Been a while, eh?

Beneath the tranquil surface, there has been activity. 

First! Most importantly! Printing's happening. Currently, that printing is physical samples, which I reckon will be with me in 1-2 weeks. Then we print the rest. Took a while, but quite a lot of that was my long-suffering account manager waiting for her finance team to send me the bloody invoice. Regrettable but understandable: I think new client setup took a while, and this is a tiny project compared to what they usually work on, so I also think I got slightly deprioritised. 

I've signed off the digital proofs (they look great, by the way), and while it will probably not be smooth sailing from here, because print production rarely is, the figurative boat has left the figurative port.

Now, at this point you're probably expecting a full and complete timeline for fulfilment. And that's a fair thing to want. But I'm not going to do one, because frankly until the books arrive in the UK, it is all really fuzzy. I will keep you updated: when I get samples (and oh boy, there will be pictures), when the books go on the boat, and when the books get to me. 

Separate to that, I am also still sorting out the test print through Drivethru RPG's print-on-demand service, so EU backers can get their print-on-demand copies pretty soon. That's taken a while too: DTRPG's got a pretty specific print profile and I had to futz around with the files so that they stand a chance of printing well there.

Still not doing this. Both because it's not urgent (it doesn't affect the process of getting the books made) and because, since I am late, so very late, I want to look into a couple of other postage options to see if there's a faster way of getting them to you without completely blowing my budget. 

I'll be there, as will Lore, as will our stall goblin (affectionate, respectful) Millie. We'll have copies of the Meatbags quickstart, so if you want to grab your copy there, you're very welcome to. (Yes, for free, if it's in your pledge/add ons.)

We're in Hall 3, stall 971.

Way, way before Meatbags, Lore and I started making a game called Feral. Well, most of a game. Enough to playtest it (then basically make it again). It's somewhere between folk horror and survival horror. You play anthropomorphic animals engaged in a battle with the monsters that stalk their forest home, and the monstrous instincts within that seek to drag them down and transform them into monsters themselves. Characters spend quite a lot of time stabbing and running from nasty things with teeth in all the wrong places; they spend just as much time reckoning with what it means to be a person, and how to build a community that can thrive despite hardship.

After I wrapped up the Meatbags layout, I was on a roll: I pressed ahead and finished Feral's quickstart rules and layout while Lore wrote an entire scenario for it. The quickstart's now finished and available for you to download on itch.io and DrivethruRPG. It's pay what you want.

If you dug the Meatbags PDF, you might like this too. If you like World of Darkness, you're even more likely to like this. Have a look, maybe?

We'll have printed copies of this at UKGE too.

That was a long update. Sorry. See some of you in Birmingham? 

- Chant

And... done.

I've sent out the complete PDF, the form-fillable character sheet, and a map for the Hob's Cross micro-setting.

If you don't receive an email from Backerkit with your download links:

Sorry it wasn't Friday: if you're following us on social media you may have seen that I have been sick as a dog this weekend (indeed, the only good fortune I have experienced is that our four dogs are hale and hearty as ever, and taking remarkably good care of me).

You've all been uncommonly good-natured about the wait involved for this project, and I consider us extremely fortunate to have backers like you. Sure, this isn't exactly a million dollar crowdfunder that you staked big money and your gaming group's next campaign on (I mean... tell us if you did, I would love to know folks are playing Meatbags), but it's still frustrating when things take longer than it says on the crowdfunder page, especially when a lot of you were taking a punt on a company you'd never heard of before.

Files will now go off to the printer tomorrow (there will be time to fix anything egregious you spot, and I have never sent a file over to a printer without one more check... just one more...). Timeline to follow.

I will also set up the DrivethruRPG listing and print-on-demand process so that European backers can order their POD copies.

Because I am sometimes not smart, I have realised the plan of locking orders and charging cards immediately was bad, actually: it makes much more sense to only do that once I've input shipping costs. And I need Backerkit to review that setup, because if I get it wrong it is financially bad either for me or you, and I do not want that. On it. I'm on it. And look, I consider it much more important that I get printing started than that I take a few more pounds from you right this moment. 

The last step is to finish our half of the adventure we're co-releasing with Eerie Games. At this point I think it's safest to just... tell you when it's done. At least that one's PDF only, so when the PDF release is done, it is complete and finished.

Thanks again - it's been a lot of fun making this for you.

- Chant

PS - backers have noted on other projects I've run comms for that my updates sometimes come off as unwarrantedly flippant. The more is riding on an update, the greater my tendency to crack jokes and generally not sound like I'm taking it seriously. It is a bad habit, and one I'm trying to break, but it's a process.

Took us long enough.

I have just placed the final piece of art in the design file.

It is done.

I'll release this on Friday. I know, another wait, but this one's because tonight I need to pack for a trip to London, and every single time I've rushed a PDF release something's gone wrong - and this time, I won't be around to fix it immediately.

I'm waiting for a quote from one newly discovered printer, but I shall be shocked if that's not waiting for me when I get back from London. If it's not, I shall simply go with the printer I was planning to work with anyway. Either way, files go to the printer this weekend. 

I'll do that this weekend, too. Backerkit gives you 48 hours' notice, so assuming I do that sometime on Friday evening, your orders will lock on Sunday evening.

You'll notice there's one major omission from this update: a timeline. That's because I need to confirm shipping dates. One reason I'm waiting on another printer is to see whether they can ship directly to the US, instead of sending it all to me to forward on. The planned printer can do this, but it's quite distressingly expensive - the new one has been chosen because they should be both cheaper and faster. 

Then it's order fulfilment, which is likely to take at most two weeks once the books make it to the warehouses (meaning Studio 2 Publishing, and... my attic). 

We're doing it, folks. We're doing it.

Thanks for sticking with me. 

- Chant