Posters are Finished! And a little check in.
almost 4 years ago – Tue, Jul 05, 2022 at 12:19:14 PM

Something fun in the interim.

We coordinated a whole lot of artists and a whole lot more players for our posters, but that stage is completely finished! Here is the final art for all the posters available on the Backerkit pre-order page. This art will be in the book, too!

If you want to pre-order and are already a backer, or have already pre-ordered, you can double-order safely. Before we start the process of squaring everything away for shipping: We will be merging orders with duplicate email addresses! No need to worry about being charged too much for shipping!

We're doin' our best to look out for ya. <3  More news about the book very soon. When you hear from me next, it'll be when we send the draft to print proofs! Hang in there, and thanks again for being patient, delvers.

Long live love.

Cullen

PS: I also put two new posters on the Backerkit store. One is a piece from the book that I couldn't help but do a run of 11x17 prints of, and the other is the cover! I'll show those ones first, and then the rest!

Surveys! Shirts! And a little update about what we're up to lately.
almost 4 years ago – Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 01:01:04 PM

The Backerkit surveys are sending soon!

We just sent out our 'smoke test', which is a little test of the survey sent to five percent of all the backers. If all goes well, tomorrow evening they'll go out for everyone!

You'll notice that we're not charging you for shipping yet. This is so that we don't over/undercharge you! Shipping is all over the place right now, so we'll be collecting your shipping fees later. There will be an update about it, don't worry. Your credit card on file will be charged for shipping down the line, and the fee is still capped at $29 for everyone worldwide in the worst-case scenario.

If you paid for the Special Edition upgrade, you will have $20 credit on Backerkit with which to select that upgrade for free. So don't fret! Just go through the survey and tell it you want the fancy cover. You won't be charged any extra in that case.

Let's talk about t-shirts!

So, on our Discord server (You are on the Discord server, right? *cough cough* join here if you're not) there have been a lot of people asking us about Bats and Kobolds, the two species left over from our last stretch goal. We originally gave October 31st as the final deadline for us to hit 500k and get the bats 'n bolds in. People were excited and more than a few of you wanted to have an opportunity to kick in toward that goal, so we decided to create a t-shirt!

You can only get this t-shirt on our website! Click the shirt to go to the store page and pre-order it until November 15th. Once that date passes, it will be gone from the store forever and I'll put in the order for very close to exactly that many shirts. It'll ship long before your pledge stuff too!

It took us a little longer than we expected to get our Backerkit survey up and running, so we're extending the deadline for kobolds and bats. The double-extra final apocalypse deadline for the last stretch goal is November 15th. This won't be extended again, so here's the final push to get these weirdos included in the book as playable species!

How's the book coming along?

I'm glad you asked, slightly-larger text. In November, Lexi and Selius and I will be headed to a cabin in the middle of the woods in the mountains for four weeks, to plunge ourselves fully into the process of writing the book. It's going to be a four-week sprint after which I am going to have tons of playtest content and all sorts of other cool stuff to share.

I won't be around much during November for this reason, but there are lots of other staff around to answer questions and help get you squared away.

And that's all I've got for this one! I will talk with all of you very soon. Long live love, delvers.

From the Halloween Party's Snack Table,

Cullen McGuire

oh... and one other thing...

We'll see you at Midwest Fur Fest, with ultra-limited edition free printed copies of Leaving Erin, the preview module, in tow.

Talk to you soon. 🐺

Artists, Mountains of Plushies, Playtesting, and Previews!
almost 4 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.

I was ready to do a countdown and everything. Bats and Kobolds are now in The Delver's Guide!
almost 4 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:

Long live love, bats and 'bolds!

Cullen

The Pandemic Hits Heartleaf
almost 4 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.

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