Backer surveys closing soon!
about 2 years ago – Wed, Feb 09, 2022 at 01:08:12 PM

Hello everyone,

Originally, this was supposed to be a short update, reminding everyone to fill out their backer surveys (if you haven't already), but I also want to share some news on delivery dates.

Backer surveys closing on Feb 12th

If you haven't received the email about the surveys, you can log into Backerkit manually, at this address: 

https://defiantrpg.backerkit.com/

The surveys are closing on Feb 12th,  so please fill out the surveys in the next three days - there are still a couple of dozen people, who have not done that. 

Delivery date estimates

As you already know, the book was sent to the printing house, all files are approved and the printing process has started. We have also paid all the printing costs and the fees for delivering the books to our US and EU warehouses (all the books worldwide are sent from one of those, depending on which one is closer). 

The last time we asked about the printing time, we were informed it will take "about two weeks". We calculated all of our delivery estimates based on this info. After the printing process has started, I've asked about the estimates again, to learn that it will take "four to six weeks". This pushes the whole plan up to a month.

I am sorry about this, we are trying to get the book done quicker, but I do not think there's much that can be done. We were promised that "if it is possible, the book will be finished earlier", but I wouldn't count on it. 

To be perfectly clear - we are the ones responsible for this delay, or at least not knowing about it sooner. I haven't asked the printing house for new estimates (and I definitely should have). We've changed the final number of copies, plus with everything going on around the world, the ETA can change drastically each week. I guess it's our lack of experience with crowdfunding projects, and I promise to do better next time.

I really hoped to deliver the main award from our first KS project right on time, but it seems we will be about a month late. I will give you more details, once we know the final date of the completion of printing. I believe that in the worst-case scenario the books will reach you in early April, but I hope it will be sooner than that.

I am really sorry about this situation. The only upside is, there's not much we can do with the rulebook and shipping at the moment, so we can focus on delivering the PDF supplements and the Defiant Online platform. 

Finally, I just want to remind you that if you want to see what the printed rulebook is going to look like, the print-layout version in PDF is already available in your DriveThruRPG libraries (the second file in the Defiant folder).

January Update
over 2 years ago – Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 03:58:33 AM

I've been waiting quite a few days before writing this update, as I wanted to be 100% sure about the situation before bringing you all the news. Thankfully, I think all is settled now and I've got all the details. :-)

Backer surveys

Backerkit has approved our surveys a couple of hours ago. We will be now sending a "smoke test" (the surveys will be sent to about 20% of you). If all is well and there are no problems, we will send the rest of the surveys on Friday afternoon. Check your inboxes, you will have time to fill out the info until Feb 12th.

Shipping costs

We did our best to find the cheapest yet trustworthy methods to ship the books to you. I think we're mostly in the price range we declared on our KS page (the UK might be a dollar or two above this). I believe this to be quite a success since the prices went up quite a lot since July. 

In the case of some EU countries and Canada, there are additional tax costs we needed to include in the price (about 2 or 3 USD, depending on the country) - this is beyond our control.  When we were planning the shipment back in July, we hoped that if such costs arise, we could just cover them, but I hope you'll understand that with the printing costs up by 60% we simply don't have any more wiggle room financially.

Printing

The book is now ready for print, the final layout is done. The printing process will probably start on Monday! :-) There's no way to be sure but we estimate that the books will start shipping on Feb 15th. We hope that most of you will get your copies before the end of February, which would mean we managed to deliver them with no delays. This was something we really wanted to achieve. This is our first Kickstarter and the first time we deliver something to people all around the world. Of course, new problems may still arise, and we'll do our best to take care of them as fast as possible.

New PDFs

If the printing house gives us the green light on Monday, we will also upload the PDF of the new layout to the DriveThruRPG library, meaning there will be an additional file to download. I believe it's still easier to read the screen-friendly edition on phones and tablets, but you might enjoy the new layout on computer screens. :-)

Since the whole text has been edited, we will also upload the new screen-friendly version of the PDF.

Defiant House Kamael

As some of you might have noticed, the House Kamael supplement is still not available on DriveThruRPG. Technically, it's already written, but I am not 100% happy with the text. After giving it some thought, we've decided to postpone its release until all is settled with the printed edition of the book. With new challenges arising each day, we figured we really need to focus on delivering you the books on time. Once we know they're on their way to you, we can get back to the supplements, Defiant Online platform, and all the other stuff we'd love to be working on.  :-) Sorry for the delay, I hope you agree with the way we've set the priorities. 

Custom art and NPCs

Unfortunately, we were unable to contact some of you in regards to your custom art and NPCs. We're not sure what happened and hope all is well and it's some sort of a technical issue. I believe that all the custom art is ready and is included in the rulebook. I'm really happy with how it looks. As for custom NPCs - please, please try to reach us via email, KS messages, Discord, or even commenting under this update - we cannot get a hold of you! It's really weird, as we were able to talk to some of you, and then the communication just stopped.  We'd love to talk with you and find the best way out of this situation!

Fingers crossed

We're so close to delivering you the printed rulebooks! I've gotta admit: I'm both excited and anxious about this. It's still too early to celebrate, as the books need to be printed, then shipped to the main warehouses in the fulfillment centers, and finally delivered to you. A lot can still happen.  There are still a million minor problems we need to fix every day, but it seems like we can handle this.  Personally, I cannot wait to get my hand on the printed copy of the rulebook! Hope we all get to see them soon!

December Update
over 2 years ago – Wed, Dec 22, 2021 at 11:13:32 PM

While we do want to wish you all the best in the holiday season, I'll leave it for the end of the update, as there are quite a few things I want to share with you in December. 

Backer Surveys

We are almost ready to send out the Backer surveys. Actually, we'd be already sending them if it wasn't for the ongoing talks about the shipment to the United Kingdom. Since we need to correctly set all shipping costs in the survey, we'll wait till early January, when hopefully all is clear as to the UK pricing. Sorry for this inconvenience. You will still have about 3 to 4 weeks to fill the surveys, so it should be more than enough time for everybody.

Physical Books

I believe we've got all the technical details done, and we will be sending the files to the print house in early January (no use sending it during the holiday season, and this gives me a bit more time to improve a few illustrations I still think could look better).

We seem to be on track with February as the month you will all be receiving your physical copies.  :-)

Defiant House Kamael

We plan on releasing the PDF of the Defiant House Kamael supplement in late December, though this time I need to ask you for some patience - I'm really not sure how much work can be done during the holidays, so we might be a few days late.  ;-)

The supplement will feature an in-depth description of the House Kamael, along with three new Flairs and two new Marital Themes. Aside from focusing on the Angels of Grace, the supplement also serves as a set of additional rules for anyone wishing to play as a Character in some sort of peril (being in debt, being targeted by a Province Law, etc.)  

Defiant Online

We are working on Defiant Online but we've decided it's not yet ready to be released, even in a beta version. We have some new ideas as to the interface and structure of the platform, so we're redesigning large portions of the UI. I believe it is all for the best, as it will result in a better final product, but I am sorry you have to wait some more.

POD Supplements

After releasing the PDF version of Defiant Birthright, we had some time to think about the Print-On-Demand supplements, that we promised you during the campaign. We also asked the Defiant Authority group to chip in and share their thoughts (and we're grateful to all those who decided to answer). 

Here's what we came up with: Rather than creating a number of short (12-25 pages) POD supplements, we're going to create a single POD supplement, with all the text from the PDFs. It's going to be ready somewhere around the release of the last stretch-goal supplement (probably March or April). As promised, all the Backers will have the option to buy it on DriveThruRPG at print cost.  We will design it in the same way as the main rulebook, so they can look good on a shelf together.  :-)

We will still be releasing all the PDF supplements as promised, of course. 

Custom Art and NPCs

I also wanted to use this opportunity to try to reach out to a few of our Backers, who we've lost contact with somewhere along the way. If you bought the option to have your custom art or NPC appear in the rulebook and haven't heard from us for quite some time (over two weeks) and feel, we're not all set - you are one of the people I'm writing about.

There are now three different people who stopped answering my emails, while we still need to discuss the final details. Perhaps my emails are now marked as spam, or something else has happened. Regardless, if you feel we haven't contacted you in a while or you didn't have time to write us back, please do so until the end of December, so we can finalize all the details! You can do so by email, Discord channel, or direct message on KS. 

Just in case, here's our Discord server: https://discord.gg/KRbgDRbC2D

All the best!

And finally, we'd both like to wish you all the best in this holiday season! Hope you find some free time to play a ttrpg game or two!

I am attaching the official Season's Greetings Cards from the Infernals of House Black, who are really keen on upholding mortal traditions (from time to time they tend to miss the mark, though):

Defiant Birthright available for all Backers
over 2 years ago – Thu, Dec 09, 2021 at 04:13:39 AM

This is just a quick update to remind you about Defiant Birthright. The supplement is available for all Backers for free. The link to the free copy should have been sent to you last week. Look for emails from "DriveThruRPG" or "dtrpg".  :-)

More than half of you have already redeemed your codes, but I wanted to be sure, everyone else knows they have the supplement available for free. 

If you haven't received the email with the link, try checking the "spam" and "offers" folders. Keep in mind, that the email was sent from DriveThruRPG, not Kickstaster. If you're still unable to find it, contact us via the KS message system, and we'll sort it out.

Cheers,

Martin

November update
over 2 years ago – Wed, Nov 17, 2021 at 07:39:21 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.