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The Delver's Guide to Beast World: a 5e Supplement & Setting

Created by Heartleaf Games

Pre-order store for The Delver's Guide to Beast World

Latest Updates from Our Project:

I was ready to do a countdown and everything. Bats and Kobolds are now in The Delver's Guide!
almost 2 years ago – Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 01:01:02 PM

We gave y'all until November 15th to hit $500,000 and get bats and kobolds in the Delver's Guide as playable species. We're counting money raised from a few different sources, so I punched the numbers into a calculator to check how close we were and—

Oh. Well. Yip.


Bats and Kobolds: two more playable species!

(there's still another day to pre-order our Bats/Kobolds 2021 t-shirt on our website! now it's a celebration of success instead of an emblem of anxiety.) Click the image to get there:

It's a neat shirt, and this is your only chance to get it.

Long live love, bats and 'bolds!

Cullen

Artists, Mountains of Plushies, Playtesting, and Previews!
almost 2 years ago – Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 01:01:02 PM

Got a whole mess of updates for y'all!

First off, a happiest of holidays from Heartleaf Games to you! We want to send you cards, full of warmth, well wishes, and art by Travispls, featuring the writer of The Delver's Guide, Cullen McGuire, our managing editor Selius, our Lead Artist Stasya Danilova, Travis himself, and me, Lexi Fox! If you'd like to receive a card in the mail from us for your holiday cheer, shoot us an email with your name and mailing address in the next 48 hours to [email protected] with the subject line "Season's Greetings"! We'll send the first 200 emails we receive a Christmas card!

Playtesting and Previews

if you have yet to join our Discord server, consider hopping in to hang out! You will get lots of little updates in art and lore of the Beast World, and a chance to introduce yourself to this awesome community. We'll be talking extensively about playtesting in the coming month, and our Discord is the place to join in for it.

https://discord.gg/5Z6dEx4pfC 

Midwest FurFest was awesome

We are fresh back from MFF, and wow, what an incredible experience meeting so many of you! A bunch of you swung by the table to pick up the physical softcover version of our preview adventure in the Beast World, Leaving Erin. Cannot wait to meet even more of you in 2022 as we hit up more conventions, though before then, we've got a book to finish!

We hung out with Fenris Publishing, our domestic fulfilment partners, forged new friendships, and hugged a lot of awesome fursuits. Can't wait to do it again!

Over 100 artists.

A huge portion of the work in the past month has gone to bringing on board artists from every corner of the furry community - over a hundred of them. Artists will be lending their talents to the book, the Deck of Delvers, the Pathpost Dungeon Scout Kit and more! I am so, so excited to be bringing together such a massive raft of talent to the Beast World, and it has only made me more excited for the future of Heartleaf Games.

Part of having so many artists means making sure there is a cohesive depiction of the clothes and cultures of the Beast World, and to help with that, our Lead Artist Stasya Danilova has been putting together visual guidelines for the Homelands and species. Have a look at two of them now!

200,000 cubic meters of plushies, oh my god

Y'all really, really liked the plushies. Anything I say will not compare to this video, so: 

https://i.imgur.com/W5ieZfM.mp4 

So many Cullen plushies. Just... so many. As you can see, manufacturing for the plushies is WELL underway. We've also got confirmation that dice have been totally completed, and all of the materials for the books and cards have been sourced.

Our manufacturing partners have been awesome, and you can certainly expect more in the future from these folks.

One last thing......

 Long live love, Delvers. Can't wait to see you in the Beast World.

The Pandemic Hits Heartleaf
almost 2 years ago – Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 01:01:00 PM

Hey y'all. I'm less-than-excited to announce a new cross-promotion that has come to The Delver's Guide to Beast World:  Heartleaf X COVID 19. 


All three of us have it. My whole family has it (and my dad had heart surgery two weeks ago, so that's more on my mind than anything else). Keep us in your thoughts.  We're doing our best to keep working, but this is a pretty major wrench in things. 


I will keep all of you in the loop about how this affects the release time frame, I promise. 


Let's Talk About Something More Fun.

We'll need some extra help to stay rested, so we've consulted the aid of the new wizard subclass in The Delver's Guide: the Somnomancer.

Monsters scatter while you take five!
Dream about kicking ass, then rise and shine to round up the loot.

Backerkit Hiccups

Backerkit has been sending out emails asking for payment information for shipping, and I wanted to clear some of that up, as we're getting a lot of questions about it, particularly because even folks that are just getting the PDF are getting those emails! If you are one of those people, you can safely ignore emails asking for shipping information.


We have reached out to Backerkit support to try and find out why they're sending these out automatically with such frequency and inaccuracy, but in the meantime, don't worry - your payment information will not be charged until it's time to ship, and if you've already paid for your pledge, it's not asking you to pay a second time!  


Love y'all.  Stay tuned. More soon.

Cullen, with Selius & Lexi

Time for Playtesting!
almost 2 years ago – Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 01:00:57 PM

Playtesting!

Hey folks, we're back! Finally on the mend from covid, and we are ready to hurl ourselves into playtesting. That means subclasses, spells, species, teamwork maneuvers, and wagon rules!

Check out this form to begin! https://forms.gle/LiWRNzVJysZQEtMZ8


If you want to take part in playtesting, we'd love to get you on the Discord! https://discord.gg/VRh2nkSpQM


This public round of playtesting will go until March 15th, so hop in and hang out with us!

See you on the road, Delvers! 

Progress Report, World Events, and General Update
almost 2 years ago – Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 01:00:55 PM

Hi everyone! First, we should talk briefly about world events.

Crises Overseas

Along with most of you, we have been following the news in Ukraine with ongoing horror. Putin's invasion continues to feel like an unreal event, but there is no denying the real effect it is having on those near and dear to us at Heartleaf. 


More than one of our artists was living in Kyiv specifically, and maintaining contact has proven incredibly difficult. Many of our artists are also in Russia, where sanctions and SWIFT cutoffs make paying them increasingly difficult, all while the floor drops out from the ruble and prices of goods skyrockets. Some of them even face jail time for joining the protests in their own country. We have made personal pledges to those artists working with us to do everything in our power to help them stay afloat, but there is much that a community can do that we alone cannot.

On March 1st, the Ukrainian division of the Red Cross put out a plea for hundreds of millions of dollars of medical supplies. To that end, we are encouraging our backers to make a donation here:

 Make a donation to the Ukraine Red Cross here. 


 We Need a Bit More Time

Might as well say it clearly, painful as it is for us to do so. Delays in production have stemmed from several places, starting with our entire home team - all three of us - getting sick around the new year. With that said, we are still handily aiming to have the project shipped well before year's end.

It hurts to admit a delay, but we want this book and everything that comes with it to be the best it can be, and rushing it out the door isn't the way. We've got a lot more plans for the Beast World in the future, but that all starts with the Delver's Guide. Heartleaf Games has no plans to put forward any other projects until this one is done.


Production

So let's talk about where we're at!

Plushies and metal dice are done. Thousands of plushies (nearly 300 boxes of them!) and countless dice are sitting in our manufacturer's warehouse, waiting to be sent over with the books. The Beast World Dice Set, with its lil animal heads, has faced a delay - the first batch of production deformed while it was setting thanks to a temperature issue in their storage - but is on track to be finished.

So many batwolves...

The Deck of Delvers now has over 80 artists working on it, bringing in awesome talent from every corner of the community and all around the world. I cannot wait to show it off, and while I can't show you any cards with characters belonging to backers (they're a surprise for the backers!), I can show one of the handful of cards with a character from us to give an idea of the level of quality we're seeing!


Rules for the Meandering Tales card game are complete and production of the individual cards is well under way, with both it and the Deck of Delvers getting printed on huge tarot-sized cards: 70mm x 120mm. Big enough that everyone at your table will be able to see them!

The first round of play testing on our Main Event Fighter, Frostburn Eclipse Sorcerer, and Carrion Master Ranger - plus dozens of spells, magic items, species, and Homeland features - went great, and the amount of feedback and enthusiasm we received has been overwhelming. We're still sorting through it!

A crew contends with an ambush of vampire spawn, by MDs

Writing has been focused entirely in the mechanics for The Delver's Guide for the last month or so, primarily in bringing you the best 5e wagon experience ever. Split into several different weight grades, 6 wagon models, and over a hundred attachments, these traveling homes and miniature fortresses for Delver crews will grow with the strength of the party. Invest in your crew's wagon, and it will be an invaluable tool for taking on the most dangerous foes in your games. Play testing on the wagons (and more subclasses, with the next pack of material including our barbarian, druid, and paladin subclasses) is still ongoing. Here's a lil preview of the work that's been pouring into these wagons...


So much wagon art.

And that's all for now! We want to continue keeping you all in the loop as Heartleaf Games continues to strive towards the finish line. If you've got any questions at all, please feel free to email us at [email protected] or hop on our Discord to chat with us directly! https://discord.gg/VRh2nkSpQM


Long Live Love,

-Lexi Fox

Editor & Layout Artist


Okay, my turn too.

HI everyone! Cullen here. I wanted to add a personal note as well.

The stuff in Ukraine has been very distracting for me. As Lexi mentioned, many of our artists are in Russia and Ukraine, and we've been doing our best to be helpful to our people there while still grinding away at this beautiful project. I hope that you'll find something to give to them; we've been donating all that we can, too.


Things with the Delver's Guide are going well! I am working my very hardest to make up for the lost time from being sick in January, and we are slowly but surely working through the other delays as well. The past few months have thrown us some manufacturing curve balls, and obviously becoming unable to pay many of our staff, or even speak to others, has been a pretty awful sort of challenge. That said, we are hammering away at what is left and the book is good. Great, even.


I'm keeping my head up. I'm so grateful to have all of you here, and to feel the energy and excitement surrounding the book. The progress is looking so good, and the more we get into a finished state, the more confident I am that this could really be something special. Just wait a little while longer, and I promise the delay will be worth it. I'm not letting go of the thing until I'm sure it's the best it can be. I can't wait to hear the stories you tell with it.


Thanks again for being patient with us. Long live love. And peace, come really damn soon please.

Cullen


PS: I want to hear from you! If you're not already in our Discord server and have questions for us, or just want to chat, we are always listening for you. The place is really jumping! I'm going to be scheduling a new round of play testing in the next few days, so come on in if you want to see what the wagon mechanics look like in particular!

 Our Discord Server 


And please, as Lexi said, consider a donation to the Ukrainian Red Cross.

Make a donation to the Ukraine Red Cross here.