Post-Campaign Update 3: Persona Generation Preview
Hello Metadungeoneers!
(Metadungeoneers is sticking, despite some delightful suggestions following the last update. Sorry. I don’t make the rules.)
The Manuscript
This update’s all about the work in progress because, uh, that’s what’s happening. Headlines: Gar’s really good at this, and we’re on track for getting our first draft of the complete manuscript in at the end of the year.
So far, Gar’s sent us the Persona Generation chapter (character creation, for those of you not yet initiated into the rituals of DIE).
This first chapter is really good work. It’s got exactly what we wanted, which is a way to bring together a group of characters with very different gaming interests and connect them all to each other, and to the Gatekeeper, the GM who has decided they all need to learn the true meaning of roleplaying. It’s also where you’ll create your Gatekeeper.
“The Gatekeeper’s been playing for decades. Over that time, they’ve run a lot of campaigns and burned through a lot of groups, chasing that perfect game. The games they play might fun, but never as fun as they could be. They’re never as deep, never as magical, as the games the Gatekeeper’s read about, as the ones they’s heard about or watched, as they knows they should be. They’ve tried switching systems. They’ve read all the theory, all the GM advice. They’ve prepped their heart out, and it’s still not right.
There’s only one answer: the players are the problem.”
My favourite bit is the set of handouts Gar’s done for character creation. Each one reflects a different era of gaming, and what mattered to a character (and, implicitly, to a player) in that style of game. Obviously these haven’t been through graphic design yet, but look how fun they are:
Also, I feel personally attacked at least once in every paragraph where Gar talks about the ’90s-style gamer (who didn’t necessarily start playing in the ’90s, but I did).
And. And. The Persona Gen chapter includes the first roleplaying and combat encounter. It’s just outside the Metadungeon, and it’s set in the village of Braunstein! If you don’t know what it is, I won’t spoil it here. You can choose to click on the link or not. But this is TTRPG HISTORY, BAYBEE!!! Gar’s done some fun things with obtaining the magic die that grants you your Paragon status (and abilities).
“The Paragons’ dice are hidden around the town, in places corresponding to the jobs the Mayor gave them. So, if the Mayor said you were the schoolmaster, then your die is in the school. If you’re a soldier, then maybe your die is in the hilt of a sword – or the skull of the first foe you slay.
When a Persona picks up a dice – kaboom, transformation sequence! Power-ups!
The people of Braunstein cheer! The heroes are here! The Paragons are here!
The Paragons are here to kick ass. Let each player describe how they turn the tide against the Fallen and help save the town.”
Gar’s also sent over a bit of Level 1: 1970s but, in all honesty, I haven’t looked at it at time of writing this update. I suspect it’s very good.
Importantly, this review is not an edit. This is where we look at the broad strokes of the text and check Gar’s going in the right direction: that there’s a nice blend of TTRPG history, emotional hooks, and genuinely exciting encounters (not so much in Persona Gen, this part).
For Metadungeon specifically, this is also where we check with our lawyers (OK, with Maz, who has… had some training on this from, I think, their journalism days) that we’re not saying anything libellous or defamatory. This is not a challenge we’ve had before - Hitler doesn’t have an estate that would sue us over Eat the Reich, and we’re too clever to get caught out with vaguely referential characters in fantasy worlds. So far there’s only one “can we say that?” note on Gar’s draft, but we’re not actually in the dungeon yet.
And After That?
So, we get the manuscript in right at the end of December. What happens then? What, pray tell, are the stages that get it from “in Chant and Kieron’s inboxes” to “in your inboxes, and subsequently into your flesh-mitts”?
Editing. A ton of editing.
First, Kieron (as the Grand GM, the Progenitor God of DIE) and I (as the book janitor) review Gar’s work in detail. At this point we go beyond flagging big, high level changes that could affect the rest of what Gar writes, and into the nitty gritty of “I don’t like this Persona Gen question”, “that’s not how that Dictator ability works”, “what if the hydra’s heads included Luke Gygax as well as his dad?”, and “dial up the gags in the ossuary of deceased childhood dreams”.
The latter two examples don’t exist. Yet. But Gar does sometimes read these updates, so don’t rule it out.
After that, the manuscript goes back to Gar to either make the changes we suggest or tell us in no uncertain terms that we don’t understand his artistic vision. Given the enthusiastic tone of our group chat, probably mostly the former - but it’s sort of important that writers get to make the thing they wanted to, you know?
Next, it goes to Maz, RRD’s editor-in-chief, for a tech edit: double checking the mechanics, confirming that the information flow actually makes sense (you know those TTRPGs where there’s a reference that only makes sense 20 pages later? We try not to make those.), and a general third opinion on whether it is, in fact, as good as we think it is.
Then it’s line and copy editing (also Maz). This is what most people think of as editing: a slow dungeon crawl through the manuscript, grinding through messy sentences, odd word choices, and spelling and grammar mistakes until the editor’s levelled up/found the way out/died in the prose equivalent of a pit trap. Sometimes Maz does the line and copy edit at the same time as the tech edit, because it’s hard not to get bogged down by details. Depends on the manuscript.
And then we send it to a sensitivity consultant, if we need to. Not sure whether we will on Metadungeon, because so much of the difficult content is in the hands of the players: exactly what an encounter represents, or how it’s flavoured, depends strongly on the characters you’ve made. And we’ve already got a robust set of safety tools in DIE to make sure groups are embarking on their adventure fully prepared for, and comfortable with, the types of content that could come up. They’re called The Magic Circle, and they’re the work of Kienna Shaw and Lauren Bryant-Monk, who you might know from the excellent TTRPG Safety Toolkit.
This gets it ready for your playtesting and feedback. Then we read the feedback, implement the feedback, and move on to layout and graphic design. Historically, this is also what we call the “fuck it, we can do it better” period, where someone has a last minute, truly superb, idea that we decide we can most definitely squeeze into the book. I am… trying to avoid that, because I have a timeline, but I’m not ruling it out.
All this is to say, when you see several months for editing on one of our timelines, we have good reasons. If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. This is also to gird you against possible disappointment when I say, in December, “manuscript’s in!”, then in February “review’s finished!”, and so on and so forth.
But for now! No disappointment, only text extracts! As you can see, Gar’s way ahead of the game on this “avoiding getting sued” scheme.
“These Powers even bind us, the writers of this book. They have laid a terrible geas upon us, forbidding us from mentioning certain proper names. So, if we speak of, shall we say, the dungeon game with all the monsters instead of calling it by its true name, or we mention a wizard called, er, Gaxyg, then know we use these elisions because our mortal souls are imperiled, and we fear the wrath of the Powers should we break those geasa.
You, O wise reader, may know the names we cannot speak, but for our own safety, we must recite the sacred formula: This is a work of fiction and parody. Any resemblance to real people, real people who put dots in their name for some reason, real products, real companies, real events, or stories we heard at a convention bar once is purely co-incidental, swear to St. Cuthbert.
Apart from the bits about Rowan Rook & Decard on p. XX, that stuff’s all true.”
It is definitely trending towards late rather than early July, but the important thing is that the pledge manager is now open!
You should all be receiving your survey links via email today (they may already be there, in fact) unless you selected Pay Over Time for your pledge, in which case you won't get your survey until you've paid your final installment.
YOUR DIGITAL DOWNLOADS
Digital downloads for all the existing DIE books - the core rulebook, the quickstart, and the scenario collections - are set up, so in principle you should get your files once your survey is done.
Accessing your downloads works like this: 1. Check your email (including your spam/junk) for a message with a direct link 2. If there's no email, log in to Backerkit, click on your profile icon in the top right corner, then on Your Pledges and Surveys in the dropdown 3. Find DIE: Metadungeon and click on it 4. Scroll until you see Survey, and click on View Order, just beneath it 5. Scroll to the Get Your Digital Downloads header, tap it, and go where it tells you 6. ??? 7. Play DIE
I have not distributed digital downloads this early in a project before, and am uncertain whether Backerkit will reliably email you about your downloads when you do your survey. So once you've done so, give it a couple of hours, check your email and then check directly in Backerkit (as above) and if you don't see all the downloads you're expecting, email [email protected] and Lovely Jim will tell me to fix it.
DIGITAL DOWNLOADS VIA OUR WEBSITE
There's an option in the survey to receive your downloads through rowanrookanddecard.com as well as through Backerkit. That's not immediate: we'll wait until the Metadungeon PDF is ready and process those requests then. Backerkit downloads, however, are right now.
WHY IT TOOK LONGER THAN I SAID
I did say I'd send out surveys in early July, and I didn't. Purely and simply: we ran another crowdfunder. (We're still running it - it's for Children of Time, where you can design entire civilisations and then plague them with crises, and if you like DIE's emotional intensity, you're going to have a real good time expanding it to a societal scale.)
We are, as a company, trying to be mindful of the amount of email you get from us. A lot of you would have received several emails about Children of Time and I didn't want to clog up your inbox further with the irritatingly frequent "done your survey?" "do your survey!" and "your survey is lonely uwu" emails that pledge managers generate when there was interesting stuff about shared narratives and uplifted pangolins to read.
Anyway, that's a really long update to say "surveys ready", so I'm going to stop there. Back in August for an update on the Metadungeon itself!
Hmm. What am I going to call you? Usually for backer updates, there’s a snappy word for what player characters are in a game. But in DIE you’re both Personas (and that’s an odd thing to call you) and Paragons (which is a level too meta; I reckon I’m addressing the Personas more than the Paragons).
Let’s go with Metadungeoneers, for now. Suggestions for alternatives in the comments, please.
The first month after a crowdfunder is always a bit quiet. We all sit around, staring into space and mentally recovering from the massive adrenaline spike. Then we get contracts signed, refine some plans, and build out the pledge manager.
I’ve now done all of those things. The staring into space and trembling was particularly important.
Pledge Manager
I’ve built it, I’m currently testing it, and next week I’ll turn it over to my colleague Logistics Alex for a second review. It should open in early July, and you’ll receive your survey links at that time.
July is also when you’ll get your PDFs of all the existing DIE stuff - the core book, quickstart, and scenarios. I’ll distribute those through Backerkit, but there will be a step in your survey that lets you choose to also receive them through your Rowan, Rook & Decard webstore account. I do recommend this: it guarantees you the fastest updates if we amend those PDFs in future.
Bonus Megadungeon Month Content
If you backed more than one Megadungeon Month project, there’s a PDF of bonus material from all participants coming your way.
Grant is writing the DIE component, and at present - first draft's written, still time for an entirely different idea to take hold - it's an entire mini-RPG where you are the characters left behind in an unreal, but very much still existent, world after the players’ campaign fell apart.
This is also due to reach you in July, and since Grant and I are at Pyrkon, a truly brilliant convention in Poland, this week I’m going to ply him with bison grass vodka, large quantities of meat, and gentle encouragement to keep him on track. Kieron’s there too, actually, so I can work on both of them at the same time. No Gar, though. He’s not allowed to leave his writing cave until he’s done with my first draft.
The Future
There’s a timeline in May’s update, and since we’re very early in the process there’s not much to say: we have started, and that is good. I’ll keep you posted, but for now the key things to know are that writing’s underway (like all writing, it mostly looks like notes at this point, with some Post-Its that say “sexy death knight???”) and I’ll sling you some teasers as soon as there’s text to show.
It Is Over. There Are 10 Minutes Left. I Understand Eternity Now.
CONTENT WARNING: There is a bloody great spider picture at the bottom of this update. If you do not want to see it, stop scrolling when you get to the "Do You Like Spiders?" header. I repeat: it is a massive spider. I think it's quite cute, but that's because I like spiders.
So…
We’re still in overtime mode. Until we go a full ten minutes without anyone backing a Megadungeon Month project, overtime mode will continue. So this is a bit of a weird “end of campaign” update, in that it’s 66 hours (at time of writing) after the end time and we’re still going.
Things that have happened since Friday night:
Gar, Kieron, and I have celebrated. Quite a lot.
About 40 more people have pledged (hurrah!)
Kieron has had several ideas about incorporating the concept of time limits and 10 minute extensions into one of his dungeons (hey, crowdfunding’s been a huge thing in TTRPGs for a couple of decades now)
The F5 button has worn out on all our keyboards
But! It’s Monday now and we all deserve some closure, even while we keep refreshing that page. So…
Here’s What Happens Next
Soon? Backerkit will collect the funds for your pledges.
June: Pledge manager will go live, and you’ll be able to do your surveys. As always, we won’t charge for shipping until later.
June to December: Gareth, Kieron, and the rest of the team are writing. I’ll share monthly (ish) updates and - when there’s text worth showing - some previews.
January to June 2027: Art happens! I’ll keep up monthly previews (this remains true for the duration of the project), including sketches and work in progress if the artists are happy for me to share, which will vary by artist and piece of work.
April to May 2027: First edit round
June to July 2027: Any major rewrites
July to September 2027: Tentative plans for a playtest - this means you!
October to December 2027: Revisions based on playtest and final edits. Layout happens.
December 2027: PDF release.
January 2028: Backer feedback on the PDF. Based on other big projects we’ve done, this period is invaluable. DIE isn’t a particularly crunchy game, but we always find things we thought were clearly expressed that aren’t as good as they could be, and of course a selection of delicious typos.
February 2028: Revisions.
March to May 2028: Printing/mass production.
June to August 2028: Books are freighted to warehouses. Disgusting business.
September 2028: Orders shipped out to you.
You’ll notice one major change from the timeline on the crowdfunding page: since I wrote that page, I have decided Metadungeon would benefit from a playtest. And since it’s, uh, big, playtesting’s going to take some time. So it’s going to take longer than I said it would, but for what I hope is an enjoyable reason: I’d like you to play the game as early as possible and give us feedback.
You’ll also notice this is much longer than most crowdfunder fulfilment timelines, and that’s deliberate. We’ve left plenty of time in there for, broadly, good ideas to happen. For example, printing time is deliberately really long in case we discover a new material we really want to use, or determine that the paper we’ve chosen isn’t quite opaque enough - a genuine thing that happens when you’re as nerdy as we are.
If we finish any of these stages faster than anticipated, great, but I am leaving time both to do everything as well as we can, with no crunch, and also to enjoy it as much as possible, because that’s how we give you the best possible book.
Join Us in Discord
If you’ve got questions, or general DIE enthusiasm you’d like to share - you’re not alone.
Come and join us in the Rowan, Rook & Decard Discord server, or even the DIE specific server. The first one’s useful if you have questions like “where are my books?” or “Chant, how on earth did the timeline change before you even started work?” (I’m genuinely sorry, the playtest is one of those good ideas that I should have had earlier, and then announcing it got lost in the excitement of number go up). The second one has Kieron in it, as well as the most knowledgeable DIE fans (of the comic and the RPG) I know.
Oh, one last thing:
You Like Spiders?
Some of the RRD team really like spiders. In space. If you’re looking for a new crowdfunder to fill the void of anticipation now Metadungeon is “over”, you could do a lot worse than check out our upcoming Children of Time roleplaying game. Written by Minærva “Legacy: Life Among the Ruins” McJanda, with close consultation from Adrian “Children of Time” Tchaikovsky, it’s a space epic (based, hopefully obviously, on the Children of Time series of novels) where you play both the crew of a centuries old ark ship transporting humanity to the stars, and the accidentally uplifted sapient animal species on the planet the ship’s headed for. Crises abound.
Children of Time’s coming this summer and I am delighted to say it’s nothing to do with me: I will be making the Metadungeon (and Hollows!) while my colleague Elaine Lithgow pilots this immense and powerful spacecraft.
So, uh, we raised £25,000 in about three days and now Kieron is definitely writing two chapters. This is for the best because I'm not sure I could have stopped him if we hadn't hit this goal.
Look, we've got about 5 hours to go, and normally I'd stop here. But Megadungeon Month is weird: it's got a shared overtime mode. That means that, until we go 10 full minutes without someone backing any of the Megadungeon Month projects, the show ain't over.
So I'm going to announce one last stretch goal I would really, really like to hit.
£200,000: MORE MONEY FOR THE TEAM. At this point the Metadungeon is a major success, and I want our freelancers to share in that with more than just the satisfaction of knowing thousands of people are going to appreciate their work. If we (somehow) hit £200,000 I'll turn some of that money into a chunk of bonus pay for Gareth and our artists Rick, Sar, and Saga. Kieron and Stephanie get royalties, so I'm less worried about giving them a financial reward.
If you're reading this, you've done your part. All I need from you is to cross your fingers and hope this works out.
A couple of people asked what stretch goals were left, and this is the last one I thought we might get to. The absolutely final one would have been a DIE Actual Play, at £225,000. I think that's well and truly off the table now, but every time I've thought we were done, I've woken up to an extremely pleasant surprise.
So cross those claws, folks, and thanks for everything <3
Me yesterday: well, I think Lin's essay is probably the last stretch goal we'll hit, but you never know... Me this morning: Kieron, grab that pen, I think you're gonna need to get writing.
It's all coming together, folks. Here's hoping for a great final 36-ish hours.
Anyway, I've got one last Master to introduce you to.
The one you've been waiting for. The present. The future. A riddle wrapped in an enigma, because we're all - figuratively - playing at their table right now. The Frontier's fractal. Potential. Meta. One thing we do know about them is that they love an audience. Whatever and however they're playing, it deserves to be seen. It's not about the game, or not only the game; it's about the watchers. Is the audience a way to spread a message? Extend The Frontier's power? Do they even know themself?
(Metadungeoneers is sticking, despite some delightful suggestions following the last update. Sorry. I don’t make the rules.)
The Manuscript
This update’s all about the work in progress because, uh, that’s what’s happening. Headlines: Gar’s really good at this, and we’re on track for getting our first draft of the complete manuscript in at the end of the year.
So far, Gar’s sent us the Persona Generation chapter (character creation, for those of you not yet initiated into the rituals of DIE).
This first chapter is really good work. It’s got exactly what we wanted, which is a way to bring together a group of characters with very different gaming interests and connect them all to each other, and to the Gatekeeper, the GM who has decided they all need to learn the true meaning of roleplaying. It’s also where you’ll create your Gatekeeper.
“The Gatekeeper’s been playing for decades. Over that time, they’ve run a lot of campaigns and burned through a lot of groups, chasing that perfect game. The games they play might fun, but never as fun as they could be. They’re never as deep, never as magical, as the games the Gatekeeper’s read about, as the ones they’s heard about or watched, as they knows they should be. They’ve tried switching systems. They’ve read all the theory, all the GM advice. They’ve prepped their heart out, and it’s still not right.
There’s only one answer: the players are the problem.”
My favourite bit is the set of handouts Gar’s done for character creation. Each one reflects a different era of gaming, and what mattered to a character (and, implicitly, to a player) in that style of game. Obviously these haven’t been through graphic design yet, but look how fun they are:
Also, I feel personally attacked at least once in every paragraph where Gar talks about the ’90s-style gamer (who didn’t necessarily start playing in the ’90s, but I did).
And. And. The Persona Gen chapter includes the first roleplaying and combat encounter. It’s just outside the Metadungeon, and it’s set in the village of Braunstein! If you don’t know what it is, I won’t spoil it here. You can choose to click on the link or not. But this is TTRPG HISTORY, BAYBEE!!! Gar’s done some fun things with obtaining the magic die that grants you your Paragon status (and abilities).
“The Paragons’ dice are hidden around the town, in places corresponding to the jobs the Mayor gave them. So, if the Mayor said you were the schoolmaster, then your die is in the school. If you’re a soldier, then maybe your die is in the hilt of a sword – or the skull of the first foe you slay.
When a Persona picks up a dice – kaboom, transformation sequence! Power-ups!
The people of Braunstein cheer! The heroes are here! The Paragons are here!
The Paragons are here to kick ass. Let each player describe how they turn the tide against the Fallen and help save the town.”
Gar’s also sent over a bit of Level 1: 1970s but, in all honesty, I haven’t looked at it at time of writing this update. I suspect it’s very good.
Importantly, this review is not an edit. This is where we look at the broad strokes of the text and check Gar’s going in the right direction: that there’s a nice blend of TTRPG history, emotional hooks, and genuinely exciting encounters (not so much in Persona Gen, this part).
For Metadungeon specifically, this is also where we check with our lawyers (OK, with Maz, who has… had some training on this from, I think, their journalism days) that we’re not saying anything libellous or defamatory. This is not a challenge we’ve had before - Hitler doesn’t have an estate that would sue us over Eat the Reich, and we’re too clever to get caught out with vaguely referential characters in fantasy worlds. So far there’s only one “can we say that?” note on Gar’s draft, but we’re not actually in the dungeon yet.
And After That?
So, we get the manuscript in right at the end of December. What happens then? What, pray tell, are the stages that get it from “in Chant and Kieron’s inboxes” to “in your inboxes, and subsequently into your flesh-mitts”?
Editing. A ton of editing.
First, Kieron (as the Grand GM, the Progenitor God of DIE) and I (as the book janitor) review Gar’s work in detail. At this point we go beyond flagging big, high level changes that could affect the rest of what Gar writes, and into the nitty gritty of “I don’t like this Persona Gen question”, “that’s not how that Dictator ability works”, “what if the hydra’s heads included Luke Gygax as well as his dad?”, and “dial up the gags in the ossuary of deceased childhood dreams”.
The latter two examples don’t exist. Yet. But Gar does sometimes read these updates, so don’t rule it out.
After that, the manuscript goes back to Gar to either make the changes we suggest or tell us in no uncertain terms that we don’t understand his artistic vision. Given the enthusiastic tone of our group chat, probably mostly the former - but it’s sort of important that writers get to make the thing they wanted to, you know?
Next, it goes to Maz, RRD’s editor-in-chief, for a tech edit: double checking the mechanics, confirming that the information flow actually makes sense (you know those TTRPGs where there’s a reference that only makes sense 20 pages later? We try not to make those.), and a general third opinion on whether it is, in fact, as good as we think it is.
Then it’s line and copy editing (also Maz). This is what most people think of as editing: a slow dungeon crawl through the manuscript, grinding through messy sentences, odd word choices, and spelling and grammar mistakes until the editor’s levelled up/found the way out/died in the prose equivalent of a pit trap. Sometimes Maz does the line and copy edit at the same time as the tech edit, because it’s hard not to get bogged down by details. Depends on the manuscript.
And then we send it to a sensitivity consultant, if we need to. Not sure whether we will on Metadungeon, because so much of the difficult content is in the hands of the players: exactly what an encounter represents, or how it’s flavoured, depends strongly on the characters you’ve made. And we’ve already got a robust set of safety tools in DIE to make sure groups are embarking on their adventure fully prepared for, and comfortable with, the types of content that could come up. They’re called The Magic Circle, and they’re the work of Kienna Shaw and Lauren Bryant-Monk, who you might know from the excellent TTRPG Safety Toolkit.
This gets it ready for your playtesting and feedback. Then we read the feedback, implement the feedback, and move on to layout and graphic design. Historically, this is also what we call the “fuck it, we can do it better” period, where someone has a last minute, truly superb, idea that we decide we can most definitely squeeze into the book. I am… trying to avoid that, because I have a timeline, but I’m not ruling it out.
All this is to say, when you see several months for editing on one of our timelines, we have good reasons. If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. This is also to gird you against possible disappointment when I say, in December, “manuscript’s in!”, then in February “review’s finished!”, and so on and so forth.
But for now! No disappointment, only text extracts! As you can see, Gar’s way ahead of the game on this “avoiding getting sued” scheme.
“These Powers even bind us, the writers of this book. They have laid a terrible geas upon us, forbidding us from mentioning certain proper names. So, if we speak of, shall we say, the dungeon game with all the monsters instead of calling it by its true name, or we mention a wizard called, er, Gaxyg, then know we use these elisions because our mortal souls are imperiled, and we fear the wrath of the Powers should we break those geasa.
You, O wise reader, may know the names we cannot speak, but for our own safety, we must recite the sacred formula: This is a work of fiction and parody. Any resemblance to real people, real people who put dots in their name for some reason, real products, real companies, real events, or stories we heard at a convention bar once is purely co-incidental, swear to St. Cuthbert.
Apart from the bits about Rowan Rook & Decard on p. XX, that stuff’s all true.”
I understood there are 4 chapters in the book and therefore levels of the dungeon, but I can't figure out how many chapters there are for stretch goals which would be printed zines. It specifically says 2 dungeons, but two aren't clear they say essay or critical eye. Thanks!
It is definitely trending towards late rather than early July, but the important thing is that the pledge manager is now open!
You should all be receiving your survey links via email today (they may already be there, in fact) unless you selected Pay Over Time for your pledge, in which case you won't get your survey until you've paid your final installment.
YOUR DIGITAL DOWNLOADS
Digital downloads for all the existing DIE books - the core rulebook, the quickstart, and the scenario collections - are set up, so in principle you should get your files once your survey is done.
Accessing your downloads works like this: 1. Check your email (including your spam/junk) for a message with a direct link 2. If there's no email, log in to Backerkit, click on your profile icon in the top right corner, then on Your Pledges and Surveys in the dropdown 3. Find DIE: Metadungeon and click on it 4. Scroll until you see Survey, and click on View Order, just beneath it 5. Scroll to the Get Your Digital Downloads header, tap it, and go where it tells you 6. ??? 7. Play DIE
I have not distributed digital downloads this early in a project before, and am uncertain whether Backerkit will reliably email you about your downloads when you do your survey. So once you've done so, give it a couple of hours, check your email and then check directly in Backerkit (as above) and if you don't see all the downloads you're expecting, email [email protected] and Lovely Jim will tell me to fix it.
DIGITAL DOWNLOADS VIA OUR WEBSITE
There's an option in the survey to receive your downloads through rowanrookanddecard.com as well as through Backerkit. That's not immediate: we'll wait until the Metadungeon PDF is ready and process those requests then. Backerkit downloads, however, are right now.
WHY IT TOOK LONGER THAN I SAID
I did say I'd send out surveys in early July, and I didn't. Purely and simply: we ran another crowdfunder. (We're still running it - it's for Children of Time, where you can design entire civilisations and then plague them with crises, and if you like DIE's emotional intensity, you're going to have a real good time expanding it to a societal scale.)
We are, as a company, trying to be mindful of the amount of email you get from us. A lot of you would have received several emails about Children of Time and I didn't want to clog up your inbox further with the irritatingly frequent "done your survey?" "do your survey!" and "your survey is lonely uwu" emails that pledge managers generate when there was interesting stuff about shared narratives and uplifted pangolins to read.
Anyway, that's a really long update to say "surveys ready", so I'm going to stop there. Back in August for an update on the Metadungeon itself!
Hmm. What am I going to call you? Usually for backer updates, there’s a snappy word for what player characters are in a game. But in DIE you’re both Personas (and that’s an odd thing to call you) and Paragons (which is a level too meta; I reckon I’m addressing the Personas more than the Paragons).
Let’s go with Metadungeoneers, for now. Suggestions for alternatives in the comments, please.
The first month after a crowdfunder is always a bit quiet. We all sit around, staring into space and mentally recovering from the massive adrenaline spike. Then we get contracts signed, refine some plans, and build out the pledge manager.
I’ve now done all of those things. The staring into space and trembling was particularly important.
Pledge Manager
I’ve built it, I’m currently testing it, and next week I’ll turn it over to my colleague Logistics Alex for a second review. It should open in early July, and you’ll receive your survey links at that time.
July is also when you’ll get your PDFs of all the existing DIE stuff - the core book, quickstart, and scenarios. I’ll distribute those through Backerkit, but there will be a step in your survey that lets you choose to also receive them through your Rowan, Rook & Decard webstore account. I do recommend this: it guarantees you the fastest updates if we amend those PDFs in future.
Bonus Megadungeon Month Content
If you backed more than one Megadungeon Month project, there’s a PDF of bonus material from all participants coming your way.
Grant is writing the DIE component, and at present - first draft's written, still time for an entirely different idea to take hold - it's an entire mini-RPG where you are the characters left behind in an unreal, but very much still existent, world after the players’ campaign fell apart.
This is also due to reach you in July, and since Grant and I are at Pyrkon, a truly brilliant convention in Poland, this week I’m going to ply him with bison grass vodka, large quantities of meat, and gentle encouragement to keep him on track. Kieron’s there too, actually, so I can work on both of them at the same time. No Gar, though. He’s not allowed to leave his writing cave until he’s done with my first draft.
The Future
There’s a timeline in May’s update, and since we’re very early in the process there’s not much to say: we have started, and that is good. I’ll keep you posted, but for now the key things to know are that writing’s underway (like all writing, it mostly looks like notes at this point, with some Post-Its that say “sexy death knight???”) and I’ll sling you some teasers as soon as there’s text to show.
CONTENT WARNING: There is a bloody great spider picture at the bottom of this update. If you do not want to see it, stop scrolling when you get to the "Do You Like Spiders?" header. I repeat: it is a massive spider. I think it's quite cute, but that's because I like spiders.
So…
We’re still in overtime mode. Until we go a full ten minutes without anyone backing a Megadungeon Month project, overtime mode will continue. So this is a bit of a weird “end of campaign” update, in that it’s 66 hours (at time of writing) after the end time and we’re still going.
Things that have happened since Friday night:
Gar, Kieron, and I have celebrated. Quite a lot.
About 40 more people have pledged (hurrah!)
Kieron has had several ideas about incorporating the concept of time limits and 10 minute extensions into one of his dungeons (hey, crowdfunding’s been a huge thing in TTRPGs for a couple of decades now)
The F5 button has worn out on all our keyboards
But! It’s Monday now and we all deserve some closure, even while we keep refreshing that page. So…
Here’s What Happens Next
Soon? Backerkit will collect the funds for your pledges.
June: Pledge manager will go live, and you’ll be able to do your surveys. As always, we won’t charge for shipping until later.
June to December: Gareth, Kieron, and the rest of the team are writing. I’ll share monthly (ish) updates and - when there’s text worth showing - some previews.
January to June 2027: Art happens! I’ll keep up monthly previews (this remains true for the duration of the project), including sketches and work in progress if the artists are happy for me to share, which will vary by artist and piece of work.
April to May 2027: First edit round
June to July 2027: Any major rewrites
July to September 2027: Tentative plans for a playtest - this means you!
October to December 2027: Revisions based on playtest and final edits. Layout happens.
December 2027: PDF release.
January 2028: Backer feedback on the PDF. Based on other big projects we’ve done, this period is invaluable. DIE isn’t a particularly crunchy game, but we always find things we thought were clearly expressed that aren’t as good as they could be, and of course a selection of delicious typos.
February 2028: Revisions.
March to May 2028: Printing/mass production.
June to August 2028: Books are freighted to warehouses. Disgusting business.
September 2028: Orders shipped out to you.
You’ll notice one major change from the timeline on the crowdfunding page: since I wrote that page, I have decided Metadungeon would benefit from a playtest. And since it’s, uh, big, playtesting’s going to take some time. So it’s going to take longer than I said it would, but for what I hope is an enjoyable reason: I’d like you to play the game as early as possible and give us feedback.
You’ll also notice this is much longer than most crowdfunder fulfilment timelines, and that’s deliberate. We’ve left plenty of time in there for, broadly, good ideas to happen. For example, printing time is deliberately really long in case we discover a new material we really want to use, or determine that the paper we’ve chosen isn’t quite opaque enough - a genuine thing that happens when you’re as nerdy as we are.
If we finish any of these stages faster than anticipated, great, but I am leaving time both to do everything as well as we can, with no crunch, and also to enjoy it as much as possible, because that’s how we give you the best possible book.
Join Us in Discord
If you’ve got questions, or general DIE enthusiasm you’d like to share - you’re not alone.
Come and join us in the Rowan, Rook & Decard Discord server, or even the DIE specific server. The first one’s useful if you have questions like “where are my books?” or “Chant, how on earth did the timeline change before you even started work?” (I’m genuinely sorry, the playtest is one of those good ideas that I should have had earlier, and then announcing it got lost in the excitement of number go up). The second one has Kieron in it, as well as the most knowledgeable DIE fans (of the comic and the RPG) I know.
Oh, one last thing:
You Like Spiders?
Some of the RRD team really like spiders. In space. If you’re looking for a new crowdfunder to fill the void of anticipation now Metadungeon is “over”, you could do a lot worse than check out our upcoming Children of Time roleplaying game. Written by Minærva “Legacy: Life Among the Ruins” McJanda, with close consultation from Adrian “Children of Time” Tchaikovsky, it’s a space epic (based, hopefully obviously, on the Children of Time series of novels) where you play both the crew of a centuries old ark ship transporting humanity to the stars, and the accidentally uplifted sapient animal species on the planet the ship’s headed for. Crises abound.
Children of Time’s coming this summer and I am delighted to say it’s nothing to do with me: I will be making the Metadungeon (and Hollows!) while my colleague Elaine Lithgow pilots this immense and powerful spacecraft.
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