Tome of Adventure Design

BackerKit
almost 2 years ago – Fri, May 20, 2022 at 03:18:54 AM

When BackerKit sent out the surveys, they should have asked for credit card information even from backers who weren't getting add-ons, since there's still a shipping charge later on. BackerKit is now contacting all of you who ordered physical books to ask for that credit card information. It is a legitimate request. We apologize for any inconvenience. If you ordered only a pdf, this doesn't apply to you; it's only an issue for people who are ordering physical books.

Surveys are sent!
almost 2 years ago – Sat, May 14, 2022 at 02:56:25 AM

We believe that we have fixed the problem with pdfs not being available for download from BackerKit, and we have sent out the surveys to all backers. Keep in mind that the DTRPG version of the pdf will not be sent out immediately; we will accumulate these and send out the links in batches. However, while you're waiting, you can still (assuming it's now set up correctly) get your pdf via BackerKit. Those who filled out surveys during the smoke-test should now find that the download is available by logging into BackerKit. 

Thanks again for your support; we will continue to keep you posted!

Matt

"Smoke Test" Launched
almost 2 years ago – Fri, May 13, 2022 at 01:04:31 AM

We have launched the "smoke test," which is the process of sending surveys to a small group of backers (5%) to make sure there's not some problem with the survey before it goes out to thousands of people. If a problem doesn't surface, we will send out the rest of the surveys afterwards: probably on Saturday. Backers receiving the smoke test SHOULD be able to download the PDF immediately after finishing the survey.  <Fingers crossed for success>

Matt

Moving Forward!
almost 2 years ago – Wed, May 11, 2022 at 04:20:25 AM

This morning we submitted the survey to BackerKit for their review. This means BackerKit will take a couple of days to review it, and then (if there aren't any hitches) it will get sent as a "smoke test" to a small number of backers, followed by the full set if no mistakes are spotted during the smoke test.

Although BackerKit handles two-phase payments fairly frequently (here I mean the fact that shipping isn't charged until much later in the process), it's more complicated than a Kickstarter where shipping is charged immediately, so there's a good chance that something, somewhere, will be caught in the survey review, so this isn't really to let you know that the surveys are imminent, more to keep you all posted on the progress.

We are also continuing to shape up the details on shipping to the UK and EU, where we will be able to reduce the shipping costs considerably. On the other hand, it doesn't look great for Australia, although we are still looking for ways to lower shipping costs there as well, since we do have several orders going there. We will know much more once the surveys are in, and we know exactly how many books are going to the various non-USA countries. It may be that we use a single center in the UK even for the EU shipping, since the cost of crossing the Brexit border might be offset by the benefit of making only one bulk shipment (UK) instead of two (UK and EU). Again, that's not something we will know for certain until we have the surveys and are closer to the shipment date.

I think that's all the news for now -- everything is moving forward!

Matt

Early Status Report
about 2 years ago – Tue, Apr 26, 2022 at 01:39:59 AM

Hello to all our backers! This is just an interim report of where we are and what we're doing at the moment. We've received the remaining additional art pieces we ordered during the Kickstarter, and Suzy has put those in to complete the layout draft for the pdf. I am in the process of checking the draft (and taking a break from that to write this update). This is where we pick up mistakes like a table that ends with a shaded line rather than a solid line, a micro-prompt that got divided by a page break, and other such matters. From time to time I'm also finding a word choice that could be improved as a jumping-off point for an idea -- for example, in the dragons table where a dragon is a connoisseur, I realized that the highly folkloric "maidens" could be replaced with a much more flexible "captives," allowing for a dragon whose collection of captives might be quite different than the ordinary folkloric dragon, possibly a collector of philosophers, calligraphers, or something that ties into an adventure idea better than just the classic captured princess. I did a lot of this earlier in the process, but I still notice one from time to time while proofreading. We are still just starting with the BackerKit survey, since we backed up to complete a couple of other details first (specifically, since BackerKit wants a SKU, and we wanted to used our ISBN numbers as SKUs, we went in and completed the ISBN registration first, which called for more detail, etc., etc.). The bottom line is that we're only just now working on the actual survey, but it will be sent out soon. We're going to complete the pdf before sending the survey, though, because I think we will have the capacity for backers to receive their pdfs direct from Backerkit immediately upon finishing the survey -- meaning that the pdf should be ready when the surveys go out. DTRPG will also be a download choice, but that will be set up after the surveys. I think that's all the news at this time, basically that everything is still moving along without any problems so far. 

Matt