The headlines:

We have lost a couple of weeks. But we did it for what I personally think is the best reason: several rounds of proofing that each made the print files a little bit better. We’ve fixed wonky page number placements, boxes that had moved a quarter inch to the left, and a handful of typos (there are still typos. There will always be typos.). At the last possible moment, we realised the placement of the perforation lines on the tear-out playbooks in the quickstart were in fractionally the wrong place.

This is the ugly truth of TTRPG design.

Anyway, as of Friday 14th November, printing is complete. That doesn’t mean everything’s done - the books still have to be bound, and pieces of hand finishing completed, like the elastic on the notebook and the playbook envelope inside the core book… but we’re getting there. 

That does shift the timeline a little bit:

PDFs are ready, we’ve got all our shipping info set up, so… it’s time to lock those orders! 

Step 1: I am starting Backerkit's countdown to locking orders tonight. That means they'll actually lock 48 hours from now, on Thursday 20th November (UK evening). After that you won’t be able to add or remove any items - so if you want to do that, move fast.
Step 2: I'll distribute the digital downloads for all books on Friday.

Step 3: I will then charge cards on Monday 24th November. 

As a reminder:

Everyone will be charged shipping at this point.

People who added items in pledge manager (i.e., after the crowdfunding campaign) will also be charged for those.

If your payment fails, you’ll get an email from Backerkit informing you that you need to try another payment method (and explaining how to do that).

Logistics Alex has done his level best to get these charges down as low as we possibly can. If you’re getting the book, quickstart, GM Kit, notebook, setting zine and patches, shipping should cost you: 

UK £15

US £20

Canada £25

EU £15-20

Australia & NZ £20

If you are in the UK or US, this is above our initial expectation. Those were our partners' best estimates, with the information we had, at the time of crowdfunding - but since then there has been a lot of global trade upheaval, and while we've done our best to minimise the impact, there has still been a noticeable increase in shipping costs in some places. We're sorry for the unexpected increase; if this makes your pledge unaffordable for you, please email us at [email protected] before we charge cards. It’s not really a silver lining, but we’re getting better at estimating our shipping costs with each crowdfunder, and also getting better at estimating contingencies that allow for the current level of potential short-notice change and upheaval in freight and postage. If you come back and support another project from us, we hope we can avoid nasty surprises in future.

There are some quirks to the shipping costs that you should be aware of. The most important of these is that if you’re one of the ten or so backers who only ordered patches, your shipping’s going to be quite expensive compared to your pledge: £10 in the UK, £12.50 in the US, Aus, and NZ, £15-17.50 in Europe. This is in part because we can't use Media Mail for these in the US - they're not books - and our pick and pack costs (living wage for warehouse employees is important, folks) means that the total cost to ship small items like these is still relatively high. Again, we're sorry that we aren't able to get these costs any lower - but if you wanted to make the shipping cost feel less spicy, you could add the quickstart, GM Kit, and the setting zine without changing the shipping price. Or the notebook. But I really like the GM Kit. I’d probably recommend the GM Kit. As above, if this makes your pledge unaffordable for you, please email us at [email protected] before we charge cards.

The next time you get an update, it will hopefully start with the words “BOOKS ON BIG BOAT”, which means this process will have passed from my domain into Alex’s. Alex is our Warehouse and Boat Specialist, and he’ll be taking over updates while Voidheart’s in or between either of those realms.

If you backed Dagger in the Heart last year, you already know Alex. If not - you’re in safe hands. He’s good at this. He’s got the mugs to prove it.

- Chant