Auroboros Development Update: January
over 2 years ago – Sat, Jan 29, 2022 at 02:23:59 AM

Hey everybody! It's been quite a while - we hope everybody had a good December and January! Here at Warchief, we're back in full swing. Aside from getting the book to you, we're starting work on our next project too so things are getting busy again.

So what's the latest news? We've got a lot to share this month!

Production Updates

We've seen all the samples, the numbers are in, Auroboros and the various add-ons are with the printers! We took a bit of extra time on finalizing everything: final balance passes, proofreading, the color correction. Once we get the final proofs we'll be sure to post lots of photos of everything altogether, as well as continuous updates  

Our current estimated date for most backers to have the book in their hands by the end of JULY. We will keep you updated on this as the process continues. We hope you have it sooner, but this is currently the line in the sand for everything to be delivered.

Publishing Update

We have some more exciting news, especially for those who may want to buy a copy for friends and family. In the next few weeks, you will be seeing Auroboros show up on some online listings (in the US) for an October release! Along with the sourcebook, you'll also see Micky Neilson's Under the Sun novel on sale as a standard edition. If you prefer to buy from your FLGS, worry not, we're working on that too! We don't have any more information to share on the global release in other languages - but rest assured, details are coming! (And yes, we're working with your favorite VTTs for digital distribution on those too - more info in time!)

Soundtrack Preview

Over the last few months, Jason Hayes and Jason Willey completed the digital soundtrack! We're going to be delivering this along with everything else digitally in March - but we didn't want our backers to have to wait that long. Chris handpicked a track for this preview, please enjoy Ash'ahar!

Final STL Miniatures!

Our artist, Ed Crane, finished the final miniatures for our STL Hero Bonus Pack! These will be sent to you along with the rest of the digital content in March as promised. We'll be printing and painting some ourselves in the next month - keep an eye out on our social media pages!

March Delivery

We've mentioned it many times but just wanted to clarify - in March (our original planned shipping date), we will be sending the book and any and all other digital items they are eligible for. This will arrive via Backerkit and their digital delivery tools. We haven't worked out the exact date as we're focused on getting everything in tip-top shape, but we'll have it ready for next month's update so you can plan around it.

We absolutely can't wait for you to start your adventures in Lawbrand!

-Warchief Gaming

Auroboros Development Update: December
over 2 years ago – Tue, Dec 21, 2021 at 01:02:10 AM

Time for the final update of the year! We're doing it a bit earlier this month due to the holidays when we'll be out of office, but we still have some news and cool stuff to show off!

Production Numbers and Backer Surveys

Today we're finalizing all of our production numbers based on backer surveys. Thanks so much to everybody who reached out, we were able to get a good chunk of issues resolved. As a reminder, addresses will not lock until early next year but feel free to reach out now if you need help changing it.

Book Production Update

This last week was an incredibly exciting (and a little emotional!) week for us at the Warchief office as we received the first wave of color correction samples.

Here's a look at our review process as we went through every page, every piece of art, and more! 

(And yes, we had some awesome Auroboros art put up on our walls here at the office...)

Along with this, we also received the final proofreading notes for the sourcebook, and are expecting the same for Under the Sun right around the corner! We are really in the home stretch - the changes have all been made and the book has been sent to color correction for another pass over the holidays.

We also received a physical sample of the Collector's Edition slipcase and books and they have come to a whopping 12lbs due to the book now being 400 pages. We are a little scared what that means for our shipping costs, but that's for us to worry about and for you to enjoy these behemoth volumes!

GM Screen Preview

As promised to those who asked, here's a look at our Auroboros GM screen. This contains some high level information for the Mark of the Serpent system, some content generation features, and some core rules any GM may want to access! Plus... some cool art you may not have seen yet! The screen is 4 panels wide, with it being 43.75" wide and 8.5" tall. As a bonus, it squeezes right into the Collector's Edition slipcase!

STL Miniatures Update

Our .STL artist has moved onto the the heroes bonus pack! Here's a look at three of the playable race + class combinations in this pack! We'll share the remaining two once they're complete.

Happy holidays and a happy new year!

We're about to take some time off for the holidays, but we're already cooking up what we'll be showing off next month as well as starting work on our next project at Warchief. Thank you all for the support it has been an incredible year for the team and we couldn't have done it without you.

-Team Warchief

Final BackerKit Survey Due In Two Weeks!
over 2 years ago – Sat, Dec 04, 2021 at 12:41:56 AM

Hey everybody!

Due to our production run starting soon, we need to lock all orders this month. That means that BackerKit surveys are due on DECEMBER 17, 12:01AM PST. If you do not complete your survey by this date, there is no guarantee that your order will be fulfilled. We currently have 378 backers who currently have not completed their BackerKit survey. We hope we can get this number down to as close to zero as possible in the next two weeks!

We have been going through all of the messages sent to us in the last month today to confirm surveys and only two users so far had not received their surveys. And that was because of...

Apple Relay Email Account Users

Many of the customers who have not confirmed their surveys are Apple Relay email users. This is a system where Apple devices generates a unique email address for an account so that companies do not have your private information. Though it is a very useful service, it unfortunately breaks between Kickstarter and BackerKit, as they are two different companies trying to email you on this email address. If you use one of these for your Kickstarter account, please send us a message on Kickstarter ASAP containing your proper email address so we can send you a survey.

Address Changes

You will still be able to log into BackerKit and change your email address until we are closer to shipping. We will announce that date at a later time and give ample time for you to finalize it. If you plan to move in the next few months, worry not! If you plan to move sometime after March of next year, consider changing your address to a third-party who do not expect to move. 

Late Backers

Worry not, late backers. You have no surveys to fill out as you already confirmed your orders ahead of time!

Thanks for your help,

Warchief Gaming

Auroboros Development Update: November
almost 3 years ago – Tue, Nov 30, 2021 at 11:52:35 PM

Hey everybody! Sorry for the delayed update this month, the holiday saw some of us traveling a little bit so we weren't able to be at our computers, but we have a lot of cool stuff to share!

Production & Development Update

Huge news on this front! The book is done!* 

*OK, technically we still have some time for balance updates and typo fixing, but the book is fully written and currently undergoing color correction before it goes off to print! 

To celebrate this, our layout artist had a black and white proof printed to go over so we could see how everything looks on the page, useful for spotting layout and spacing issues that aren't as easily seen on your monitor. We posted a video of that over on our Twitter account, and it's pretty awesome!

Beyond the book itself, we also wrapped on all of our add-ons, and Under the Sun is undergoing final layout changes this week. As mentioned before, we have already opted to miss March due to the ongoing shipping crisis, but we will be delivering the PDFs (and STLs) to backers in March as originally intended. We hope to have updates on the expected delivery date of the physical product early next year.

Beyond that, now that we've wrapped a vast majority of our work on Worldbook: Lawbrand, we're looking to the future! More on that next year...

BackerKit Surveys

Once again, we are asking you to finish your survey if you haven't! There are almost 400 backers who have yet to finish their surveys, which means we won't be able to ship them any product and won't have final confirmation on our printing totals. If you haven't received your BackerKit survey for whatever reason, or you lost it, please send us a message here on Kickstarter!

The Book Interiors

So now that you know where the book is at production-wise, we'd love to show you some of our most recent work, starting with some pages straight out of the book so you can see how far the layout has come! We've learned a LOT about making RPG books but something we've continued to prioritize as a value is clean, useable design whenever possible, and big, beautiful art!

First up, the World section of our book features a section for each city. This spread comes in the middle of that section and details some of the POIs and important people who live there, as well as beautiful maps by Francesca Baerald. These are meant to be readable by players and GMs alike, and there's another, more in-depth section in the Adventuring section of the book for GMs to come up with stories for each city, known as Adventure Guides (which we've talked about in previous updates). 

As you may or may not notice, we've made some big iterations on text headers, the page margin design, and even callout boxes. The page backgrounds are a bit lighter as well to improve clarity from our original designs. It's been an incredible experience working together to make the book as good as can be.

Secondly, here's a peek at our Bestiary - we have (thanks to stretch goals) a total of 20 distinct monsters, many of which have 3 statblocks, giving GMs a variety of CRs and flavors to choose from. Gaze upon the mighty Duneback, adventurers, and despair...

Lastly, here's a peek at one of the dungeons we've featured. As this isn't a campaign book, we don't go too in-depth, but you can find dungeons like this in the Adventure Guides, ready for GMs to adapt to their needs and drop into their campaign. The boss of this dungeon, Eric Sunseeker, is a character you'll come to know more about in the companion novel, Under the Sun!

Add-On Previews

Dice Update

As previously promised, here's some photos of our pre-production dice samples! Panda Gaming Manufacturing provided us with these before they go to print - they're ABS plastic and turned out rather beautiful, complete with our custom symbols (and displayed in our Wyrmwood accessories). The details turned out nice and sharp and we love the gold numbers/symbols on the green dice.

Item & Spell Cards

Our designer Mark finished the designs for our Item & Spell card decks, one of the add-ons from the campaign. Here's a peek at them, with some rules previews as well... As we mentioned last month, Humble Squid Creatives was able to do item art for us, allowing every single magic item to have art on these cards! Some of this art is actually exclusive to the cards themselves and is not featured in the book, but we did splash some in where it fit.

Thanks for reading everybody! We'll see you next month! If you have questions or want to chat with other people in the community, be sure to join our Discord server for Auroboros!

Auroboros Development Update: October
almost 3 years ago – Sat, Oct 23, 2021 at 01:07:34 PM

Hey all! Hope everybody has been well, we're excited to share this month's development update!

BackerKit Surveys

First and foremost - as you know, we have locked and charged BackerKit surveys. If you have not received one of these surveys, please message us here on Kickstarter! 

If you need to change your address, you have a few more months to do so, we will be messaging a lock date for those in time. To do so, simply log in to BackerKit.com and edit it! If you have any issues, message us and we'll get it sorted.

Auroboros Development

Big news! We finished principle design and writing of the sourcebook this month, and it's being sent to copy-editing now! This means that every spell, item, monster, piece of lore, and everything else are all written and have been reviewed by playtesters and gone through multiple rounds of iteration. We do still have more time to make changes to balance and copy-editing will surely catch a whole mess of typos, but we're in the home stretch! We've also got a few more pieces of brand new art coming in, but those have places in the book already reserved for them. The source book is sitting just around a whopping 400 pages right now!

Additionally, Micky Neilson has finished writing the companion novel Under the Sun and that's going off to copy-editing as well! It's certainly an exciting time here at Warchief to see all of our hard work come together and new printed samples are being prepared. 

Last, but certainly not least, we just received a draft of the entire soundtrack from Jason Hayes & Jason Wiley. It's been a very productive month for Team Auroboros!

Item Preview

Our book has a lot of magic items, ranging from legendary weapons, magical musical instruments, and absurd gadgets. In the sourcebook, Samwise Didier drew concept art for 13 of our total 41 items. When it came time to create the cards from the Item & Ability Cards deck, our artist Mark Bryner felt that the cards felt a bit empty without art for the rest of the items, so we're commissioning Humble Squid Creatives to create concept art for the rest of them! This concept art will be featured on the item cards specifically, and we'll post some here when we've received some - but there may be room for more art in this section as the book comes out of copy-editing. It's pretty jam-packed as it is!

New .STL Files

We've got some new STLs to show off for monsters! As before, these .STLs will be pre-supported and are based on our fantastic bestiary art by Alex Horley, with 3D model design by Ed Crane! This batch of .STLs make up our STL Miniatures Bonus Pack, which was free if you purchased either Pack 1 or Pack 2.

In the coming months, we'll get some of these printed and painted by the Warchief team to show off in a future update. As tabletop gamers, it is such an awesome feeling to see things come to life like this.

Dungeon Maps

One of the stretch goals during the Kickstarter campaign was to add dungeon maps to the sourcebook. Though it is a campaign setting and not an adventure, we wanted to give you a sense of how some of the iconic faction and location dungeons look and felt. To accomplish this, Chris sketched out 7 unique dungeons on paper, and our artist Mark is translating them into proper dungeon maps for the book. Without further ado, here's a look at the Catacombs of Vorilgraine - there's also details about who the last boss is with a portait, but we'll show that another time!

Until Next Month!

We've gotten so much work done, received tons of awesome new art, and even a soundtrack in the last month - it's been a busy one! We're entering the final stages of development and look forward to showing you more in the coming months. We've also started work on our first starter adventure, which we hope to have deliver in PDF form in March, along with the sourcebook. Next week's update may be slightly shorter as the holidays approach and we get ready for color correction, but rest assured, we'll still have awesome things to show you.

-The Warchief Team