I have received today a notification that the Saethor's Bane softcovers have been completed and a shipping label printed.

Today I received on my porch 100 copies of the Delvers to Grow Omnibus softcover books.

I am told that in 2-3 days the new copies of the Dungeon Fantasy RPG Companion books ordered will also arrive direct from Amazon; SJGames has already shipped 48 copies of the DFRPG Boxed Set to my home, which are currently blocking entry into my dining room, much to my wife's dismay. My cats like them though. Nice high perch.

I have boxes and envelopes. I am ready for physical fulfillment. I shut down pre-orders/late pledges a few days ago (I thought I'd shut them down earlier, but apparently the program requires you to, you know, click save or something. Who knew?)

I have already received the boxes of Quick Reference cards from my card vendor, Artiforge. Picked those up in my Subaru a while ago.

The last digital item pending is the Foundry VTT pack. Nick sent me a WIP of the current layout for the character actors, which is not in final graphic perfection form, but looks very good.

Some of this will need to change to match the notes in the book; this looks to have included some of the GCS "helper" bits like "Increased Dexterity 1" which is good for the character generator but not important when it comes to presenting the actor: the fact that Angel is DX 11 in this guise is enough.

In any case, I expect to start physical fulfillment before the end of next week. If things go very well, I will receive all the cool stuff on Monday or Tuesday and immediately start pick-and-pack. I do expect this to take a few days.

I'll also gear up to collect and start shipping the UK-Hub materials to GamesQuest.

What this means, though, is that if you've ordered physical materials and have not completed your survey, providing your shipping address and covering shipping costs and taxes, your order will be reverted to digital form, with 80% of the difference between physical and digital cost refunded. If you placed a late pledge and have not paid, your order will be cancelled (and as no money has changed hands in these cases, there's nothing to refund).

I've been sending reminders daily along with a few direct-to-backer emails. Fair warning has been given and more so.

So that's where we stand. If things go swimmingly, folks might even have some Saethor's Bane in hand the second week in May. UK-hub, Canadian, and the AUS-NZ crowd will take longer (they always do), but I'll reach out to those backers directly rather than by update.

This morning I pushed the button to Lock Addresses with 48-hour notice. So on Sunday morning, the system will lock and that will be it for adjusting shipping address.

I've sent the cards to the printer, and am about to make the last few corrections to a few stat sheets in the adventure. Gentry and the Tenokian Templars both have a little tweaking due to GCS not assigning some levels to things, and me not catching it. Misery has the same problem as the Tenokian Templars in some of the GCS sheets at 140-some-odd points and higher in the GCS files I sent out: The Master at Arms combat talent isn't being applied appropriately to skills. Gentry has an issue with a level of Increased Move not adding to Move.

But once I make these changes, I'm sending the books to print. They are almost always ready in 2 weeks.

There are still 27 folks with "incomplete surveys." I use quotation marks because a non-trivial number of folks are "pre-orders, survey stores, late pledges" and that seems to not really get a "survey" as such, but even so, here's an important note:

1) If you ordered physical stuff that includes any product from SJGames - the box set or DFRPG Companions - I MUST have your shipping address and fees taken care of in order to place the order for these books. If I don't by the end of the weekend, I'll have to revert your pledge to the digital versions of items ordered, and refund 80% of the difference. 

2) If you ordered physical stuff from not-the-USA (or not-Canada), you fall into the same category as #1. I need to have shipping addresses confirmed and payment taken care of ASAP, as I will be placing an order from Mixam-UK for the Saethor's Bane books. There are enough that it makes sense to do it that way, so I need to have addresses confirmed. 

3) If you ordered physical stuff to be delivered to the US or Canada but will NOT be ordering anything originating from SJGames, you have more time. I'll let things go until primary fulfillment is complete, then revert to digital and refund 80% of the delta. That's probably end-of-May timeframe.

4) Same timing on digital-only rewards. Most of these are $0 balance so can be "push button-push-button-charge" and done. I'd prefer it if you as a backer did it yourself, but in the end, I can handle these. If there's a balance and no money has been collected (either a late pledge with no card info, or a campaign pledge that errored out and was never revisited), I'll just cancel the pledge.

Note that every effort will (has!) been made to try and bring these to backers' attention. At some point, though, it's time to finish this.

I think that's it! 

Ideally, everyone should have received the draft file for the quick-reference cards.

In a few cases, there's more information on the QR cards than in the book (Dark Legion soldiers, I'm looking at you).

In two cases - the same two that are pending in the book, Zond and the Tenokian Templar - I've got B/W art where a new color art is pending in a few days. 

But this should give everyone a chance to make sure the information looks good. Once it's validated that it looks fine and that it's identical to the info in the book where it's replicated, I can prepare to finalize the card decks and the books themselves.

That leaves three things:

1) The VTT Foundry Pack. That's derived from the information in the GCS, QR, and book files, and the timing on that depends a LOT on what Nick, Neck, and Nose are doing.

2) The GCS files themselves. I'll do a little work on these to get some basic stuff consistent (like names) and then ZIP them up and send them out. They're not designed to be complete, just convenient for those exporting to other systems. The preponderance of critters in this that are human or humanoid makes the "don't bother with points for monsters and NPCs" less of a commandment, so I'll send these out as a "why not?"

3) The token files. These are super easy, and I'll send them out once I get the art.

So we're close.

In case you didn't see it, I pushed an update this morning.

Fixes include:

A bloody ton of tweaks to bring things into DFRPG-usual format for range; things like Reach 1-2 being replaced by Reach 1, 2. It's not a big deal, but deviation should be intentional.

A lot of cut, cr, imp got changed to cutting, crushing, impaling.

I went through and tried to fix up some consistency using lb (1 lb and less) and lbs (more than 1 lb). I don't use a period for the abbreviation (that part matches the usual technical literature too, as you don't write 5 kgs), but I do follow the pluralization for lbs, which is good in journalism but not science. I do not intend to fuss over this anymore, though.

I fixed a few stat entries in characters.

On the "hey, that's a big deal" there was a bit of paragraph exit/entry for 028 and 043 that got messed up, and I fixed it.

I did NOT push the fix for paragraph 109 yet, but this is a fight directly in front of Saethor's Chamber, and it's meant to be to the death. You cannot retreat on this one: win or die. If you die, at this point you hit 047, which is 'the kingdom is safe but no one knows Saethor's fate.' So this will appear in the final version.

I'm also starting to bludgeon links into submission, so if folks would check to see that anything that looks like a hyperlink is actually a hyperlink, that would help me. Use the Errata Page to ID things that aren't right.

I am awaiting only two bits of color art that will make the BOOK complete. I'm turning my attention to the QR cards now, which will pull from the same final cards that pretty much appear in the book with a few exceptions for Dark Legionaries (they get a short-form in the book and an expanded form for cards) and the like. 

One note on surveys: There are still five folks who are asking for SJGames physical products in their pledges who haven't answered surveys. I'm not over-ordering these: I need these surveys complete ASAP and will send out emails directly as well.

There were enough tweaks to the four main PCs and some of the NPC adversaries that it was worth a file update. I won't do this every day.

Thanks to the folks who not just submitted detailed errata, but did so using the errata form on the blog!

Last week for my kids' spring break we took a bit of a vacation, heading out to Arizona for a few days. Some hiking, some play, and some more hiking later, we're back.

And I used the time there and here productively. I have uploaded and distributed a copy of the near-final PDF of Saethor's Bane. It's not the final-final copy, as there are a few things left yet to do.

With that in mind, every fight in the book has received at least one playthrough, and not by me. So the entire adventure - rapid advancement and all - has at least gotten a set of independent eyes on it for difficulty. Not all fights are supposed to be teetering on a knife's edge of lethality, but those that are supposed to be potentially career ending have been tested.

I'm fairly pleased to date with how this has turned out. Making an adventure with this much advancement is pretty atypical, but the mission of the book is to let folks get a feel for zero-to-hero (about 100 to about 250 points) of the Dungeon Fantasy RPG in the course of a single plot arc, and this one does it.

So, with that in mind, I'm pleased to give you all the first real complete look at the adventure.

Read it, test it, fight it ... and if you have comments or observations, please share them! If you have spelling, grammar, or word choice, please go to the Gaming Ballistic blog's Errata Page, select Saethor's Bane from the drop-down product menu, and let me know what's up. 

As always, "I'd do this differently" is not errata, nor are the narrative choices available in the branching pathway adventure themselves. There could very well be errors in rules interpretations, character sheet representation of PCs, NPCs, and monsters. Some may look like errors but aren't (Bob has Sword-17 on his skills list, but Sword (20) for the attack line? It's probably because he has Weapon Bond, the sword is Balanced, and it's magical with Accuracy +1). In any case, please bring anything you see to my attention so it can be examined and - if needed -corrected. 

Hopefully this marks a roughly 7-10 day period of comments and play, and then I'll get the final file distributed, with complete art, and the books ordered. The cards should be ordered at roughly the same time. The VTT assets (Foundry actors) may take a bit more time, but the maps, GCS files for some of the characters, and tokens should be pretty close to finished in the next 1-2 weeks as well.

In a shocking twist, a battle to control a key strategic bridge crossing turned into spectacular carnage for both sides as the Ýlirköttur (Yule Cat) made the most of both armies’ distraction.

Casualties were massive on both sides as the huge faerie feline conquered the field in but a moment, and proceeded to play with its food.

(Thanks to A Roy for the playtests and the cat pic. Things are getting tested and refined day by day. DFRPG characters are surprisingly robust.)

Just a quick note. Today I did a full front-to-back layout, with placeholder or final art, for the entire book.

It's coming in at 52 pages at this point, and it's likely to stay that way.

For fun, it appears that our total backer count has now surpassed the Citadel at Nordvorn, as that was 600 backers and we've picked up a fair few in the post-campaign phase, going from 587 to 605.

My art team tells me they're still on schedule to have finals to me by the end of the month. I've started to receive playtester feedback here and there, with more on the way. One of my Patreon subscribers took one of the fights out for a test drive, and now his kids "want to play the whole story, not just the fights."

Well. That's a win.

I'm very close to having a testable copy of the full manuscript. I've got all the NPCs and monsters designed (many in GURPS Character Sheet, and I'll include those files in the digital asset pack along with the Foundry VTT assets). I'm doing the incredibly tedious layout work of rationalizing the sometimes massive lists of traits, skills, and spells that can decorate a character.

That being said ... I'm also starting to see artwork. Here's an example of before/after. The text on the pages isn't the same, because if nothing else, 8.5x11" US Letter is being reformatted into 8x10" DFRPG size.

But this...

...is rapidly turning into this...

I anticipate a testable document in the next few days. Then my secret cabal of hardcore playtesters will do a bit of fight-testing to ensure that the translation happened OK and we catch egregious stuff. Then we'll start locking and charging and with that PDFs go out.

I'm very much hoping folks start to have things in-hand by the end of next week for new material. As soon as lock-and-charge starts, existing PDFs go out.

Late pledges, of course, remain open until I order physical materials, which feels like 2-3 weeks from now.

I've started the process to lock down completed surveys. Those who have filled out surveys will get a notice that their order will lock down in 48 hours - basically Friday morning.

At that point, I'll charge cards for shipping and any plus-ups folks did. Those whose cards are successfully charged should start receiving downloads for most things. I need to do a detailed scan of all the offering bits, and ensure that everything that is currently ready has a digital download associated with it.

That means if you don't see something you should EXCEPT for the main Saethor's Bane book (which has a playable draft, but is still lacking final art, some proofing, and fight-testing) I've missed something. That's not malice, just an oversight. Ping me and I'll fix it. I will, of course, try and make that not necessary.

In the meantime:

If you haven't filled out your survey, please do so.

If you're following but have not yet backed, now is a great time to get on board should you choose to do so. Late Pledges (called pre-orders or Survey Store by Backerkit) are a great way to get the stuff on offer now that you know precisely what's in it.