End of May Update
almost 7 years ago – Mon, May 22, 2017 at 07:17:43 PM

With the Core book at the printer, we have some important odds and ends to cover.

First: If your order hasn’t shipped yet, now is a good time to update your address to the address where you’ll be in July. Log in to Backerkit to do this. If you don’t remember how to get into Backerkit, use this link. https://planet-mercenary-rpg.backerkit.com/ If you are having trouble with the system, email [email protected]

Status reports:

Planet Mercenary Corebook

We got page proofs last Friday. There were some color adjustments that needed to be made. Today I’m sending back the page proofs so that the printer can continue work. They expect to complete the printing in late June and ship things to us.

Planet Mercenary PDF

We’ve updated the PDF to include the sidebar commentaries and indexes. We’re still planning to include cross reference links, but we don’t have a specific timeline yet. Putting in the links is a time consuming process and getting physical books done and mailed has priority. Also on the list is making a form-fillable character sheet.

FAQ / Errata Document

This will ship with the book, so we’re already beginning to organize information and put it together. If you have found something that you think should be noted in the document, you can submit it at this link: Planet Mercenary Errata

Other components

We’re expecting the ships-to-scale GC screen to arrive tomorrow. At that point we will have all the components in hand and the only thing we will be waiting on is the book itself.

GC Secrets PDF

Work has begun on this. Things that we know we will include are: an expanded index for the Planet Mercenary book, a detailed example of combat in a Planet Mercenary game, and specific advice for creating NPCs. There will be other things as well. We’re still gathering and organizing material. We’ve scheduled the last week of June to make a concerted push to get the writing done. Editing will happen after that.

Updating Planetmercenary.com

The website has been sitting idle while we focused on the game itself. We plan to give it an overhaul so that it has downloads from us and a mechanism by which players can share resources. In the meantime, Planet Mercenary gamers have already begun to form groups on places like Reddit and Facebook. If you know of a place where other players can join you in talking about the game, email it to [email protected] with the subject line "Planet Mercenary Discussion Group" and we’ll post an update with a list of links.

Deluxe Handbrain Screen

This addendum Kickstarter is chugging along. It has funded and is now reaching for stretch goals. Since the screens will be arriving at about the same time as the Planet Mercenary books, we’ve figured out a way to combine shipping on the two. Details are available in the FAQ of that project. Feel free to go take a look. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/howardtayler/deluxe-rpg-handbrain-screen

The Game Chief's Deluxe RPG "Handbrain" Game Screen (a new Kickstarter project)
almost 7 years ago – Mon, May 15, 2017 at 09:27:27 PM

We're launching another RPG-related Kickstarter! Before we say any more about that project, this "come look at our new Kickstarter" message is not the sort of thing we'll be sending out very often, but we do plan to continue to make cool things, and we sincerely hope those things will align with your interests. 

The Handbrain Game Screen That You Made Possible

We are announcing this project to Planet Mercenary backers first. The R&D for this product was funded out of Planet Mercenary proceeds. Per our final stretch goal, we promised to spend some money trying new things. This is the new thing:

 

But Wait There's More (and Howard Promises to Not Say That Again)

In addition to the ABS plastic Game Chief screens, we'll be offering a Planet Mercenary adventure in PDF format as an add-on. The adventure, "Size Might Matter," is set in Eina Afa, land of low apparent gravity and enormous creatures, and will debut at GenCon this upcoming August. If you only want the PDF, you can back the project for $10, and only get the digital goods. This adventure can be played as a continuation of the pre-built adventure in the Planet Mercenary core book, so if you're creating a campaign, it might be something you want.

The Handbrain Game Screen project can be found here.

And Now, Planet Mercenary Core Project News

The layout files for the Planet Mercenary core book went to the printer this morning. We'll provide further updates next week, once the printer has updated Sandra with fascinating details about things like the exact date the books will be done. 

If you found a typo in the PDF update that went out this weekend, please congratulate yourself at having found something that will definitely be in the book. Think of these last few errors (and we know there will be a few) as Easter Eggs. Treat the missing "i" in the word "if" as a personal trophy.  Don't post those in here because you'll spoil the fun for everyone else. 

Maybe at some future date these will be fixed, perhaps in a second printing. We'd love for Planet Mercenary to need a second printing. 

People are Already Playing Planet Mercenary

Over on the Schlock Mercenary Facebook group,  Eric Wendlandt posted a game report from the first session of a custom campaign he created, which tells a story of the opening shots of The Teraport Wars in 3096. Among the things that Eric learned: the Planet Mercenary D6³ system let him run a larger game than he thought he could. The game went brilliantly, and the players who were unfamiliar with the Schlock Mercenary source material came up to speed just fine. It warms our cold, mercenary hearts to know that people are playing the game, telling their own stories, and having fun.

Thank you

We keep saying "thank you" because we don't actually have cold, mercenary hearts. We're awash in gratitude nearly all that time. You have made so many things possible for us, it's difficult for us to find words that express how we feel, and any words we use seem to lose some of their power over time because we say them so often. 

That's no reason to not keep saying them. Thank you.

--Howard, Sandra, & Alan

Mid May Update
almost 7 years ago – Fri, May 12, 2017 at 10:49:35 PM

Apologies that this update is late. We’ve been head-down on the final touches before going to print. Everything is done and we’re just doing final passes and copy edits. The book goes to print on Monday and an updated PDF will be released sometime between now and Monday.

Also on Monday, we’ll be launching a Kickstarter to fund the manufacturing on the Deluxe Handbrain Screen which was researched and tooled as part of the Planet Mercenary funding. We'll create a full announcement on this over the weekend.

We expect to have books at the end of June and to ship all the orders in July.

GenCon: Howard, Alan, and Sandra will all be at GenCon in August. Planet Mercenary books will be there too. You can find us at booth 1549 in the dealer's hall. We've registered some Planet Mercenary games and they'll be available when event registration opens. Last year they filled up quickly, so if you're interested you'll want to be quick to register.

Component Status

• Dice - Ordered and Arrived
• Mayhem Deck - Ordered and Arrived
• Pins & Coins- Ordered and Arrived
• GM Screen – Order placed, proof approved. This will arrive to us within a week or so.

Planet Mercenary Book Status

• 100% complete, final copy checks and off to print by Monday.

Game Chief Secrets PDF: We’ll begin work on this next week. We’ve been collecting materials for this all along, but now it is time to begin organizing and preparing them so they’ll be a useful tome instead of a collection of random bits.

Thanks for your continued support! We are working diligently to get this in your hands. - Howard, Sandra, & Alan

End of April Update
about 7 years ago – Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 01:43:16 AM

If you want to stop receiving these updates (Which is likely for those of you who only ordered Seventy Maxims books):  

• Login to your Kickstarter account. 
• Go to Settings-> Notifications. 
• Scroll down past the newsletter info. 
• Then you'll find a list of all the projects that you have backed. 
• Uncheck the box next to Planet Mercenary and click save. 

You will no longer be notified by email when we post an update, but you'll still be able to check on the updates by going to the project page. 

If your order contains a Planet Mercenary core book, all of your items will ship together in July. If you want to check the contents of your order or if you need to update your shipping address, use this link to log in to Backerkit: https://planet-mercenary-rpg.backerkit.com/ 

The Beta PDF: This was released last Monday. If you have a PDF or a corebook as part of your order, you should have gotten an email from Backerkit with instructions for how to acquire your PDF. This PDF is preliminary and will be updated as the files are finalized. Final page count for the book will be 352, almost 100 pages more than we stated in the Kickstarter. 

We're on schedule to go to print in early May, which has us shipping books in July. 

Component Status 

• Dice - Ordered and Arrived 
•  Mayhem Deck - Ordered and Arrived 
•  GM Screen – Copy edit done. We'll be placing the order for this tomorrow.

Planet Mercenary Book Status 

• Rules Text: 100% written. 
•  Editing 100%. 
•  Art: 100% 
• Setting Text: 100%. 
• Commentary text: 50% This goes in the sidebars to give you jokes and additional clarifications. 
•  Pre-Gen Adventure: 100% 
•  Copy-editing: 90% (+30%). We're catching odds and ends now. 
• Indexing: 70% Pages Our indexer has all the pages. I'll be checking with her later this week for a status update. Expected completion is May 1. 

An alternate measure: the book has 20 sections 

• Sections 1-19 Layout complete. (348 pages completely laid out.) 
• Section 20 Indexes, Character sheet, etc. Character sheet is complete. Indexing began on April 1. 

By Pages: 

• Page 1-348 catching last errors and tweaking problems 
• Pages 1-348 being indexed 
•  Pages 1-348 Commentary and sidbars being added. 

Game Chief Secrets PDF: Pieces are in place, but our focus is on getting the core-book out to you, and then turning our attention to this fully. 

Thanks for your continued support! We are working diligently to get this in your hands. - Howard, Sandra, & Alan

Planet Mercenary PDF Release
about 7 years ago – Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 09:09:47 AM

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