RiPP Token Early Draft
about 9 years ago – Fri, May 08, 2015 at 09:14:33 AM

We don't like showing early drafts, but we want you to know where we're headed with the RiPP tokens. Here is one of the candidate designs for the "tails" face of the token.

This token will be aluminum, and will be 25mm in diameter and 3mm thick, die cast in aluminum. That's about the same diameter as a quarter, and about as thick as a poker chip. It will be light weight, but it will still "ting" when you bounce it off the table.

We're not crowdsourcing this design. 

We're just letting you know where we are in the design process. Please don't lob critiques at it. We have a zillion things to do besides respond, and that zillion things includes several hours of grinding through design drafts, and refining our final choices. Rest assured, the final coin will be precision drafted, textured, anodized for color, and will definitely NOT look like Howard slapped "bevel and emboss" on some fonts and circles. 

If you're not comfortable increasing your pledge on a set of these tokens without more information, by all means wait. We'll make sure you have more information in time to make that decision.

Maximillian Backers - Switch pledges!
about 9 years ago – Thu, May 07, 2015 at 07:09:40 AM

This is what we get for doing these things late at night.

The original MAXIMILLIAN tier overcharges for shipping. A new tier has been created that is priced correctly. Long story short, it saves everybody five bucks. We can't update the existing tier unless no-one is using it. As of this writing there are 29 of you...

We've also created the MAXIMILLIAN with an AIR DROP tier, which adds the game PDFs to the reward. (We ship you the Maxims book, and electronically deliver the PDFs.)

Sorry for the confusion!

Heads Down, Driving Forward
about 9 years ago – Wed, May 06, 2015 at 08:26:08 AM

This is a quick update in three parts.

Part One: Thank You!

Again, thank you for your support. The 70 Maxims books looks like a shoo-in. When it is unlocked it will appear as a standalone pledge item and as an add-on. We'll show you what a page will look like once we get there. The price will be $15 + S&H (all included in the Extended Mag.)

Part Two: Sound and Fury

Expect fewer updates here, and more noise out there. After all, if you're reading this in your email, you're not the people we should be hounding for support. You've already backed the project. You should be entitled to sit back and watch as people de-lurk and unlock the rest of the goodies.

Our job is to get those folks to de-lurk. We have twelve days, and if our experience with these things is any gauge, we could very well see as much growth in this last phase as we saw in the first five days. Kicktraq tentatively agrees. (This doesn't mean anything is guaranteed. It just means it's possible.)

Part Three: Irons in the Fire

We're working on putting the word out, yes. We also have two key efforts under way:

• We're negotiating with an EU shipping and distribution partner. Our goal is to keep worldwide shipping costs at $20, and to NOT have a VAT cost passed along to you when you collect your package.
• We're collecting final bids on tokens and Game Chief screens. We need to lock those in soon so we can give you an add-on price before the project closes. We want each of these (20 tokens, one screen) to be in the $10 neighborhood, but we can't promise that until we have firm numbers.

That's it for now. The next twelve days are going to be busy. Thank you again for your support!

—Alan, Howard, and Sandra

Add-On Pricing Announced
about 9 years ago – Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 02:03:15 PM

We've crossed the $120k mark, which makes pins a near-certainty. We've gotten some numbers back from our suppliers, so we can now offer you prices on things, should you feel inclined to increase your pledge.

Add-On Pricing 

• Dice—$8.00 for a set of 6: (two Mayhem dice, and four non-Mayhem dice.) 
• Coins—$10.00 ea. 
• Pins—$5.00 ea, or $15.00 for the set. (LOCKED) 
• Seventy Maxims hardcopy—$15.00 (LOCKED) 

Once they are unlocked, everything above will be in the Extended Mag. That's $48 in goodies for just $30 over the core pledge. If you want extra stuff, increase your pledge amount to cover that stuff. If the extras haven't unlocked, however, please hold off. We don't want you upping your pledge for something we don't end up producing. 

 The Kickstarter Backer pins will be included for Sergeants on up, and we'll be sliding one or two of those into each retailer package as well. 

We're still in the design phase on the dice, but we've got suppliers lined up who can give us SIX custom faces rather than one. The current Mayhem die design is purple with bullet-pocks for pips and the MAYHEM text on the six. The non-Mayhem dice will probably be green with manufacturer logos on the six, and we might even do something to distinguish the two green dice from each other so you can go house-rule crazy with permutations once you're familiar with the D6³ system.

Thank you for your support, everyone!

—Alan, Howard, and Sandra

AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit
about 9 years ago – Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 06:56:25 AM

Ask Me Anything!

Alan and Howard are doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) over on Reddit at r/fantasy today. The shortlink is redd.it/345gnp, which is cool because there's a straight (345) plus the abbreviation for Gross National Product (gnp) making it easy to remember.

Or you could just click on it. 

If you Reddit, that's a great place to ask questions because the answers are threaded and everybody can see them.

Goofing Off With Blueprints

Ben McSweeney is doing a bunch of the weapon diagrams for us. Howard took a few of his drafts and turned his line art into blueprint style sketches.

Howard posted Ben's Chainsaber Mark V line art over at schlockmercenary.com. Yes, the Chainsaber is in the book, and it is NOT a Phubar weapon, so it is totally safe to use.*

(*note: No, it is not.)

Thank you again for your support, everyone. We're just $10k from unlocking those pins, and we're pretty excited about the stretch goals that lie beyond them!

—Alan, Howard, and Sandra