer. Having now spoken to my new contact, it was all understandable and nothing nefarious. It did, however, mean that we lost the time over the holidays where I'd have liked to have been printing cards.

Artiforge was sensitive to the timeliness of my order, and so did a quick inventory of what would be needed to make the printing happen.

Notionally, all the cards could be printed in a single day, cut and packed in another day, assuming machine availability and all consumables on hand. Unfortunately, the 4" x 5" card die was damaged, so they need to order another one. They asked me if I could scale my stuff down to 3.5x5", which is a "no" because I think we all want them to be compatible with the old cards. Plus...way, way too much info on a GURPS card to make them smaller. 

So we'll have to wait. Likely 4-6 weeks before the die comes in. It's complicated by issues of quality and delivery; there's an overseas vendor whose dies are really top-notch, but Chinese New Year interferes with timing; the US vendor tends to wear out faster, but can arrive sooner. Artiforge is absorbing the cost of die replacement (as they should, since it's a "standard" die size), so the choice on what route to take is on them.

What we have decided to do is to get all the cards printed immediately. The vendor has my card files as of yesterday, and they'll inspect them and decide on the best packaging strategy. So the printing will be finished, and as soon as the die comes in and gets through Quality Control, they'll be cut and packed and I'll drive over to pick them up.

At that point, I'll box up the remaining domestic physical books and cards and get them out, as well as shipping 18-20 card decks to satisfy the UK hub. I will also need to ship books to Australia, as small-volume printing is very expensive at Mixam-AUS (Mixam-UK is almost always reasonable for quantities as low as 5 books).

So, a delay. I don't like it, but without a die-cutter, we can't make cards. 

Not exactly.

Here was the original schedule:

If we do get the cards in February, then all domestic packages will be in hand by March, easily.
It will take time to get the packages of cards to the Australia reshipper and the UK GamesQuest site. A few weeks each. That still means most folks will have their orders by March, but I do expect a few stragglers.

I'm sorry about that; I was really thinking we'd have it all wrapped by before the end of January.

My authors were asking at what point the books were going to go on sale. I don't like putting things out there before backers get them - that's why you backed, to make it happen and get it first.

But everyone has their digital copies, and has for a while. I'd like to throw those up on my web store through January, and then list them on W23 and DriveThru in February.

Physical won't happen until every package is in the mail, though. Same rationale. Y'all get it first.

Sorry for the lengthy update, but I wanted to be complete. As schedules firm up (maybe we get the die sooner? In these days later is usually the better bet, but we can hope) I'll update Team Nightmare.